TXTDS 200, Books Unbound, offers a low-stakes, 3 credit, CR/NR introduction to the topics, themes, possibilities, and the skills learned in the minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities.
The course can be supplemented with TXTDS 201, "Practicum", taken in a later quarter, to complete 5 total credits towards the minor's elective requirement. In the TXTDS 201, you will complete a bookmaking project of some kind, started in TXTDS 200.
More information about the minor below (scroll down: for info and images) and here: https://txtds.uw.edu/index.php/programs/minor-in-textual-studies-digital-humanities/.
For information and to ask about an add code, write to text@uw.edu or to Geoffrey Turnovsky at gt2@uw.edu. Note space is limited. Priority given to students not yet in the minor but who are seriously thinking about it. And to those who get in touch earlier.
The TXTDS minor offers the opportunity to to explore how text and information technologies -- from ancient scrolls, medieval manuscripts, and early printed books to digital and computational tools, and now to AI -- have shaped how we write, read, store, organize, access, and process information.
Coursework emphasizes hands-on, project-oriented experiences, skills-building, and creativity:
- discover UW and Tateuchi East Asia Library Special Collections; work with manuscripts, early hand-printed books, our unparalleled collection of artists books, and archival sources
- discover global histories of the text, with courses covering textual traditions in the Middle East, South and East Asia, Europe, and Latin American and the Caribbean (see our courses for 2025-2026 here: https://txtds.uw.edu/index.php/current_courses/#nxyr)
- learn techniques for making and publishing digital editions, exhibits, and collections.
- learn to create and analyze databases of cultural and historical materials; and to address cultural, historical and humanistic questions computationally.
- reflect on the impacts of digitization; on inherited notions of publishing, privacy, creativity, authorship, and originality; on how we read, understand, research, and find information; on the past, present, and future of libraries and archives; on the role of copyright, historically, today, and in the future.
- explore the impacts now of AI in relation to these questions
- pursue creative, book- and zine-making projects: with letterpress, bookbinding, typewriters, and computational and digital tools
Core courses include:
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- TXTDS 401 Text Technologies (5, max. 10) A&H/SSc
- TXTDS 402 Book Arts (5, max. 10) A&H
- TXTDS 403 Archives, Data, and Databases (5, max. 10) A&H/SSc
- TXTDS 404 Texts, Publics and Publication (5, max. 10) A&H/SSc
- TXTDS 413 Texts, Data, and Computation (5, max. 10) A&H/RSN
- TXTDS 414 Digital Editing and Text Processing for Publication (5, max. 10) A&H/SSc.
Key elective courses include (among others):
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- TXTDS 220 Making Manuscripts: Manuscript and Handwriting Technologies from Antiquity to Today
- TXTDS 221 Artificial Intelligence and Human Creativity in Historical Perspective
- TXTDS 224 Histories and Futures of the Book, Texts, and Reading
- TXTDS 267 Data Science and the Humanities
- TXTDS 320 Ancient Media
- TXTDS 321 Text Reuse, Artificial Intellectual and the Art of Stealing
- TXTDS 322 Translation, Adaptation and Textual Travels
The Capstone offers students a chance to develop an independent project or to acquire experience working with a faculty member, librarian, or a partner of the program. See sample projects here: https://txtds.uw.edu/index.php/capstones/
The TXTDS minor is of interest to students imagining careers and further study in libraries, archives, publishing and editing, and in fields where curating, preserving and making accessible cultural texts, in physical and digital forms, is key.