You’re a Times New Romance!

Friday February 9, SCU Letterpress got everyone ready for Valentine’s Day by hosting a card printing and decorating event. We had the best turnout we have ever had at this event, with at least 75 students, faculty, staff, and family members filling Dowd 306 and 310 between 3-5pm to print, decorate, and de-stress on a Friday afternoon. We’ve set the bar pretty high with Valentine’s designs in the past, and I’m happy to say I think we met the bar this year. Kathryn Kain made a stack of special decorative Valentine-inspired stock to print on (see middle photo), they are…

Harvest Fest Letterpress at the Forge Garden, 10.26.23

Letterpress was excited to be invited by the Forge Garden and the Center for Sustainability to be part of Fall Harvest Fest during Mission Week. There were a whole bunch of firsts for letterpress that made this a great learning opportunity: it was our first time printing outdoors at an event, the first time wheeling the table top C&P over on our brand new printing cart (print-on-wheels!), and our first collaboration with Kathryn Kain (Art & Art History). Special thanks to Maria Judnick and Rebecca Nelson for your invitation and for putting so much care and thought into this special…

What’s Critical About Critical Bibliography? A Discussion of a Special Issue of Criticism among Co-Authors and Editors, 6/20/23

This morning, I participated in an organized and moderated hour+ conversation among the contributors to the special issue of Criticism devoted to “New Approaches to Critical Bibliography and the Material Text.” I represented the team of co-authors of our essay, “Activist Bibliography as Abolitionist Pedagogy in the American Prison Writing Archive” by myself, Catherine Koehler, and Doran Larson. “This issue consists of 22 theoretically engaged essays and shorter interventions that foreground under-represented approaches to bibliography, book history, and media studies, incorporating intersectional anti-racist, feminist, queer, postcolonial, labor-centered and disability studies methods. The works in this issue do not merely add representation to…

2023 British Women Writers Conference: A Plenary, A Roundtable, and a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon

The 31st British Women Writers Conference was held at UVA from Thursday May 25 through Saturday May 27. It was my first in-person BWWC since the pandemic, so I went “all in”. It was also my last conference as the Web and Media Manager (WAMM), a position on the executive board I created and have devoted a lot of energy to since 2013, the year after I co-hosted the annual conference at CU-Boulder with Kelli Towers Jasper and Jill Heydt-Stevenson (faculty advisor). After 10 years of service as the WAMM (2 new websites and various social media accounts later), it…

Printer’s Valentines, 2/8 CAH Open House Letterpress Event

On Wednesday 2/8 SCU Letterpress helped co-host the Center for Arts and Humanities Open House held on the 3rd floor of Dowd. The many people who contributed to putting on this event included Michelle Burnham, Amy Randall, and Britt Cain of the CAH; and myself, Kathy Aoki (AAH), Renee Billingslea (AAH), and Heather Turner (English) of the DHI and SCU Letterpress. We had a great array of participants and visitors at the Open House and printing event, from our CAH Frank Sinatra Artist in Residence Mark Duplass, to groups of students, staff, and faculty from across campus. Visitors started in…

“Moving Beyond Pandemic Pedagogy: Meeting Learning Objectives, Having Fun” workshop by Katherine D. Harris

On Tuesday October 18 from 1-2:30pm, Katherine D. Harris, Professor of English and Director of Public Programming at SJSU, led a workshop in University Library room LC 205. The DHI organized and sponsored this workshop. Special thanks to Kelci Baughmann McDowell, Meg Eppel Gudgeirsson, and Jess Gopp for helping me organize the event. I had been envisioning a workshop on this topic for a long time for several reasons. We had a good group of around 15 faculty and staff from across campus who joined us. First, it would address an opportunity that I saw pandemic teaching create to deepen…

Slides: Stainforth Project conversation hosted by Keats-Shelley Association of America, 9 Sept. 2022, Zoom

Thank you to Kate Singer, Mariam Wassif, and the Keats-Shelley Association of America for inviting us to present in an inaugural virtual event, and to Michelle Levy for being our moderator and interlocutor. I’ve included my slides here, which is just one half of the program, as Deborah Hollis (CU-Boulder) gave a presentation following mine on the Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing from a collections and librarian’s research perspective. We were thrilled to have almost 60 registered attendees and a great discussion in Q&A. Helpful links: Slides: For links to many of the projects in my last slide, see https://stainforth.scu.edu/related-projects/.

7th Annual DH Student Showcase, May 31, 2022

On Tuesday, May 31 the 7th Annual Digital Humanities Showcase featured 9 student projects in the St. Clare Room of University Library for a 2-hour interactive exhibit. Special thanks to my co-organizers Meg Eppel Gudgeirsson, Kelci Baughmann McDowell, and Nadia Nasr for helping to make this happen. Each project added its unique content to the field of DH by thinking critically about the relationship between technologies and the humanities. The theme of the event was: “Finally! Celebrating the Digital in the Physical,” and each project had their own table at the event. The projects included “Mexican Immigration” by Daniel Longaker…

Videos for “Resistance in the Materials: A Gathering of Printers Pressing for Change” Plenary and Roundtable Events, 25-26 Feb. 2021

The videos are here! The #antiracismUMD YouTube channel just released recordings from “Resistance in the Materials: A Gathering of Printers Pressing for Change.” The two-day bicoastal event, held 25-26 February 2021, centered BIPOC artists, scholars, interventionists, and allies who leverage “print” broadly construed across many media as an accessible form of activism capable of leaving its own unique impressions in diverse communities. Featuring Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Jonathan Senchyne, Victoria Law, Sarah Matthews, Rio Yañez, and Amy Suo Wu. “Resistance in the Materials” was co-organized by Santa Clara University (Kirstyn Leuner, Kathy Aoki, Michelle Burnham) and the University of Maryland (Matt Kirschenbaum,…

Resistance in the Materials: A Gathering of Printers Pressing for Change

It’s now March 8, unbelievably, and I’ve finally caught up sufficiently on grading and administrative tasks to blog a bit about a recent two-day event I co-organized called “Resistance in the Materials: A Gathering of Printers Pressing for Change.” The organization efforts for this event mirror the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the event itself. Resistance in the Materials was a collaboration between the year-long Antiracism Series at the University of Maryland’s Center for Literary and Comparative Studies and Santa Clara University’s Center for the Arts and Humanities. A discussion begun by Tita Chico (UMD) and Michelle Burnham (SCU) early…