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6 results in Book Cultures, Medieval to Modern

Network Analysis for Book Historians
  • Digital Labour and Data Visualization Techniques
  • Liz Fischer
  • Published by:
    Arc Humanities Press
    Published online:
    20 October 2026
  • Researchers and archivists have spent decades digitizing and cataloguing, but what does the future hold for book history? This book explores the potential of network analysis as a method for medieval and early modern book history. Presented through case studies of the Cotton Library, the Digital Index of Middle English Verse, and the Pforzheimer Collection, this book offers a blueprint for drawing on extant scholarly resources to visualize relationships between people, text, and books. Such visualizations serve as a new form of reference work with the potential to offer new, broad insights into the history of book collecting, compilation, and use. This volume gives a realistic look at the decision-making involved in digital humanities work, and emphasizes the value of so-called "mechanical" labour in scholarship.

Trans Histories of the Medieval Book
  • An Experiment in Bibliography
  • J. D. Sargan
  • Published by:
    Arc Humanities Press
    Published online:
    20 October 2026
  • Archival collections are political spaces: the decisions that govern whose histories are preserved, when, and by whom are not neutral. They reflect the communities that make them. For most of western history queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people were excluded from such communities. Premodern trans experiences went largely unreported and reconstructing such histories relies on the piecing together of ephemeral glimpses. Literary scholars developed tactics and tools to read through the traces, with hugely generative results that highlight the richness of non-normative premodern genders. But how do we move beyond the limits of the trace to uncover a more expansive history of premodern gender non-conformity? This book takes a methodological approach to the question. An experiment in applying trans approaches to the study of the premodern book offers alternatives both for trans histories and for book historical methods.

Disrupting Categories, 1050–1250
  • Rethinking the Humanities through Premodern Texts
  • Elaine Treharne
  • Published by:
    Arc Humanities Press
    Published online:
    16 October 2026
  • This study uses a series of medieval texts to address a set of urgent critical issues in Humanities centring on categories of L/literature, history, periodization, languages, and descriptions of script. These categories are inherited from the foundation of modern disciplines and fields of study, superimposed on what could be more flexible modes of scholarship. They are reinforced by modern academics in ways that hinder nuance, intellectual nimbleness, and new interpretative possibilities. Readers and researchers of English Language, Literature, Book Historical/Media Studies, and History are obliged by delimiting labels to navigate problematic foundational approaches and sources that confine and frustrate scholarly investigation. Through a series of cogent case studies, all situated from 1050 to 1250, the book highlights how restrictive and hierarchical modern scholarly categories can sometimes be.

A History of Old English Verse Layout
  • Poetics on The Page
  • Rachel A. Burns
  • Published by:
    Arc Humanities Press
    Published online:
    29 June 2026
  • This study presents the first full history of Old English poetic mise-en-page, drawing its approach from the fields of literary criticism, art history, metrics, palaeography, and the history of the book. Paying special attention to lineation, this book surveys the layout of poetry from the earliest Latin writings in England, to modern editions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It argues that the vernacular verse page is not, as has often been assumed, merely constrained by linguistic status. Rather, the layout of Old English poetry is shown to be the result of engaged scribal and editorial choices, and one of a set of tools used to meet readers’ needs and to express identities. Old English verse is not laid out "like prose,” but like Old English verse.

Portable Manuscripts and their Utility in the Late Middle Ages
  • Julia Bruch, Katharina M. Hofer, Ulla Kypta, Paul Schweitzer-Martin
  • Published by:
    Arc Humanities Press
    Published online:
    27 June 2026
  • This book explores the mobility of merchants’ manuscripts—understood as written records in various forms—and their role in shaping and reflecting late medieval social structures. Focusing on merchants as key agents of manuscript circulation, it highlights their impact across fairs and markets in the Holy Roman Empire. Blending cultural and economic history, the chapters span fifteenth- and sixteenth-century case studies that challenge conventional periodization. Drawing on interdisciplinary methods, the book traces manuscripts from production to dissemination and the formation of reading communities. It argues that the history of the premodern economy is incomplete without accounting for the movement of manuscripts as material and social objects.

Transmediation and the Archive
  • Decoding Objects in the Digital Age
  • Astrid J. Smith
  • Published by:
    Arc Humanities Press
    Published online:
    27 June 2026
  • Building on the field of modern archival practice, Transmediation and the Archive explores the possibilities of archival objects. Investigating material as diverse as early modern printed books, death masks, a spirit photograph, and a manuscript choir book, this study interrogates not only what the objects are now, but also asks what they were before taking material form, and what they can become as their format is transferred to other media. Blending insights from museum, library, archives, and media studies with experiential research, Astrid J. Smith examines the activities that shape the making of heritage objects, and asks how an awareness of digitization practices can inform our knowledge of both their digital and physical form. She proposes a new methodological framework for evaluating the way materiality and media can affect our relationship with historical artefacts and book culture and demonstrates its fascinating application.