Whitney Trettien

Congratulations!

Keeping me afloat is the 5yo, who leaves little merz-y dada "books" he made on my bookshelf.

Tonight, a small quarto titled TOOTODTDO. Stick figures box; a rocket sits atop a trampoline. Caption, "OFG/OEG/GPZ." I ask, what's it mean? He says, heavy: You may only read what you want it to mean.

The Price Lab’s Critical Approaches to AI Working Group has released a white paper in which we advocate for AI-free instruction in reading, writing, & research. These are fundamental skills in the humanities (& in general), & with decisive action we can keep teaching them well in the age of AI!

The image is a promotional graphic for a symposium titled "Text & Textuality" at Bryn Mawr College. The upper portion features white text over an out-of-focus black and brown background resembling keyboard keys. Dates and times are specified for Friday, March 20 and Saturday, March 21, along with the location, Old Library 224. The lower portion is a bright pink background with white text reiterating event details and emphasizing that no registration is required.

Pink text on a white background with information about the Text and Textuality Symposium at Bryn Mawr College in March 2026.

The BSA Events Committee is proud to support the Text & Textuality Symposium at Bryn Mawr College next month! The symposium features two days of lectures and panels, including keynotes by Jesse Erickson (The Morgan Library & Museum) and Whitney Trettien (University of Pennsylvania).

AI & Machine Learning Developer University Overview The University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer in Philadelphia, is a world-renowned leader in education, research, and innovation. This historic, Ivy League school co...

Penn Libraries seeks a (FT, hybrid) AI & ML Developer w an annual salary of $66-$92,700.00; apply by 3/8. Please share widely! As a future colleague of this person, I esp. welcome those with a background in the humanities, arts, or social sciences to apply. wd1.myworkdaysite.com/recruiting/u...

My book history course is largely taught using this amazing archive of lectures. Just taught @illdottore.bsky.social on Roman writing tools last week, Margaret Bruchac on wampum belts today. So much better than texts with few/no images, and you get to see amazing scholars work through their method.

Screenshot of graphic that says "ESSAYS ON CRAFT AND DISABILITY Write for us. OPEN UNTIL 01 APRIL 2026 We are now commissioning texts for a small-format, collaborative publication exploring the intersection of craft practices and disability - challenging dominant narratives of ability, productivity and inheritance in craft." -Ache & Common Threads Press

Common Threads Press call for nonfic writing+art on craft+disability: "often romanticised as therapeutic, relaxing, universal, but whose hands, bodies, rhythms are centered? Disability offers radical reimaginings of craft..." (pays you $200) www.commonthreadspress.co.uk/pages/submis... #DHmakes

✨John Garcia @jgarc.bsky.social speaks tomorrow at 5:15pm EST - hope that you can make it!
Attend in-person on the sixth floor of Penn's Van Pelt Library or remotely via Zoom.
Feb 16 • 🕔 5:15 PM EST
Full details at: pennmaterialtexts.org
(Pic: Indenture form, Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

Call for papers!

INSCRIPTION 7 (out 2027) will be all about BLANKS. It will be (as ever) a BEAUTIFUL and MAXIMAL object.

Send us your ideas!

Historical / theoretical / creative / creative-critical -- or some strange blend.

First step: 400-word proposal + brief CV by 1 April 2026.

CFP attached.

Douglass Day 2026 is under way at Penn! Join us in RDDSx on the first floor of Van Pelt. We will be here until 3pm—we have coffee and snacks to fuel your transcriptions ☕️🍊 (not to mention lots of these stickers!)

@douglassday.bsky.social @ccp-org.bsky.social

Pink background with white text about applying for funding from the BSA for a book-related events by 1 April.

White background with dark pink text providing some details about the types of events BSA can fund

🚨 Funding Alert! 🚨 Are you passionate about book history, bibliography, or book arts? Submit your proposal today for financial support for upcoming events in your community! 📖✨

📅 Deadline: 1 April (7 weeks away!) Learn more & apply today 👉 bibsocamer.org/events/funding-opportunities

ACH 2026 CFP Submit a proposal: ACH 2026 ConfTool

ACH is holding our annual virtual conference, ACH 2026, from June 24 to 26, 2026. We are excited to announce that we have extended our call for papers to February 23, 2026: buff.ly/Rltfrcu

[Job 📣] Are you curious about #AI applications in the #humanities? My Print and Probability research group (@print-and-prob.bsky.social) is hiring a postdoc! Come help us develop computational methods for identifying clandestine early modern printers!

cmu.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/CMU/job/Pitt...

Super SPIF-fy!! Thanks, Ryan. 🙂

I know there's a lot going on in the world right now, but I recently read Charles Babbage's On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacture (1832) for the first time, and it blew my f'ing mind. So much to think with. Especially for book historians.

Temple is hosting another Electronics Faire, on REPAIR. Submit art, performance, workshops: sites.temple.edu/efaire/repair/

"We invite submissions that focus on the technical aspects of repairing electronic media & objects and/or radically imagine ... community, collective, & interpersonal repair."

CFP: Navigating Digital Humanities Careers Beyond the Ivory Tower | Debates in the Digital Humanities Transforming scholarly publications into living digital works

How does DH travel outside the academy? What impact and what careers do DH skills enable? CFP for our next excellent (and necessary) book in the DDH series, edited by Jeanelle Horcasitas, @lisaironcutter.bsky.social, and @kallewesterling.bsky.social

dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/page/cfp-dh-...

Actually I should tag @drkarrschmidt.bsky.social since she might know more!

Susan Frye's Pens and Needles is the book I always recommend from the early modern perspective, and Suzanne Karr Schmidt's Altered & Adorned has lots on the development of single-sheet/use prints.

The EDM Craftwork Index This website houses the craftwork index material I have compiled on the EDM including an interactive index to open-access copies of the complete run of the EDM (1852-1879), interdisciplinary open educ...

Nice! Check out the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine Craftwork index, lots of 19c textile patterns with links to digital copies of the magazine. jmsw.github.io/edm-craftwork/

What time period is your student interested in, @sarahebull.bsky.social?

This is a stunning resource, beautifully presented - congratulations to Ros Smith Kathy Acheson and their team emwmlibrary.com

Some book trade ephemera for the cold weather: a piece of frost fair ephemera printed on the frozen River Thames by (or for) Mrs Sarah Baker on 18 January 1715/16 and probably later pasted into a book. Part of a collection assembled by A. N. L. Munby and now @theulspeccoll.bsky.social Munby.b.131.

Many must have been printed on the ice, but so few survive -- almost always in books! So cool.

Narrascope 2026 open call:

The Experience

Bridging the Physical and Digital Worlds through Narrative

Seeking projects in the realms of augmented/mixed reality, interactive installations, haunts, escape rooms, live performances that leverage tech, and more.

narrascope.org/experience/

NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts

“[NASA will] review the library holdings over the next 60 days; some material [will] be stored in a govt warehouse while the rest [will] be tossed away.”

I used a similar library at Harvard. The scope of the scientific knowledge they’ll destroy is unimaginable… 2/

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/c...

Criticism & The Chatbot Bubble (Vandal Live at UPenn English) with Christopher Newfield & Whitney Trettien

A full (ongoing) series of Vandal Live episodes kicked off at Penn in October, featuring @cnewf.bsky.social & @whitneytrettien.bsky.social. Listeners really love this episode. If there were another month in 2025, it might get to #1. But then again, we might all be dead.

Also 100th episode of Vandal

For decades, a cacophony of technological prophets has repeatedly proclaimed the impending end of the paper era. But here we still are, a paper-using humankind.

@agnesgehbald.bsky.social and me wrote an article about paper in global book cultures. #paperhistory is #bookhistory, #globalhistory

1/3

Text reads: “new report: turning the tide: climate action in and against tech by Tamara Kneese, Data & Society” with an image of Data Centers in front of an orange sky with images of protestors juxtaposed with tech work happening

This report is how I have channeled my rage as the tech industry has grown in wealth and power at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment. The old mechanisms of reform aren’t sufficient in a time of AI ascendance and data center accelerationism datasociety.net/library/turn...

A closed jar of pickled gherkins, with a white printed label showing the title and author of the poem. The gherkins look like they're past their due date.

#NewAcq: the #poem 'Jeroentje 9 voor, 9 na' by Jan Vanhaelen (1972). The text, on little sheets of paper, has been added to a jar of pickled gherkins. 🫙 🥒🥒🥒

Don't say: a nightmare for our preservation department.

Do say: an creative literary experiment!

EHC Antwerp 910872 📚💙 📖 📜