Breaking the Book: Print Humanities in the Digital Age

Breaking the Book compares and contrasts the print with the digital revolution, emphasizing that those with one foot in manuscript and coterie print cultures have much to reveal to those of us who straddle mass print and new media.

Along with altering our notions of what constitutes a ‘book,’ the transformation of the printed page to digital text has forced us to question long-held methodologies in literary criticism. In this new manifesto, noted media and digital humanities scholar Laura Mandell explores the cognitive consequences and emotional effects of human interactions with physical books, revealing why the traditional humanities disciplines are resistant to “digital” humanities. Provocative and timely, Breaking the Book opens an important new chapter on the liberating potential for digital media to revolutionize the fields of book history and the digital humanities.

Keywords:

Digital revolution, digital humanities, digital media, printed book, history of the book, digital books, literary culture, print cultures, new media, mass print, mass communications, the book, digital text, literary criticism, human interactions, physical books, humanities, institutional restructuring of the humanities, future of the humanities, Poetess Archive Journal, PAJ, Journal of the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture

Digital revolution, digital humanities, digital media, printed book, history of the book, digital books, literary culture, print cultures, new media, mass print, mass communications, the book, digital text, literary criticism, human interactions, physical books, humanities, institutional restructuring of the humanities, future of the humanities, Poetess Archive Journal, PAJ, Journal of the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture