Mak discusses materiality of texts at the University of Copenhagen

Bonnie Mak
Bonnie Mak, Associate Professor

Associate Professor Bonnie Mak is an invited speaker at Literature and Formats, a symposium on the materiality of texts, which will be held at the University of Copenhagen on November 15-16. Organized by the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, the event will bring together an international slate of speakers to examine the complex relationship between text and format. Mak's paper, "Scholarship and Its Formats: Documenting the Humanities," explores the enduring features of humanistic scholarship in different technological contexts.

"In a world in which productivity is increasingly gauged by data-driven metrics, we must articulate the distinctive contribution of humanistic research in its own terms," Mak said. "Thinking about the materiality of the humanities—how humanistic scholarship is performed and instantiated—may offer a different way to engage in campus conversations about quality and impact."

Mak holds appointments in the iSchool, History, and Medieval Studies at Illinois. Her areas of research include the history of information practices and the aesthetics of information. A forthcoming publication explores the manuscript as a technology of information visualization, while another examines the logic of the card catalog. Mak is currently collaborating with graphic designers to develop digital interfaces that encourage alternative ways of interacting with the plant collections at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney, Australia. Her first book, How the Page Matters (University of Toronto Press, 2011), examines the interface of the page as it is developed across time, geographies, and technologies.

Research Areas:
Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

New project improves accessibility of health information through AI

Assistant Professor Yue Guo has received a $30,000 Arnold O. Beckman Research Award from the U of I Campus Research Board for her project, "Optimizing Personalization in Plain Language Summaries: Comparing Predictive and Interactive Approaches for Tailored Health Information." 

Yue Guo

Han successfully defends dissertation

Doctoral candidate Yingying Han successfully defended her dissertation, "Community Archives as Agency: Documenting Chinese American Experiences in the U.S.,” on May 28.

Yingying Han

Education of Things named a SHARP Book Prize finalist

A book by Associate Professor Elizabeth Hoiem, The Education of Things: Mechanical Literacy in British Children's Literature, 1762-1860, has been named a finalist for the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) Book History Book Prize. 

Elizabeth Hoiem

Debnath datafies "The Bulletin"

MSIM student Tan Debnath, whose interests span data mining, statistical modeling, text mining, and digital humanities, joined the Center for Children's books as a research assistant. He was tasked with building curation processes that would datafy seventy-five years' worth of archival issues of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, one of the nation's leading children's book review journals.

Tan Debnath stands casually with his hands in his pockets and smiles broadly at the camera. It's a sunny day