“Programmable Type: the Craft of Printing, the Craft of Code”

The Edward S. and Melinda Sadar Lecture in Writing in the Disciplines, co-sponsored by Kelvin Smith Library, will feature Ryan Cordell, an assistant professor of English at Northeastern University. The talk, titled “Programmable Type: the Craft of Printing, the Craft of Code,” will take place Friday, March 23, at 3 p.m. at Kelvin Smith Library, Freedman Center Collaboration Commons. Refreshments will be provided.

About the talk

This talk will center on textual craft, seeking to illuminate conversations about computer coding in the 21st century through parallels with letterpress printing in earlier eras. These technologies of text may seem very different, but they share essential features of deliberation, planning, execution, industry and automation. Cordell also will discuss whether coding should be considered a variety of writing and be taught in the standard curriculum alongside reading, writing and arithmetic.

About the speaker

Cordell’s scholarship seeks to illuminate how technologies of production, reception and remediation shape the meanings of texts within communities. Cordell primarily studies circulation and reprinting in 19th-century American newspapers, but his interests extend to the influence of computation and digitization on contemporary reading, writing and research. Cordell is a senior fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School and serves on the executive committee of the MLA's Forum on Bibliography and Scholarly Editing.