History of Text Technologies: Writing with Quills

What many and varied ways have humans used to write over the years? Through a series of workshops on the History of Text Technologies, scheduled over the 2026-2027 academic year, we will investigate this question. We'll look at books from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, and we'll make some of our own. 

What did people write with before phones, computers, and ballpoint pens? Some of them wrote with quills - feathers, trimmed at the end and dipped in ink. On Monday, September 21, SIMS Curator for Digital Humanities Dot Porter will lead a workshop where we will examine some manuscripts that were written with quills, look at some different historical scripts, and then try our hand at writing on both paper and parchment.

History of Text Technologies is sponsored by the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies and will be held in the Vitale II Lab for Digital Humanities & Book History (Van Pelt Library 623). Example is "A dream of bounden dutie : dedicated to Queen Elizabeth" written in 1580, UPenn Ms. Codex 199.