Johanna Drucker

Johanna Drucker (30 May 1952, Philadelphia) is an author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. She is the Inaugural Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies in the Department of Information Studies. She has published and lectured on topics in book history, visual epistemology, graphic design history, artists' books, digital humanities, and contemporary art and literature.

Johanna Drucker has held faculty positions at the University of Texas at Dallas (1986-1988), Columbia University (1989-1994), Yale University (1994-1999), and the University of Virginia (1999-2008), as well as fellowships and visiting positions at Harvard University (Mellon Faculty Fellow, 1988-1989), SUNY Purchase (1998-1999), and Stanford (Humanities Center, 2008-2009).

Recent titles include the jointly authored Digital_Humanities (MIT, 2012) with Anne Burdick, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp; Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide (Pearson Prentice Hall) with Emily McVarish, and SpecLab: Projects in Digital Aesthetics and Speculative Computing (Chicago, 2009). A collection of her essays, What Is? was published by Cuneiform Press in 2013 and Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production appeared in 2014 as one of the three first volumes in the new series that Harvard University Press launched in their new MetaLab series on the impact of digital humanities and design.

In addition to her academic work, Drucker has produced artist’s books and projects that were the subject of a retrospective, Druckworks: 40 years of books and projects, that began at Columbia College in Chicago and travelled in venues in the US for two years. Her artist’s books are represented in museum and library collections throughout the United States and Europe. In 2014 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. (2018)

Publications

Scholarly publications

• The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, University of Chicago Press, Spring 1994. Chapter 2: "Visual and Literary Materiality in Modern Art".

• Theorizing Modernism: Visual Art and the Critical Tradition, Columbia University Press, Summer 1994.

• The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination, London: Thames and Hudson, Spring 1995, 315 pp.
  • Il labirinto alfabetico: le lettere nella storia e nel pensiero, Milan: Bonnard, 2000, 318 pp. (Italian)
  • Alfabetski lavirint: slova u istoriji i imaginaciji, trans. Branislav Kovačević, Novi Sad: Stylos, 2006, 320 pp. (Serbian)

• The Century of Artists' Books, New York: Granary Books, 1995, xii+377 pp; 2nd ed., intro. Holland Cotter, New York: Granary Books, 2004.

• Figuring the Word: Essays on Books, Writing, and Visual Poetics, New York: Granary Books, 1998, IA. Excerpt.

• Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity, University of Chicago Press, 2005, xviii+291 pp, IA.

• with Emily McVarish, Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2008, xxix+386 pp, IA; 2nd ed., rev., Boston: Pearson, 2012, xxix+386 pp. Publisher.
  • Ping mian she ji shi: Yi bu pi pan xing de yao lan [平面设计史: 一部批判性的要览], Nanning: Guangxi Fine Arts Publishing, 2017, 386 pp. (Chinese)
  • Una historia del diseño gráfico. De la prehistoria hasta el siglo XXI, Buenos Aires: Ampersand, 2020, 450 pp. Publisher. (Spanish)

• SpecLab: Digital Aesthetics and Speculative Computing, University of Chicago Press, 2008.

• Le Petit Journal des Refusées, critical edition, Houston, TX: Rice University Press, 2009, PDF.

• with Anne Burdick, Todd Presner, Peter Lunenfeld, and Jeffrey Schnapp, Digital_Humanities, MIT Press, 2012, x+141 pp.
  • Umanistica_digitale, trans. Matteo Bittanti, Milan: Mondadori, 2014, 250 pp. (Italian)
  • Shu zi ren wen: Gai bian zhi shi chuang xin yu fen xiang de you xi gui ze [数字人文: 改变知识创新与分享的游戏规则], Beijing: Zhong guo ren min da xue chu ban she, 2018, 192 pp. (Chinese)
  • Digital_humanities, trans. David Vichnar, Prague: Academia, 2019, 192 pp. Publisher. (Czech)

• Druckworks 1972-2012: 40 Years of Books and Projects, Chicago: Epicenter Press/Columbia College, 2012, 140 pp. Exhibition catalogue for retrospective. [1]

• What Is? (A Letter, Writing, A document, Graphic about Graphic Textuality, etc.), Cuneiform Press, January 2013.

• Graphesis: The Visual Production of Knowledge in a Digital Era, Harvard University Press, 2014.

• Introduction to Digital Humanities: Concepts, Methods, and Tutorials for Students and Instructors, Los Angeles: UCLA, 2014. Textbook.

• The General Theory of Social Relativity, Vancouver: The Elephants, Apr 2018, viii+93 pp. Publisher. Review: Portela (EBR).

• Visualization and Interpretation: Humanistic Approaches to Display, MIT Press, Nov 2020, 208 pp. Publisher.
  • Visualisation: l'interprétation modélisante, trans. Marie-Mathilde Bortolotti, Paris: B42, Jun 2020, 200 pp. Publisher. (French)

• Iliazd: A Meta-Biography of a Modernist, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Dec 2020, 312 pp. Publisher.

• The Digital Humanities Coursebook: An Introduction to Digital Methods for Research and Scholarship, Routledge, 2021, 252 pp. [2]

• Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present, University of Chicago Press, 2022, 384 pp.

editor

• with K. David Jackson and Eric Vos, Experimental-Visual-Concrete. Avant-Garde Poetry Since the 1960s, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996, 448 pp. Includes "Experimental, Visual, and Concrete Poetry: A Note on Historical Context and Basic Concepts", pp 39-61. TOC. [3]

• Art Journal: "Digital Reflections: The Dialogue of Art and Technology", Fall 1997.

• The Journal of Artists' Books 12: "Experimental Narrative and Artists' Books", Fall 1999, 32 pp, JPGs. Exhibition catalogue.

Artist's books

• Dark, The Bat Elf Banquets the Pupae, 1972.
• As No Storm or the Any Port Party, 1975.
• Twenty-six '76, 1976.
• Fragile, 1977.
• From A to Z, 1977.
• The Surprise Party Or, 1977.
• Experience of the Medium, 1978.
• Netherland: (How) So Far, 1978.
• Kidz, 1979.
• Dolls of the Spirit, 1980.
• Italy, 1980.
• Jane Goes Out w' the Scouts, 1980.
• 'S crap 'S ample, 1980.
• It Happens Pretty Fast, 1982.
• Tongues: a parent language, 1982.
• Against Fiction: Organized Affinities, 1983.
• Just As, 1983.
• Spectacle, 1984.
• Through Light and the Alphabet, 1986.
• Bookscape, 1988.
• Sample Dialog, 1989.
• The Word Made Flesh, 1989.
• History of the/my Wor(l)d, 1990.
• Simulant Portrait, 1990.
• OTHERSPACE: Martian Ty(o)pography, 1992.
• Deterring Discourse, 1993.
• Narratology, 1994.
• Three Early Fictions, 1994.
• Dark Decade, 1995.
• The Current Line, 1996.
• Prove Before Laying, 1997.
• Night Crawlers on the Web, JABBooks, 2000, IA.
• Nova Reperta, 2000.
• Emerging Sentience, 2001.
• Quantum, 2001.
• A Girl's Life, with Susan Bee, 2002.
• Damaged Spring: Pink Noire, 2003.
• Cuba, 2005, with Brad Freeman.
• Damaged Nature / Salvage Culture, 2005.
• Events: Particle Zoo, 2005.
• From Now, 2005.
• Graphical Investigations, 2005.
• Subjective Meteorology, 2005.
• Testament of Women, 2006.
• Stochastic Poetics, 2012.
• Diagrammatic Writing, Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2013, 32 pp; repr., Set Margins, 2022, 36 pp.
  • Diagrammatisk skrift, trans. Kamilla Jørgensen, Svendborg: Arkhest, 2021, 31 pp. (Danish)
• Fabulas Feminae, with Susan Bee, 2015.
• Downdrift: An Eco-Fiction, 2018.
• The Fall, with Brad Freeman, 2018.
• Off-world Fairy Tales, with Susan Bee, 2020.

Links

• Website
• The Work of Johanna Drucker
• Artists' Books Online, an online repository of facsimiles, metadata, and criticism; dir. Johanna Drucker.
• Profile on UCLA
• CV, 2018
• Wikipedia