Articles
[en] The Ends of EditingPeter M. W. Robinson, University of Birmingham
Abstract
[en]
Many “ends” of editing in the digital world may be distinguished. One may speak
of “end” as in the supersession of one model of editing (the
“intentionalist,”
“definitive-text” model) by another (the multiple texts, multiply-intentioned
views enabled by digital methods). One may speak of “end” as in aim: not only
the aim of the author or authors, but also the aims of the editor or editors. These
questions were already complicated in the print world; the advent of digital methods
has both focussed and widened the contests around these concepts. The essay reviews
some of these questions, with examples drawn from (inter alia) the utterances of the
two George Bushes, from editions with which the author is associated of Chaucer,
Dante, and of Armenian texts, from the eColi genome, and from Barack Obama's
discussion of different viewpoints on the Constitution of the United States. The
essay concludes that a huge shift is indeed underway in the editing world, towards a
more open and participatory model of editing and reading.
[en] Picture Problems: X-Editing Images 1992-2010Morris Eaves, University of Rochester
Abstract
[en]
After centuries of image deprivation, we now bathe in a sea of pictures, most of them
digitized at some stage. In the 1990s, as humanists began to sense the advantages of networked
computing on the web, they conceived major new editorial projects that would depend to an
extraordinary degree upon the documentary power of pictures. Despite evident progress in
devising sturdy and responsive standards, images, and tools, stubborn problems persist in several key areas that are explored here through an overview of issues that arise as the William Blake Archive acquires images, prepares them for reproduction, and makes them available for manipulation by its users. Editing electronic images in so unsettled and unsettling an environment generates the provisional success — weak success — that is utterly characteristic of X-editing, electronic scholarly editing in our time. Our dependence on current technology and the expertise of others is not a remediable condition. We must play the game as it presents itself, making the compromises that are necessary, and move ahead.
[en] Edition, Project, Database, Archive, Thematic Research Collection: What's in a
Name?Kenneth M. Price, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
[en]
What are the implications of the terms we use to describe large-scale text-based
electronic scholarship, especially undertakings that share some of the ambitions and
methods of the traditional multi-volume scholarly edition? And how do the conceptions
inherent in these choices of language frame and perhaps limit what we attempt? How do
terms such as edition, project, database, archive, and thematic research collection
relate to the past, present, and future of textual studies? Kenneth M. Price
considers how current terms describing digital scholarship both clarify and obscure
our collective enterprise. Price argues that the terms we use have more than
expressive importance. The shorthand we invoke when explaining our work to others
shapes how we conceive of and also how we position digital scholarship.
[en] How Literary Works Exist: Convenient Scholarly EditionsPeter Shillingsburg, Loyola University Chicago
Abstract
[en]
This is the second of two essays on the nature of electronic representations of literary texts, the first focusing
primarily on the original textual material and the materiality of literary works, and the present essay focusing first
on the nature of the electronic surrogates to those material forms and, second, on the ways our decisions about how to
create them can be affected by our notions of use.
[en] The Productive Unease of 21st-century Digital ScholarshipJulia Flanders, Brown University
Abstract
[en]
Despite prevailingly progressive narratives surrounding the impact of digital
technology on modern academic culture, the field of digital humanities is
characterized at a deeper level by a more critical engagement with technology. This
engagement, which I characterize as a kind of “productive unease”, is focused around issues of representation, medium,
and structures of scholarly communication.
Posters
[en] Reinventing the Classroom Edition: Paradise Lost
Book IX Flash AudiotextOlin Bjork, Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract
[en]
In the spring of 2005, a grant
from the University of Texas at Austin made possible the development of a digital classroom edition of
Paradise Lost, John Milton's seventeenth-century
poem. The resulting prototype “audiotext” of Book Nine of the twelve-book epic
incorporates and synchronizes text, explanatory notes, and audio within a Flash
interface that resembles a book lying open on a table.
[en] Mapping Concord: Google Maps and the 19th-Century Concord Digital ArchiveAmy Earhart, Texas A&M University
Abstract
[en]
The 19th Century Concord Digital Archive implemented a scholarly map interface
that draws on current open source technologies. The archive includes interlinked
literary texts, maps, census materials, town reports, broadsides, and period
newspaper clippings. These texts are technologically designed to reference and
interact with each other. However, the archive does not seek merely to present a set
of texts for study. Instead, it tests an initial map interface to the textual
data. When we are able to view satellite photos of the topography and quickly
find a physical description related to the topography in an essay, what new
information might be revealed? When we explore a place visually and then link to the
text, what new conclusions might scholars draw?
[en]
“May the Text Rise up to Meet You”: New Ways of Reading Old ManuscriptsEugene Lyman, University of Rhode Island
Abstract
[en]
This poster demonstrates the suite of programs I created for the Society of Early
English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET) to facilitate the display of its
TEI-compliant documentary and critical editions of medieval texts.
[en] The Poetess Archive DatabaseLaura Mandell, Miami University of Ohio
Abstract
[en]
Since it was first mounted in 2005, the Poetess Archive has housed a
bibliography of materials for studying popular poetry written between 1750 and 1900
in Britain and America. Recently, we have transferred what were static html pages
presenting that bibliography into an Oracle database to allow multiple ways of
organizing and generating bibliographic lists. The archive includes primary
materials: works by the authors producing Anglo-American popular poetry between 1750
and 1900, and by their contemporaneous critics. But it also includes secondary
materials: later criticism of and scholarship about these writers and their literary
productions.
[en] Simulated Visuals: Some Rhetorical and Ethical ImplicationsAimee Roundtree, University of Houston-Downtown
Abstract
[en]
This poster introduces some of the rhetorical and ethical dimensions that underpin
the graphics and visuals designed to illustrate results from a computer simulation.
Simulations have been used by meteorologists to predict and report weather behavior,
by climatologists to forewarn about the inevitable damage that global warning will
cause, and by government officials to foresee the potential destruction of a major
hurricane. In particular, my poster examines the latter — a set of visuals from
Hurricane Pam, a computer simulation and set of training exercises that predicted the
devastation that Hurricane Katrina would cause one year prior to the tragedy. FEMA
conducted preparation workshops for state and local officials, arming them with
workbooks with projection maps, conceptual models, and other visuals meant to help
ready them. This poster seeks to understand what part the visuals might have played
in preparation failure.
[en] Cervantes Project: The Digital Quixote Iconography CollectionEduardo Urbina, Texas A&M University; Richard Furuta, Texas A&M University; Steven E. Smith, Texas A&M University
Abstract
[en]
In 2001 the Cervantes Project (CP) started
the creation of a hypertextual archive to include digital images of the illustrations
taken from over 500 of the most significant editions to form the textual iconography
of the Quixote (as permitted by copyright limitations). Our main objectives are to
make the illustrations more accessible and to establish their contribution to the
reception and interpretation of the text. At the time of this poster's creation, the archive has
acquired, digitized, and made available online more than 25,000 images, supported by
a fully searchable database and complemented by rich metadata and innovative
visualization tools.
[en] Over Uncle Tom's Dead Body: Publication Context and Textual Variation in Harriet
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin
Wesley Raabe, Kent State University
Abstract
[en]
This poster invites you to explore an article published in the National
Era — on 18 March 1852, the same day publisher John P. Jewett's two-volume
edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin was made available for sale
— as a commentary on the interaction between Harriet Beecher Stowe's fiction and what the Era reports as the Southern reality. And it invites you to
contemplate Stowe's two alternate explanations for young George Shelby's punch, which
levels Simon Legree. The poster promotes “Harriet Beecher Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin: an Electronic Edition of the
National Era Version” (1996), a digital
dissertation project available through the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the
Humanities at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~wnr4c/index.htm
[en] The Radical Historicity of Everything: Exploring Shakespearean Identity with Web
2.0Katheryn Giglio, University of Central Florida (English Department); John Venecek, University of Central Florida Libraries
Abstract
[en]
This article presents the results of a semester-long project designed to determine how
effectively interactive Web 2.0 technology can facilitate collaborative research in
undergraduate learners. The study was conducted during a 2007 advanced Shakespeare course
at the University of Central Florida that focused heavily on a new historicist approach to
studying literature. In this paper we first establish the theoretical foundation for this
particular approach to literary studies, then discuss more in-depth how the collaborative,
inter-connective nature of wikis allowed students to witness first-hand some of the
concealed assumptions enmeshed in the creation of historical explanation or narrative. We
also discuss how, in thinking about the past, this technology allowed our students realize
some of the stakes in describing history for the present. In other words, having students
create wikis based on the social identities that recur in Shakespeare’s works developed an
implicit awareness of motives for “doing” history. We also show how employing open
source technology in a localized classroom setting can assuage some of the gaps we
experience in trying to provide enough period coverage while also attending to theoretical
apparatus and students’ experience of meaningful connections to material. On a larger
scale, creating inquiry-based projects can alleviate some of the humanities’ disengagement
from the “real world” that many have been suggesting of late.
[en] XML, Interoperability and the Social Construction of Markup Languages: The
Library ExampleJerome McDonough, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Abstract
[en]
The past decade has seen XML widely adopted within a variety of communities,
including the digital library community. While it now plays a critical role in the
infrastructure of many digital library operations, XML's promise of interoperability
of data across systems and organizations has not been fully realized within digital
libraries. The reasons for this are not primarily technical in origin, but social,
and relate to the cultures of XML's designers and XML language implementors, and a
failure on the part of the digital library community to grapple with the
sociotechnical nature of XML and its implementation. Possible strategies for
addressing these issues of interoperability might include reduction of the
flexibility afforded by specific XML-based markup languages used by the digital
library community, and an increased focus on standardizing translations between
various communities of practice use of such markup languages.
[en] Humanities Computing as Digital HumanitiesPatrik Svensson, Umeå University
Abstract
[en]
This article presents an examination of how digital humanities is currently conceived
and described, and examines the discursive shift from humanities computing to digital
humanities. It is argued that this renaming of humanities computing as digital
humanities carries with it a set of epistemic commitments that are not necessarily
compatible with a broad and inclusive notion of the digital humanities. In
particular, the author suggests that tensions arise from the instrumental, textual
and methodological focus of humanities computing as well as its relative lack of
engagement with the “digital” as a study object. This article is the first in a
series of four articles attempting to describe and analyze the field of digital
humanities and digital humanities as a transformative practice.
[en] Avatari: Disruption and Imago in Video GamesElizabeth Sandifer, University of Florida
Abstract
[en]
This article offers an analysis of the video game in terms of the experience of gameplay, starting with the concept of the avatar, which is central to all video games. The avatar is typically described as our second self in the virtual world of the game. The paper challenges this theory, suggesting that the avatar is better understood as a set of possible interactions, and proposes a second concept, the avatari. If the avatar is our second self, the avatari is the rebellious figure on the screen that we cannot quite control, and that jumps into the pit, gets hit by the enemy, or otherwise fails despite our best efforts to succeed. Conceptualizing video games in terms of the avatar and avatari enables thinking about video games via a more sophisticated and productive model of interactivity than many of the existing paradigms.
[en] Designing Data Mining Droplets: New Interface Objects for the Humanities
ScholarStan Ruecker, University of Alberta, Canada; Milena Radzikowska, Mount Royal College, Canada; Stéfan Sinclair, McMaster University, Canada
Abstract
[en]
In this paper, we describe the design of a number of alternative interface
“droplets” that are intended for use by humanities scholars interested in
applying data mining and information visualization tools to the task of hypothesis
formulation. The trained droplets provide several functions. Their primary purpose is
to encapsulate the results of the software training phase. They can be saved for
future re-use against other collections or combinations of collections. They can be
modified by having the user accept or reject features identified by the data mining
software. Finally, they can also contain choices for how to display and organize
items in the collection. The opportunity to develop a new interface object presents
the designer with the challenge of effectively communicating what the tool is good
for and how it is used. This paper outlines the design process we followed in
creating the visual representations of these interface objects, describes the
communicative strengths and weaknesses of a number of alternative designs, and
discusses the importance of the study of new interface objects as the means of
providing the user with new interface affordances.
