MAKE _YOUR_ EDITION: MODELS AND METHODS FOR DIGITAL TEXTUAL SCHOLARSHIP

Call for applications: Summer 2017 NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities

DEADLINES: Applications are due Tuesday, February 28, 2017. Applicants

will be notified of acceptance by March 15, 2017.

INSTITUTE DATES: July 10-29, 2017

Synopsis

The University of Pittsburgh is pleased to invite applications to an NEH

Advanced Institute in the Digital Humanities for summer 2017 entitled

_Make YOUR edition: models and methods of digital textual scholarship_.

The target audience for this workshop is digital textual scholars who

are already comfortable editing their texts (in TEI XML or comparable

alternatives); the goal of the Institute is to assist them in moving

beyond textual editing to imagining, creating, and publishing

research-driven, theoretically and methodologically innovative digital

editions.

Rationale

Digital humanists already have access to workshops and tutorials to help

them learn to transcribe, edit, and tag a text in preparation for

publishing a digital edition. These training resources play a vital role

in empowering editors to formalize and instantiate their interpretations

as markup, so as to make them available for subsequent analysis.

Nonetheless, sophisticated markup expertise alone is not enough to make

an edition, and learning nothing more than tagging may leave scholars

staring at their angle brackets and wondering what to do next. For some

a solution like TEI Tapas provides an adequate next step, but for those

who wish to ask new types of questions of their documents, and to

produce new types of editions that enable new types of research, an

understanding of how to turn a set of tagged texts into a customized

edition that meets individualized research goals is crucial. Digital

humanists cannot build editions that break new methodological ground

solely on the basis of solutions prepared largely by others, and the

focus of this Institute is on the creation of digital editions motivated

by project-specific research questions and implemented from a

perspective driven first by theory of edition, second by editorial

methodology, and necessarily but less importantly by specific toolkits.

In this respect we foreground not learning a particular programming

language or technology or framework, but learning to think and act

digitally about the process of creating a digital edition. Because tools

and technologies come and go, the Institute emphasizes learning to

translate original digital thinking about editions into implementations

of those editions, rather than on “tooling up” in the context of

currently popular frameworks. In this respect, the Institute recognizes

thinking digitally in ways driven by project-specific research goals as

the most important feature of _sustainable Digital Humanities training

and education_.

Program

The Institute will introduce textual and manuscript scholars to a

powerful and broad-reaching skill set of digital methods and

technologies, grounded in a context that prioritizes a research-driven

theory of edition. The course moves in a three-week succession from

novice to experienced level, and from base textual data to full digital

publication of scholarly editions. The Institute assumes that

participants will have meaningful prior experience in digital editing

(in TEI XML or a comparable framework), but it makes no other

assumptions about prior knowledge or skills.

-   An optional first-week _boot camp_ establishes basic infrastructure

    skills (operating comfortably at the command line, handling files,

    navigating file systems, sharing resources and code responsibly,

    running Python programs from the command line, etc.).

-   The second week allows participants to practice and advance their

    basic skills when they start combining digital textual scholarship

    theory (e.g., McGann 2004[1], Andrews 2012[2], Siemens 2012[3], Robinson

    2013[4], Haentjens et al. 2015[5]) with standard (e.g., XML, Python,

    Jupyter Notebooks) and advanced digital technologies (e.g.,

    StemmaWeb, CollateX, Neo4j, Tinkerpop, eXist-db).

-   By the end of the third week, participants will be able to

    conceptualize from theory a perspective on digital textual

    scholarship and digital scholarly editions. They will also know how

    to go about planning and implementing such an edition by engaging

    programmatically and algorithmically with digital data, handling it

    computationally, and querying, analyzing, and transforming it into

    visualizations that transcend the digital translation of a text as a

    codex.

The Institute will meet at the main (Oakland) campus of the University

of Pittsburgh from Monday, July 10, 2017 through Friday, July 28, 2017

and will draw on an international faculty of distinguished scholars,

practitioners, and teachers of digital philology from several

collaborating institutions. On Saturday, July 29, 2017 there will be an

optional pedagogical review of the Institute, designed to assist

participants in organizing and conducting their own workshops at their

home institutions.

Instructors

-   Tara Andrews (Institute of History, University of Vienna)

-   David J. Birnbaum (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures,

    University of Pittsburgh)

-   Hugh Cayless (Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing [DC3], Duke

    University)

-   Ronald Haentjens Dekker (Huygens Institute, Royal Netherlands

    Academy of Arts and Sciences)

-   Na-Rae Han (Department of Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh)

-   Mike Kestemont (Department of Literature, University of Antwerp)

-   Leif-Jöran Olsson (Department of Swedish Language, University of

    Gothenburg)

The instructors will be assisted by Gabrielle (Gabi) Keane (Senior

Undergraduate Institute Assistant, University of Pittsburgh).

Details

Applications are invited for the full three-week Institute or, in the

case of those who are already comfortable with the types of first-week

topics described above, for just the second and third weeks. Applicants

should already be proficient with digital textual editing in TEI XML or

similar technologies, and should be seeking guidance and training in how

to move their texts into innovative digital editions that will enable

them to explore project-specific research questions. Evidence of

meaningful prior hands-on digital textual editing experience is

required, but prior experience in programming for textual exploration

and publication is not. Applicants who do not have prior experience with

the Python programming language must agree to complete a recommended

free online introductory Python course before the beginning of the

Institute, for which the Institute will maintain its own support and

discussion board. For budgetary reasons, preference will be given to

applications from within North America.

Participants accepted to the Institute will receive a travel allowance,

complimentary accommodation in single-occupancy dormitory rooms, and a

complimentary meal plan in the University Dining Services in lieu of per

diem. Access to the University libraries, computer labs, and networked

digital resources will also be provided. Participants must bring their

own laptops (Windows 7–10, Mac OS, or Ubuntu/Debian Linux). We welcome

scholars at all career levels from advanced graduate students through

senior faculty. Applications to the Institute should include the

following:

-   A one- to two-page statement about how participation in the

    Institute will enhance the scholarly and professional goals of the

    applicant. This statement should describe the digital edition

    project that the applicant plans to pursue or undertake, with

    special attention to the research questions motivating the creation

    of that edition. Preference will be shown to applications that

    articulate a clear understanding of the textual research potential

    of digital scholarly editions.

-   A one-page description of the applicant’s experience with textual

    editing. Prior experience in programming for text processing is

    neither required nor expected, but those who have such experience

    should describe it here.

-   Brief CV (maximum of two pages), concentrating on textual editing

    and Digital Humanities experience.

-   Indicate whether you are applying for the full three weeks or only

    for the second and third, and in the latter case please describe

    your background in the areas related to those described above as

    part of the “boot camp” week.

-   Indicate whether you wish to participate in the optional one-day

    pedagogical review of the course on Saturday, July 29.

-   Participants are required to participate full-time in the Institute

    for the two or three weeks that they are in residence, and must

    confirm that they will not undertake other significant commitments

    during the Institute period.

All application materials should be submitted by email as a single PDF

file to djbpitt+neh@pitt.edu. The deadline for applications is Tuesday,

February 28, 2017, and applicants will be notified by March 15, 2017.

Questions may be directed to djbpitt+neh@pitt.edu.

David J. Birnbaum, Institute Director

Professor and Chair, Slavic Languages and Literatures

Faculty Fellow, University Honors College

Email: djbpitt+neh@pitt.edu

_____

References

1.  McGann, Jerome, 2004. “Marking texts of many dimensions.” In Susan

    Schreibman, Raymond Siemens, and John Unsworth, eds. _A companion to

    Digital Humanities_. Oxford: Blackwell.

2.  Andrews, Tara L., 2012. “The third way: philology and critical

    edition in the digital age.” _Variants_ 10, pp. 61–76.

3.  Siemens, Raymond et al., 2012. “Toward modeling the social edition:

    An approach to understanding the electronic scholarly edition in the

    context of new and emerging social media.” _Literary and linguistic

    computing_, 27(4), pp. 445–61.

4.  Robinson, Peter, 2012. “Towards a theory of digital editions.”

    _Variants_ 10, pp.105–31.

5.  Haentjens Dekker, Ronald, Dirk van Hulle, Gregor Middell, Vincent

    Neyt, Joris van Zundert, 2015. “Computer-supported collation of

    modern manuscripts: CollateX and the Beckett Digital Manuscript

    Project”, _Digital scholarship in the humanities_, 30(3), pp.

    452–70.