Via Humanist.

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 08:29:20 -0600
From: Michael Ullyot
Subject: Call for Papers: SHARP @ RSA 2012

NB: Topic #3, below, will be of interest to digital humanists.]

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP) will sponsor four panels at the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., 22-24 March 2012.

Organized by Steven W. May, Anne Lake Prescott and Michael Ullyot, SHARP @ RSA links the RSA with scholars studying the creation, dissemination, and reception of script and print.

We invite submissions that consider English and Continental books and manuscripts from 1350 to 1700, within one or more of these four topics:

1. WHEN READERS WRITE: What led manuscript anthologists to copy the texts they did? An enormous volume of transcribed works in prose and verse circulated widely in early modern England and the Continent. What can we learn about contemporary interests and taste from the choices reflected in a given document or documents?

2. DRESSING GENDER IN PRINT: How did printers or editors exploit the gender of an author on their title pages or paratexts? Did they often (or ever) in fact treat male and female writers differently?

3. MANICULES AND THE ‘DIGITAL’ HUMANITIES: What are digital humanists doing now with early modern books and manuscripts? Ann M Blair recently argued that medieval and early modern systems of “managing textual information in an era of exploding publications” are precedents for modern information management systems. Do early reference books, annotations and compilations inform, anticipate, or otherwise influence our computer-assisted thinking?

4. THE INTERSECTION OF MANUSCRIPT AND PRINT: It has become increasingly clear that scribal and print culture were complexly intertwined during the Renaissance. What do we learn about the transmission of texts and contemporary regard for both media from works that appeared in both and authors who published in script and print?

Please send paper titles and abstracts (150 words) and one-paragraph CVs to *each* of the three organizers: < ullyot@ucalgary.ca > and and < steven_may@georgetowncollege.edu > by *Friday, 6 May 2011* (this is earlier than RSA’s own deadline).

For more information on SHARP, see < http://www.sharpweb.org/ >.

For more information on the Renaissance Society of America, see < http://rsa.org/ >. All participants must be members of the RSA by August 2012 or they cannot be included in the programme.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michael Ullyot, Assistant Professor
Department of English, University of Calgary
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~ullyot/ | @ullyot | 403.220.4656

Posted by: Dot Porter (dot.porter@gmail.com).

The Digital Medievalist Community of Practice and the Medieval Academy’s Digital Initiatives Advisory Board are organising a poster session for speakers on digital topics in medieval studies this year at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, May 12-15. The Poster session will be held on Friday, May 13, at 7:00 pm.

***
Wait – what’s a poster session?

The way a poster session works is that all participants have space to set up a poster (and / or a computer if the presentation involves a software demonstration of some sort, and maybe a handout), and people who attend the session are free to walk through and see the posters, and talk to the presenters. There isn’t really a formal presentation, nor a time constraint. In the past when I’ve presented posters I’ve found it very helpful to have a couple of minutes of patter – almost an elevator pitch, just enough to give people an idea of what I’m working on. Some people pass right by; others might spend more time and ask a lot of questions, it just depends. It’s quite a different experience from giving a traditional presentation, much more informal and more personal as well.

OK – Thanks! On with the call.
***

This is a meta-session intended for speakers *who have already had a paper accepted at another session at the congress*. Its purpose is to allow for followup, the presentation of additional details or demonstrations, and also simply as a way of letting people catch up on papers they might have missed because of scheduling conflicts. An informal session at the 2009 Congress was extremely well attended, with lots of discussion, questions, and posters.

Posters are welcome on any aspect of the use of digital media, tools, techniques, and principles in medieval studies. The only restriction is that they must be associated with a paper already accepted for presentation at the 2011 Congress. Acceptable posters might share exactly the same focus and the presented paper, or they might focus on the presentation, demonstration, or elaboration of aspects from the presentation that are better suited to the poster format.

If you are interested in presenting a poster, please contact the session organisers, Dot Porter (dot.porter@gmail.com), Jim Ginther (james.ginther@gmail.com), or Dan O’Donnell (caedmon@uleth.ca) for further information or inquiries.

Posted by: Dot Porter (dot.porter@gmail.com).