Spring 2008 Rosenzweig Forum on Technology and the Humanities

[An announcement from Matt Kirschenbaum and our good friends at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.]

This spring the Rosenzweig Forum on Technology and the Humanities is pleased to present:

Ken Price on “Edition, Project, Database, Archive, Thematic Research Collection: What’s in a Name?” Ken’s abstract:

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? What genre or genres are we now working in? And how do the conceptions inhering 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? Drawing on a range of resources including the Walt Whitman Archive, I consider how current terms describing digital scholarship both clarify and obscure our collective enterprise. In addition, I’ll use the final term, thematic research collection, to discuss yet-to-be-developed parts of the Whitman Archive dealing with place-based cultural analysis and translation studies as a way to illustrate the expansive possibilities of this new model of scholarship.

Our speaker will be Professor Kenneth Price, of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Price received his B.A. from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and then earned both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. He is University Professor and Hillegass Chair of Nineteenth-Century American literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he also serves as co-director of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. Price is the author of over forty articles and author or editor of nine books. His most recent book is co-edited with Ed Folsom and with Susan Belasco, Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). His other recent books include Re-Scripting Walt Whitman: An Introduction to His Life and Work , co-authored with Folsom (Blackwell Publishing, 2005) and To Walt Whitman, America (University of North Carolina Press 2004), a main selection of The Readers Subscription, a national book club.

Since 1995 Price has served as co-director of The Walt Whitman Archive an electronic research and teaching tool that sets out to make Whitman’s vast work, for the first time, easily and conveniently accessible to scholars, students, and general readers. The Whitman Archive has been awarded federal grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the U. S. Department of Education, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The Whitman Archive has received many honors, including the C. F. W. Coker award from the Society of American Archivists and a “We the People” grant from the NEH to build a permanent endowment to support ongoing editorial work.

We will meet on Tuesday, March 11 fom 4:00-6:30 PM in the McKeldin Special Events Room (6th floor, room 6137), McKeldin Library, on the University of Maryland campus in College Park. There will be an informal dinner downstairs in MITH after the forum, at a cost of $10 per person. Please RSVP to Matt Kirschenbaum (mgk[at]umd[dot]edu) by March 7, 2008 if you would like to have dinner (money will be collected at the door–please have cash).

Co-sponsored by the Center for History & New Media (CHNM) at George Mason, the Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), the Rosenzweig Technology and Humanities Forum explores important issues in humanities computing and provide an opportunity for DC area scholars interested the uses of new technology in the humanities to meet and get acquainted.

McKeldin Library is located at the top of McKeldin Mall at the center of the University of Maryland, College Park campus. There is free shuttle service to campus from the College Park Metro station (Green line). Best parking for visitors is the lot next to Stamp Student Union, less than five minute walk to the Library.