EMDA 2015

Details about Early Modern Digital Agendas: Advanced Topics

15 June to 1 July 2015

Following on the first “Early Modern Digital Agenda,” an intensive survey of the most current resources and methods in digital research to be found in July 2013, “Advanced Topics” is a second three-week NEH institute to be hosted by the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Jonathan Hope, Professor of Literary Linguistics at the University of Strathclyde, will direct an advanced exploration of data creation and management to be followed by various forms of hands-on investigation, including text analytics, social network analysis, dimensionality reduction, research process design, and even historical reflection on the nature of “exemplarity” claims in humanistic argument. It is supported by a $175,000 “Institutes for Advanced Topics” grant from the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities.

The Institute will convene a technically advanced cohort of early modern digital humanists for scholarly assessment of the most effective tools by which data sets are gathered, curated, and analyzed. EMDA2015 will build in more time than its predecessor for application and experimentation with the tools to which its participants will be introduced; it will also encourage participants to bring their own data and, as often as is practical, process that data for analysis with the tools that the visiting faculty introduce.

Participants will reflect on the ways DH expands the universe of possible questions that literary scholars can ask while new technologies produce exponentially larger bodies of evidence faster than ever before. Among the questions visiting faculty will pose and consider with the participants: What is “data”? What transformations lie behind statistical analysis? How is corpus-wide variation being treated? What are the principles of visualization? The aim is to enable participants not just to perform analysis, or curate data, but to understand the processes they engage in—where they enable, how they restrict, and how they might be improved. It remains the Folger’s goal to ensure that DH practitioners question not only what is possible with digital tools, but why one would put them to certain uses, and at what costs.

Application guidelines and materials will be available by 5 January 2015 on a new Folger website. The application deadline is 2 March 2015.

Visiting faculty

Ruth Ahnert, Lecturer in Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary University of London

Sebastian Ahnert, Royal Society University Research Fellow, Cambridge

Erin Blake, Folger Head of Information Collections Services and of Cataloguing Meg Brown, Folger/CLIR Fellow for Data Curation Matthew Christy, Lead Programmer at IDHMC, Texas A&M University Erika Farr, Head of Digital Archives, Emory University Lisa Gitelman, Professor of English and of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University Mike Gleicher, Professor of Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin David Hoover, Professor of English, New York University Eric Johnson, Folger Director of Digital Access Markus Krajewski, Professor of Media History and Studies, Universität Basel Laura Mandell, Director of the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media and Culture (IDHMC), Texas A&M University Tony McEnery, Professor of Linguistics and English Language and Faculty Dean, Lancaster University Trevor Muñoz, Associate Director, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities Mike Poston, Folger Database Applications Specialist Andrew Prescott, Professor of Digital Humanities, King’s College London Goran Proot, Conservateur, Bibliothèque Mazarine Jan Rybicki, Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland Paul Schaffner, Head of Electronic Text Production at the University of Michigan’s Digital Production Library Service and the TCP Production Manager Stephan Thiel, Studio NAND, Berlin Ted Underwood, Associate Professor of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Rebecca Welzenbach, TCP Project Outreach Librarian Michael Witmore, Director, Folger Shakespeare Library Heather Wolfe, Folger Curator of Manuscripts