Dark Archives 20/20: A Conference on the Medieval Unread & Unreadable, Zoom, September 8–10, 2020
We are excited to be bringing together dozens of medievalist speakers, respondents and other participants at Dark Archives 20/20, from Shanxi to California.
This year, medieval primary materials have become physically inaccessible to researchers – and their archives literally dark – to a degree unknown since medieval studies first developed. And yet 2020 also caps a decade of huge growth in online digital images and other data for those sources, albeit still only for a tiny fraction. As Dark Archives 2019 investigated, this burgeoning digital availability is fuelling some of the great ambitions of medieval studies: to scan, transcribe and assemble all of its physical materials, both extant and approximations of the lost, as a single ‘graphosphere’, enabling thereby a range of transformative new disciplines and insights.
Dark Archives 20/20 therefore invites researchers from around the world to address a basic question underscored by our current physical isolation: if we no longer have access to the original sources, only to (overwhelmingly digital) copies, what of the medieval do we still possess, and what more might we thereby uncover?
In order to maximise live participation for all in the debates, the conference is organised along the following lines: All presentations are pre-recorded. As well as being streamed on their respective days during the conference itself, the talks will be released to registered participants in view-on-demand format five days ahead on 3rd September 2020; on that date we will also be opening a forum to allow registered participants to send possible questions for discussion at the conference itself - or ask questions via Twitter.
All Zoom discussion sessions, including question-and-answer sessions with speakers, will be held live and in plenary format, in the afternoons and evenings British Summer Time.
Multiple moderated Zoom break-out rooms will also operate throughout the conference, to allow continued socialising and Dark Archives 20/20 discussion.
General registration will remain open until 6th September 2020.