Digital Editions, Digital Corpora and New Possibilities for the Humanities in the Academy and Beyond, A NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities, Tufts University, July 16–27, 2018
This institute will provide an opportunity for humanists to spend an intensive two weeks applying a range of new methods for annotating textual sources that transform both the audiences that such texts serve and the role that such texts play in the intellectual life of advanced researchers, students and the general public. The methods that we consider have the potential to affect every question that we can pose of the textual record. Participants will learn how to use advanced methods and tools for working on digital editions and digital corpora of historical languages. By the end of the institute, participants will have concrete experience applying all of these techniques not just to provided texts and corpora but to their own source material as well.
Participants will create projects that include both a data set, and traditional, expository prose. The prose may serve as the introduction to an edition of a small document or form part of a larger document. Examples of such prose include analysis of a stylistic or linguistic feature based on published linguistic annotations on an existing collection or a commentary that includes both (semi)-automatic machine actionable annotations and expository comments. Such a commentary, for example, may feature work with syntactic analysis, text reuse, named entity and co-reference identification, and indications of where one text quotes, paraphrases or cites another and also provide explanation of instances where machine actionable annotation was not obvious.
Instruction will feature a range of new methods including but not limited to the Canonical Text Service Protocols; linguistic annotation; named entity analysis; parallel text alignment; representation of text reuse; geographical annotations; ancient and modern language aligned translations; and machine actionable information about social and geospatial networks.
Who should apply?
The institute is open to all motivated and enthusiastic humanities faculty, graduate students, and library professionals. International participants are welcome. Instruction will be conducted in English.
Please note that the institute is centered on “advanced topics” and as such, participants should be prepared to demonstrate understanding of certain fundamentals (such as text markup) through pre-workshop assignments.
We particularly encourage participants who are committed to developing research agendas that integrate contributions and research by undergraduates; expand the global presence of the humanities; and that, in general, broaden access to and participation in the humanities. Preference will be given to participants who are best prepared not only to apply new technologies but to do so as a means to transform their teaching and research and the relationship of their work to society beyond academia.
Funding
We are committed to bringing together the best participants possible and will endeavor to fully fund as many applicants as our budget permits.
Selected participants will be provided on-campus room and board and support for travel to and from the institute. Support is strictly limited and subject to the travel policies and guidelines of the NEH, Tufts University, and the institute organizers. Failure to comply with these policies will result in the denial of reimbursement of expenses.
Stipends are not offered.