Call for Papers

The Textual Studies team of INKE (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) wish to invite presentation proposals for Beyond Accessibility: Textual Studies in the 21st Century.
June 8, 9, and 10, 2012, University of Victoria, Victoria BC, Canada.
Keynote speakers: Adriaan van der Weel (Leiden University) and Sydney Shep, (Victoria University of Wellington)

At the end of the 20th century, textual studies witnessed a revolution in accessibility to texts with the explosion of the internet.  Now we simply take it for granted that digital processes infuse every step of our study, editing, production, and dissemination of texts. The Textual Studies team of INKE invites presentations that address the questions "What is the state of textual studies in the 21st century? What is the important work of textual studies in the 21st century? What are the outstanding issues, challenges, concerns, emerging trends, methods, attitudes, and exciting developments in textual scholarship?  Papers may address such questions as

• What is the state of the scholarly edition after the transition from print to print and digital?
• What is the impact on the material book and on book history of the different kinds of access enabled by the digital medium?
• How have authorship attribution studies been transformed by access to so many more searchable texts?
• How has the new age of access to materials affected the state of textual studies in various regions of the globe?
• How well are scholars being served by traditional and emerging infrastructures for the study, creation, production, and dissemination of texts?
• What is the future of, for example, the study of readership and letter writing, genetic editing, and reception history?

INKE is a multi-national, multi-disciplinary research initiative, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and partnering organizations, to study, develop, and implement digital environments for reading and research (www.inke.ca). The Textual Studies Team of INKE is researching ways in which the age of manuscript and print production can inform our development and implementation of electronic reading technologies.

We invite proposals for papers, posters/demonstrations, and roundtable discussions that address these and other issues pertinent to research in textual studies. Proposals should contain a title, a detailed and focussed abstract (of approximately 300 words) plus list of works cited, and the names, affiliations, and Website URLs of presenters.
Please send proposals before 15 December 2011 to richard.cunningham [at] acadiau.ca.

Potential participants in the conference, particularly those coming from abroad, might be interested to take advantage of the Digital
Humanities Summer Institute, which will just before our conference, from 4-8 June, also at the University of Victoria (http://www.dhsi.org/). A limited number of scholarships for workshop tuition will be available for graduate students participating in the Beyond Accessibility conference.  Also of potential interest is the annual conference of the Society for Digital Humanities (SDH/SEMI) at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, 28-30 May, 2012 (http://www.sdh-semi.org/).