“focused on thinking about ways that the ASECS website might become more user-friendly, interactive and reflective of contemporary digital design principals.  We also briefly touched on the ways the Digital Humanities Caucus can best serve the organization and communicate with its members. We wrapped up with several action points, including an ASECS member survey….”

Today I am proud to say that, unlike many plans made in the intellectual excitement and general joie de vivre that conferences elicit, this one has come to fruition.  Thanks to the hard work of Eleanor Shevlin, in collaboration with an ad hoc committee of DH caucus members, a survey was released to ASECS members this spring.  This week a report summarizing the results of the survey is being emailed to members, and is also available here.  If you are someone with eighteenth century and digital humanities interests (which, if you are reading this blog, I kind of assume you are), please read and comment on the report, even if you are not an ASECS member.  Discussion will take place on the EMOB (Early Modern Online Bibliography) blog, so please post your comments there.  What do you think of the results?  Do members’ interests, abilities or digital needs surprise you?  Most importantly, what should the DH Caucus of ASECS do with this information?  We don’t want to come up with an action plan until the results have been discussed–so please join in!

The DH caucus has no officers or official meetings. It is an ad hoc group run by those who attend, in person or virtually, and who care to contribute. A description of its goals and aims is available here.

In 2012 ASECS hosted two DH caucus panels, among several other digital humanities events (2011 DH panels listed here; 2010 DH panels listed here).

Please use the comments to contribute ideas for session topics, volunteer your services as chair/organizer, and to generate ideas on how we might organize ourselves as a caucus in the future.

A few ideas of mine, drawn from conversations and observations at ASECS 2012:

• Developing standards for evaluating scholarly digital projects in promotion and tenure decisions.
• Training students (undergraduate and/or graduate) in digital humanities theory and methods while also teaching eighteenth-century studies.
• How to pursue DH projects if you’re faculty at at a smaller, perhaps teaching-oriented, institution without a DH center or strong IT infrastructure.

To quote Lisa Maruca from last year, “I’m sure YOU have better ideas, so please step up!”

To register and find out more go to asecs2012.thatcamp.org

The event will be accessible to all and it would be good to have some sessions which are about introducing people to some of the digital research possibilities for eighteenth century scholars. Please post co mments or questions about the format here. There will be a website for the event for registering and most importantly for suggestions for the program in the near future.

The last two hours of the day will be a workshop about how to use 18thConnect to which everyone is invited. To wind up what we’re hoping will be a very good day of digital eighteenth-century studies the IDHCM will host a cash-bar with finger-food. Please plan on coming to THATCamp ASECS, the 18thConnect workshop and the IDHCM cash-bar, and tell your friends and colleagues (especially those won’t be likely to read this blog), and of course watch this space for more information over the coming months.

The call for papers has been uploaded to the ASECS website (as a Microsoft Word file).

Below is a selected list of CFPs that have a digital humanities angle. Please contact the individual panel chairs with any questions and with your presentation proposals.

“Digital Approaches to Library History”

This panel will consider how digital tools and digital methodologies are reshaping our understanding of eighteenth-century libraries.

Libraries, book clubs, reading circles and other institutions of collective reading have long been acknowledged as important features of eighteenth-century print culture, but the continuing development of modern database software has opened up new interpretative possibilities, allowing us to understand their significance in unprecedented detail. Libraries promised access to a much wider range of books than most patrons could possibly afford, but they were hugely significant in other ways. They emerged to serve particular communities, reflecting the specialist demands of military garrisons, religious academies and informal networks of medical men and lawyers. They provided a forum for conversation, debate and sociability, and made a key contribution to the social impact of the Enlightenment, the ‘consumer revolution’, the growth of nationalism and the spread of religious evangelicalism. Since they emerged in Britain, North America and continental Europe at around the same time, they also provide endless opportunities for comparative history–with different territories adopting distinctive organisational models, yet consuming a remarkably similar canon of international bestsellers.

Papers might consider these or any other themes relating to the history of particular libraries or types of library, but should aim to reflect on methodological approaches made possible by technological advances associated with the digital humanities.

“Diggable Data, Scalable Reading and New Humanities Scholarship”

Various communities of practice are emerging around new data resources that are available, communities such as Bamboo Corpora Space, sponsored by the Mellon Foundation; ARC, the Applied Research Consortium comprised of MESA, REKn, 18thConnect, and NINES, Connected Histories in the UK, and the Voyeur: Reveal Your Texts group in Canada. These groups are all creating tools that allow for “scalable reading,” that is, combining reading up close with reading at a distance, to produce a new digital philology. Papers given at this seminar would present tools created by these groups as part of seminar papers of the traditional sort—that is, as part of an interesting argument that using the tools made possible. We will invite all ASECS members to submit proposals to present.

“Digital Humanities and the Archives” (Roundtable)

This roundtable seeks three to four ten-minute papers aimed at generating substantive conversation on the broad topic Digital Humanities and the Archives. Possible topics include but are not limited to how digital tools are transforming our theoretical conceptions of “archives,” what effects digital facsimiles are exercising on our understanding of original documents; how our digital environment is shaping the kinds of archival projects being undertaken, the methodologies used, and/or the types of research questions posed; how interactions between the digital and the archival are creating new paradigms or inspiring shifts in existing models; how questions concerning the economics, equity, and accessibility of archival materials are being addressed or perhaps reconfigured by digital tools and platforms.

“Bits and Bytes Lunch”

In this lunch time session, we ask participants to bring a snack and a digital tool. Similar in format to a more traditional poster session, presenters in this session will simultaneously demonstrate their tools to participants, who will be able to experience multiple presentations and interact directly with presenters and their tools during this open workshop. The goal is for participants and presents to have an open dialogue and to play with new and emerging technologies in a relaxed atmosphere.

“A Digital Humanities Experiment, Year One: Aphra Behn Online” (Roundtable)

Aphra Behn Online: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts 1640-1830, launched in March 2011 at ASECS with the intent to create an interactive online community centered on women and the arts in the long eighteenth century.  As an online, free access journal, our aim is to publish excellent and relevant scholarship and other exciting and innovative work.  We hope to support the community of scholars (contributors and readers) with constructive and thoughtful (and signed) submission feedback and by providing a platform for the exploration of the exciting opportunities that online information and researching can offer, such as the blog and discussion forums, creative and meaningful use of the online format, and flexibility and creativity in publication schedules and formats.  This roundtable seeks to explore issues surrounding this new scholarly project and to position these issues–and the journal itself–within a larger trend toward online and interactive scholarship.  We are interested in talking about what has worked, what has been surprising about the process, and what audience feedback and involvement can teach us.  We encourage roundtable submissions that evaluate successes and hiccups both in regards to our journal and to others and engage and participate in a discussion about the perils, pleasures, and possibilities of online scholarship.

“Best Practices in Digital Pedagogy”

Presenters in this session will share their experiments, challenges, and successes in using digital applications to teach eighteenth-century studies at the undergraduate or graduate level. Some questions that presenters might address are:

1. How has the use of digital media promoted student learning inside and outside the classroom?
2. What challenges does the use of digital media pose?
3. How do “best practices” in digital pedagogy differ from more traditional forms of teaching?
4. What does the use of digital media add to the study of the eighteenth-century?

The caucus has no officers or official meetings. It is an ad hoc group run by those who attend, in person or virtually, and who care to contribute. A description of its goals and aims is here.

This year’s 2011 ASECS conference hosted two caucus panels, among many other digital humanities events (listed here; 2010 DH panels listed here). It would be nice to put on two next year as well.

Please use the comments to contribute ideas for session topics, volunteer your services as chair/organizer, and to generate ideas on how we might organize ourselves as a caucus in the future.

I have chaired sessions two years in a row so am definitely ready to pass the torch.  However, I can offer a couple ideas for others to follow up on based on conversations I had with some of you at ASECS11:

• Best Projects:  Digital Humanities Showcase (perhaps in conjunction with 18thConnect, which peer reviews such projects…)
• Best Practices in Digital Pedagogy (or something teaching & learning related)
• Digital Humanities How-To Workshop

I’m sure YOU have better ideas, so please step up!

–Lisa Maruca
Wayne State University
lisa.maruca@wayne.edu

Written by George Williams

Submitted and approved at 2010 meeting of ASECS

The ways in which digital technologies are changing the humanities are increasingly visible. These changes arrive not just through the online publication of information that previously had appeared only in print, but also through the proliferation of sophisticated digital tools that allow new ways of thinking about the humanities. And these changes are quite noticeable in eighteenth-century studies: almost any ASECS conference program from the last decade features at least one session devoted to digital resources for teaching or research. This year [2010], in particular, there are 4 such panels:

• Session 17: ECCO, EEBO, and the Burney Collection: Some ‘Noisy Feedback’
• Session 68: The Digital Eighteenth Century 2.0 — I
• Session 110: The Digital Eighteenth Century 2.0 — II
• Session 128: Digital Humanities and the Eighteenth Century: Pros and Cons

Obviously, the participants in these sessions are evidence that scholars, teachers, and students are engaged in exciting work with computational tools. However, many of us are also concerned about the best ways to make use of these tools (see the title of Session 128) as well as the potential problems caused by lack of access to commercial digital projects (see Peter Reill’s 2009 letter to ASECS membership).

Given the extent to which the digital humanities is becoming a part of the “bloodstream” of the humanities, in general, and eighteenth-century studies, in particular, I propose establishing an ASECS Digital Humanities Caucus. Under the auspices of this caucus, a panel or roundtable could be organized around these issues at our annual meeting. Future developments might include affiliation with the Association for Computers in the Humanities <http://www.ach.org>.

This new caucus need not simply celebrate uncritically digitally-enabled approaches to our field. Rather, it would ideally provide a accessible intellectual forum for those scholars and teachers with advanced training and experience in the digital humanities as well as those who are interested in these tools and the new approaches they enable but are perhaps unfamiliar with how best to make use of them.

An ASECS Digital Humanities Caucus would enable our organization to avoid simply responding to the changes brought to our field by digital technologies but instead to take a more active role in shaping those changes.

Some suggested further reading:  ”18th-Century Studies” Meets “Digital Humanities“;  ”A Message from ASECS President, Peter Reill“

“Evaluating Digital Work: Projects, Programs, and Peer Review” Session Description:

As new media projects begin to supplement or in some cases replace the print essay, research paper, scholarly article or monograph, what modes of evaluation should we expect or demand of students (undergrads and graduate students), colleagues, and ourselves? In recent times groups like HASTAC and the MLA begin discussion on evaluating digital work — the latter appropriately enough ona wiki — while the president of the MLA has even advised that more digital dissertations be produced. Similarly, the American Historical Association and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University announced in 2008 a new annual prize for “an innovative and freely available new media project that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with technology and the practice of history.” Since our students now might ask to produce a YouTube video instead of a paper, and our colleagues go up for tenure with a digital archive instead of a book, it behooves the member of ASECS to join this discussion and reflect on both methods and criteria for judging specifically historical work.

The organizers welcome descriptions of your own or others’ classroom or institutional experiments; policies that you or others have authored; ideas for future criteria, rubrics, methods and standards for evaluation; as well as theoretical examinations of evaluation as a concept. Panelists might reflect on the following, applied to both students and faculty:

• Which standards should we preserve and which reject as we move from evaluating print work to digital projects?
• What are the digital equivalents to (or replacements for) familiar print products such as (for undergrads) the interpretive essay or research paper; (for graduate students) the seminar paper or dissertation; (for faculty) the journal article, chapter or book?
• How do we transfer such criteria as length and depth to innovative projects?
• How do we account for the new skills that may need to be acquired to produce works in new media?
• How do we fairly assess forms requiring multiple team members?
• How can we import crowdsourcing as a method into the classroom or for examining scholarly work?
• How do we allow for citation and account for influence in the digital realm?
• What is the relationship between methods of evaluation for students and that for faculty?
• How do new media projects de- and re-construct print-based concepts we bring to evaluation, such as periodicity, authorship, originality, knowledge, and intellectual property?
• How might digital pedagogy and service be reconceived as valuable and quantifiable forms of scholarly work?

Participants:

The project I will describe arises from my DH work in liberal arts colleges. Over the past two years, I have organized and hosted various activities focused on new media, DH, and undergraduates with my colleague, Katherine Rowe (Bryn Mawr College)—including a Mellon-sponsored national seminar (‘Digital Archives and the Future of the Humanities at Liberal Arts Colleges’), which brought in ODH representatives; and the national liberal arts student conference “Re: Humanities,” which will take place at Haverford this November. Rowe and I are now in the process of spearheading a Trico (Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, Haverford) DH Regional Center.  As we think about the role of DH in the undergraduate intellectual experience, I have created course assignments around the construction of a digital archive in the liberal arts classroom. I will describe the work with reference to an advanced course on Restoration and 18th-Century Print Culture.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

SESSIONS I:  8:00 – 9:30 a.m.
9. “Media Technologies and Mediation in Intercultural Contact”
(Roundtable) Pavilion Ballroom D
Chair: Scarlet BOWEN, University of Colorado, Boulder
1. Mary Helen MCMURRAN, University of Western Ontario
2. Neil CHUDGAR, Macalester College
3. Jordan STEIN, University of Colorado, Boulder

SESSIONS II: 9:45 – 11:15 a.m.
19. “Scholarship and Digital Humanities, Part I: Editing and
Publishing” (Roundtable) Grand Ballroom BC
Chair: Lorna CLYMER, California State University, Bakersfield
1. Timothy ERWIN, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
2. Christopher MOUNSEY, University of Winchester
3. Eleanor SHEVLIN, West Chester University
4. Christopher VILMAR, Salisbury University

26. “Eighteenth-Century Reception Studies” – I Port Hardy
Chair: Marta KVANDE, Texas Tech University
1. Alise JAMESON, Ghent University, “The Influence of Gerard
Langbaine’s Seventeeth-Century Play Catalogues on Eighteenth-
Century Criticism and Authorship Ideals”
2. Diana SOLOMON, Simon Fraser University, “Sex and Solidarity:
Restoration Actresses and Female Audiences”
3. Jennifer BATT, University of Oxford, “The Digital Miscellanies Index
and the Reception of Eighteenth-Century Poetry”
4. Michael EDSON, University of Delaware, “From Rural Retreat to Grub
Street: The Audiences of Retirement Poetry”

SESSIONS III: 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.
38. “Scholarship and Digital Humanities, Part II: Authoritative
Sources” (Roundtable) Grand Ballroom BC
Chair: Christopher VILMAR, Salisbury State University
1. Katherine ELLISON, Illinois State University
2. Ben PAULEY, Eastern Connecticut State University
3. Adam ROUNCE, Manchester Metropolitan University
4. Brian GEIGER, University of California, Riverside
5. Lorna CLYMER, California State University, Bakersfield

SESSIONS IV 2:30 – 4 P.M.
56. “Scholarship and Digital Humanities, Part III: Materials for
Research and Teaching” (Roundtable) Grand Ballroom BC
Chair: Bridget KEEGAN, Creighton University
1. Mark ALGEE-HEWITT, McGill University
2. Anna BATTIGELLI, State University of New York, Plattsburgh
3. Ingrid HORROCKS, Massey University
4. John O’BRIEN AND Brad PASANEK, University of Virginia

66. “Editing the Eighteenth Century for the Twenty-First Century
Classroom” (Roundtable) Junior Ballroom B
Chair: Evan DAVIS, Hampden-Sydney College
1. Joseph BARTOLOMEO, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
2. Linda BREE, Cambridge University Press
3. Anna LOTT, University of North Alabama
4. Marjorie MATHER, Broadview Press
5. Laura RUNGE, University of South Florida

Friday, March 18, 2011

SESSIONS VII 9:45 – 11:15 a.m.
102. “The Eighteenth Century in the Twenty-First: The Impact of the Digital Humanities” (Digital Humanities Caucus) (Roundtable)
Grand Ballroom BC
Chair: George H. WILLIAMS, University of South Carolina, Upstate
1. Katherine ELLISON, Illinois State University
2. Michael SIMEONE, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
3. Elizabeth Franklin LEWIS, University of Mary Washington
4. Kelley ROWLEY, Cayuga Community College

SESSIONS IX 4:15 – 5:45 p.m.
146. “New Media In the Eighteenth Century” (New Lights Forum:
Contemporary Perspectives on the Enlightenment) Port Alberni
Chair: Jennifer VANDERHEYDEN, Marquette University
1. Lisa MARUCA, Wayne State University, “From Body to Book: Media
Representations in Eighteenth-Century Education”
2. Caroline STONE, University of Florida, “Publick Occurences and the
Digital Divide: The Influence of Technological Borders on Emergent
Forms of Media”
3. George H. WILLAMS, University of South Carolina, Upstate,
“Creating Our Own Tools? Leadership and Independence in
Eighteenth-Century Digital Scholarship”

Saturday, March 19, 2011

SESSIONS XI 9:45 – 11:15 a.m.
177. “Crowding-sourcing and Collaboration: Community-Based
Projects in Eighteenth-Century Studies” Grand Ballroom D
Chair: Bridget DRAXLER, University of Iowa
1. Margaret WYE, Rockhurst University, “The Challenge and
Exhilaration of Collaboration: From Post Grad to Undergrad, It’s All
Research, All the Time”
2. Victoria Marrs FLADUNG, Rockhurst University, “Undergraduate
Research: How I Learned to Love Irony in Jane Austen’s Mansfield
Park”
3. Laura MANDELL, Miami University, “Crowd-sourcing the Archive:
18thConnect.org”
Respondent: Elizabeth GOODHUE, University of California, Los Angeles

SESSIONS XII 2 – 3:30 p.m.
181. Evaluating Digital Work: Projects, Programs and Peer Review”
(Digital Humanities Caucus) (Roundtable) Grand Ballroom BC
Chair: Lisa MARUCA, Wayne State University
1. Holly Faith NELSON, Trinity Western University
2. Bill BLAKE, University of Wisconsin, Madison
3. Allison MURI, University of Saskatchewan
4. Laura MCGRANE, Haverford College

“Evaluating Digital Projects: A Roundtable Discussion of New Forms of Grading and Peer Review”

(Digital Humanities Caucus Roundtable)

Lisa Maruca, 5057 Woodward, Dept. of English, Wayne State U., Detroit, MI 48202; Tel: (248) 890-5177

E-mail: lisa.maruca@wayne.edu AND gwilliams@uscupstate.edu

As new media projects begin to supplement or in some cases replace the print essay, research paper, scholarly article or monograph, what modes of evaluation should we expect or demand of students (undergrads and graduate students), colleagues, and ourselves? In recent times groups like HASTAC and the MLA begin discussion on evaluating digital work — the latter appropriately enough on a wiki — while the president of the MLA has even advised that more digital dissertations be produced. Similarly, the American Historical Association and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University announced in 2008 a new annual prize for “an innovative and freely available new media project that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with technology and the practice of history.” Since our students now might ask to produce a YouTube video instead of a paper, and our colleagues go up for tenure with a digital archive instead of a book, it behooves the member of ASECS to join this discussion and reflect on both methods and criteria for judging specifically historical work.

The organizers welcome descriptions of your own or others’ classroom or institutional experiments; policies that you or others have authored; ideas for future criteria, rubrics, methods and standards for evaluation; as well as theoretical examinations of evaluation as a concept. Panelists might reflect on the following, applied to both students and faculty:

• Which standards should we preserve and which reject as we move from evaluating print work to digital projects?
• What are the digital equivalents to (or replacements for) familiar print products such as (for undergrads) the interpretive essay or research paper; (for graduate students) the seminar paper or dissertation; (for faculty) the journal article, chapter or book?
• How do we transfer such criteria as length and depth to innovative projects?
• How do we account for the new skills that may need to be acquired to produce works in new media?
• How do we fairly assess forms requiring multiple team members?
• How can we import crowdsourcing as a method into the classroom or for examining scholarly work?
• How do we allow for citation and account for influence in the digital realm?
• What is the relationship between methods of evaluation for students and that for faculty?
• How do new media projects de- and re-construct print-based concepts we bring to evaluation, such as periodicity, authorship, originality, knowledge, and intellectual property?
• How might digital pedagogy and service be reconceived as valuable and quantifiable forms of scholarly work?