WWP Seminars on Scholarly Text Encoding

As part of its outreach activities the Women Writers Project teaches workshops and seminars in scholarly text encoding. The goal of this initiative is two-fold: first, to provide humanities faculty and students with an opportunity to examine the significance of text encoding as a scholarly practice, through a combination of discussion and practical experimentation. And second, to provide supporting resources for humanities researchers who want to experiment with text encoding on their own, or would like to start or become involved with a digital research project. The resources and events listed below are all aimed at faculty, students, and practitioners in the humanities who have little or no technical experience but are interested in digital textuality. In addition to providing support in grappling with the technical topics, these resources also engage with the scholarly issues that surround these technologies.

Funding for these seminars comes from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the WWP, and the hosting institutions. In 2006 we received funding from the NEH to support a two-year program of workshops and seminars on text encoding, aimed specifically at humanities faculty, held at humanities centers across the US during 2007-2009. In 2008, we received a second NEH grant to support a continuation of this work, providing a smaller set of more advanced workshops on special topics in scholarly text encoding. This program will support six seminars between July 2009 and June 2011.

Introductory seminars: locations and dates

Locations and dates for the events in this series are as follows (with more information as it becomes available):

March 15, 2007: Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University
Schedule and information
May 14-15, 2007: University of California, Los Angeles
Schedule and information
September 19-21, 2007: Transliteracies Project, University of California, Santa Barbara
Schedule and information
October 4-5, 2007: Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska - Lincoln (held in conjunction with the Nebraska Digital Workshop)
Schedule and information
January 8-10, 2008: University of Buffalo
Schedule and information
April 30-May 2, 2008: Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland
Schedule and information
June 16-17, 2008: Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington
Schedule and information
July 22-24, 2008: Miami University of Ohio
Schedule and information
October 10-12, 2008: Wheaton College, Massachusetts
Schedule and information
January 13-15, 2009: Northwestern University
Schedule and information
2009 (to be rescheduled because of Hurricane Ike): College of Liberal Arts, Texas A&M University
Schedule and information

Advanced seminars: locations and dates

Our advanced seminar series focuses on two topics: manuscript encoding and the representation of contextual information in thematic collections. Each topic will be offered three times at three different locations during the course of the grant. Specific locations and dates will be posted soon, and a call for participation will be issued in fall 2008.

Support and consultation

No matter how engaging these seminars prove to be, they cannot answer all the questions that will arise and they cannot in themselves make it possible for participants to become confident, engaged critics, creators, and leaders of digital text projects. To ensure that the interests and ideas arising from the seminars receive ongoing support, this program also supports a number of activities and resources intended to provide longer-term advice and consultation, as well as a place where participants and others interested in the field can go to find out more. These include:

project consultation for participants who are thinking about starting or getting involved with a digital project
advice on writing grant proposals for digital text projects
support in creating TEI schemas and customizations
advice on digital editing, authoring, and publication
information on staffing, funding, project management
the opportunity to ask questions of any kind: we welcome them all

If you have participated in a WWP seminar and you'd like to get advice or information, please contact us at WWP@brown.edu. Even if you haven't attended a WWP seminar, please feel free to write—we may be able to help and we'll be happy to try.

Resources

What is the TEI? Basic information for those starting from scratch
Sample curricula
Readings
WWP Guide to Scholarly Text Encoding