The Digital Americanists Society solicits abstracts (c. 250 words) for papers to be included in the Society’s pre-arranged session at the 2019 American Literature Association Conference (Boston, May 23-26, 2019).
If you are a graduate student or an independent researcher without institutional support, we encourage you to apply for our $100 travel grant. If you wish to be considered, please send a short statement of interest (one sentence suffices), as well as a note on your current institutional travel support, alongside your paper proposal.
The panel will focus on the digitization of “unique” collections of materials that are related to American literature or culture, broadly defined. These might be collections of non-traditional or non-canonical texts, genres, or forms; materials related to marginalized individuals or groups; or collections of materials that for either historical or technical reasons present unique challenges for those looking to digitize them. While we are open to the form that these talks might take, we welcome and encourage collaborative presentations and discussions of works in progress. We imagine that panelists might discuss both the challenges (bureaucratic or institutional, economic, technical, theoretical) and affordances of dealing with such collections of materials, with an eye towards assisting other scholars who may encounter similar issues in their own digitization projects, and explaining how such collections offer new possibilities for scholarship, teaching, digital preservation, and/or public engagement.
Deadline for submissions is January 1, 2019. Send abstracts or questions by email to digitalamericanists@gmail.com. For more information about the Digital Americanists, see our “About” section. For information about the ALA and the 2019 conference, see http://americanliteratureassociation.org/.