Posts in category: Events

Tomorrow I’m leading a digital humanities workshop at Rutgers.

Empowerment Part II: Digital Text

Wednesday, November 20, 1:10-3:10 p.m.
Alexander Library, Room 413
169 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ

This workshop aims to expand our horizons for thinking about how we handle text on our computers. In order to attain liberation from Word, we will explore the difference between text editors and word processors, discuss the ways computers represent text as content or form, and experiment with some key technologies for digital document preparation. We will dally with three related computer languages in rapid succession. We will begin with markdown, a minimal but versatile set of plain-text conventions. Then we will learn to convert markdown into equivalent HTML markup using Pandoc. Finally, we will introduce the LaTeX document-processing system, which elegantly typesets plain text into PDF files. No prior experience with any form of markup or other computer coding is required. E-mail Vishal Kamath to register (vkamath at scarletmail dot rutgers dot edu).

Naturally I will be riding my markdown and TeX hobby horses. But the actual “empowerment” (modest but real) comes in getting a more detailed understanding of the way the systems we already use handle text, and in learning more ways to manipulate that text, beyond the confines of any single program. The business of plain-text-slinging, a minor craft on its own, nonetheless forms a natural starting point for thinking more deeply about analyzing digitized texts, expressing yourself in “code” of various kinds, and composing in the digital medium.

It’s a busy digital month here.

Omeka Workshop at Rutgers

The second workshop in the Rutgers DH workshop series, on Omeka, will take place on October 24. It will be led by a member of the Omeka dev team, Sheila Brennan.

Conference: Remediating the Avant-Gardes, 10/25–26

This conference at Princeton, convened by the Blue Mountain Project, is focused on the central topic of magazines and digital archives. I am the discussant on a panel on Saturday morning with some very interesting papers, “Navigating Avant-Garde Collections, Systems and Networks” (9:30-11:30 a.m., McCormick 101):

I spent last Friday and Saturday at an excellent workshop on Indian Literature as Comparative Literature, organized by Preetha Mani of the AMESALL department at Rutgers. The workshop focused on the relations among the regional languages and literatures of South Asia and the question of their joint participation in “modern” or “modernist” Indian literature. I had the pleasure of being the discussant for a panel with Snehal Shingavi, Kumkum Sangari, and Francesca Orsini. For me, someone with interest in but very limited knowledge of South Asian literatures, and no modern S. Asian languages (except…English), the talks and discussion provided all kinds of leads into scholarship and primary sources from South Asia I want to know more about—and, equally, a wealth of stimulating comparative and theoretical ideas.¹

I’m participating as a panel discussant in a workshop at Rutgers tomorrow and Saturday, organized in the AMESALL Department: Indian Literature as Comparative Literature.

There’s a really exciting schedule of talks tomorrow, Friday, September 27:

1. Rethinking Comparativism (10 a.m.). Kumkum Sangari (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Francesca Orsini (School of Oriental and African Studies), Shehal Shingavi (University of Texas-Austin), and Andrew Goldstone, discussant (Rutgers Unviversity).

2. Novel Experimentations (1:30 p.m.). Satya Mohanty (Cornell University), Vasudha Dalmia (Yale University), Krupa Shandilya (Amherst College), and Mukti Lakhi Mangharam, discussant (Rutgers University).

3. The Local and the Global (4 p.m.). Preetha Mani (Rutgers University), Anjali Nerlekar (Rutgers University), Kannan Muthukrishnan (French Institute of Pondicherry), and Pritipuspa Mishra, discussant (Princeton University)

All events in the Pane Room, Alexander Library.

Saturday has a roundtable at 10:30 a.m., with Francesca Orsini and Janet Walker.

I’m currently in Toronto participating in the American Comparative Literature Association meeting. My seminar, organized by David Alworth, is on “New Sociologies of Literature,” and it’s open to anyone at the conference. I’m presenting tomorrow at 11 a.m.; also on tomorrow’s slate: Laura Heffernan and Rachel Buurma, Kate Eichhorn, and David Alworth. Our location is subject to change, so check with the ACLA organizers, but we’re scheduled to be in Victoria College 215.

My own contribution is titled “Coding: Literary Field Theory, Categories, and Judgments.” I can promise invocations of both Bourdieu and Richard Scarry. More to the point, I can promise that my fellow panelists will be awesome and the discussion is guaranteed to be lively.

Two announcements of events I’m involved in, transpiring in the week after next:

Princeton Digital Humanities Initiative: Roundtable (3/26)

I’ll be joining a group of people at a Princeton Digital Humanities Initiative Graduate Student Outreach. It’s March 26 at 4:30 p.m. in Frist Multipurpose Room C. I’ll talk a bit about the PMLA topic models Ted Underwood and I are working on.

Rutgers: Lecture by Jim English (3/28)

The Rutgers Modernism and Globalization Seminar Series, which I am running this year, is hosting a guest lecture by James F. English of Penn on Thursday, March 28:

Modernism and Globalization Seminar Series

James F. English
John Welsh Centennial Professor of English
University of Pennsylvania

Not Now: Empirical Method and Default Temporality in Contemporary Fiction

Thursday, March 28, 2013, at 4:30 p.m.
Murray Hall, Room 302, 510 George Street
Reception to follow at the Center for Cultural Analysis, 8 Bishop Place
Free and open to the public

Abstract: This paper is mainly concerned with methodological challenges involved in using digital methods and big data in the field of contemporary fiction. It sketches an early-stage “small data” research project and presents some initial empirical (quantitative) results having to do with the temporal settings of Anglophone novels since 1969. These findings then provide an occasion to consider some possible reasons for a shift in the default temporality of the novel, and some possible implications of surface reading with respect to novels that eschew the present in favor of the past, the future, and the temporally queer.

James F. English is the author of The Economy of Prestige (Harvard, 2005) and The Global Future of English Studies (Blackwell, 2012), and Director of the Penn Humanities Forum.

Co-sponsored by the English Department, the Center for Cultural Analysis, and the Rutgers British Studies Center.

[Edit 3/18/13: RBSC link fixed.]

Yesterday I had a great discussion with the Comparative Modernisms Workshop at Northwestern about my book, Fictions of Autonomy. I’m grateful to Harris Feinsod and Rebecca Johnson for the invitation and for facilitating such a lively event. I was particularly pleased to have had undergraduates from the lit-theory interest group (with excellent, searching questions) as well as grads and faculty at the discussion. Everyone who read my book had generous-spirited, thoughtful things to say. May my book find more such readers.

After the jump, a lightly edited version of my introductory remarks, plus a little esprit de l’escalier.

One more reminder: I’ll be discussing my new book, Fictions of Autonomy: Modernism from Wilde to de Man, with the Comparative Modernisms Workshop at Northwestern University tomorrow, Monday, January 14.

The discussion will be held at 5:15 p.m. in the Seminar Room at the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities (Kresge Hall 2-370; map). Contact Prof. Harris Feinsod for copies of the advance reading from the book.

After the event I’ll post my introductory remarks on this blog.

My book, Fictions of Autonomy, is available at the Oxford Unversity Press display at the MLA conference taking place right now in Boston. Behold, peruse, acquire!

On Monday, January 14, 2013, I’ll be discussing my new book, Fictions of Autonomy: Modernism from Wilde to de Man, with the Comparative Modernisms Workshop at Northwestern University. Copies of the book will be available at the event.

The discussion will be held at 5 p.m. in the Kaplan Humanities Institute Seminar Room (Kresge Hall 2-370). Contact Prof. Harris Feinsod for copies of the advance reading from the book.

[Edit 1/3/13: added room info.]