This session reports on my (Andrew Keener) participation this past summer at Rare Book School in Charlottesville, VA, which was made possible in part by a NUDHL Connections grant. My presentation will recount some of the knowledge and techniques I acquired and how they fit them into the design for The Spenser Engagements, a digital project I am currently conducting with Josh Honn and Brendan Quinn. The discussion of this project’s possible futures will lead into a broader conversation about collaboration and digital projects at Northwestern among scholars, librarians, and graduate students.

Prompts: What should a digital scholarly project look like? What is the role of design in digital scholarship or a digital archive? What kinds of language should we use when we discuss our work with administrators and colleagues who may not be familiar with or warm to digital approaches to these humanistic issues? What bearing do these transformations we’re seeing today have upon the university library, broadly understood? What bearing do these transformations have upon graduate education, and what can we do to make it (more) sustainable?

Event Details
Friday, December 13, 2013
Kaplan Seminar Room, Kresge Hall, 10am-noon
For more information, contact Andrew Keener.

Recommended Readings

• Jerome McGann, “On Creating a Usable Future” (2011)
• Alan Galey, “‘The Enkindling Reciter’: E-Books in the Bibliographical Imagination” (2012)
• whitney trettien, “A Deep History of Electronic Textuality: The Case of English Reprints Jhon Milton Areopagitica” (2013)