The John and Bebe Petrou Foundation, the Department of English, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) are very pleased to announce the 2006 Bebe Koch Petrou Lectures on NEW MEDIA STORYTELLING at the University of Maryland, College Park.

On Tuesday, May 2nd, SCOTT McCLOUD will present “Comics as Storytelling” at 3:30 in Susquehanna Hall 1120. There will also be a more casual colloquium discussion at MITH (McKeldin Library, B0131) earlier in the day at 11:00, which all are welcome to attend. McCloud is perhaps the world’s best known theorist of comics as a visual and narrative art form, widely known and regarded for his two books on the subject, _Understanding Comics_ (1993) and _Reinventing Comics_ (2000)–both of which are themselves written and drawn in comic format. A third book, _Making Comics_, is forthcoming in September. He is the author and illustrator of a number of successful underground strips and series, including _Zot!_ which ran for 36 issues between 1984 and 1991 (”A cross between Peter Pan, Buck Rogers and Marshall McLuhan”). Most recently, McCloud has been on the cutting edge of Web comics, experimenting with digital layout and design effects to create comics that take advantage of the new opportunities for storytelling offered by electronic media. His work has been published in Wired, Nickelodeon, Computer Gaming World, Wizard, and Publishers’ Weekly. He has had speaking engagements at many distinguished universities and institutions, including the MIT Media Lab, Harvard, Microsoft, the Electronic Arts festival, and the Smithsonian. Visit his home page here: http://www.scottmccloud.com/ .

Following a very successful day of discussion on the digital humanities MITH hosted earlier this semester with Johanna Drucker and Jerome McGann, please join us for a morning of discussion on electronic literature. In preparation for the Electronic Literature Organization’s impending move to MITH (www.eliterature.org), two of the ELO’s directors, ALAN LIU (Professor of English, University of California Santa Barbara) and JOE TABBI (Professor of English, University of Illinois Chicago) will visit to present talks on the preservation and collecting of electronic literature, as well as a new curriculum (at Santa Barbara) to support its teaching.

The talks will take place from 9:30-12:00 on Friday, April 28 in the McKeldin Special Events room (#6137). The schedule will be as follows:

* ALAN LIU, “Preserving Electronic Literature” (9:30-10:00)

* JOSEPH TABBI, “The Directory of Electronic Literature” (10:00-10:30)

* Discussion with Liu and Tabbi (10:30-11:00)

* Break (11:00-11:15)

* ALAN LIU, “The University of California Transliteracies Project: Research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading” (11:15-12:00)

ALAN LIU, Professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, is one of the most accomplished theorists in the digital humanities today. He is the initiator of numerous digital projects, including the Voice of the Shuttle (http://vos.ucsb.edu/index.asp), the earliest and still the largest humanities portal on the Web. His most recent book is _The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information_ (University of Chicago Press, 2004). JOE TABBI, Professor of English at University of Illinois Chicago, is the author most recently of _Cognitive Fictions_ (University of Minnesota Press, 2002) and is the founding editor of _ebr_ or the _electronic book review_ (http://www.electronicbookreview.com/), which has evolved into an essential hub for writing and scholarship on new media and electronic literature.

Coming up @MITH, *Tuesday* May 2, 11:00-12:00 : A discussion with SCOTT McCLOUD, internationally renowned author of _Understanding Comics_ and _Reinventing Comics_. The discussion is an opportunity to meet him and discuss his work in a roundtable setting. McCloud will give the English department’s Petrou Lecture that afternoon, at 3:30 in SQH 1120, entitled “Comics as Storytelling.” (This is the second of a two-part Petrou lecture series on New Media Storytelling–author and artist Shelley Jackson visited earlier in the semester.)

View MITH’s complete Spring Speakers Schedule here:

http://mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_spring_2006.pdf

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Acting Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-5896).

A MITH Digital Dialogue
Tuesday, April 25, 12:30-1:45
MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135

MITH is pleased to present two more of its current Fellows discussing their ongoing work in digital humanities, specifically (in this instance) scholarly databases. Please join us for these two presentations.

“Yintong: the Chinese Phonological Database”
DAVID PRAGER BRANNER, Associate Professor of Chinese

Yintong is a database of Chinese historical phonology with a number of new search mechanisms. It is designed to make this arcane but important body of knowledge accessible to students and other non-specialists who can use it in the study of modern Chinese dialects, classical literature, and historical linguistics.

“The Steinschneider Bibliographical Database: Digitizing a Classic Reference Work for Arabic and Latin Premodern Philosophy, Science, Medicine, and Literature Translated into Hebrew”
CHIP MANEKIN, Associate Pofessor of Philosophy

In 1893 the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider published the crowning achievement of a long and distinguished scholarly career — a thousand page bibliographical essay (in German) entitled The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages, and the Jews as Transmitters. For over a century, the Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages has been the primary reference source for medieval Jewish philosophy, science, medicine, and literature, translated from the Arabic and Latin into Hebrew. It is the classic work on the translation movement of the High Middle Ages from Arabic and Latin into Hebrew. Over a century old, it has never been translated, revised, or updated. The Steinschneider Bibliographical Database (SBD), a project of MITH and funded in part by an NEH collaborative grant, will be a fully searchable English translation, revision, and update of Steinschneider’s work prepared by scholars in Germany, Israel, and the US that will be available to scholars on the world wide web. As part of the website scholars will be able to consult digital images of Steinschneider’s own annotated copy of the original German, as well the fifteen-hundred page handwritten French memoire that preceded the German print edition.

Coming up @MITH, *Friday,* April 28th 9:30-12:00 in the McKledin Special Events Room (6137): A Morning of Discussion About Electronic Literature. In preparation for the Electronic Literature Organization’s impending move to MITH (www.eliterature.org), two of the organization’s directors, ALAN LIU (Professor of English, University of California Santa Barbara) and JOE TABBI (Professor of English, University of Illinois Chicago) will visit to present talks on the preservation and collecting of electronic literature, as well as a new curriculum (at Santa Barbara) to support its teaching.

View MITH’s complete Spring Speakers Schedule here:

http://mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_spring_2006.pdf

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Acting Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-5896).

MITH is currently conducting searches for two full-time Graduates Assistants (GAs): an information architect and a Managing Director for the Electronic Literature Organization.

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MITH Program Associate
12-month GA position
Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH)

This twelve-month GA position will report directly to MITH’s Acting Director. Responsibilities include development and maintenance of a wide variety of humanities computing initiatives that employ a range of web-deliverable technologies and assisting in the maintenance of MITH computing facilities.

MITH is a collaborative community of scholars, an interdisciplinary institute housed in McKeldin Library, and an electronic space devoted to exploring the use of new technologies in university research and teaching. MITH Program Associates work in a dynamic environment, usually on several different projects.

Candidates should have a solid background in web technologies, including XML, HTML, and CSS. Experience with database design and management and with scripting and programming languages such as JavaScript and Java would be a distinct advantage. Candidates should be adept at managing several tasks simultaneously, be conversant with some of the issues relating to digital humanities, and have an interest in applying the newer technologies to the humanities.

To apply, please submit application letter and resume to Professor Neil Fraistat, Acting Director, at fraistat@umd.edu. We are seeking to fill this position soon. For best consideration, please apply immediately. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.

The John and Bebe Petrou Foundation, the Department of English, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) are very pleased to announce the 2006 Bebe Koch Petrou Lectures on NEW MEDIA STORYTELLING at the University of Maryland, College Park. There will be two speakers associated with this event, coming to campus on separate days. All events are free and open to the public.

The first will be on Monday, April 17th. SHELLEY JACKSON will present “Shelley Jackson’s Interstitial Library” at 3:30 in Susquehanna Hall 1120. There will also be a more casual colloquium discussion at MITH (McKeldin Library, B0131) earlier in the day at 11:00, which all are welcome to attend. Jackson is an internationally recognized writer, electronic artist, and theorist and practitioner of new performance media. Her work includes Patchwork Girl (published in 1995 by Eastgate Systems, it is a hypertext refashioning of Frankenstein, told–in part–from the vantage point of the female monster). “Perhaps the true paradigmatic work of the era,” writes Robert Coover, “Shelley Jackson’s elegantly designed, beautifully composed Patchwork Girl offers the patient reader, if there are any left in the world, just such an experience of losing oneself to a text, for as one plunges deeper and deeper into one’s own personal exploration of the relations here of creator to created and of body to text, one never fails to be rewarded and so is drawn ever deeper, until clicking the mouse is as unconscious an act as turning a page, and much less constraining, more compelling.” More recently, Jackson has gained notoriety for “Skin,” a short story “published” as individual words tattooed onto the skin of hundreds of willing participants. She has written experimental Web-based texts, including “My Body–a Wunderkammer” (available at http://www.altx.com/thebody/) and “Stitch Bitch” (http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/jackson.html). She is also an illustrator of children’s books. Jackson teaches at the New School.

SCOTT McCLOUD will visit on Tuesday, May 2. Watch for further details.

First Annual Nebraska Digital Workshop

Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) University of Nebraska-Lincoln September 22-23, 2006

The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will host the first annual Nebraska Digital Workshop on September 22-23, 2006 and seeks proposals for digital presentations by pre-tenure faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and advanced graduate students working in digital humanities.

Workshop Goals

The goal of the Workshop is to enable the best early-career scholars in the field of digital humanities, including but not limited to, English, History, and Modern Languages, to present their work in a forum where it can be critically evaluated, improved, and showcased.

Under the auspices of the CDRH research faculty and staff-a group that includes CDHR Co-Directors Kenneth M. Price and Katherine L. Walter, Brett Barney, Andrew Jewell, Brian Pytlik Zillig, Douglas Seefeldt, William G. Thomas, III, and Judellen Thornton-J=E4ringe-the Nebraska Digital Workshop will offer opportunities to discuss the potential of humanities computing, present examples of successful projects created at the CDRH, offer a new tools workshop, share strategies for developing administrative and institutional support for digital humanities scholarship at the applicants’ home institutions, and share external funding and grant-writing tips. The Workshop ultimately endeavors to foster a network of digital scholars who will come together across disciplinary boundaries at the workshop, and who in the future will advance humanities computing and help define the state of digital scholarship. For information on the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities and faculty/staff biographies, see http://cdrh.unl.edu.

The Workshop will supplement its roster by bringing two nationally recognized senior scholars in digital humanities to Lincoln to participate and work with the scholars whose work is selected for presentation. This year, the Workshop coincides with the Department of History’s third annual Pauley Symposium on the topic “History in the Digital Age,” a gathering of top digital historians that will include: Abdul Alkalimat, University of Toledo; Edward L. Ayers, University of Virginia; Peter Bol, Harvard University; Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara; John Lutz, University of Victoria; Patrick Manning, Northeastern University; Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University; Jan Reiff, University of California, Los Angeles; Roy Rosenzweig, George Mason University and Robert Schwartz, Mt. Holyoke College. Two of these digital humanists will participate in the Workshop.

Travel, Lodging and Honoraria

The CDRH will pay for travel and lodging expenses and scholars will receive an honorarium for presenting their work at the Nebraska Digital Workshop. Workshop participants will also be invited to all of the Pauley Symposium “History in the Digital Age” events.

Selection Criteria

Applicants are encouraged to submit a three-page narrative abstract for an approximately 30-minute presentation of their digital project along with files of, or links to, any digital elements, electronic text, analytical tools, or multimedia visualizations already created. Applicants who are earlier in the production phase of their digital project may also submit descriptive text that explains their plans for such digital materials.

Selection criteria include: the significance of the project in primary disciplinary field, elements of technical innovation, theoretical and methodological sophistication, and creativity of approach to the subject.

To Apply

Applicants are asked to send a proposed workshop abstract, curriculum vitae, and a representative sample of digital work via a URL or disk to William G. Thomas, III, Chair, Nebraska Digital Workshop Committee, via email attachment at wgt@unl.edu or via surface mail at 615 Oldfather Hall, UNL, Lincoln NE 68588-0327.

Deadline

The deadline for applications is May 1, 2006.

The Electronic Literature Organization, which will move its institutional headquarters to MITH in July, is in the news with this story, about a reading by electronic author Robert Coover in San Antonio.

A MITH Digital Dialogue
Tuesday, April 11, 12:30-1:45
MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135

MITH is pleased to present two more of its current Fellows discussing their ongoing work in digital humanities. Please join us for these two presentations.

“The Multilingual Thesaurus for Medieval Studies”
PATRICIA COSSARD, Subject Librarian for Architecture and Historic Preservation

The Multilingual Thesaurus for Medieval Studies (MLTMS) is an attempt to build both a research database and a software tool. As opposed to a traditional thesaurus, MLTMS will work as both a termbase for web-based search and retrieval as well as a research database for the deconstruction of historical hierarchical ontologies as expressed by contributing classification systems. MLTMS is intended as a long-term and inter-disciplinary project focused on the European Middle Ages. Currently in its infancy, the software will ultimately researchers to do web-based search and retrieval of both primary evidence (in corpora)and argument (in journals and books). The technolgoy will be open source. <http://www.mith2.umd.edu/thes/>.

“Creating Digital Versions of Early 20th Century African-American Texts: Nannie Burroughs’ 1928 ‘What the Negro Wants Politically.’”
MICHELE MASON, Doctoral Candidate, Communication and MITH Winnemore Dissertation Fellow

The Washington Post called the 1928 presidential election, "the bitterest and most baffling presidential campaign of more than a generation." During the campaign, civil rights leader Nannie Burroughs campaigned tirelessly for the Republican party. As a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, Burroughs issued statements through the press and delivered dozens of speeches on behalf of Herbert Hoover. When the election was over Burroughs wrote "What the Negro Wants Politically," offering a brief analysis of the racial dimensions of the election and issuing a set of political demands to the Republican party. Published in several African-American newspapers, Burroughs’ article reached a large national audience. In this presentation I will discuss the significance of Burroughs’ editorial, along with the advantages a digital version of the text offers.

Coming up @MITH, *Monday,* April 17th 11:00: Colloquium with SHELLEY JACKSON. Jackson is an internationally recognized writer, electronic artist, and theorist and practitioner of new performance media. Her work includes Patchwork Girl (a hypertext refashioning of Frankenstein, told–in part–from the vantage point of the female monster), and “Skin,” a short story “published” as individual words tattooed onto the skin of willing participants. The colloqium is an opportunity to meet her and discuss her work in a roundtable setting. She will give the English department’s Petrou Lecture that afternoon, at 3:30 in SQH 1120, entitled “Shelley Jackson’s Interstitial Library.” (This is the first of a two-part Petrou lecture series on New Media Storytelling–look for SCOTT McCLOUD, author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, on May 2.)

View MITH’s complete Spring Speakers Schedule here:

http://mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_spring_2006.pdf

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Acting Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-5896).