International Conference: Digitizing the Medieval Archive.

Centre for Medieval Studies

University of Toronto,

March 27-29, 2014.

David Greetham (The Graduate Center, CUNY); Stephen G. Nichols (Johns Hopkins University); Caroline Macé (KU Leuven); Consuelo Dutschke (Columbia University Library)

The discussion about the digitization of the Middle Ages, by its very nature, tends to be one that takes place in an online setting. As the question of how medievalists may work within this digital environment becomes an increasingly popular topic of Internet conversation, we invite scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences to come together in real time to consider and discuss the possibilities of a digitized medieval archive.

There has been and continues to be considerable variation in the introduction, evaluation and continuation of digital storage. At the same time, in the digital humanities more broadly, the term 'archive', rather than being a term of clarification, has become a metaphor for what we do not understand about the nature of digital collections. Digital technology has expanded and complicated the idea of the archive. In bringing together the two concepts, digitization and archivization in the sphere of Medieval studies, we aim to address questions of access to and the dissemination of materials and research, as well as long-standing questions relating to the methodological and practical ways we carry out research. This conference sets out to explore ways in which medievalists might harness the vast, digital possibilities for a cross-institutional and interdisciplinary medieval archive.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to the following:

• Implications of digital archives for the editing of medieval texts
• Methodologies and/or ideologies behind archivization
• The archivization of already existing digital databases
• Digitized archives/collections as enabling or limiting research
• The digital (re)construction of medieval collections
• Compilation and order of medieval texts
• Textual forms / reading methods
• Fluidity of the medieval text and the Internet

Please submit a short C.V. and abstracts of 250 words by October 1, 2013 for consideration.

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