Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library to Deliver Inaugural Digital Humanities Institute Lecture/2013 Dean’s Scholars in Shakespeare Lecture
We are very pleased to announce the launch of a new Digital Humanities Institute, co-founded and co-directed by Alexa Alice Joubin and Jonathan Hsy. The inaugural Digital Humanities Institute lecture will be delivered by Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, whose work on data-mining and literary analysis will provide an entry point into a discussion of some of the possibilities — and potential limitations — of large scale digitization projects.
Focusing on digital culture and library research, Dr. Witmore’s talk promises to be very entertaining and accessible.
Addressing the Text: Reflections on Shakespeare, Digital Access, and Libraries
3 pm on Friday September 6 in Post Hall on Mt Vernon.
The talk will explore the ways in which large scale digitization projects have created new access problems while solving old ones; it will also show some underlying similarities between the physical codex and the digital surrogates that we are now creating for printed books: both are “massively addressable objects,” simply at a different scale. The plays of Shakespeare are only one place where this convergence can be explored; they will serve as a point of departure in this talk.
“Addressing the Text” is co-sponsored by the GW Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute (GW MEMSI), the Digital Humanities Institute, the Dean’s Scholars in Shakespeare, the Department of English, the Department of History, and the Gelman LIbrary.
Dr. Michael Witmore is Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library and author, most recently, of Shakespearean Metaphysics and Landscapes of the Passing Strange: Reflections from Shakespeare (with Rosamond Purcell). He is part of the Mellon funded digital research initiative Visualizing English Print, 1470-1800 and maintains a blog on digital approaches to literary studies.
Free shuttle to Mt Vern: http://transportation.gwu.edu/mount-vernon-shuttle-vern-express
