Sally Fisher – Monash University
ANZAMEMS: Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminar ‘Medieval and Early Modern Digital Humanities’ Report
An illuminating article by Jock Phillips tracing digital history in New Zealand, a preliminary survey of some relevant medieval and early modern digital projects, and tentative plans afoot for my own digital project all contributed to my enthusiasm to attend the Medieval and Early Modern Digital Humanities Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminar at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. As a training seminar, my reasons for attending were grounded in a desire to build upon my understanding of the digital humanities. One of the highlights of the day, however, was the confirmation that those skills which humanities postgraduates work so hard to hone (writing research proposals, advanced critical thinking skills, careful attention to detail) are readily transferable to digital humanities projects.
The day consisted of two keynote presentations, an interactive session, examples of postgraduate proposals for digital projects and a panel discussion to close.
Professor Evelyn Tribble (University of Otago) opened the seminar with a presentation on ‘Materiality, Affordances, and the Digital’. Using the example of early modern and modern Shakespeare scripts to explore the differences in how actors learn their lines, Tribble considered the affordances of writing technologies before moving on to a discussion of the Early English Books Online (EEBO) database within the contexts of transparency, remediation and materiality. As my own area of interest is late-medieval England, Tribble’s discussion of the EEBO was extremely useful. Highlighting the need to consider the process of digitisation and to always ask ‘what lies behind the screen’, Tribble led us between text, microfilm, and the digital database as she traced the materiality of these sources and offered suggestions for how best to use them.
From affordances to assemblages the second keynote, ‘The Digital Recovery of Moving Media: EBBA and the Early English Broadside Ballad’, was presented by Professor Patricia Fumerton (University of California, Santa Barbara). The downfall of one of the women of my thesis became the subject of a mid-seventeenth ballad so it was with keen interest that I followed Fumerton’s discussion of the database and her reading of a seventeenth-century ballad. Moving from the geographical location used in the ballad to a discussion of the images and the accompanying music, Fumerton’s keynote confirmed the richness of the ballad as an historical source. Fumerton’s use of the term ‘assemblages’ encouraged consideration of both the ballads and the database to which they belong, reminding us how these ballads were received in their time, and how we receive them through the EBBA.
In the interactive session Fumerton took us behind the scenes at the EBBA, from an outline of the cataloguing system to an experiment in making a broadside ballad. Yet again, I was struck by the possibilities of reading the materiality in these digital sources and the implications of this for my own work. Following on, Dr James Smithies (University of Canterbury) led us through the process of setting up our own digital project. This session moved nicely from the immensity of the EEBO and EBBA projects to demonstrate how a small-scale, or even prototype, digital project could be developed.
After several postgraduate projects were put forward, in various stages of development, the day closed with a panel discussion featuring Dr James Smithies, Dr Chris Jones (University of Canterbury) and Joanna Condon (Macmillan Brown Library). The term ‘digital humanities’ was, rightly, the main focus of the discussion and, for me, it was a measure of the success of the seminar that my understanding had moved beyond the article by Jock Phillips, with which I began, to begin to consider not where we are now in the digital humanities, but where we might move next.
Of course, the occasion of a PATS also affords opportunities to catch up with other postgraduates; finding moments in the breaks to discuss our work, discover shared interests and plan future projects together. These benefits cannot be underestimated, even for those who of us who are fortunate to be part of a strong postgraduate cohort at our home universities.
The day was compered by Dr Tracy Adams (University of Auckland) and organised by Dr Francis Yapp (University of Canterbury). I am grateful to ANZAMEMS and the University of Canterbury College of Arts for a travel bursary to attend the PATS.
