Textual scholarship, artificial intelligence, corpora and intelligent editions

Venue: Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Dates: 2-4 October 2024

Call For Papers

Deadline: 15 May 2024

Registration Website: https://easychair.org/account2/signin?l=556918102917776758

Textual scholarship, artificial intelligence, corpora and intelligent editions

The nineteenth annual conference of the European Society for Textual Scholarship (ESTS 2024)

Although the deep learning-based AI revolution in human language processing began at least a decade ago, the emergence of generative AI through ChatGPT has far exceeded even experts’ expectations. Will AI make textual scholarship and our editing practices smarter? Will we be able to produce intelligent editions, in print or online, without the “help” of computers in the third decade of the 21st century?

In this context, it is worth considering the opportunities and threats of the computer as a cultural artefact in the production of scholarly editions, or in textual scholarship in general, from the Index Thomisticus (Roberto Busa) to Winchester Philology (Thorsten Ries) and the technology of the Semantic Web. The conference also addresses the role of corpora and corpus linguistic methods in the humanities, such as computer-based analysis and annotation of poetic texts.

Papers on the following or related topics are welcome:

• What is an Intelligent Edition?
• Who is the (digital) edition for?
• Can editions become more inclusive?
• What challenges is textual scholarship facing?
• Is there a future for print?
• Textual Scholarship and/as data
• Editorial Interfacing
• (Digital) Research Infrastructure and Future-proofing the Edition
• Editing and Deep Learning
• Corpus linguistics as Method and Tool
• Annotation and Commentary in the Age of Google

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• Scholarly editing, textual scholarship and/as research data – in the age of FAIR data management.
• Versioning, persistent identification, standardization, metadata schemes, data mining, search tools, search platforms. Named entity recognition, data enrichment, linked open data.
• Scholarly editions on display. Displaying scholarly editions.
• Arrangement of philological data on the printed surface of paper and on the computer displays, marking-up, sign systems in print and on the screen, relation of the visual arrangement of the source and the edition; lists, glossaries, annotations, marginalia and footnotes: what they disclose and what they hide. Digital interfaces, responsive design and visual stability/instability. Digitizing scholarly editions and printing digital ones.
• Rule based digital tools, automatic collation, data visualization; intertextuality detection, stylometry and authorship attribution: old and new methods. Deep learning (HTR, LLM), digital research infrastructures.
• Corpus linguistic methods and tools in poetic research: canonical and non-canonical poetic genres, characteristics of lyrical and narrative poetry (e.g. grammatical and semantic patterns, poetic styles and devices, literary periods), quantitative and qualitative methods.
• Electronic literature and the challenges of textual scholarship.
• Born-digital and digitized sources and the challenges of textual scholarship.
• The audiences of digital and printed editions.

Contributions to the ESTS Conference may take the following forms:

• Research Papers
  Individual scholars are welcome to submit proposals for papers which may then be selected for
  panels. 20 minutes in length. Please supply an abstract of 150 words (max) + bio of 100 words
  (max).
• Panel sessions
  We also invite groups of scholars (3 speakers) to submit proposals for thematically linked research paper panels. 90 minutes in length (3 x 20 minute papers + q&a). Please supply 3 abstracts of 150 words (max) each + bios of 100 words (max) for each speaker. The organisers will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field.
• Roundtable
  We also invite groups of scholars (up to 6 speakers) to submit proposals for thematically linked roundtable sessions. 90 minutes in length (10 mins per speaker + q&a). Please supply an overall abstract of 250 words (250 words) for the roundtable + bios of 100 words (max) for each speaker.
• Poster sessions
  We will run a poster session as part of the main conference program. Topics of interest include all topics listed above. The poster session is an opportunity for researchers to discuss their early/ongoing work with attendees. The posters presented are to be between sizes A3 and A2; Please provide an abstract of maximum 250 words.

Proposals are to be submitted on the registration link by 15 May 2024.

Proposals are to be reviewed by early June.

Further information

Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at the email address below:
dh-conference@btk.elte.hu

Organisers

The Organising Committee

ESTS – The European Society for Textual Scholarship

ELTE-DH – Department of Digital Humanities, Eötvös Loránd University

ELTE-MIKTI – Institute of Hungarian Literature and Cultural Studies, Eötvös Loránd University

ELTE-DiAGram – Research Group in Stylistics

Authorship, Identity, and Textual Scholarship

Venue: University of Kent

Dates: 13-14 April 2023

Call for Papers

Deadline: 14 October 2023

Registration Website: https://bit.ly/ESTS2023

To what extent does the identification of an author’s identity affect how we approach and edit their texts? Or, to pursue a contested poststructuralist line of thinking, why might it matter to an editor, or any reader, that they know who is speaking? Though the Barthesian idea of the ‘Death of the Author’ has been largely dismantled, theoretical questions about agency, intentionality, and reception still loom large in modern critical discourse. Given our present-day concerns with anonymity, fake news, misattributed quotations, and the spread of disinformation, this timely conference shines a light on the relationship between the identification of an author-figure and the transmission, mediation, and reception of their texts.

The organisers invite proposals for creative, critical, and analytical papers, panel sessions, roundtables, posters, and digital exhibitions that approach and analyse the overlap between studies in attribution, authorship, biography, and textual scholarship from antiquity to modern day. We particularly encourage proposals which consider the range of identities that authors take and investigate how the imperative for diversity, relates or challenges conventional concepts of authorship The digital turn in literary studies has enlivened debates about authorship, reflecting a concurrent rising interest in textual issues related to co-authorship, revision, and adaptation. Traditional canons of literary and non-literary works have been challenged vigorously in recent years.

So, too, authorship has figured significantly in the detailed analyses of the lives and output of scribes and stationers (publishers, printers, booksellers) from the premodern to modern periods, producing rich new evidence about the transmission and circulation of text. Similarly, the material turn in literary scholarship has provided original insights into the material conditions of authorship, from the everyday experience of life as a practicing author to the tools used in producing the material book itself. The work that is produced and disseminated is now studied as a social as well as textual object.

Contributions to the ESTS Conference may take the following forms:

Research Papers

Individual scholars are welcome to submit proposals for papers which may then be selected for panels. 20 minutes in length. Please supply an abstract of 150 words (max) + bio of 100 words (max).

Panel sessions

We also invite groups of scholars (3 speakers) to submit proposals for thematically linked research paper panels. 90 minutes in length (3 x 20 minute papers + q&a). Please supply 3 abstracts of 150 words (max) each + bios of 100 words (max) for each speaker. The organisers will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field.

Roundtable

We also invite groups of scholars (up to 6 speakers) to submit proposals for thematically linked roundtable sessions. 90 minutes in length (10 mins per speaker + q&a). Please supply an overall abstract of 250 words (250 words) for the roundtable + bios of 100 words (max) for each speaker. The organisers will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field.

Digital Projects Exhibition

We invite scholars working on DH projects related to authorship to showcase their work through a poster/exhibition session. A DH project session will be held during one of the days of the conference. Please supply abstract of 150 words (max) + bios of 100 words (max) for each presenter; if the project is live, please supply a link.

Poster Session

We invite scholars to submit an abstract for a poster presentation linking their research to the themes of the conference. A poster session will be held during one of the days of the conference. Please supply abstract of 150 words (max) + bios of 100 words (max) for each presenter.

All proposals are due by 14 October 2022. Please send proposals to ESTS2023@gmail.com If you have any queries about the submission process, please contact R.Loughnane@kent.ac.uk or any of the members of the Planning Committee.

ESTS 2023 Planning Committee: Rory Loughnane (Kent, Chair); Bashir Abu-Manneh (Kent); Anne Alwis (Kent); Claire Bartram (Canterbury Christ Church University); Jennie Batchelor (Kent); Karen Brayshaw (Kent); Helen Brooks (Kent); Robert Gallagher (Kent); Emily Guerry (Kent); Anna Jordanous (Kent); Ryan Perry (Kent); Catherine Richardson (Kent); David Rundle (Kent); Amy Sackville (Kent); Wim Van Mierlo (Loughborough University); Matthijs Wibier (Kent); and Cressida Williams (Canterbury Cathedral Library and Archives). Postgraduate Advisors: Ségolène Gence (Kent; MEMS PG Ambassador); Samantha McCarthy (Kent); Jonathan Pinkerton (Kent-Lille).