The EMDC fulfils an idea that circulated at MLA 2013: what if early modernists using digital humanities tools and methods had a venue for our research collaborations? The MLA Commons launched its platform at the same meeting, so it seemed like the right place to begin.
This is a public group; anyone working in the field of early modern studies — that is, texts and culture between about 1450 and 1700, principally (not principle-y) in English, is welcome to join. The parameters of your research interests are less important than your willingness to share ideas, tools, workflows, resources, advice, questions, problems, and anything else that will productively advance your research.
As I wrote on our Group page, the EMDC serves at least three purposes:
- to foster scholarly collaborations among early modern DHers;
- to pose + answer questions specific to our research objects; and
- to propose + test ways for current tools and resources to address our joint + several problems.
We could expand our scope to pedagogical questions, but at this stage that might be overly ambitious.
Finally, who am I? Michael Ullyot, and this summer (2013) I’m grappling with a problem I presented at the MLA last month: how do we automate the detection of rhetorical figures in Shakespeare? And what insights would it yield?
I’ll post more on that project another time. What remains is for other members to join the group, to introduce themselves and their projects. Link to a blog, if you have one — or post your project description here. The forums are for questions and answers. We also have a place to collaborate on documents (think Google Docs). So let’s get started.