New Directions in Manuscript Studies: The Digital and Manual Future

On November 9 from 4:00-5:30PM EST, the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI) is pleased to welcome Elaine Treharne, the first speaker in our 2022-23 Visiting Speaker Series. Professor Treharne’s talk is titled “New Directions in Manuscript Studies: The Digital and Manual Future.”

Elaine Treharne is Senior Associate Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education, Roberta Bowman Denning Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford University, where she teaches Manuscript and Archival Studies, and Early British Literatures. She co-directs Stanford Manuscript Sciences, and she is currently working on the fourth edition of Old and Middle English: An Anthology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023) and a revised edition of Neil Ker’s Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Early English. Her most recent books include Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts: The Phenomenal Book (OUP, 2021) and, with Orietta Da Rold, The Cambridge Companion to British Medieval Manuscripts (Cambridge: 2020).

Abstract: This is a critical moment. Millions of manuscript images are available online in repositories across the world, but what differences do they and could they make to contemporary knowledge and understanding of textual cultures from the past? Some inherited research that provides the basis of manuscript history is limited, partly because of what was available to scholars; partly because of previous scholars’ own, sometimes biased, worldviews; and partly because of the tools they had to hand. What kinds of new discoveries, then, might be facilitated by the mass digitisation of manuscripts and through new computational and digital methods and tools. More, what further limitations exist for the work (some of it manual) that is yet to be done?

This event will be held virtually via Zoom. Please register online.