&c sessions at #mla16

December 22, 2015 Claire M. L. Bourne

Detail of John Dryden, ALL FOR LOVE (1678), D2229 (Copy 4), Folger Shakespeare Library.

This January, I will be presenting a paper at the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention for the first time. It won't be my first time at MLA (I've been before for job interviews), but it will be my first time navigating the convention's extensive line-up of panels, roundtables, &c.

To that end, I've compiled a list of sessions that constellate around my interests in book history, bibliography, remediation, and pedagogy. This list is not designed to be comprehensive but rather to give others who might be interested in similar fields a starting point for their own #mla16 itineraries.

transcribe this! #transcribeVCU #folgerEMMO

November 17, 2015 Claire M. L. Bourne

One of the most popular pages at the VCU-Folger EMMO transcribathon: MS V.a.103, 38r, Folger Shakespeare Library (via LUNA)

Anyone who doubts that extra-curricular humanities programming can draw a crowd should have been at VCU's James Branch Cabell Library last Friday, November 13, where upwards of 100 people—most of them undergraduates—spent the afternoon transcribing seventeenth-century manuscripts for the Folger Shakespeare Library's crowd-sourced and soon-to-be web-accessible Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) project.

As the Folger's Curator of Manuscripts Heather Wolfe reminded us in her opening remarks, the ability to read hand-written historical documents informs how we understand our cultural, social, political, religious, and economic inheritance. Wolfe stressed that manuscripts didn't die out with the rise of printing, Instead, manuscript production flourished. Printed texts were "just the tip of the textual iceberg." What would happen, she asked, if more people could read the manuscripts that are only currently accessible to a select few with special paleography training? What would we be able to learn about our past?

TRANSCRIBATHON! #transcribeVCU #folgerEMMO

October 25, 2015 Claire M. L. Bourne

Detail of V.a.103, fol. 3v, Folger Shakespeare Library.

I will be celebrating VCU's very good luck this Friday the 13th when the Folger Shakespeare Library's Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) project team visits Richmond to lead a transcribathon for faculty, students, staff, representatives from local institutions, and interested members of the general public.

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