Please note:  The Program Committee will not be offering an extension to the deadline as has become customary in recent years. The deadline of November 1 is firm. If you intend to submit a proposal for DH2011, you need to submit it via the electronic submission form on the conference website by November 1

Presentations include:

• Posters (abstract max of 1500 words)
• Short papers (abstract max of 1500 words)
• Long papers (abstract max of 1500 words)
• Multiple paper sessions, including panels (overview max of 500 words)

Call for Papers Announcement

I. General Information

The international Program Committee invites submissions of abstracts of between 750 and 1500 words on any aspect of digital humanities, from information technology to problems in humanities research and teaching.  We welcome submissions particularly relating to interdisciplinary work and on new developments in the field, and we encourage submissions relating in some way to the theme of the 2011 conference, which is Digital Humanities 2011: Big Tent Digital Humanities. With the Big Tent theme in mind, we especially invite submissions from Latin American scholars, scholars in the digital arts and music, in spatial history, and in the public humanities. The conference web site is in development at http://dh2011.stanford.edu will be developing over the next few weeks.  The program committee aims for a varied program and for that reason will normally not accept multiple submissions from the same author or group of authors for presentation at the conference.

Proposals might, for example, relate to the following aspects of digital humanities:

research issues, including data mining, information design and modelling, software studies, and humanities research enabled through the digital medium;

computer-based research and computer applications in literary, linguistic, cultural and historical studies, including electronic literature, public humanities, and interdisciplinary aspects of modern scholarship. Some examples might be text analysis, corpora, corpus linguistics, language processing, language learning, and endangered languages;

the digital arts, architecture, music, film, theater, new media, and related areas;

the creation and curation of humanities digital resources;

the role of digital humanities in academic curricula;

The range of topics covered by digital humanities can also be consulted in the journal of the associations:  Literary and Linguistic Computing (LLC), Oxford University Press.

The deadline for submitting poster, short paper, long paper, and sessions proposals to the Program Committee is November 1, 2010.  Since the deadline is firm, we urge you to begin preparing your proposals before the submission form is ready. Presenters will be notified of acceptance on February 15, 2011.  The electronic submission form will be available on the conference site the beginning of October 2010. See below for full details on submitting proposals.  

A separate call for pre-conferences and workshops will be issued by the Program Committee next week. In addition, proposals for non-refereed or vendor demonstrations should be discussed directly with the local conference organizer, Glen Worthey, as soon as possible.  His email address is gworthey@stanford.edu. All other proposals should be submitted to the Program Committee through the aforementioned electronic submission form on the conference web site.

For more information on the conference in general, please visit the conference web site.

II.  Types of Proposals

Proposals to the Program Committee may be of four types:  (1) poster presentations; (2) short paper presentations; (3) long papers; and (4) sessions (either three-paper or panel sessions).  This year, the committee is approaching submissions in a different way.  The type of submission preferred should be specified on the application; however, the committee may accept the application in another category based on the number of proposals and the nature of the abstracts.  In part this addresses the incredible response to recent calls and in part recognizes that all applications are refereed and that the types of presentations are therefore equal in importance.

Papers and posters may be given in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish.

1)  Poster presentations

Please submit an abstract of 750 to 1500 words.  Poster presentations may include any work in progress on any topic of the call for papers as outlined above, computer technology, project demonstrations, and software demonstrations.  Posters and software demonstrations are intended to be interactive, with the opportunity of the presenter to exchange ideas one-on-one with attendees and to discuss their work in detail with those most deeply interested in the same topic.  Presenters will be provided with board space to display their work, computer connections may be available, and presenters are encouraged to provide a URL, business card, or handouts with more detailed information. Posters will be on display at various times during the conference, and a separate conference session will be dedicated to them when presenters should be present to explain their work and to answer questions.  Additional times may be assigned for software or project demonstrations. Poster sessions may showcase some of the most important and innovative work being done in the digital humanities.  In recognition of this, the Program Committee will award a prize for best poster.

2)  Short papers

This is a new category of presentation, allowing for up to five short papers in a one-hour session, with the length held to a strict ten (10) minutes each in order to allow time for one to two questions per paper.  Short paper proposals (750 to 1500 words)  are appropriate for reporting shorter experiments; describing work in progress; and  for describing newly conceived tools or software in early stages of development. At the behest of the Program Committee, short papers may be presented as both a short paper and as a poster session.  For research or projects further along in development, presenters should consider applying for a long paper presentation.

3)  Long Papers

Proposals for long papers (750-1500 words) are for reporting substantial, completed, and previously unpublished research; the development of significant new methodologies or digital resources; and/or rigorous theoretical, speculative, or critical discussions.  Individual papers will be allocated twenty (20) minutes for presentation and ten (10) minutes for questions.

Proposals about the development of new computing methodologies or digital resources should indicate how the methodologies are applied to research and/or teaching in the humanities, what their impact has been in formulating and addressing the research questions, and should include some critical assessment of the application of those methodologies in the humanities.  Papers than concentrate on a particular application or digital resource in the humanities should cite traditional as well as computer-based approaches to the problem and should include some critical assessments of the computing methodologies used.  All proposals should include relevant citations to sources in the literature.

4) Multiple Paper Sessions (90 minutes) are either:

• Three long papers.  The session organizer should submit a 500-word statement describing the session topic, include abstracts of 750-1500 words for each paper, and indicate that each author is willing to participate in the session;

or,

• A panel of four to six speakers.  The panel organizer should submit an abstract of 750-1500 words describing the panel topic, how it will be organized, the names of all the speakers, and an indication that each speaker is willing to participate in the session.

The deadline for session proposals is the same as for proposals for papers, i.e. November 1, 2010.

Several points about the sessions papers:  papers that are submitted as parts of special sessions may *not* also be submitted individually for consideration in another category. Session proposers should justify bundling the three papers into a special session, i.e., explaining the added value of the special session as opposed to including the papers separately, particularly how the special session addresses the conference theme.

III.  Format of the Proposals

All proposal must be submitted electronically using the online submission form, found at the conference web site at http://dh2011.stanford.edu beginning October 1, 2010.  Anyone who has previously used the confTool system to submit proposal or reviews should use their existing account rather than setting up a new one.  If anyone has forgotten their user name or password, please contact dh2011@digitalhumanities.org.  As noted above, the electronic submission form will be available on the conference site the beginning of October 2010.

IV.  Information about the conference venue
Situated on the peninsula between the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, Stanford University is in the heart of Silicon Valley, not far from magnificent redwood forests and the vineyards of the Napa and Sonoma Valleys.  Stanford has a special culture and history to offer the Digital Humanities, sharing both rich traditions in the humanities, arts, and sciences, and a deep kinship with the world of computing, beginning well before the late 1930s founding of Hewlett-Packard by two recent Stanford graduates in a Stanford professor’s now-legendary garage, and continuing through the founding of Google by two other Stanford graduate students in the late 1990s.  We welcome new pioneers of DH2011 to Stanford.

V.  Bursaries for young scholars

A limited number of bursaries for young scholars will be made available to those presenting at the conference by the Association of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO).  Young scholars who wish to apply for a bursary will find guidelines on the ADHO website http://www.digitalhumanities.org later this fall (roughly November 1st).  More details will be issued about this subject in the next few weeks.

VI.  International Program Committee

Arianna Ciula (ALLC)
Dominic Forest (SDI-SEMI)
Cara Leitch (SDI-SEMI)
John Nerbonne (ALLC)
Bethany Nowviskie (ACH)
Daniel O’Donnell (SDI-SEMI)
Dot Porter (ACH)
Jan Rybicki (ALLC)
John Walsh (ACH)
Katherine Walter (ACH: Chair)

We held our second DDH last night in the Price Alfred Hotel in Carlton. Individuals from the Public Records Office, the University of Melbourne, Victoria University, and VeRSI showed up. As it was no longer the beginning of semester, the pub was safe from pub-crawling students.  We discussed issues such as history online (and its limitations), the THATCamp in Canberra (in which a number of us are attending on the weekend),  and the use of the TEI in history. I am not sure we actually touched upon the issue that we were supposed to discuss;  ‘the free software movement’, but we did touch upon some important broader Digital Humanities issues. One of which is somewhat ephemeral nature of ‘digital humanities’ practice in Melbourne in terms of the ebbs and flows of the field. There had been numerous computing in the humanities initiatives over the past 15 years that had come in waves of rewards structures and incentives. Many of these had been forgotten, but most of us agreed that it was again a good time to become involved in the field as there is a lot of interesting activity occurring in the field.

“This exploration is framed by a series of seminal questions,” Professor Trigg says. “What happens when European emotional regimes are transported into a colonial context? What role do emotions play in the development of Australian national identity? How do we track emotional continuities and discontinuities between past and present? And what can we learn from older emotional regimes about contemporary social and cultural patterns? (link).

The Australia and New Zealand Digital Encyclopaedia Group (ANZDEG) is a loose affiliation of people working on, or associated with, online reference collections. We include people working on small, individual projects and members of large institutions – the definition of “digital encyclopaedia” is deliberately vague so as to encompass a broad range of projects and interests. The group includes people working in eResearch and digital humanities, libraries and archives, museums, web publishing and computing science (link).

Next Thursday 26th , 5.30-7.30 we will meet again in the Prince Albert Hotel, 191 Grattan Street, Carlton, to discuss digital humanities in the pub. ‘Decoding Digital Humanities’ is an informal monthly get together in to discuss all things digital in the humanities.  This is an opportunity to meet others working on digital projects (or thinking about starting one) and is open to staff, students, and faculty.

Again the format of Decoding Digital Humanities has been borrowed from one of the newest centre’s in the field, UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities in the UK. They hold a similar pub event and are eager to collaborate in some way with others working of the intersection of computing and the humanities (I believe a couple of places in the US have now started DDH too!).

This month we will be discussing the Free Software movement
http://www.2cultures.net/ddh/

Have a look at the material and come to the pub to discuss. We will meet down stairs and there is food available. And we can move upstairs if needed.

Tell others and hope to see you Thursday,

Kind regards,

Craig

Thanks to Toma for sending the Link

• Melbourne Indymedia
• http://indymedia.org.au/melbourne
• S11.org(ant-globalisation protest movement website…on the Pandora Archive)
• http://pandora.nla.gov.au/parchive/2000/S2000-Sep-14//www.s11.org/
• Realjeff.com (1999 Victorian State Election…on the Pandora Archive)
• http://pandora.nla.gov.au/nph-arch/1999/Z1999-Sep-24/http://www.realjeff.com/index.htm
• Engage Media (Local Melbourne activist group using ‘Web 2′ techniques)
• http://www.engagemedia.org/
• The Death of Ian Tomlinson (London 2009)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECMVdl-9SQ
• Mash-up Australia (data sources)
• http://mashupaustralia.org/data-sources/
• Suburban Trends (one of the winners from Mash-up Australia)
• http://mashupaustralia.org/mashups/suburban-trends/
• They work for you (UK Mash-up of Hansard)
• http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
• GetUp (Melbourne activist group)
• http://www.getup.org.au/
• Major Parties
• http://www.alp.org.au
• http://www.greens.org.au
• http://www.liberal.org.au

Elton Barker, The Open University, Eric C. Kansa, University of California-Berkeley, Leif Isaksen, University of Southampton, United Kingdom. Google Ancient Places (GAP): Discovering historic geographical entities in the Google Books corpus.

A small group of Digital Humanities enthusiasts met at the Prince Alfred Hotel in Carlton to discuss all things digital in the humanities.  We did this in conjunction with UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities in London who hold a similar monthly event.

As it was the first week of Semester at the University of Melbourne, the Pub chosen was unfortunately on the route of a College pub crawl so our conversations were in competition with crowds of fresh undergrads complete with loud speaker!

We did manage to discuss some of the activities of the Digital Humanities at Melbourne, including a proposed workshop in the Faculty of Arts showcasing some of the digital projects being developed. As a field, the ‘Digital Humanities’ is not as coherent in Australia as it is in come countries, but there is still interesting work happening in various research and service contexts within a number of disciplines. We discussed the possibility of setting up an ‘Australian Association for the Digital Humanities’ to bring together some of the existing digital projects and forums in the humanities with the possibility of holding a small conference sometime next year.

Although those present did view the video of the Plenary of this year’s Digital Humanities conference by Dr Melissa Terrace, we didn’t really discuss it at length because of the loud-speaker and pub-crawling students. Next time we will bring our own loud speaker.

In conjunction with University College London’s Centre for Digital Humanities, Decoding Digital Humanities is an informal monthly get together in the pub to discuss all things digital in the humanities.  This is an opportunity to meet others working on digital projects and is open to staff, students, and faculty.

The first meeting of this semester will be held at the Prince Alfred Hotel, 191 Grattan Street

Date: Thursday  29 July 2010

Time 530-730PM

To kick off this semester, it is suggested that we engage with the same material as our colleagues at UCL. Melissa Terras from UCL gave the closing plenary at the recent Digital Humanities conference in London which is online as text and video and would be a good point to start the informal discussions. This is from UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities web site.

The annual Digital Humanities 2010 conference held this year at King’s College London was brought to a close on 10 July with a plenary speech by Dr Melissa Terras (UCL). Due to the topical and timely nature of issues raised in the speech, we felt it would make an excellent focus for discussion. The assigned reading for our meetup on the 27th will be:

“Present, Not Voting: Digital Humanities in the Panopticon”. Text available here. Video available here.

Have a look at the video and text and come along and discuss at the pub. If you have any suggestions for articles, software, funding opportunities any ‘digital humanities’ ideas drop us a line and we will put it on the agenda.  The meeting is organised by Craig Bellamy and Conal Tuohy of VeRSI. craig.bellamy@versi.edu.au, conal.tuohy@versi.edu.au

Decoding Digital Humanities Dates 2nd Semester:

• July 29 (Thursday)
• August 26 (Thursday)
• September 23 (Thursday)
• October 21 (Thursday)
• November 18 (Thursday)