Call for Papers

Resourceful Reading: The New Empiricism, eResearch and Australian Literary
Culture Symposium

Sponsored by Australian literature @ the University of Sydney and AustLit.

4-5 December 2008
The University of Sydney
        
On 4-5 December 2008, Australian Literature @ the University of Sydney will
host a symposium on Resourceful Reading: The New Empiricism, eResearch and
Australian Literary Culture. Plenary speakers include digital humanities
specialist Professor Hugh Craig (University of Newcastle) and Professor
David Carter (University of Queensland).

Although once the domain of the natural and social sciences, empirical
methods are becoming increasingly important in humanities research
internationally. Influential examples of such research in literary studies
include Franco Moretti’s method of ‘distant reading’ and William St.
Clair’s ‘political economy of reading’. In the modern, digital age,
empirical methods are often (though not always) carried out through
eResearch strategies, including databasing, data-mining and geo-spatial
mapping. The importance of both empirical and eResearch methods to
contemporary research in the Australian humanities is indicated by the
outcome of the 2002-3 ARC call for network funding, which saw the formation
of an eHumanities Network and the Cultural Research Network (CRN). A
central premise of the successfully-funded CRN is that since the 1960s and
1970s, theoretically-driven research in the humanities has somehow come
adrift from the empirical research techniques of the social sciences, and
that there is scope for a reconnection of these approaches that is at once
‘post-theoretical’ and ‘new-empirical’.

A series of papers given at the 2007 conference of the Association for the
Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) at the University of Queensland, the
coming to maturity of databases like AustLit, and the rise of new on-line
projects such as the Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library (APRIL)
indicate that empirical methods, and eResearch techniques and applications,
have reached a critical moment in research into Australian literary
culture. This is evident not only in fields such as the history of the book
and the history of publishing, but also in the ARC-funded ‘Resourceful
Reading’ project, which seeks to use empirical methods and digital archives
to revise the legacy of theoretically-driven literary history and
criticism, and to generate new ways of writing literary history and reading
texts. Such projects often bring together researchers from more than one
discipline, and from different kinds of institution, creating fruitful
partnerships between academics, librarians, writers and publishing
professionals.

Proposals for papers on the following topics applied to Australian literary
culture are particularly welcome:

• Synoptic papers or case studies involving exemplary new empirical
research and/or eResearch
• History of the book
• History of publishing
• History of reading
• Print culture
• Distant reading, close reading, resourceful reading
• eResearch in Australian literary culture
• Bibliographic research and digital editing
• Text and data-mining
• Geo-spatial mapping
• Digital archives
• Databasing and quantitative analysis

Limited funding to assist early career researchers may be available on
application to the convenors.

Proposals of approximately 250 words should reach the convenors by 31 May
2008.

Dr Katherine Bode
ARC Postdoctoral Fellow
English Department
University of Sydney
Sydney 2006
Australia
Tel: +61 2 9351 7448
Email: katherine.bode_at_usyd.edu.au

Professor Robert Dixon, FAHA
Professor of Australian Literature
Department of English
University of Sydney
Sydney 2006
Australia
Tel: +61 2 9036 7231
Email: robert.dixon_at_usyd.edu.au

===================================
 From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
            cfp_at_english.upenn.edu
             more information at
         http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
===================================
Received on Tue Apr 15 2008 - 01:41:33 EDT