Recent MLA Conventions have featured many sessions about the digital humanities, considering their impact on methodology, pedagogy, bibliography, race, and the profession itself. What is sometimes forgotten, however, is that the output of digital analysis is not itself the goal; rather, it is a means to an end, and that end is the interpretation of a text or corpus (understood widely). This session—organized by the Association for Computers and Humanities (ACH)—seeks to re-establish this understanding and conversation, defamiliarizing the conversation about the digital and making it re-familiar to the larger body of MLA participants.
This panel will feature presentations that offer interpretations of texts, language, literature and/or literary history that definitely began with a digital approach. Crucially, however, we will ask presenters to speak not about their methods but instead about their interpretation, results, and conclusions.
Speakers will give brief talks (5-7 minutes, depending on number of participants). Speakers will also be invited to write brief blog posts to be shared on their own websites as well as that of the ACH about their methods and approaches. These posts will be shared at the session but will not form the subject of the conversation.
Send 300-word abstracts and bio to brian [dot] croxall [at] emory [dot] edu by 27 March 2013 at 12pm EST. N.B. All panelists will need to be MLA members (or have their membership waived) by April 7th.
I am organizing this session on behalf of the ACH. Since the ACH is an allied organization of the MLA, this session is guaranteed for the 2014 MLA.