Digital Medievalist Journal – Call for Submissions

Dear digital medievalist community,

Digital Medievalist is an indexed (see below), open access and internationally peer-reviewed scholarly journal, devoted to topics likely to be of interest to medievalists working with digital media, though they need not be exclusively medieval in focus. It publishes work of original research and scholarship, theoretical articles on digital topics, notes on technological topics, commentary pieces discussing developments in the field, bibliographic and review articles, tutorials, and project reports. The journal also encourages reviews of books and major electronic sites and projects. All contributions are reviewed before publication by authorities in humanities computing.

The journal is published online as a continuous volume and issue throughout the year. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in getting content publicly available. Special collections of articles are welcomed and will be published as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page.

The journal’s publisher, Open Library of Humanities, focuses on making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. Content is also archived around the world to ensure long-term availability. Ubiquity Press journals are indexed by the following services: Nordic list, Google Scholar, Chronos, ExLibris, EBSCO Knowledge Base, JISC KB+, SHERPA RoMEO, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), EBSCOHost, OpenAire and ScienceOpen.

Prospective authors should consult the Author Guidelines at: https://journal.digitalmedievalist.org/about/submissions/

More information can be found at the journal’s homepage: https://journal.digitalmedievalist.org/

We look forward to receiving your submissions!

Digital Medievalist Editorial Board

Digital Medieval Congress 2019, Call for Proposals

1. NUME, Research Group on Latin Middle Ages, organizes in 2019 the first entirely virtual congress dedicated to medieval studies (DMC – Digital Medieval Congress).

2. The theme chosen for the first edition of the DMC is the ENVIRONMENT, in its broadest sense. We will consider Contributions investigating the problem of the relationship between medieval man and the environment in which he lived, the way in which it was perceived, imagined and transformed, with particular attention to the problem of its mental representation and the impact that this representation had on specific aspects of medieval European culture. Possible topics and approaches include but are not restricted to:

– The mutual impact between the urban context and the natural environment, and how one transforms the other;
– Researches on solutions adopted by medieval man in terms of pollution, urban hygiene, conception and use of green spaces;
– The environment understood and disseminated by political propaganda, theological reflection and artistic elaboration;
– Walking, traveling, fighting, hunting in the landscape;
– Empty places and human contexts;
– Dreamed, imagined, desired places;
– Tools and surveys for understanding the medieval landscape;
– Representations and use of animals, plants and minerals as “resources” (material, cultural, etc.).

3. There are no disciplinary limitations: contributions of history, philosophy, politics, literature, art, archeology, material culture, new technologies applied to medieval studies will be accepted.

– Contributions with two or more speakers are accepted;
– Contributions already structured in panels and leaded by a coordinator are accepted.

4. Participation proposals must have abstract format, written on a single pdf file in English, not exceeding 300 words. Furthermore, 5 keywords identifying the topic will have to be reported in the same file. Proposals must be accompanied by a short CV (no more than 1000 words), and sent by September 6th, 2019 to the email address:

info[AT]nuovomedioevo.it

NB: In the case of panels, the proposal must include a general title with a general presentation not exceeding 300 words, followed by abstracts of all the interventions (presented as in point 4.)

5. Proposals will be evaluated by the Review Board on the basis of quality, interest and originality. The judgment of the Commission will be unquestionable.

6. The Commission will notify the convocation for the speakers considered suitable by September 20th, 2019. The previous membership of the NUME Association does not necessarily imply the convocation.

7. The selected speakers will be asked to prepare a video intervention not exceeding 20 minutes, and to send it by October 12th, 2019 at:

info[AT]nuovomedioevo.it

8. The selected speakers will be required a registration fee (30 EURO each). Speakers who are not yet NUME Members will have to register with our Association (20 EURO membership fee).

9. The congress will be held on October 31st, 2019 on our social platform Numet. All received videos will be uploaded on the site, and organized in virtual rooms in which users from all over the world will be able to access and to follow and comment on the interventions. Chat rooms will also be created in which users can access to follow and animate the debate on contents.

10. At the end of the congress, all the contributions will be collected in a volume with the conference Proceedings. Speakers will be required to send a paper of their intervention by February 28th, 2020 (20,000 characters, notes and spaces included). Speakers who do not respect this deadline will be excluded from publication.

11. The Conference program will be published by October 20th, 2019.

12. The deadlines set out in this call must be strictly observed, otherwise the contribution will be excluded from the call.

NB: Please read the call at: https://www.nuovomedioevo.it/2019/06/17/digital-medieval-congress-2019/

Call for Nominations to DM Board 2019–2021

Digital Medievalist will be holding elections in June 2019 for five positions to its Executive Board. Board positions are for two year terms and incumbents may be re-elected (for a maximum of three terms in a row). Members of the Board are responsible for the overall direction of the organisation and leading the Digital Medievalist’s many projects and programmes. This is a working board, and so it is expected that you are willing and able to commit a little bit of time to helping Digital Medievalist undertake some of its activities (such as helping to run its its journal, conference sessions, etc.).

For more information about the elections, see: https://digitalmedievalist.wordpress.com/elections-2019/

For further information about the Executive and Digital Medievalist more generally please see the DM website, particularly:

We are now seeking nominations (including self-nominations) for the annual elections. In order to be eligible for election, candidates must be members of Digital Medievalist (membership is conferred simply by subscription to the organisation’s mailing list, dm-l) and have made some demonstrable contribution either to the DM project (e.g. to the mailing list, or the wiki, etc.), or to the field of digital medieval studies.

If you are interested in running for these positions or are able to recommend a suitable candidate, please contact Lynn Ransom (lransom[AT]upenn.edu) or Greta Franzini (greta.franzini[AT]unicatt.it) who will treat your nomination or enquiries in confidence. The nomination period will close at 23:59 UTC on Saturday, June 8, and voting closes on Monday 1st July 2019, 23:59 GMT.

Computer-Assisted Text Analysis for Resource-Scarce Literatures

24-25 April 2019
University of Miami, FL

Call for Papers

This two-day symposium aims to bring together scholars and researchers working with computational approaches to texts. The event targets a broad audience interested in the application of digital text analysis technology, as text mining, topic modeling, authorship detection, writing style analysis, text reuse, or more generally tasks performed through Natural Language Processing (NLP). These techniques have significant potential not only for the study of literature but also for the study of texts and language in general. The symposium aims to create an open forum for showcasing these techniques.

The event is also grounded in the idea that computational text analysis should be integrated not only in the academic research by faculty and their PhD students, but also in a pedagogical environment. The use of computational analysis opens up new questions in literary studies, and exposes students to many different ways of thinking about literature today.

Computer-aided literary studies still thus tend to be focused on literatures written in modern languages. NLP tools are quite developed for modern languages, especially for the modern English language. For medieval and premodern languages, due to their instability of orthographic forms, attempts to conduct computer-aided (thus, to a degree, systematic) research face many challenges to normalize and standardize their linguistic forms. Therefore, the symposium also aims to explore the use and challenge of using NLP tools for studying literatures written in underrepresented and historical languages, such as the medieval and premodern variants and precursors of Spanish, French, Latin, and Dutch. Therefore, a special focus will be on the preprocessing routines available for these texts, such as lemmatization, by which we collect inflected forms under a single item or lemma, as well as challenges faced normalizing orthographic variation of historical texts and other languages with unstable orthographies. Among the international and national speakers we will have several experts on the topic.

Our envisioned program for the symposium is as follows: On the first day, there will be several workshops, including one devoted to integrating computer-assisted analysis in the classroom, which will offer an introduction to stylometry, visualization, and text-reuse. On the second day, there will be talks (30 min) that present ongoing research projects, methodologies, and challenges. The subject languages are preferably, but not limited to underrepresented and historical languages.

We are specifically interested in receiving proposals for contributions on one or more of the following topics:

    • Stylometry for authorship studies
    • Stylometry as an approach to literary study
    • Natural Language Processing and linguistic annotation
    • Lemmatizers for underrepresented modern languages and old languages
    • Text reuse detection
    • Normalization
    • Distributional semantics
    • Network analysis
    • Text visualization

We especially welcome contributions from those working with any type of textual corpora, preferably those conceived for a specific research and/ from a diachronic perspective. We conceive this symposium as an opportunity to share (best)-practices and broaden conversation, thus proposals can be on ongoing and experimental methodologies.

Confirmed Speakers

  • Greta Franzini (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)
  • Francisco Gago Jover (College of the Holly Cross)
  • Mike Kestemont (University of Antwerp)
  • Enrique Manjavacas (University of Antwerp)
  • Marco Passarotti (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)
  • Dennis Tenen (Columbia University)

Organization committee

  • Susanna Allés Torrent
  • Lindsay Thomas

Scientific committee

  • Susanna Allés Torrent
  • Alberto Cairo
  • Mitsunori Ogihara
  • Allison Schifani

Important dates 

  • 15 January 2018. Deadline for the submission of abstracts
  • 30 January 2019. Notification of acceptance
  • 24-25 April. Symposium

Abstract submissions and format
We invite researchers to submit 500-word proposals (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography) in one single page related to any of the topics mentioned above. The format of the contributions will be 20 mins presentations followed by 10 min Q&A. Title, name(s) and affiliation should appear and the preferred formats are .txt, .docx, .odt and pdf.

Submissions must be sent to susanna_alles@miami.edu and they will be reviewed by the scientific committee.

Languages 
The official language of the symposium is English, but it is possible to submit a proposal also in Spanish, French, or Italian.

The symposium will be held with support from: 

  • Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Miami
  • College of Arts and Sciences
  • SEED You Choose Program
  • Center for the Humanities

In collaboration with: 

  • University of Antwerp
  • The Digital Humanities Flanders (DHuF) research community, sponsored by the FWO

AIUCD 2019 – Pedagogy, teaching, and research in the age of Digital Humanities

AIUCD 2019: Italian Conference of Digital Humanities

LOCATION: University of Udine, Udine, Italy.
DATES: 23-25 January 2019
WEBSITE: https://aiucd2019.wordpress.com/

The main topic of the AIUCD 2019 Conference is ‘Pedagogy, teaching, and research in the age of Digital Humanities’. The conference aims at reflecting on the new possibilities that the digital yields for pedagogy, teaching, and scholarly research: how will these transform teaching in the humanities? What contributions can humanistic cultural critique offer to the digital revolution? What is the connection with the digitization plan for Universities outlined by the Ministry? It also concerns the Digital Humanities as a new discipline, and this brings forward further considerations: how can the new professional figure of the digital humanist be developed? Which areas of knowledge define the Digital Humanities as a subject of study, research, and teaching? How can we recognise, classify, describe, and evaluate research efforts in the Digital Humanities?

While open to other topics related to Digital Humanities, proposals for contributions are particularly encouraged on the following:

General questions:

  • the epistemological positioning and area of knowledge of DH in relation to the systems of Academic Research Areas (Settori Scientifico-Disciplinari) and Recruiting in Italy;
  • the positioning of DH in the European and International academic systems;
  • the evaluation of research in DH beyond traditional publications;
  • dissemination, public history, and crowdsourcing within research projects;
  • the role of inter(multi-trans-cross)-disciplinary DH research in European projects, enquiry, and teaching.

Pedagogy and teaching questions:

  • teaching DH: which models, technologies, and methods?
  • teaching the humanities in secondary schools and universities with DH tools;
  • teaching DH at the University: how is it taught today?
  • DH and media: production, dissemination, and analytical prospects;
  • teaching history and DH;
  • DH and didactic strategies;
  • DH and hands-on teaching practices;
  • DH and primary source teaching;
  • Big Data methodologies and technologies in DH research and teaching.

Questions concerning research efforts:

  • statistical and quantitative research methods and their teaching applications;
  • Data Science and the role of DH in the definition of new knowledge;
  • Information science and DH: meeting points and methodological integration;
  • cultural and social impact of humanities research with computational methodologies;
  • Semantic web technologies and linked open data in the humanities;
  • models and tools for knowledge representation in the humanities and the cultural heritage sector;
  • visualization methodologies and technologies and their significance for humanities and cultural heritage knowledge and information;
  • Natural Language Processing methodologies and applications for the humanities;
  • digitization methodologies and technologies for the production, preservation, and promotion of digital cultural heritage.

DEADLINES

The deadline for submitting proposals is the 25th October 2018 (h. 23.59 CET).

Notifications of acceptance will be sent to the authors by 15th December 2018.

The official languages of the AIUCD 2019 Conference are Italian and English, but it is possible to submit a proposal also in the following languages: French, German and Spanish. In these cases, it is mandatory to provide a short abstract in English in ConfTool.

PROPOSAL CATEGORIES AND SUBMISSION

Proposals must be sent in the form of an extended abstract (see below for details), using the ConfTool conference management system, accessible at: http://www.conftool.net/aiucd2019

The Conference provides the following proposal categories:

  • long proposal (30 mins: 20 mins + 10 mins for for questions and answers): it should discuss innovative methodologies and their theoretical foundations, experiences of analysis and applications that are methodologically significant within a discipline; presentations devoted to presenting a specific tool or resource are acceptable only if they include a thorough critical discussion of the methods used and/or a theoretical evaluation of the results obtained;
  • short proposal (20 mins: 15 mins + 5 mins for questions and answers): it must present a mature research product or a research project;
  • panel (90 or 45 mins, including questions and answers): a series of presentations (maximum 6) should describe, from a theoretical and methodological point of view, a specific topic or a critical presentation of the grounding, methods and results of a big project;
  • poster: must primarily address the progress of an ongoing project or the technical details of a tool or of a digital resource;
  • workshop and tutorial: in the two days prior to the Conference, one or two workshops or tutorials on topics or tools of interest to the DH community will be accepted.

Proposals will be evaluated through double-blind peer review by scholars in the Humanities, Computer Science and/or Digital Humanities. The proposal evaluation will be carried out based on the following criteria:

  • Relevance to the topic of the conference; consistency with the Digital Humanities and Digital Culture domains.
  • Originality, relevance, or innovative approach.
  • Methodological rigour, accurate description of the methodology; the research presented should be reproducible.
  • Adequacy of the theoretical and conceptual approach to the reference domain.
  • Consistency of arguments; clear definition of the objectives; coherence between objectives and results.
  • Critical analysis of the literature; a bibliography.
  • Quality of any technical solutions proposed within the reference domain.
  • Good balance between the Humanities and Computer Science components of the research.
  • Structure of the text; quality of writing; ease of understanding; explanations of scientific language.

At the end of the evaluation process, the Program Committee may decide to move an accepted proposal to a different category of presentation.

To submit a proposal, please sign into ConfTool (http://www.conftool.net/aiucd2019). When submitting a proposal, authors must specify keywords from those suggested by the platform in order to facilitate the review process.

 

PROPOSAL STRUCTURE AND FORMATS

Proposals must clearly present the goals of the contribution, provide a brief overview of current research in the field, specify and discuss the methodology adopted and, where appropriate, the results obtained or expected. The abstracts will be published in a book with an ISBN identifier. The most promising contributions will be selected for publication as full articles in the AIUCD Umanistica Digitale journal (https://umanisticadigitale.unibo.it). Proposals must also include a short bibliography. Figures or tables may be included. The length of the proposal varies depending on the type of proposal:

  • Long paper proposal should be 1500-1800 words in length (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography);
  • Short paper and poster proposals should be 800-1000 words in length (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography);
  • Panel proposals should be 800-1000 words in length plus 200-250 words for each single presentation, (including footnotes but excluding the bibliography);
  • Workshop or tutorial proposals should be at least 1000 words and include: a title and a short description of the content and its relevance to the conference and the DH community in general, complete information of all tutors with a brief description of their research interests and previous experience, requests for technical support at the conference, and whether the workshop will have its own Call for Participation.
  • Posters should be written in Italian or English. Posters will also need to clearly present the objectives of the project, provide a brief overview of the state of the art and the methodologies adopted and, where appropriate, the results obtained or expected. They must also contain a short bibliography. The format is portrait A1 (841×594 mm). Posters will be displayed in a dedicated space at the Conference venue. Display panels will be provided. Please bring your poster already printed, as we are unable to provide a printing service. Personal laptop computers may be used in the poster exhibition area. If your presentation includes a laptop, please inform the organising committee on acceptance of your proposal. Specific poster slam sessions will be scheduled in the Conference programme to give authors the opportunity to briefly introduce (max 2 minutes) their poster.

When submitting the proposal, ConfTool also requires the provision of a short abstract (300 words). Proposals should be drafted according to the templates available at:

Word: template-abstract-AIUCD2019-en.doc
ODT: template-abstract-AIUCD2019-en.odt
which also includes editorial specifications. Valid formats are DOCX, DOC, and ODT.

Official website of the AIUCD 2019 Conference: https://aiucd2019.wordpress.com/
Official website of AIUCD: http://www.aiucd.it/