Digitizing Early Material Culture: from Antiquity to Modernity

A Seminar to be held in conjunction with

CaSTA (the Canadian Symposium on Text Analysis) 2008:

New Directions in Text Analysis
A Joint Humanities Computing, Computer Science Seminar and Conference at
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, 16-18 October 2008


“Digitizing Early Material Culture: from Antiquity to Modernity” seminar will be held at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon 16 October 2008 and will feature guest speakers:
Melissa Terras, Lecturer in Electronic Communications in the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies at University College London
Lisa Snyder, Associate Director of the Experiential Technologies Centre, University of California, Los Angeles



It will be held in conjunction with CaSTA 2008–“New Directions in Text Analysis,” 17-18 August, featuring guest speakers:

David Hoover, Professor of English at New York University (keynote)

Hoyt Duggan, Professor Emeritus in English at University of Virginia

Geoffrey Rockwell, Associate Professor in Humanities Computing at University of Alberta

Cara Leitch, PhD candidate in English at University of Victoria



Call for submissions for “Digitizing Early Material Culture: from Antiquity to Modernity”



The organizing committee also invites proposals (approx. 500-700 words) from Canadian and

international scholars and practitioners working on the application of digital technology to the study of material culture up to c.1700 (computer science, archaeology, anthropology, geography, history, literature, etc.) for a pre-conference seminar on “Digitizing Early Material Culture: from Antiquity to Modernity.” Final submissions should aim to be 2,500-5,000 words in length and may address digital projects, programs of research, digital tools and practices, or theory related to the digitization of material culture to the end of the seventeenth century. Complete papers will be circulated in advance of the conference and participants (presenters and non-presenters) will sign up for and participate in two to three sessions on Thursday, 16 October, having read the complete papers (2-3 per session) in advance. Each session will comprise short introductory summaries by presenters (5-10 minutes) followed by extensive discussion of the circulated texts. Participants can expect to receive concrete and expert advice from other participants as they pool expertise (together with our invited speakers) to consider how the project, tool, or theory can be further developed toward publication or implementation.



All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, which will be available subsequently through the conference Web-site. Complete papers will be published on the conference Web-site prior to the conference. Contributors to the digitizing material culture seminar will also be invited to submit papers for a planned collection on “Digitizing Early Material Culture.”



Proposal abstracts should be sent electronically as a MS Word, WordPerfect, or pdf file to:

Brent Nelson, conference committee chair, brent.nelson AT usask.ca The deadline for proposal submissions is 15 May 2008, and complete papers will be due 15 September 2008