For forty years, a time slot on the ADE annual meeting program has been reserved for a “presidential address,” a solo talk given by the outgoing president and typically imbibed by conference attendees alongside drinks and dinner. But just as 2020 catalyzed change everywhere, and exposed the pressing need for greater change, it has produced this opportunity to provide a more social and engaged presidential reflection on the ADE—a discussion among three presidents and with the audience. While the experience of guiding the ADE through the COVID-19 pandemic is an important topic, the session will primarily look ahead to the continued significance of scholarly editing, how it needs to change for the future, and the role of the ADE in that future. Past president Paul Israel (2017-2018) will facilitate the session, starting the Q and A with immediate past president Ondine LeBlanc (2019-2020) and current president Connie Schulz (2020-2021).

Moderator: Paul Israel

Paul Israel  (@pisrael_taep) is director and general editor of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University. To date the project has produced nine volumes of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison as well as an online digital image edition with over 150,000 documents with plans to add additional documents. In 2005 the Society for the History of Technology awarded the Edison Papers a special, one-time retrospective award as a model reference work published since the founding of the Society 1958.

Dr. Israel is also the author several articles and three books: Edison: A Life of Invention (Wiley & Sons, 1998), for which he won the Edelstein [Dexter] Prize from the Society for the History of Technology; From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory: Telegraphy and the Changing Context of American Invention, 1830–1920 (Johns Hopkins, 1992); and Edison’s Electric Light (Johns Hopkins 2010; Rutgers 1986) written with Robert Friedel. In these works he has been examining technological creativity, the origins of modern innovation, technological enterprise, patent regimes, and the intersections between science, technology, and business.

Dr. Israel is a frequent consultant and contributor to projects seeking material about Edison and invention, including over forty television and radio documentaries, and has given numerous talks on these subjects.  He has also been involved in developing or revising exhibits and interpretive programs at several museums and historic sites, including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, and the Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park.  In addition, Dr. Israel teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the history of technology.

Presenters:

Ondine Le Blanc (@oleblanc) is Ford Editor of Publications at the Massachusetts Historical Society. She holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. At the MHS since 1997, Le Blanc has helped to publish a variety of documentary editions—including letters, diaries and journals, notebooks, and memoirs—as well as other kinds of publications. On the ADE council, Le Blanc has served as president, treasurer, and a councilor-at-large.

MHS website: www.masshist.org

Dr. Constance B. Schulz is the project director and senior editor of The Papers of the Revolutionary Era Pinckney Statesmen, a born digital edition published by the University of Virginia Press in its Rotunda Founding Era Collection. From 2008-2012 she was the project director and senior editor of the digital edition of The Papers of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and Harriott Pinckney Horry (Rotunda Founding Era Collection, 2012). The Pinckney editions are supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). Schulz holds the M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Cincinnati. A Distinguished Professor Emerita of the Department of History at the University of South Carolina, she retired in 2008 from the position she held there from 1985 as Director or Co-Director of its Public History program.  Her editorial experience began as a research assistant at the Booker T. Washington Papers project in 1974.  She was the NHPRC Fellow in Documentary Editing at the Documentary History of the First Federal Congress from 1980 to 1981 and served as the final managing editor of the Papers of Henry Laurens from 2001 to 2004. She served as the AHA commissioner on the NHPRC from 1994–1997, and is currently the president of the Association for Documentary Editing.

This event will be recorded and uploaded to the ADE Youtube Channel.