The Association for Documentary Editing 2023

Theme: Modalities of Text and Editing

Call for Papers

The Association for Documentary Editing (ADE) will meet in person, for the first time in four years, on June 22–25, 2023. The conference will be held in Washington, DC, and most sessions, streamed live online, will revolve around the theme “Modalities of Text and Editing.” The Program Committee invites proposals for presentations and panels on this theme or any topic related to the editing, publication and recovery of historical or literary texts.

With the proliferation of digital editions and the diffusion of digital technologies in every area of editing, the multimodality of both texts and editions is increasingly defining editors’ work. Multimodal texts have always been a part of editing. Editors have long grappled with how to represent diverse texts and unique textual elements such as the long “s” in early modern print form, drawings in field books, poetry mixed with prose, and musical notes in a diary. The diverse actors whose texts we edit, including those with limited literacy or using distinct languages and dialects, require our attention to and navigation through many textual modes.

Both to accommodate the multimodality of the textual artifacts and to maximize their accessibility to widespread audiences, editors increasingly use multimodal digital and print tools in the editing and publication process. Some editions still feature letterpress volumes; others publish solely in digital form. Even within digital editions, the “mode” of editing varies depending on the tools we use: Omeka with rich Dublin Core metadata, TEI with robust tagging features, crowdsourced editions with highly involved audiences, or new tools being developed by individual projects or digital publishing cooperatives. These choices affect our work processes, the functionality and design of the editions, and the points of access and accessibility for people who use them.

The conference organizers aim to assess and expose the affordances and limitations of the editing processes in which we engage as a community, as well as the ways our texts (broadly defined) are multimodal artifacts themselves.

Presentations may address these, or many other, questions: 

• How has the concept of the “text” been opened by digital tools, and how might this broaden our process of editing and understanding of the text?
• How does multimodality widen our readership? In what ways does multimodality change access for our audience members, particularly when considering the limitations of digital interfaces for visually or motor impaired individuals?
• In what ways does multimodality affect the process of recovery?
• The term “born digital” has become its own form of modality, but what does “born digital” signify? 
• Has multimodality changed how we teach texts in the classroom and how we train the next generation of editors?

C-SPAN has expressed interest in recording portions of the conference for later broadcast. They are especially interested in sessions relating to US presidents, first ladies, or vice presidents, so we invite proposals on any of these topics. 

We also encourage submissions from individuals from underrepresented backgrounds and those working on topics currently underrepresented in the field of scholarly editing.We welcome proposals from projects and individuals in all disciplines and at any stage of their careers, including those who engage in public history, archival management, or the advancement of  knowledge beyond the academy. Submissions for individual papers, panels, roundtables, posters or poster sessions, and alternative presentation modalities are welcome.

Submission Instructions:

For individual paper and poster submissions, send 300-word abstracts, brief (100 word) bios, and email addresses.

For alternative formats (workshops, unconference sessions, others) and panel formats (roundtable, traditional panel, multiple presenters), please submit 500–750 word abstracts and brief bios and email addresses for all presenters. 

Please submit inquiries and proposals to the Program Committee Chair, Serenity Sutherland (serenity.sutherland@oswego.edu), by January 30, 2023. Please note in your proposal if you would prefer that your presentation not be live streamed or recorded.