The Association for Documentary Editing 2025
Theme: Editing for Access: Audiences and Technologies
Call for Papers

The Association for Documentary Editing (ADE) will meet June 20-22, 2025 in Madison, Wisconsin.

The Program Committee invites proposals for presentations and panels on the theme of “Editing for Access: Audiences and Technologies” or any topic related to the editing, publication, and recovery of historical or literary texts.

The publication of documents to increase access for researchers, educators, and the general public has long been a central goal of the documentary editing, scholarly editing, textual editing, digital humanities, and public humanities fields. At the same time, projects have had to adopt a variety of strategies in the face of the changing economic and technological contexts of publishing and digital infrastructure in order to continue making their work available in print and digital formats. And recommendations have evolved to optimize accessibility for audiences with visual, hearing, and other physical challenges.

The program committee invites proposals for panels, roundtables, and individual papers that reflect best practices, innovative approaches, and boundary-expanding projects within our capacious field.
Presentations may address these or other topics:

• Opportunities that technologies present for editors in reaching audiences • Communities and their interests in various forms of access to historical and literary manuscripts and texts
• Accessibility tools as a form of enabling access to historical and literary manuscripts and texts
• Interdisciplinary projects and their contributions to editorial best practices • Examples of editorial practices within classrooms, both K-12 and in colleges and universities
• Ways that evolving technologies and accessibility tools change our teaching of texts in the classroom and our training of new editors
• Reflections on audiences, technologies, public access, and accessibility

We welcome submissions from those engaged in publication of documents as editors, independent scholars, and students, including those working in libraries, archives, digital humanities centers, public humanities initiatives, and community projects as well as colleges and universities.

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, posters), panel formats (roundtable, traditional panel, multiple presenters), and remote sessions, please submit 500 to 750-word abstracts and brief (100-word) bios and email addresses for all presenters.

Please submit inquiries and proposals to the Program Committee Chair, Kathryn Tomasek at kathryn.tomasek@gmail.com no later than March 1, 2025.

Note: Travel stipends and free conference registrations will be available for students, early career scholars, and independent scholars.