University News
WIU English Graduate Organization to Host Digital Humanities Conference
October 15, 2010
MACOMB, IL - - Western Illinois University's English Graduate Organization will host its seventh annual conference, with the 2010 theme of "Humanities in the Digital Age," Oct. 22-23 on the WIU-Macomb campus.
Amy Earhart, an assistant professor in the English department at Texas A&M University, a specialist in digital humanities is the keynote speaker. Drawing on work from a longer book project, Earhart's talk will provide a definition of digital humanities, examples of trends in the field, and suggestions on productive uses of digital humanities within literary study.
She will speak at 7:30 p.m. Friday in Morgan Hall Room 109. Saturday's (Oct. 23) presentations will be delivered from 9 a.m.-noon and from 1:30-5:30 p.m. in Simpkins Hall Rooms 014, 027 (ground floor) and 220. Both events are open free to the public.
Earhart works with digital humanities and 19th Century American literature and culture, with a particular emphasis on race, ethnicity and gender. Her work has appeared in DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly, The Oxford Handbook to Transcendentalism, and Reinventing the Peabody Sisters (Iowa UP) among other venues. She has co-edited a collection of essays titled The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age with Andrew Jewell, forthcoming Fall 2010 from the University of Michigan. She is also at work on a monograph titled "Traces of the Old, Uses of the New: The Emergence of the Digital Humanities." In addition, she is developing the 19th Century Concord Digital Archive in partnership with the Concord Free Public Library. In addition her associate professor role, Earhart is affiliated faculty with the Africana Studies program at Texas A&M.
"The topic not only ties in to this year's University theme, Teaching and Learning for a New Era, but also, it's relevant to many departments across campus. Digital humanities are broadly defined to encompass the common ground between information technology and issues in humanities research, writing and teaching," said Christine Jach, a graduate student in English from Quincy (IL) and English Graduate Organization co-president. "We would like to encourage other WIU humanities students and faculty to attend the sessions and participate in the question-and-answer sessions, as well as to hear our speaker, whose work lies at the forefront of digital humanities."
The event is sponsored by the Visiting Lecturers Committee. For more information, contact Jach at cm-jach@wiu.edu, or visit the conference web site at www.wiu.edu/EGO/conference/2010.
Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
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