Everything Old Is New Again

The Re-emergence of Medieval Polyvocality in Digital Manuscript Archives

This talk will explore the use of digital media to depict and account for medieval notions of authority, translation, and textual transmission, concepts that are often excluded from or distorted by print editions. Whereas print editions of medieval literary texts typically treat the presence of competing textual versions, authors, and manuscript witnesses as a problem to resolve, either by recreating a hypothetical authorial text or choosing the best extant text to represent an entire textual or narrative tradition, digital manuscript archives are increasingly fostering a re-emergence of the simultaneous presence of competing voices and authorial roles. Digital media are thus allowing us an opportunity to "get medieval" in our representations of texts in a manner unprecedented in the age of print. Examples will be drawn from my work on three manuscript archives--the Roman de la Rose Digital Surrogates Project, the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, and the Siege of Jerusalem Electronic Archive. No familiarity with medieval texts or textual traditions will be assumed or necessary to follow or participate in this discussion!

Speakers

Timothy Stinson
Timothy Stinson
Postdoctoral FellowJohns Hopkins University

Timothy Stinson is Associate Professor of English and a University Faculty Scholar at North Carolina State University. He received his PhD in English Language and Literature in 2006 from the University of Virginia and was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University for two years prior to joining the NC State faculty in 2008. He is a member of the program faculty for the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Program and an affiliate faculty of the Jewish Studies program. Stinson's research has garnered numerous awards and grants, including support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council on Information and Library Resources, and the Bibliographical Society of America. He has published in leading journals in the field of medieval studies and book history, including Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, The Yearbook of Langland Studies, Manuscript Studies, and The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. His work has also garnered recognition and support from North Carolina State University, where he is a University Faculty Scholar and has received a CHASS Research Award, a Research and Innovation Seed Funding Award, and a Non-Laboratory Scholarship/Research Award. His research interests include Middle English poetry, codicology, history of the book, and digital humanities. Stinson is a leader in the application of digital technologies to medieval studies. He is co-founder and co-director of the Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance, director of the Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET), co-director of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, associate director of the Advanced Research Consortium (ARC), and editor of the Siege of Jerusalem Electronic Archive. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Fellowship and has received planning and implementation grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for his digital humanities work. He has served on the advisory boards of numerous projects in the field, including the Roman de la Rose Digital Library, Europeana Regia, and the Medieval Academy of America’s Digital Initiatives Advisory Board. Stinson has also collaborated with colleagues in the biological sciences to analyze the DNA found in medieval parchment manuscripts. This work has garnered international press coverage in outlets such as the BBC’s The World Today, National Geographic, Science, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Stinson is a devoted teacher and a recipient of the NC State Oustanding Teacher Award. He has helped to develop new curricula and courses in the fields of medieval English literature, history of the book, and digital humanities at NC State. He is a contributor to the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and collaborated on the creation of a history of the book teaching collection in the NC State Department of English.