Editing Early Texts symposium in Wellington

Scholars will converge in Wellington this week to discuss the latest editing techniques making 400 year-old literary texts accessible in the 21st Century.

The Editing Early Texts: Practice and Protocol symposium will be held at Massey University’s Wellington campus on Friday. Massey University senior lecturer in English Sarah Ross says the conference will bring together scholars, students and those interested in editing early literary and non-literary texts from 1500-1800.

Thirteen experts will speak on their editing interests from modern women’s writing and early modern historical texts, to digital humanities and online editing. Professor Paul Salzman from La Trobe University in Australia will deliver the keynote address on Mary Wroth and the Hermaphroditic Circulation, and the joys and tribulations of online editing. Dr Elizabeth Scott-Baumann of University of Leicester in the United Kingdom is another notable presenter. She is in New Zealand on a Massey Fellowship working with Dr Ross.

Dr Ross says scholars will talk about editing techniques, new directions in the field and the ways in which the Internet is opening new doors.

“It’s [editing early texts) about taking a text from the past and making it accessible to readers, producing it into a form where readers can pick it up as a book or look at it online,” Dr Ross explains. “In my case, with women’s writing, finding some poems buried in one surviving printed copy, or in manuscripts in a library in London, the issue is: how do you enable your students in New Zealand to read that, because they can’t go and look at that one copy. It’s about taking those materials and making them available to readers, and about the processes that go on in making that happen.”

Rare texts, poetry, plays and manuscripts from hundreds of years ago are now becoming more accessible, with scholars increasingly creating online editions. The conference will discuss new techniques and traditional practice and protocols in the field that takes the past into the future.

“It’s about getting more people interested in the rich diversity of older texts and making them available to people, allowing people to understand the cultures of the past. It’s a meeting of the past and the most innovative, and futuristic medium,” Dr Ross says.

Conference convenor Dr Ross has also started a new joint project funded by an Australian Research Council grant. The two-year study based at Newcastle University will use the Internet to make available rare texts by women and show the impact they’ve had on literary history. “It’s really exciting for Massey University to be part of this project. We are a digital University in so many ways and I think particularly with our distance student body we naturally think about the potential of the Internet for making resources available for disseminating knowledge,” Dr Ross says.

If you are interested in last-minute registration, please contact Dr Sarah Ross at S.C.Ross@massey.ac.nz

Programme details are available here.