One of the things I admire about some elements in the Digitial Humanities is the movement's commitment to open sources and to busting the work of humanities scholars out of the closed and maybe sterile loop of academic publishing. See the Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0.
So, I'm really struggling here with what might be called my soul (hope I've got one). On the one hand, I'd love to have a translation of the entire corpus online for everyone to consult and argue about. In one version of my fantasy, I could think of a kind of translation wiki that would allow users to intervene in and talk about the translations, though as some of you have mentioned, such a site would only really work if there were a critical mass of users. On the other hand, I originally began this project as 21st century update and completion of Bradley's Anglo-Saxon Poetry.
I hate to small about this (oh, my soul!) but self-publishing a set of translations probably won't impress my department and the administration of my university very much.
A third way between online publication and conventional book would be to post the translations either behind a subscription wall (odious, because knowledge should be free) or under a public licensing agreement. I like the latter idea much better.
Now, this is where I hope to get some ideas from the digital and OE scholarly world. What do you think about this dilemma, and what would you suggest?
So then, for the time being, I'm going to suspend my posting of full translations in order to open up a channel for brainstorming about digital publishing, wikis, etc. I'll also post some individual passages (I'm now in the middle of Junius 11's Daniel) with some queries and observations. During all of this, I'll keep translating. That's my mantra. 50 lines a day. Every day (except weekends).
Good afternoon,
ReplyDeleteThis is an awesome project/blog! I'm excited you're doing this (and so impressed-- I get burned out after 10 or 20 lines). Thanks for bringing up these questions, too. I'm dealing with them now as a participant in HASTAC and as someone trying to start a public, digital map of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (a project I started when Fiona Somerset introduced me to digital humanities at Duke. I hope/assume you're taking advantage of her enthusiastic genius!)
I've recently written to eth press about a translation of "Battle of Brunanburh" that a colleague and I are working on. Eth is a "parascholarly poetry press interested in publishing innovative poetry that is inspired by, adapted from, or otherwise inhabited by medieval texts." You can find their call for proposals here:http://ethpress.com
I'm starting to think that I should just try to squeeze out one "old school" journal article and at least one tool/interactive site/digital project before I graduate. Here's my justification: everyone who's hiring wants some sort of digital something, but there are 1) no agreed-upon ways of evaluating digital work and 2) no one except the Fiona Somersets of the world to guide students through the process of becoming digital/public scholars.
It seems to me, then, that there's a good middle ground in playing into the establishment while also making the case for a new kind of scholarship. If you can get all of these poems out there, someone will want to help you publish the group, even if it is only online (you might want to check out anvil press, too). In other words, it's up to us to show the market what it needs. If your poems can be shared on a really cool platform in an innovative way, you could be just as influential a scholar as someone who writes a fancy (but never bought) book.
I think.
In any event, best of luck!
-Rebecca Shores, 3rd year PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill
Dear Bob,
ReplyDeleteI caught this post via Twitter--it's great to see someone thinking so earnestly about the issue of public vs traditional publication!
Like Rebecca, I wonder whether there might be a middle ground here, perhaps something along the lines of what Peter Baker has done with his _Introduction to Old English_. The third edition came out just this year, but much of the material (and, indeed, much useful supplementary material) is publicly available online as well (http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/). Would this kind of approach be appropriate for your work?
Very best,
Mary Flannery (Lecturer, University of Lausanne)