Agenda

Emmanuela Carbé, University of Siena
Old Issues and New Perspectives for Born-Digital Literary Archives

In 2013 Matthew Kirschenbaum described the complexity of the “.txtual condition” by referring to the category of Born-digital Literary Archives. He reported the most important experiences on these materials preserved in some institutions, such as the Emory University Library, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). In the first part of the seminar, we will analyse from an historical and theoretical point of view this “.txtual condition”. Starting with a definition of Born-Digital Literary Archives, we will reflect on the most relevant case studies in the international and Italian panorama, by analysing part of the archival issues that arise within acquisition, preservation, and description of this type of archives. We will look at some specific examples, such as the archives of Salman Rushdie, Michael Joyce, and Wendy Cope, and also the Italian archives of Franco Fortini, preserved at the University of Siena. In the second part of the seminar, we will present some hypotheses on how to work with this type of archives using the instruments of philology and literary criticism. The second part of the seminar focuses on this specific question: do we need new methodologies for archives of this kind? We will try to answer by looking at the Dossier Génétique of the Jacques Derrida’s Archive, and on some works on Italians contemporary authors, in particular two cases involving materials preserved at the Centre of Manuscripts of the University of Pavia, the funds of Francesco Pecoraro and Franco Buffoni.

Emmanuela Carbé is a Research Fellow of Comparative Literature and Literary Criticism at the University of Siena, where she teaches Digital Humanities for the M.A. degree courses and Digital Libraries for the Master Programme in DH (Infotext). From 2013 to 2017 she was Postdoctoral Fellow within the PAD - Pavia Archivi Digitali Project at the University of Pavia; from 2018 to 2021 she was Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Siena, working at the ELA-Eurasian Latin Archive Project. She is Personal Investigator of BiGraFo, a digital project on Franco Fortini’s Bibliography. She has published Digitale d’autore. Macchine, archivi e letterature (Firenze University Press – USiena Press 2023) and La scrittura necessaria. Il diario di guerra di Fausta Cialente (Artemide 2021). She has been working on new editions of Cialente’s works for the publisher Nottetempo. On November-December 2022 she has been Visiting Scholar at the VeDPH.

Registration for online participation: link

The seminar is part of the Seminars in Digital and Public Humanities organized by the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH), Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

It will be held in person and online.
Info: link