Digital Humanities Lecture Series: "A Lab Model for the Humanities: A Timid Manifesto"

Building on an account of an argument among editors of the Oxford Spenser and its relation to the development of EarlyPrint, a rich digital archive of the output of the English press from 1473 to 1700, the talk will explore the pedagogical affordances of work in the digital humanities and the surprising the usefulness of deans. The presentation will issue, nervously, in a manifesto on behalf of adopting a lab model for humanities scholarship.

Joseph Loewenstein is the author of two books on Jonson and another on the history of intellectual property and the rise of "possessive authorship.” He has edited The Staple of News for the Cambridge Jonson; right now, his most absorbing intellectual projects are a print/digital edition of the Collected Works of Edmund Spenser for Oxford University Press, curatorial work on EarlyPrint (on which he’ll be speaking) and preparations for a Mellon-funded graduate practicum to culminate in an archivally focused course at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center. He has taught at Washington University since 1981 where he currently directs the Humanities Digital Workshop and the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities.