Last year, I wrote a blog about Ania Loomba’s lecture “Shakespeare and the Black Body” (check it out here). There, I said that no humanities festival would be complete without an event on the Bard. I meant it then, and I mean it now. With that, let me tell you what we have installed for tech•knowledgē. It’s a doozy – is that a term from Shakespeare…?
This fall, we will welcome Michael Witmore to discuss his work on digital Shakespeare. Now what does that mean? Mike, as he is known, is at the forefront of a group of humanists who are pioneering electronic approaches to the study of the great texts. He uses things like bioinformatics, corpus linguistics, and probability clouds to do so – strange new technologies that are completely changing the way we think about the canon.
Michael Witmore
As an expert in early modern English literature, Mike is particularly keen to apply the new devices to Shakespeare – and he uses them to spot previously unrecognized patterns in his words. It’s a fascinating marriage of the humanities and technology and the subject of a book Mike is writing under the title “Shakespeare by the Numbers.” Mike’s research has propelled him to the forefront of international scholarship and into one of the most influential positions in the global world of Shakespeare.
A former member of the faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (which is our partner in the presentation), he was recently appointed Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. It is the world’s largest repository of Shakespeare materials and holds major collections of other rare Renaissance books, manuscripts, and works of art.
The Folger Shakespeare Library
I am thrilled that this year’s Festival will feature this pioneering scholar. Just like last year, when we had the chance to hear from Ania Loomba about her path-breaking work on postcolonial Shakespeare, this year’s program on digital Shakespeare will take us right to the cutting-edge of the humanities. Only at the CHF!
Poetry Foundation: Nov. 13, 11:00 AM
Tags: Shakespeare, digital humanities, technology
