News

The Digital NVS Officially Launched

Virtual NVS Booth at the World Shakespeare Congress, Singapore 2021

We are happy to announce that we’ve just successfully launched the digital NVS featuring digital versions of The Winter’s Tale and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the 11th World Shakespeare Congress, Singapore. The conference runs from July 18 to July 24; however, our virtual exhibit which includes our logos, video, website, and a feedback webform will be on display at the virtual NVS booth through June 30, 2022 (feel free to look at the website, video, and web form at the above links).

Many thanks to the NVS Board, the General Editors, and the design team for making excellent progress on this project despite the many challenges we faced in 2020 and continue to face this year.  

Also, special thanks to Kayley Hart and Lindsey Jones, graduate students in the English Department at Texas A&M, for working with the NVS design team to prepare the digital NVS for publication!

Presenting the Digital NVS at DHSI and Day of DH

As the editorial and governance center of the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare (NVS) series project, Texas A&M University’s Center of Digital Humanities Research (CoDHR) has plans to publish the first two digital editions of the New Variorum Shakespeare by July 2021 at the 11th World Shakespeare Congress in Singapore. Each edition will contain the complete text of each play along with a full collation of textual notes from the earliest editions to the present, including extensive previous commentary.

Working ahead of the official July launch, the NVS team has presented its work on the project at the Day of DH conference in April and at DHSI in June.  Please see the following video for more information about the digital NVS. Link video here Digital NVS

New Variorum Shakespeare Project Update

Building the Digital NVS

The NVS design team at CoDHR has made significant progress on improving the digital NVS’s functionality and performance. The site is now in alpha and can be accessed Here. The design team is on schedule to launch the digital NVS in July 2021 at the 11th World Shakespeare Congress, Singapore.

Also, special thanks to Dr. Julia Flanders (Professor of the Practice in English, Director of the Digital Scholarship Group in the Northeastern University Library, and NVS Board Member) for all of the work she has done to XML-encode the NVS edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and to help prepare the volume for online publication.  For a full list of contributors to this project, please visit the NVS Contributors page.

2021-2022 Hagler Institute for Advanced Study Graduate Student Fellow

CoDHR welcomes doctoral student Lindsey Jones as the the new 2021-2022 Hagler Institute for Advanced Study (HIAS) Graduate Student Fellow. She will conduct research with Dr. Lena Cowen Orlin, a 2020-2021 HIAS Fellow (see announcement about the 2020-2021 Class of Hagler Fellows), by assisting Dr. Orlin with research projects on the authorial voice in historical documents such as witness depositions in law courts, wills, probate inventories, and other genres of “pragmatic” writing. Additionally, Lindsey will collaborate with the Center of Digital Humanities Research (CoDHR) on its New Variorum Edition Shakespeare (NVS) project.

Lena Cowen Orlin named 2020-21 Hagler Fellow at TAMU

The Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University announces Lena Cowen Orlin, Professor of English, Georgetown University, as one of its ten Hagler Fellows for its Class of 2020-21.  Fellows are selected from among top scholars who have distinguished themselves through outstanding professional accomplishments or significant recognition.

Dr. Orlin is a highly cited expert on private domestic life during the Renaissance and specializes in the works of Shakespeare. Orlin serves on the editorial boards for the journals Shakespeare Studies and Shakespeare Survey and for the publication series Oxford Shakespeare Topics and Arden Shakespeare State of Play.

During the fellowship, Dr. Orlin will be conducting research with the help of two graduate students from the College of Liberal Arts.  Additionally, she will collaborate with faculty and students from the College of Liberal Arts and University Libraries as well as the Center of Digital Humanities Research (CoDHR) on its New Variorum Edition Shakespeare (NVS) project to whom the Modern Language Association (MLA) awarded publishing rights, see the MLA announcement.  As chair of the NVS Board, Dr. Orlin will work with CoDHR on the transition from previously published in print editions to new digital editions in the NVS series.

The Hagler Institute for Advanced Study was established in December 2010 by The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents to build on the growing academic reputation of Texas A&M and to provide a framework to attract top scholars from throughout the nation and abroad for appointments of up to a year. The selection of Hagler Fellows initiates with faculty nominations of National Academies and Nobel Prize-caliber scholars who align with existing strengths and ambitions of the University.

Go to Texas A&M Hagler Institute Announces 2020-21 Hagler Fellows, Distinguished Lecturer for the complete list of fellows and lecturer.

Designing the Digital New Variorum Shakespeare

Since the Modern Language Association’s Executive Council awarded the Center of Digital Humanities Research at Texas A&M a generous grant to publish NVS editions online, the NVS design team has been hard at work to create the front- and back-ends of Corpora, the web application that will make publishing NVS volumes online and open access possible. The design team, which includes Dr. Laura Mandell (Director of CoDHR and NVS PI), Dr. Anne Burdick (Research Professor in the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney and NVS front end designer), Dr. Bryan Tarpley (Lead Software Developer at CoDHR and inventor of Corpora), and Dr. Katayoun Torabi (NVS Project Manager) have been meeting twice monthly to build and improve the site’s performance in order to launch the digital NVS in July 2021 at the 11th World Shakespeare Congress, Singapore.

Digital Future for New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare to be with CoDHR

The College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University (TAMU) announces that its Center of Digital Humanities Research (CoDHR) is the new home of the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare (NVS) series from the Modern Language Association (MLA).  Texas A&M will make the NVS editions, works that collate notes by various editors and commentators of the texts, openly available to scholars on a richly resourced, fully networked digital platform and will become the editorial and governance center for the project, under the direction of Laura Mandell, Professor of English and CoDHR Director.  MLA is providing funds for the project transition.

“Collaborating with Texas A&M’s internationally renowned World Shakespeare Bibliography, we can publish Shakespeare’s plays as part of a richly networked digital environment.  We would like to be the Folger of the West,” said Dr. Mandell.

Started in 1860 and the only reference editions of their kind, editions in the NVS series offer not only complete text of Shakespeare’s plays but also centuries of scholarly opinion and interpretation, dating, sources, emendations to stage history, and influential interpretations of particular words. Through the resources of the Center of Digital Humanities Research at TAMU, new editions previously published in print will be freely available online and new digital editions in the series will continue to be produced, making them accessible to a wider audience of readers, scholars, directors, and performers across the globe.  New visualization tools and interface design will enable new forms of digital scholarly interpretation to emerge, now and well into the future.

TAMU, which is already home to the editorial offices of the World Shakespeare Bibliography and owner of a copy of the second folio (the 1632 edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare), is honored to have an opportunity to use its expertise to make the NVS editions widely accessible to researchers and students.

Read more about the NVS series from the MLA here.