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Project Proposal
Shakespeare au/in Québec (SQ) is a bilingual, online, critical anthology of 20+ previously unpublished French adaptations of Shakespeare written in Québec since the
Quiet Revolution, a period of massive social change that began in 1960. Similar to the
University of Guelph based Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (CASP), to which I have contributed two essays, SQ will consist of a) hypertext editions of the adaptations I have compiled to date; b) a searchable database of each play’s theatre history and production details, as well as multimedia image, audio, and video files; c) a bibliography of secondary sources on these plays, including production reviews; d) academic essays providing critical analyses of the plays; e) interviews with playwrights; and f) writings on the literary and political history of Québec.
The heart of this digital humanities project is the plays themselves, which will be marked up in XML compliant with the standards of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI).
Most of these plays require substantial editorial intervention in preparation for publication, hence the “critical” part of the anthology since each play will adhere to the scholarly standards associated with traditional print editions. This editorial intervention includes correcting spelling and grammar errors (which can be preserved in XML, thereby producing both an “original” and a “clean” text within the same e-document) as well as commenting on political and historical allusions (as one would expect to find in the introduction and footnotes of a critical edition). The critical notes will be rendered as on-click pop-up bubbles (similar to those used by the Oxford English Dictionary online edition), and these pop-up bubbles will also import excerpts of Shakespeare’s texts from the Internet Shakespeare Editions at the University of Victoria. Overlaying the French 3
adapted text with the corresponding English text will provide a richer reading experience,
especially for francophones unfamiliar with Shakespeare, than print allows.
I have built a half dozen academic websites (including the new English
department website: http://english.ua.edu) and am self-taught in HTML and CSS. I have
set up the skeleton of the SQ website in the same Drupal content management system
used for the English department site (http://www.as.ua.edu/shakespearequebec) and am working to compile a TEI-compliant XSD schema, which is the tag set that will be used to mark up the texts. At the Alabama Digital Humanities Center, in whose creation I was involved from the ground up, I have been attempting to learn PHP, XML, and
In order to complete the Shakespeare au/in Québec project, I need to increase my knowledge of the XML markup language beyond the basic understanding I have now. I am applying for CARSCA funding in order to attend the Digital Humanities Summer
Institute at the University of Victoria in British Columbia (http://dhsi.org/). The DHSI, which has existed since 2001, has been characterized by The Chronicle of Higher
Education as “grown up nerd camp” and is now the subject of several articles by The
Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed about the remarkable training its week-long intensive sessions provide (Bessette; Meloni; Pannapacker). I wish to register for the beginner- level course on “Text Encoding Fundamentals and their Application” which will train me in “the philosophy, theory, and practicalities of encoding in XML … using the Text
Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines,” thereby allowing me to proceed with the editorial
markup of the primary texts for this anthology. At the end of the course, seminarians 4
present the progress they have made on their research project, so I will be working
directly on an SQ anthology text as I am learning the fundamentals of XML. In addition, the schedule includes plenary lectures by specialists in the field of digital humanities,
thereby providing knowledge about a variety of topics beyond the scope of the intensive
seminar. Without funding to attend DHSI and learn XML, I would be hard-pressed to edit and tag the playtexts according to scholarly and computing standards.
The criteria for success of the work will be learning XML sufficiently to mark up and post a critical edition of the first play, entitled Henry. Octobre. 1970., thereby demonstrating the advantages of this methodology and producing a sample text that will make the project credible for external funding. Because each play will undergo the same scholarly editorial process as a play would require for print, marking up over 20 plays is the equivalent of editing 20 plays, a process that will stretch over several years. Rather than striving to “finish” the online anthology site, a more reasonable goal would be to strive to mark up 1 play approximately every 6 months, depending on the length of the play (one is as short as 8 pages; another is over 100 pages long), the complexity of the political and historical allusions, and the amount of corresponding Shakespearean intertext. The website will have an Editorial Board made up of experts in the field of
Canadian adaptations of Shakespeare, thereby providing scholarly oversight similar to peer review for all content published on the site.
The SQ website bears a University of Alabama logo, and, like the Canadian
Adaptations of Shakespeare Project which is known for being hosted by the University of
Guelph, the association between Shakespeare au/in Québec and the University of
Alabama will grow as the site continues to publish more texts and attract more visitors. 5
Budget
Digital Humanities Summer Institute registration fee (before April 1) …… $950.00 CAD Return airfare to Victoria, British Columbia ………………………………. $920.00 CAD University of Victoria accommodation ($92.20 x 6 nights) ……………….. $557.40 CAD Meals ($75.00 x 6 days) …………………………………………………… $450.00 CAD Taxis to/from airports ……………………………………………………… $120.00 CAD ______Estimated Total = $2997.40 CAD
The current exchange rate is $1.00 CAD = $1.00644 USD. For the past several summers,
the Canadian-US exchange rate has tended to hover near parity, with the Canadian dollar
performing slightly better than the US dollar during the summer months. To cover these
slight variations, I am requesting an even $3000.00 USD.
Budget Justification
The Digital Humanities Summer Institute takes place June 6th-10th, 2013. I am applying
to CARSCA in the Fall semester rather than the Spring semester in order to take
advantage of DHSI’s early registration fee, which is currently $950.00 CAD but increases
to $1250.00 CAD after April 1st, 2013 (and also to ensure a spot in the appropriate seminar since registration is already open and has been increasing steadily from 125
participants in 2008 to 423 in 2012). The remainder of the budget will be devoted to
transportation, lodging, and meals during the seminar. In May 2012, I purchased a new
Lenovo X220 laptop running the French-Canadian version of Windows 7 and Office
(essential for working with primary texts in French) with personal funds, I have an iPad
supplied by A&S, and I use the oXygen XML Editor software on the Macintosh
computers in the Alabama Digital Humanities Center in Gorgas 109A, so I am not
requesting funding for computer hardware or software at this time. 6
References
Berry, David, ed. Understanding Digital Humanities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Bessette, Lee. “Ephiphany: TEI is Scholarship.” Inside Higher Ed. 4 June 2012.
CURRICULUM VITÆ JENNIFER DROUIN
Address : University of Alabama Telephone : 814-853-5354 (cell) Department of English, Box 870244 Fax : 205-348-1388 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0244 E-mail : [email protected]
Academic Position: Assistant Professor. University of Alabama. Tuscaloosa, AL. (2009-present) Tenure-track. Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies, Department of English.
Education: PhD in English Literature. McGill University, Montréal, QC. (2002-05)
Works in Progress: Shakespeare in Québec: Nation, Gender, and Adaptation. Book manuscript under review at University of Toronto Press. Shakespeare au/in Québec (SQ). Digital Humanities. Bilingual database and critical anthology.
Relevant Publications: “Othello in Québec: Adapting Race and Gender in Une histoire inventée.” Shakespeare on Screen: Othello. Eds. Sarah Hatchuel and Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin. Rouen: Publications des universités de Rouen et du Havre, forthcoming. “Nationalizing Shakespeare in Québec: Theorizing Post-/Neo-/Colonial Adaptation.” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 3.1 (Spring 2007): 23 pp.
Other Publications: “Diana’s Band: Safe Spaces, Publics, and Early Modern Lesbianism.” Queer Renaissance Historiography: Backward Gaze. Eds. Vin Nardizzi, Stephen Guy-Bray, and Will Stockton. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009. 85-110. Bourassa, André G. “Personnage: History, Philology, Performance.” Trans. Jennifer 8
Drouin. Shakespeare and Character: Theory, History, Performance and Theatrical Persons. Eds. Paul Yachnin and Jessica Slights. New York: Palgrave, 2009. 83-97. “Cross-Dressing, Drag, and Passing: Slippages in Shakespearean Comedy.” Shakespeare Re-Dressed: Cross-Gender Casting in Contemporary Performance. Ed. James C. Bulman. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2008. 23-56. Rev. “The Shakespeare’s Mine: Adapting Shakespeare in Anglophone Canada, ed. Ric Knowles and A Certain William: Adapting Shakespeare in Francophone Canada, ed. Leanore Lieblein.” alt.theatre 8.2 (January 2011): 36-38.
Digital Humanities Experience: Contributor to and Editorial Board member of Shakespeare on Screen in Francophonia (http://shakscre.uuidget.com/). Funded by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). (2012-present) Webmaster of Making Publics: Media, Markets, and Association in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 (http://makingpublics.mcgill.ca/). Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (SSHRC-MCRI) (2005-2008) Websites designed include the Alabama English department (co-design; http:// english.ua.edu), Allegheny English department (co-design with Jacob Langley; http://webpub.allegheny.edu/dept/english/), the McGill Making Publics Project (http://makingpublics.mcgill.ca/), the Shakespeare and Performance Research Team (http://shakespeare.mcgill.ca/), the Shakespeare Moot Court Project (http://www. mcgill.ca/shakespearemoot/), the Senate Equity Subcommittee on Queer People (http://www.mcgill.ca/queerequity/), and a personal page related to research and teaching (http://bama.ua.edu/~jsdrouin/). Knowledge of HTML and CSS (advanced), plus .htaccess, JavaScript, PHP, and XML (limited).
Relevant Invited Lectures: “Shakespeare au/in Québec: Building a Cross-Referenced Bilingual Online Anthology with the Drupal Content Management System.” Oxford Conference for the Book panel on “Texts and Technologies” with Mary Heyes and Gregory Heyworth. University of Mississippi. (March 2011)
Relevant Local Lectures: “Challenges associated with CSS and XML in a Foreign Language DH Drupal Project.” Alabama Digital Humanities Center (ADHC) Brown Bag Lecture Series. University of Alabama. (September 2012) “Interdisciplinarity and Digital Humanities.” Postdoctoral Fellows Roundtable. Making Publics colloquium. McGill University. (June 2010)
Relevant Service to UA: Redesign of UA English website: http://english.ua.edu (2011-2012) UA English webmaster. (2011-present) UA English department Technology Committee chair. (2010-present) UA university-wide Information Technology Committee. (2010-2012)