The Committee on Scholarly Editions (CSE) was created in September 1976 and became a

Transcription

1 Delegate Assembly Meeting 9 January 2016 COMMITTEE ON SCHOLARLY EDITIONS ANNUAL REPORT TO THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION AUGUST 2015 Background The Committee on Scholarly Editions (CSE) was created in September 1976 and became a standing committee of the MLA in It replaced the advisory board of the MLA Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA) when the CEAA ceased to be a grant-making body funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The CSE now serves as a clearinghouse for information about scholarly editing and editorial projects, offers advice and consultation to editors on request, honors excellence in editing by awarding emblems to qualified editions, and promotes dissemination of reliable texts for classroom use and among general readers. Over time the committee has enlarged the range of editions, periods, and languages for which it provides professional advice, and over the past decade it has increasingly considered electronic scholarly editions in various forms. The committee s central purposes are the review and evaluation of particular scholarly editions and the consequent decision whether to award the MLA s seal of approval to editions that merit the distinction. Current Membership The committee has nine members; normally, eight members represent various areas and historical periods of literary scholarship and one member represents scholarly presses. While the current membership does not include a representative from a scholarly press, it does include several members with specialties in digital texts and electronic publishing. The membership of

2 2 the committee for the period 1 July June 2015, with their terms of service noted, was as follows: Julia Flanders, Northeastern University ( ) Paul Armstrong, Brown University ( ) Stephen G. Nichols, Johns Hopkins University ( ) Kenneth M. Price, University of Nebraska, Lincoln ( ) Heather Bamford, George Washington University ( ) Timothy Stinson, North Carolina State University ( ) Raymond G. Siemens, University of Victoria ( ; cochair, ) Andrew Stauffer, University of Virginia ( ) John Young, Marshall University ( ; cochair, ) MLA staff: Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communication (liaison) Anna S. A. Chang, Associate Director of Scholarly Communication Katina Rogers, Managing Editor, MLA Commons (through 30 Sept. 2014) James C. Hatch, Senior Acquisitions Editor Katherine S. Kim, Editorial Assistant Activities of the Committee The cochairs of the CSE serve, whenever possible, in staggered rotation. For , Raymond G. Siemens and John Young cochaired. As of July 2015, Andrew Stauffer became cochair. He will serve along with Young for and thereafter for one more year. The committee met on 5 September 2014 at MLA headquarters in New York. During the year, the CSE considered the following four scholarly editions: 1. Author: Henry James Title: The Complete Letters of Henry James, , volume 2 Editors: Greg W. Zacharias and Pierre A. Walker Publisher: University of Nebraska Press Review manager: John Young Vetter: Roger Osborne 2. Author: Joseph Conrad Title: Victory, An Island Tale

3 3 Editors: J. H. Stape and Alexandre Fachard Publisher: Cambridge University Press Review manager: Stephen Nichols Vetter: James L. West 3. Author: Joseph Conrad Title: An Outcast of the Islands Editor: Allan H. Simmons Publisher: Cambridge University Press Review manager: John Young Vetter: John Peters 4. Author: James Fenimore Cooper Title: The Chainbearer. Or, The Littlepage Manuscripts Editors: Lance Schachterle and James P. Elliott Publisher: AMS Press Review manager: Andrew Stauffer Vetter: Jerome McGann The following editions are currently in progress or in preparation for review: The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, ed. Thomas Morgan, to be published by Ohio University Press; The Complete Letters of Henry James, , volume 1, eds. Greg W. Zacharias and Michael Anesko, to be published by University of Nebraska Press; and Robert Penn Warren s Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices: A Parallel Text of the 1953 and 1979 Editions, ed. John Burt, to be published by Louisiana State University Press. The committee also completed a white paper, Considering the Scholarly Edition in the Digital Age: A White Paper of the Modern Language Association s Committee on Scholarly Editions. This collaboratively authored document is intended to spark broader discussions of the standards and practices for current and future print and digital editions and to broadcast the CSE s role to editors working in both environments. If approved by the Executive Council, the

4 4 white paper will be disseminated on MLA Commons and will yield further response through a planned cluster of articles, edited by Julia Flanders and Ray Siemens, to be proposed for publication in Profession and through a session planned for the 2017 MLA convention. A copy of the white paper in its entirety is attached to Annex No. TK. For the annual convention in 2016, the CSE will sponsor the following sessions: 215. Editing Unruly Objects Presiding: Timothy L. Stinson, North Carolina State Univ. 1. Church as Compilatio: The Clopton Chantry Chapel and the Presentation of Lydgate at Holy Trinity, Long Melford, Matthew Davis, Texas A&M Univ., College Station 2. Could We Edit Hadrian s Wall? On the Limits of Editing Things, Daniel O Donnell, Univ. of Lethbridge 3. Printed Books as Digital Textual Objects: The Case of the Advertencias para los confessores de los Naturales, Hannah Alpert-Abrams, Univ. of Texas, Austin 473. Editing at the Crossroads: Language Contact and Editions in Languages Other Than English Presiding: Heather Bamford, George Washington Univ. 1. From Old French to Italian: The 1341 and 1441 Huon d Auvergnes, Leslie Zarker Morgan, Loyola Univ., Baltimore 2. Creating a Digital Edition/Translation: The Role of Collaboration, Shira Schwam-Baird, Univ. of North Florida 3. Theory and Practice in Encoding a Digital Edition of Huon d Auvergne, Stephen Patrick McCormick, Washington and Lee Univ. 4. Digital Editions, Translations, and the Challenge of Representation, Susanna Allés Torrent, Columbia Univ.

5 5 The CSE s next meeting will be held on 11 September 2015 at MLA headquarters in New York. In conclusion, the two cochairs wish to thank the individual members of the committee and the MLA staff members, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Anna Chang, James Hatch, and Katherine Kim, for their dedication and hard work in support of the CSE. Respectfully submitted, Raymond G. Siemens and John Young, cochairs, CSE