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- Convenors:
-
Linda Chance
(University of Pennsylvania)
Susan Klein (UC Irvine)
Mary Gilstad (Yale University)
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- Chair:
-
Mary Gilstad
(Yale University)
- Section:
- Pre-modern Literature
- Sessions:
- Thursday 26 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 26 August, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses approaches to the construction of socio-literary comunities and personae through a comparative study including different online platforms and social media, and Heian period texts, opening new possibilities and tools for pre-modern Japanese literary research.
Paper long abstract:
In the Diary of Izumi Shikibu和泉式部 (b. 976?), the Heian period poet and lady-in-waiting tells the story of her affair with the imperial prince Atsumichi 敦道親王 (981-1007), often referring to the accusations about its scandalous and socially disruptive nature raised against her by her lover's servants and attendants. Ladies-in-waiting are shown as particularly vicious participants of this process, and Izumi Shikibu is depicted as powerless at their hands, even though she herself had served in their midst, both before and after the events portrayed in the diary. It is the community formed by these women and those they have access to that create the system of circulation of texts at which mercy the poet finds herself; the very disruption of her affair, the nikki (diary, memoir) suggest, is embodied through these liminal figures who break down the separation between what is described as a concealed, socially ineffectual affair, and the visually available—and therefore, subjectable to open moral judgment and social scrutiny. This formulation of the powerlessness of the individual in the face of a group that punishes and rewards particular modes of self-presentation while creating their social significance within it is also denounced in interestingly similar ways by the 2019 video-essay Canceling, by the Youtuber Natalie Wyn. Her fall from grace within the internet trans community and the impossibility to control circulation of discourse are shown as products of the interactive community of creators and consumers that shape her own persona, in a delicate balance between the way between the contextualisation of her utterances and writings and the way in which she attempts to respond and redefine these words.
This paper will consider, using a comparative lens through these two case studies, how the construction and re-contextualisation of literary personae throughout different social media is effected by power dynamics between the authors and the often unnamed, individually irrelevant members of their socio-literary community to which their production is aimed; focusing particularly in the creation of text (nikki, video) that intends partly to serve as a tool for the negotiation of the creation of a particular public image.
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents ongoing collaborative research on a 17th century Japanese album of calligraphy samples and excerpts (tekagami-jō) held at Yale University and raises issues related to digital commentary and preservation of pre-modern texts.
Paper long abstract:
This paper presents ongoing collaborative research on a 17th century Japanese album of calligraphy samples and excerpts (tekagami-jō) held at Yale University and raises issues related to digital commentary and preservation of pre-modern texts. The tekagami-jō at Yale University contains 139 samples of calligraphy attributed to famous hands. Beginning with an excerpt attributed to the hand of Emperor Shōmu and containing pieces attributed to a number of emperors, courtiers, and poets, the album adheres to the expectations of what can be called a calligraphy album genre. As such, it also serves as a compilation of excerpts of famous literature including excerpts from Buddhist sutras, individual Chinese and Japanese poems, and short sections of classical poetry anthologies.
With high-resolution images of every page of this album uploaded to a IIIF image viewer and annotator (in this case Mirador), the "future" of the calligraphy, the literature, and the form of the album itself opens up in surprising ways. Images of once-whole works that now exist in disparate institutions can be brought together digitally and studied in a version of their previous form. The images and metadata that cohere to it may be used to develop OCR technology. Most importantly for this talk, this project (like similar ongoing projects in many institutions) provides ground for experimentation with collaborative research methods in the humanities and seems to represent new potential for preservation and aggregation of information. But the annotation-centered platform should also make us reflect on pre-modern commentarial traditions, which preserved the objects of commentary even as they also supplanted them (certain texts only survive in annotated "editions"). This paper thus proposes to juxtapose past and present methods of preserving and transmitting the past.