Spring Tea 2022
Speaker: Elizabeth Raisanen
Topic:Mary Russell Mitford and Jane Austen: “Nearly Neighbors: Mary Russell Mitford and Jane Austen Through The Lens of the Digital Humanities Project.”
Hosted via Zoom by Marcia Hamley (Former Co-Region Coordinator)
By Vonnie Alto, Secretary
We held our annual Spring Tea on May 1st, 2020 via zoom. Marcia Hamley introduced our speaker and moderated the event. Our guest of honor was Elizabeth Raisanen, Ph.D, who is an Assistant Dean and instructor of literature and undergraduate research in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon where she is a specialist in women writers of the British Romantic era with research interests in eighteenth and nineteenth-century British literature, Romantic drama, and Digital Humanities.
Digital Humanities applies computational methods and practices to the study of literature and the arts. It allows us to see connections and to ask questions about those materials that we might not know to ask without digitalization.
Raisanen is a founding editor of The Digital Mitford <https://digitalmitford.org/> which originated in April 2013 at the British Women’s Writer’s Conference. Digital Mitford is a free comprehensive online scholarly archive of the works of Mary Russell Mitford who was a contemporary of Jane Austen.
The Digital Mitford is a master site index of people, places, and things that populated Mitford’s world. . Raisanen edits Mitford’s writings and codes her texts. She teaches how to transcribe, code, and conduct research on Mitford’s writings. Raisanen is also the drama section editor for the project.
Raisanen presented on “Nearly Neighbors: Mary Russell Mitford and Jane Austen Through The Lens of the Digital Humanities Project.” Like Jane Austen, Mitford shared the same birthday but was 12 years her junior. Although they were nearly neighbors as they shared a geographical proximity to each other, they never met or corresponded despite Mitford’s admiration of Jane.
Mitford defies categorization as she was a prolific writer of both the Romantic and Victorian eras--a novelist, poet, dramatist, a prose stylist of pastoral idylls, writer of short domestic fiction, a diarist, and an epistoler of over 2,000 letters (much of it which hasn’t yet been edited). Although forgotten due to her fragmented literary identity, Mitford was a literary celebrity known in her time for Our Village based upon her life in Three Mile Cross in Berkshire where readers from all over the world visited to find its many locations.
We also received a crash course on XML coding with examples of XML tags as it relates to Mitford’s life to see how text becomes searchable. We learned that the British Romantic period is the start of computer coding and that it takes a digital village to bring women writers out of obscurity.
Thank you, Elizabeth Raisanen for showing us Mary Russell Mitford's life and introducing us to the Digital Mitford!
Speaker: Elizabeth Raisanen
Topic:Mary Russell Mitford and Jane Austen: “Nearly Neighbors: Mary Russell Mitford and Jane Austen Through The Lens of the Digital Humanities Project.”
Hosted via Zoom by Marcia Hamley (Former Co-Region Coordinator)
By Vonnie Alto, Secretary
We held our annual Spring Tea on May 1st, 2020 via zoom. Marcia Hamley introduced our speaker and moderated the event. Our guest of honor was Elizabeth Raisanen, Ph.D, who is an Assistant Dean and instructor of literature and undergraduate research in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon where she is a specialist in women writers of the British Romantic era with research interests in eighteenth and nineteenth-century British literature, Romantic drama, and Digital Humanities.
Digital Humanities applies computational methods and practices to the study of literature and the arts. It allows us to see connections and to ask questions about those materials that we might not know to ask without digitalization.
Raisanen is a founding editor of The Digital Mitford <https://digitalmitford.org/> which originated in April 2013 at the British Women’s Writer’s Conference. Digital Mitford is a free comprehensive online scholarly archive of the works of Mary Russell Mitford who was a contemporary of Jane Austen.
The Digital Mitford is a master site index of people, places, and things that populated Mitford’s world. . Raisanen edits Mitford’s writings and codes her texts. She teaches how to transcribe, code, and conduct research on Mitford’s writings. Raisanen is also the drama section editor for the project.
Raisanen presented on “Nearly Neighbors: Mary Russell Mitford and Jane Austen Through The Lens of the Digital Humanities Project.” Like Jane Austen, Mitford shared the same birthday but was 12 years her junior. Although they were nearly neighbors as they shared a geographical proximity to each other, they never met or corresponded despite Mitford’s admiration of Jane.
Mitford defies categorization as she was a prolific writer of both the Romantic and Victorian eras--a novelist, poet, dramatist, a prose stylist of pastoral idylls, writer of short domestic fiction, a diarist, and an epistoler of over 2,000 letters (much of it which hasn’t yet been edited). Although forgotten due to her fragmented literary identity, Mitford was a literary celebrity known in her time for Our Village based upon her life in Three Mile Cross in Berkshire where readers from all over the world visited to find its many locations.
We also received a crash course on XML coding with examples of XML tags as it relates to Mitford’s life to see how text becomes searchable. We learned that the British Romantic period is the start of computer coding and that it takes a digital village to bring women writers out of obscurity.
Thank you, Elizabeth Raisanen for showing us Mary Russell Mitford's life and introducing us to the Digital Mitford!