Call for Papers

The ACH and ALLC invite submissions of 1,500 to 2,000 words on any aspect of humanities computing, defined broadly as the use of computing methodologies in humanities research, teaching, or archives. NB: Financial aid for conference registration and travel is available for students, academics from less developed nations, and ALLC members. To find out more, click here.

The ACH and the ALLC have held joint conferences, alternating between North America and Europe, for the last 18 years. This conference is the premier forum for presenting innovative work in the humanities that makes use of computing methodology.

The conference welcomes work across the humanities disciplines, including (but not limited to) languages and literature, history, philosophy, anthropology, and art history; the creative arts, such as creative writing, art and music; cultural studies and anthropology; computational linguistics and corpus linguistics.

We encourage submissions from scholars, teachers, librarians, museum professionals, editors, publishers involved in the creation, maintenance, delivery, and use of digital information. We especially encourage submissions from those new to the ACH and the ALLC.

Recommended characteristics of submissions:

In the interests of fostering lively debate, we invite:

• sessions or papers which illuminate (or incite) debates within a field of humanities computing

• papers which situate projects with respect to current debates and previous work, or explore the theoretical ramifications of new developments

• sessions which dramatize methodological differences, or which explore a variety of approaches

Suggested topics for submissions:

• significant issues of creation, representation, discovery, delivery, teaching, management and preservation of digital resources relevant to the humanities

• hypertext, markup, text corpora, statistical models, linguistic text analysis, humanities computing as a discipline

• the role of humanities computing in undergraduate and graduate training, and institutional support for humanities computing

• analytical discussions of software applications and implementations for teaching humanities content, and evaluations of such uses

Deadlines:

Submission of paper/panel: December 4, 1998 (extended from Dec. 1)

Notification: February 1, 1999

Submission of Posters/Demos: January 7, 1999

Revisions of accepted papers for the Conference Proceedings: May 1, 1999

Format of Proposals

Proposals may be of four types:

papers

panel sessions

posters

software demonstrations

Papers

Proposals for papers (1,500 words) should take into consideration the recommended characteristics for submissions, above. Individual papers will be allocated 30 minutes for presentation, including questions.

Proposals should describe original work. Those that concentrate on the development of new computing methodologies should make clear how the methodologies have been or might be applied to research and/or teaching in the humanities, and should include some critical assessment of the application of those methodologies in the humanities. Those that concentrate on a particular application in the humanities should cite traditional as well as computer-based approaches to the problem and should include some critical assessment of the computing methodologies used. All proposals should include conclusions and references, and should indicate a familiarity with previous work in the area.

Paper proposals are due: December 4, 1998

Panel Sessions

Sessions (90 minutes) take the form of either:

1. Three papers on a topic, either exploring it in depth, or presenting differing views on it. The panel organizer should make sure the session schedule leaves room for discussion. The session organizer should submit a 500-word statement describing the session topic, plus 1,000-word abstracts for each paper, and indicate that each author is willing to participate in the session;

   or

2. A panel of four to six speakers on a topic. The speakers should either present different facets of the topic or they should introduce a debate on it. In either case, the panel organizer should make sure that there is enough time left for discussion among the panelists and the audience. The panel organizer should submit an abstract of 1,500 words describing the panel topic, how it will be organized, the names of all the speakers, and an indication that each speaker is willing to participate in the session.

Panel Session proposals are due: December 4, 1998

Posters and Demonstrations

Poster presentations and software and project demonstrations (either stand-alone or in conjunction with poster presentations) are designed to give researchers an opportunity to present late-breaking results, significant work in progress, well-defined problems, or research that is best communicated in conversational mode.

By definition, poster presentations are less formal and more interactive than a standard talk. Poster presenters have the opportunity to exchange ideas one-on-one with attendees and to discuss their work in detail with those most deeply interested in the same topic. Each presenter is provided with about 2 square metres of board space to display their work. They may also provide handouts with examples or more detailed information. Posters will remain on display throughout the conference, but a block of time separate from paper sessions will be assigned when presenters should be prepared to explain their work and answer questions. Specific times will also be assigned for software or project demonstrations.

Proposals for posters and demos should be about 750 words long, and should indicate the type of hardware, if any, that would be required if the proposal were accepted. These proposals should also include an indication of the relation of this research to previous and related work.

Poster and Demo proposals are due: January 7, 1999

Format of Submissions

All submissions must be sent electronically, either by email to

with the subject line " Submission for ALLCACH99", or through the web at

Please pay particular attention to the format given below. Submissions which do not conform to this format may well be returned to the authors for reformatting, or may not be considered if they arrive very close to the deadline.

All submissions should begin with the following information:

TYPE OF PROPOSAL: paper, panel session, poster or software demonstration.

TITLE: title of paper, panel session, poster or demo

AUTHOR: name of first author (used for contact purposes)

AFFILIATION: of first author

E-MAIL: of first author

KEYWORDS: three keywords (maximum) describing the main contents of the paper or session

CONTACT ADDRESS: full postal address of first author or organizer for panel session proposals

FAX NUMBER: of first author

PHONE NUMBER: of first author

If submitting a paper, poster or demo proposal, give the additional following information:

AUTHOR: name of second author

AFFILIATION: of second author

E-MAIL: of second author (repeat these three headings as necessary)

If submitting a panel session proposal consisting of three papers, please include, at the start of each participant's section, the title of the paper and the name, affiliation and email of each author. All panel sessions, even if consisting of three papers, will be treated as a unit.

Proposals should take the form of ASCII or HTML files. Where necessary, a header should indicate the combinations of ASCII characters used to represent characters outside the ASCII or ISO 8859/1 range. Notes, if needed, should take the form of endnotes rather than footnotes.

Those who submit abstracts containing graphics and tables are asked to fax a copy of the abstract in addition to the one sent electronically.

Faxes should be sent to: (1) 804-982-2363

The cover page should reproduce the header from the electronic submission.

Equipment Availability

Mac or PC computers with internet connections, and LCD projectors, will be provided for each conference session, and for poster sessions, as required.

If you require special software, we recommend that you bring that software on your own laptop computer, and allow time before your session or demo to test-drive the LCD projector.

If you wish to bring data on standard media (floppy disk, CD, Zip or Jazz drive), but do not require special software to be installed, simply let us know what your requirements are, and we will make the necessary equipment available. If you have questions or requirements not covered above, please let us know.

Publication

A book of abstracts will be provided to all conference participants. In addition, abstracts will be published on the conference web page at

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in Computers and the Humanities, a Kluwer journal.

International Program Committee

Proposals will be evaluated by a panel of reviewers who will make recommendations to the Program Committee. Members of that committee are:

Elizabeth Burr, Gerhard-Mercator-Universitat GH

John Dawson, University of Cambridge

Julia Flanders, Brown University

Laszlo Hunyadi, Lajos Kossuth University, Hungary

Elli Mylonas, Brown University (Program Chair)

Mark Olsen, University of Chicago

Thomas Rommel, University of Tubingen

David Seaman, University of Virginia

Local Organizers:

The Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu

The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia
http://www.iath.virginia.edu

The Instructional Technology Group, University of Virginia
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/itcweb/support/instruction/intech.html

Bursaries

As part of its commitment to promote the development and application of appropriate computing in humanities scholarship, the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing will award up to five bursaries of up to 500 pounds sterling each to students and young scholars who have papers accepted for presentation at the conference. Applicants must be members of ALLC. The ALLC will make the awards after the Program Committee have decided which proposals are to be accepted. Recipients will be notified as soon as possible thereafter. A participant in a multi-author paper is eligible for an award, but it must be clear that s/he is contributing substantially to the paper.

Applications must be made to the conference organizer. The deadline for receipt of applications is the same as for submission of papers. Full details of the bursary scheme, and an on-line application form, will be available from the conference web site.

Other opportunities for the subvention of travel and registration, for students and for those from developing nations, may become available after this announcement: please check regularly at the conference web site.

Location

The conference will be held at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Virginia, a little over one hundred miles south of Washington D.C., in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. For more information on facilities, excursions, travel, and housing, please check the conference web site:

Further Information

Queries concerning the goals of the conference or the format or content of papers should be addressed to:

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