The temperature is dropping and the piles of books are rising as we start another academic year, and I wanted to take this opportunity to make a few announcements for the EMiC community. First—after keeping us organized, answering our questions, and making sure our funding was waiting for us in our bank accounts for the past two years, in addition to contributing countless hours to EMiC since 2009—Emily Ballantyne is stepping down as project administrator and handing over the position to recent MA graduate Alix Shield. Emily’s dedication has been an invaluable asset to the project, and she has kindly shared her administrator know-how with Alix to ensure that the project continues to run smoothly.
Alix completed her Master’s at Dalhousie University and wrote her thesis on a selection of early twentieth-century First Nations collaborations with non-aboriginal authors, anthropologists, and ethnographers. She framed her thesis within versioning theory, and some of you may have seen her at this past spring’s DHSI in the versioning class. She has also worked as an RA collecting and digitizing versions of the texts she studied in her thesis, focusing particularly on Pauline Johnson’s Legends of Vancouver, which she hopes to present in a digital edition as part of her continuing work with Dean Irvine.
Second, my name is Katherine Wooler, and I am taking over Amanda Hansen’s role in writing and coordinating the EMiC blog. I’m hoping to keep tabs on everyone’s projects as well as she has over the past year. I have also just completed my MA at Dalhousie University and have previously worked as an EMiC RA and held an EMiC MA stipend. I am currently developing a digital edition of bpNichol’s concrete poetry, which was the topic of my thesis. I am looking forward to getting to know each of you and your projects better as I organize blog posts over the next year and profile the great work being done by our ever-growing community of scholars and researchers.
I encourage all of you to share your thoughts, plans, struggles and triumphs in your own blog posts, as this is a great forum for initiating collaborations, generating feedback, and finding inspiration. These blog posts serve as a comforting reminder that we’re not all slaving away at out projects in complete isolation, but that we’re part of a diverse support system in which all of us are making similar discoveries in our own unique ways. The blog archives are full of exciting and though-provoking writing by many talented academics, and I am eager to see this archive grow in the coming year.
My third order of business is to mention our stipend holders, as well as our newest postdoctoral fellow. While there are no MA stipend holders this year, I am pleased to list three PhD stipend recipients: Alana Fletcher, Christopher Doody, and Amanda Visconti. Alana (Queen’s University) is continuing with her compilation of the George Whalley database with Michael DiSanto of Algoma University, while Christopher continues at Carleton University working with Zailig Pollock (Trent University) on the P.K. Page Brazilian materials. Amanda’s project is called “Joyce, Klein, and Transferring Digital Knowledge to Canadian Texts,” and she will be working with Dean Irvine and Matthew Kirschenbaum while pursuing her degree at the University of Maryland. Paul Barrett of McMaster University now holds the EMiC postdoctoral fellowship and is working with Daniel Coleman to study Austin Clarke’s Survivors of the Crossing.
I’d like to congratulate EMiC’s latest stipend recipients and postdoctoral fellow, thank Emily and Amanda for all their hard work with the project, and welcome Alix to her new position. Please feel welcome to make your own introductions and announcements on this blog, as well as keep fellow EMiC-ers updated on your experiences with the project. Facebook and Twitter are also a great way to keep in contact with your EMiC colleagues, so please don’t hesitate to keep those channels of communication active as well. If you haven’t already, you can join the Facebook group by searching Editing Modernism in Canada (EMiC) and keep up with EMiC tweets by following @emic_project. I am looking forward to talking with you all more in the upcoming semesters. Happy September!
Great update, Katherine. It’s wonderful that we have you and Alix to step into these important positions — thank you!