[Cross-posted, with permission, and with thanks to ghostprof.org.]
We have lift-off! The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism goes live today with the first 1000 entries at rem.routledge.com. The REM aims to provide the most comprehensive resource in existence on modernist aesthetic practice around the world and across the arts. It includes entries written by subject experts in Dance, Film, Visual Arts, Architecture and Design, Literature, Intellectual Currents, Music, and Drama/Performance. Over 1000 specialists have contributed material to an editorial team of over 60 to bring this project to fruition. If you are one of them, THANK YOU! The REM is truly a communal project on a scale well beyond anything I, for one, ever imagined attempting. Some might say it was a mad enterprise. They wouldn’t be wrong. And yet here we are. So, again, thank you.
Why not breeze by the site now, and take a tour or sign up for a free trial?
This launch includes 1000 entries. We are already preparing the first major update to the REM, and will launch that material by the fall of 2016. We have much more to post, so if you don’t see what you are looking for (yet), please hang tough. If you think we may have missed the entry altogether, please by all means let me know. And if you’re game to write the entry, let me know that too!
Finally, please consider checking out Linked Modernisms, the companion site for the REM, which uses RDF, domain expert verification, and machine reasoning to plumb the REM‘s content for metadata and connections among terms. It features some pretty cool visualisations, and you can use the RelFinder tool to check out how many degrees of separation there are between your favourite figures, movements, places, works, techniques, etc. Again, we are constantly updating the content, enhancing the density of the metadata you can explore, so if you notice something missing (even something pretty central) please hang on for more updates. Many thanks to Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for funding the development of the site.
Like what you see? Please let me know at saross ]at[ uvic.ca
Don’t like what you (don’t) see? Also let me know (or wait a bit first, then let me know when you run out of patience).
Finally, I want to be sure to thank the Subject Editors of the REM:
Dance — Allana C. Lindgren
Film — Rahul Sapra
Architecture and Design — Michael Johnson
Visual Arts — Hazel Donkin
Literature — Megan Swift
Music — Jonathan Goldman
Intellectual Currents — Vincent P. Pecora
Drama/Performance — Sheila Rabillard
Each of these Subject Editors commissioned, managed, edited, and selected hundreds of entries. Some of them will stay on as we move into production, while others will move on to other responsibilities, but they all have done enormous work to ensure that the REM is as good as it possibly can be. They oversaw teams of between 3 and 15 Editorial Board Members, whom I cannot list here, but who have likewise lifted enormous burdens in getting this material to the screen.
My tireless Project Managers Laura Dosky, lately replaced by Amy Tang, have made the project possible when it seemed completely overwhelming. The legion of graduate students who helped prepare entries by formatting them for web presentation, copy editing, and fact-checking, likewise merit a great big thank you.
Lastly, Polly Dodson, Senior Editor at Routledge, indefatigable champion of the project, wry interlocutor, and kind but at-times demanding partner in crime has been a complete joy to work with. We’ve torn through a number of other team members at Routledge over the years, but Polly has remained the backbone of this operation. Thanks for not breaking!
by Stephen Ross (@ghostprof)