LCPO Research Team to Present at ASECS

Several members of the Laboring-Class Poets Online research group will present their recent work at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference in Minneapolis, MN later this month.

Dan Froid (primary organizer and PhD student, Purdue University) will chair a panel titled "Laboring-Class Poets in Print and Digital Culture." Roundtable panelists will include William Christmas (Professor of English, San Francisco State University), Cole Crawford (MA student, Oregon State University), Daniel Johnson (English Literature and Digital Humanities librarian, University of Notre Dame), Jennifer Orr (Lecturer in Eighteenth Century Literature, Newcastle University), and Katie Osborn (PhD candidate, University of Notre Dame). Bridget Keegan (Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English, Creighton University) will unfortunately be unable to attend due to recent administrative responsibilities.

An updated panel abstract is below. We look forward to seeing you at ASECS!

We propose a roundtable on the topic of laboring-class poets in print and digital cultures. The participating scholars share an interest in Laboring-Class Poets Online, 1700-1900, a digital project that aims to compile critical/biographical summaries on British laboring-class poets with accompanying bibliographies. As session chair, Dan Froid will ask each panelist to consider how digital methods help challenge assumptions about the tradition of laboring-class print culture and how thinking digitally contributes to new knowledge in the field. William Christmas will focus on the kinds of information scholars should record, such as bookseller/publisher details, in order to optimize the LCPO website for research. Cole Crawford is developing a Drupal-based website for the database and will discuss its technical aspects and potential for furthering our understanding of laboring-class poets. Daniel Johnson, project manager of the digital archive Scholars’ Grotto, will consider editorial control of laboring-class poets’ works and its impact on digital encoding. Jennifer Orr will discuss rural and urban print networks in Union-period Ireland. Katie Osborn will contribute thoughts on the important but contentious role of subscription printing, printing, a phenomenon particularly fitted to the projecting spirit of the long eighteenth century, in laboring-class writers’ careers.