George Washington University

Seeking help for a promising opportunity to help digitize (while maintaining the appropriate permissions) some of the Ellison Papers for the Library of Congress. LoC is currently requesting proposals for third-party digitization of some of their holdings. See http://www.loc.gov/about/business/thirdpartydig/. In Ellison's case, perhaps some of his essay drafts, notes, and other material would be a nice place to start, since they sometimes fly below radar compared to the novels and correspondence. I would need different kinds of contributors, particularly with the technology, programming, and interface. I've also asked a few Ellison scholars for the participation and/or advice. This project would need a balance between textual studies, archival work, and different kinds of technology. If any of you are interested or know people who might be, please let me know. This is potentially a major project, and it would help us merge Elllison studies with digital humanities. Please contact me: [email protected]. From the Library of Congress: Access is open for the Ralph Ellison Papers, but all rights are reserved and the collection includes an abundance of protected materials from many hands. The collection is large, valuable to scholars, and in fairly good condition. Certain sections arrived fragile or damaged and/or became overused; these were moved to a closed section and replaced with photocopies for reference use. The Papers of Ralph Ellison (1914 -1994) comprise some 74,800 items in 314 containers plus 25 oversize. They reflect the work of African-American author and educator, Ralph Ellison who won the National Book Award for Invisible Man, his first novel, in 1953. The collection consists of general correspondence, organizational correspondence and reports, family papers, drafts, notes, and production files for novels, essays, poetry, short stories, reviews, and other writings, speeches, lectures, and interviews, reference file, and miscellany. Among the many works documented are Invisible Man (1952), Shadow and Act (1964), Going to the Territory (1985), and episodes and drafts of Ellison’s second unpublished novel which his literary executor edited into two different versions and published posthumously.

Alexander C. Y. Huang (Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Stanford) is the co-founder of "Global Shakespeares" at MIT: http://globalshakespeares.org/ He is the author of Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange (Columbia University Press), a study of the interactions between ideas of "Shakespeare" and "China" in fiction, film, and theatre in an age of globalization. The book received the Modern Language Association's (MLA) Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, the Colleagues' Choice Award of the International Convention for Asian Scholars (ICAS), and an honorable mention of New York University's Joe A. Callaway Prize for the Best Book on Drama or Theatre. Part of his work focuses on racial and national histories that connect imaginative writing to performances on stage and on screen, which led to the publications of Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia and Cyberspace (Purdue University Press; co-edited) and Class, Boundary and Social Discourse in the Renaissance (co-edited). He has served as the guest editor of special issues of Shakespeare (Journal of the British Shakespeare Association), Asian Theatre Journal, and Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, and has contributed to MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly, Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Bulletin, Theatre Journal, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Yearbook, China Review International, Shakespeare Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, The Shakespearean International Yearbook, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, World Literature Today, and Asian Theatre Journal, among other peer-reviewed journals and books. His research has been supported by several institutions and grant agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, China Times Cultural Foundation, International Shakespeare Association, Folger Institute, Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Stanford University, and others. Further projects underway include a book on literary humor and a book on ethics and intercultural performance. At George Washington University Prof. Huang is a member of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute (MEMSI) and is affiliated with the Sigur Center for Asian Studies where he serves as co-editor of the Papers in the Asian Humanities series. He has served the theatre and Asian studies community in his roles as the Vice President of the Association for Asian Performance (AAP), Vice President of the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies (MAR/AAS), editorial board member of Brill’s series on “East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture," and book review editor of Chinese Literature Today. Huang has contributed to Shakespeare and early modern studies through his publications and service. He has been involved in the larger artistic and academic communities in the U.S. and abroad as the General Editor (with Tom Bishop and Graham Bradshaw) of the Shakespearean International Yearbook, member of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Committee on the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, MLA executive committee on East Asian languages and literatures since 1900, board member of the Internet Shakespeare Editions (based in Victoria, Canada), early modern studies faculty of the Middlebury College Bread Loaf School of English (a summer graduate program), guest speaker at the Edinburgh International Festival, consultant for several other theatre festivals, and the video curator for an exhibition at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. He has appeared on BBC Radio, BBC TV, and other television and radio programs to discuss cultural globalization. In addition, stories about his work have appeared in media outlets in English and Chinese. http://web.mit.edu/acyhuang/www/