CESTA Seminar | M. Maryl "Digital Literary Studies with Polish Accent"

Digital humanities suddenly erupted in Poland in the second decade of the 21st Century: scholars and institutions established first digital humanities centres, joined important European networks and consortia like CLARIN, NeDiMAH, DARIAH, OPERAS, and hosted large international conferences, including ADHO’s DH 2016 in Kraków. Yet this sudden eruption by no means marks the beginning of DH in Poland, as the first digital projects could be traced back to the early 2000s.

This presentation provides a general overview of DH in Poland with a focus on literary studies. I adapt Roopika Risam’s (2017) notion of “DH accent” to discuss the tension between the “global DH” and local practices. I will briefly present major centers, networks and survey data on digital methods and practices in the humanities. Finally I will showcase selected projects in digital literary studies, including web-based tools for natural language processing, digital editions and resources that could be freely accessed and used by researchers.

Maciej Maryl, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at and the founding head of the Digital Humanities Centre at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He chairs a COST action, New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent, and coordinates the data project, Polish Literary Bibliography – a knowledge lab on contemporary Polish culture. He is also involved in DARIAH Digital Methods and Practices Observatory WG (DiMPO), ALLEA E-humanities Working Group, OPERAS Core group, and OpenMethods Editorial Board.

He is currently a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Stanford Literary Lab, where he works on quantifying transitions in Polish literary history (1989-2000) on the basis of bibliographical data and full academic journals.