Fragmenting, representing, and governing in early modern literature, art, and music through digital methods (RSA annual meeting, San Francisco)
Organized within the framework of the Global Early Modern Studies (GEMS) program at the CUNY Graduate Center, this lightning panel invites short presentations (5–7 minutes) exploring how digital tools reshape our understanding of power, representation, and mediation in early modern literature, art, and music. We are particularly interested in projects that engage with fragmentary or marginal corpora—such as letters, pamphlets, sonnets, portraits, musical scores, maxims, diplomatic documents, trial records, or ephemera—and apply digital methods to make these sources more accessible, analyzable, and interpretable.
We welcome proposals that reflect on:
- textual, visual, or musical representations of power and authority
- gendered or transnational dimensions of early modern communication
- editorial or archival strategies for encoding and visualizing early modern sources
- intersections of form (brevity, repetition, gesture, structure) and digital analysis
- ethical or methodological challenges in digitally recovering overlooked figures or materials
The session seeks to foster an interdisciplinary conversation across literary studies, art history, musicology, and the digital humanities. Proposals from scholars at any stage are welcome.
The panel will take place during the RSA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, 19–21 February 2026.
Deadline: 14 July 2025
Please send a short abstract (150–200 words) and a brief bio to: bmundo@gradcenter.cuny.edu