ACH/ALLC 2001 Humanities Computing Conference at NYU By Kate Monahan, with the ITS Humanities Computing Group kate.monahan@nyu.edu

Click here for a print-friendly pdf version of this article.
If you do not already have Acrobat Reader on your computer, please click here for a free download.

Figure 1. The general membership meeting of the ACH was convened during the conference.

This past June, people from all over the world came to New York University to participate in this year's joint international conference of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing, ACH/ALLC 2001. Information Technology Services (ITS) hosted this event, which was co-sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, NYU Libraries, and the NYU Humanities Council. The conference, which has been in existence for 13 years, is the most important gathering of academics, researchers, students and industry specialists engaged in humanities computing.

The ACH/ALLC conference takes place every year, and alternates locations between North America and Europe. Previous conferences have taken place at Oxford University, the Sorbonne, Georgetown, and UC Santa Barbara. At this year's conference, from June 13th-16th, NYU was rewarded with a record turnout--over 300 people attended, over 90 academic papers were presented in parallel and plenary sessions, and there were 20 poster demonstrations of all aspects of computing in the humanities.

Dr. Allen Renear, professor of Libraries at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and ACH president, remarked that "The conference was an enormous success, absolutely fantastic. For one thing, we think it was easily the largest ACH/ALLC conference ever--which is not surprising given the rapidly increasing sense around the world that contemporary computing techniques are enabling some really exciting new work in the humanities."

Planning for this event started two years ago, when Lorna Hughes put in a bid to the ACH and ALLC committees for NYU to host the conference, which was accepted. Both organizations were keen to bring the conference to New York City. In addition to New York's renown as home of many cultural landmarks and attractions, there was a sense amongst both organizations that NYU is developing a number of key initiatives in Humanities Computing, and that the conference was a good opportunity to showcase these activities. "The conference came at a great time for us" said Lorna Hughes, the local conference organizer. "We have a fully staffed Humanities Computing Group at ITS now, and we are expanding our coverage of faculty and student technology facilities. We have been working on some really exciting initiatives, such as the establishment of the Studio for Digital Projects and Research in collaboration with the Libraries, a new center for faculty to explore technology in the humanities and related disciplines. It was great to be able to host this conference at NYU right now, when I really feel technology is becoming so central to the way we research and teach the Humanities."

Otto Sonntag, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, echoed Ms. Hughes sentiment, remarking:

NYU in general and the Faculty of Arts and Science in particular benefited greatly from having visitors from around the globe get a good look at us and our facilities and to enjoy our hospitality. The conference participants, from all I could tell, saw a very impressively organized and run event, offering an enormous range of sessions and presentations. NYU faculty and students, for their part, had a wonderful opportunity to get to know people who are making creative use of computers in the humanities and to discuss common challenges with them.

Figure 2. A poster and demonstration session was held the third evening of the conference.

Figure 3. ITS CITO Marilyn McMillan welcomed the delegates at the conference's opening plenary.

Figure 4. Stine Taugbol and Ellen Nessheim from the Henrick Ibsen's Project in Oslo, Norway were among the attendees.

The local organizing team was led by Lorna Hughes, Assistant Director for Humanities Computing at ITS. A large number of staff from ITS were involved in this initiative; among others, Humanities Computing Special-ists Gary Shawver and Matthew Zimmerman assisted with all aspects of the organization, including coordination of registration, housing for delegates, and technical support for this event. Staff from ITS Academic Computing Services assisted with technical aspects of the conference and the logistical aspects inherent in the planning of such a large event.

Dr. Renear praised NYU's efforts highly, saying, "Lorna Hughes and her crew from Humanities Comput-ing were absolutely terrific, amazing. In all my years in ACH, I have never seen anyone so expert at creating the conditions for satisfying intellectual camaraderie."

Support for the conference was provided by a local NYU steering committee that was convened in 1999 when the opportunity to host the 2001 conference was awarded to NYU. The members of the committee were Marilyn McMillan, CITO; Carol Mandel, Dean of Libraries; Matthew Santirocco, FAS Dean; Otto Sonntag and Sally Sanderlin, FAS Deans; Ellen Nantz, FAS Special Events; Jim Matthews, GSAS; and Vince Renzi, MAP.

Figure 5. Michael Sperberg-McQueen (World Wide Web Consortium), Lisa Lena Opas-Hanninen (University of Joensuu, Finland), and Willard McCarty (King's College, London) relax at the conference banquet.

"After working together to prepare for the conference, it was a thrill to have all conferees on site and in action," remarked Marilyn McMillan, CITO. "With so much interesting work underway in so many domains, we seem to have reached a new plateau where innovations with computing can strongly promote superb scholarship in these disciplines. I look forward to capturing the energies sparked by the conference as we move forward at NYU."

An international program committee, chaired by John Lavagnino, Kings College, London, was convened, and they worked on the task of putting out a call for papers and then approving a large number of papers and poster sessions. It was felt that this was one of the strongest programs seen at an ACH/ALLC conference yet, with topics ranging from multilingual computing, 3D representation of archaeological modeling, digital libraries, and multimedia archives, to the development of degrees in humanities computing.

As Dr. Renear observed: "The program was terrific, a combination of valuable practical projects and fascinating theoretical insights. By the end, no one had any doubt that humanities computing has become one of the most exciting areas of intellectual work in the world today."

The four-day conference opened with a keynote address by Johanna Drucker, Robertson Professor in Media Studies, University of Virginia. Her presentation described the humanities computing community at the University of Virginia as a context for thinking and rethinking the premises on which an array of projects are currently conceived, and was a useful overview of some of the most cutting-edge uses of technology.

The mid-conference plenary session was a presentation by Professor John Burrows of the University of Newcastle, Australia, whose paper was concerned with "Questions of Authorship: Attribution and Beyond". Burrows has used technology to research the authorship of texts and the stylistic features of the works of Jane Austen for many years, and was awarded the Roberto Busa award for 2001.

Figure 6. Barbara Bordelejo, a graduate student at both De Montfort University (England) and NYU is awarded one of the ALLC bursaries.

This award is given every three years, and is named for Father Roberto Busa, SJ, the pioneer of humanities computing who used punchcards for concordances of texts in the 1940's. The closing speaker was Alan Liu of the University of Santa Barbara, who talked about "The Tribe of Cool: Information Culture and History". Thanks to assistance from NYU Television and ITS Network Services, all the keynote sessions were webcast live, and have been archived on the conference website.

Dr. Renear captured the enthusiasm everyone felt about the conference when he remarked:

"Sometimes a conference has that spark, that sense that great things are afoot. And that's what we felt. That it happened this time, with this much intensity, is due as much to the mood set by our NYU hosts as to anything else...Computing and the humanities in 2001, in New York City, at NYU...can it get any better than that? I don't think it can."

Posted November 6, 2001