CHB Seminar series: Editing and Politics

About the seminar

Editing and Politics

By Dr Andrew Taylor and Prof. Dana Van Kooy 

Questions about editing and textual scholarship quickly become political.  At issue is not only the question of who deserves the attention of textual scholars, but also the matter of how the protocols of textual editing may themselves serve (or collude in) political ends.  In this seminar, two editors working in different historical periods will reflect on the concerns with race, class, and gender which inform their work.

About the speakers 

Andrew Taylor is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh.  He specialises in nineteenth-century North American literature and intellectual history.  With Celeste-Marie Bernier, he edited If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O. Evans Collection (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

Dana Van Kooy is Director of English and Liberal Arts, Humanities and Associate Professor, English in Transnational Literature, Literary Theory and Culture at Michigan Tech. Her research is grounded in transatlantic, transnational and global perspectives of literature and drama produced throughout the long eighteenth century. Her most recent book is Shelley’s Radical Stages: Performance and Cultural Memory in the Post-Napoleonic Era (Routledge,2016).

About the Centre for the History of the Book

Established in 1995, the Centre for the History of the Book (CHB) promotes research into the production, circulation and reception of published material, from manuscripts to electronic texts.

Led by Professor Tom Mole, winner of the Saltire Literary Awards 2018 'Research Book of the Year' for his book 'What the Victorians Made of Romanticism', it is based in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC) at the University of Edinburgh.

The CHB Annual Public Lecture is one of a range of activities organised by the Centre to bring together staff and students interested in the history of the book as a material object, in all its forms. Previous speakers include Kathleen Jamie and Alberto Manguel.

The Centre's one-year taught masters programme, Book History and Material Culture, brings together theory and practice in new and innovative ways and is accredited by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

Find out more about the Centre for the History of the Book