Roundtable: Epistolary Networks in Early Modern Italy: Connecting and Coordinating Current Digitization Initiatives

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

This roundtable charts the various initiatives currently ongoing to collect and publish (in paper or online) large collections of letters produced in early modern Italy by poets, artists, scientists, intellectuals, and so on. Its ambition is to contribute to coordinating these projects and to establish connections to other international projects dedicated to the digitization of epistolary networks. The roundtable brings together scholars responsible for the projects Archilet (Bergamo-Roma-Viterbo), Epistolari del Settecento (Verona), EpistolArt (Liège), Cultures of Knowledge (Oxford), ePistolarium (The Hague-Utrecht), and the COST Action Reassembling the Republic of Letters. They reflect on goals and challenges of collecting large epistolary databases and reconstructing correspondence networks in early modern Italy and Europe. Particular attention goes to discussions on the interoperability between the various systems (in terms of both underlying technologies and matching metadata). Linking the various projects and establishing collaborations will be a central issue of agenda-setting for the upcoming years.

Sub Unit

• RSA Annual Meeting

Organizer

• Harald Hendrix, Royal Netherlands Institute Rome

Chair

• Harald Hendrix, Royal Netherlands Institute Rome

Discussants

• Clizia Carminati, Università degli Studi di Bergamo

• Charles van den Heuvel, Huygens ING

• Howard Hotson, St. Anne's College, University of Oxford

• Paola Moreno, Université de Liège

• Emilio Russo, Universita degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"

• Franco Tomasi, Università degli Studi di Padova

• Corrado Viola, Universita degli Studi di Verona