Venue: ST276 (Stewart House, second floor) and streamed live on the web at historyspot.org.uk

Magnus Huber (Giessen), ’The Old Bailey Corpus: Spoken English in the 18th and 19th centuries’

On Tuesday Magnus Huber will be talking about the use of historical court records in the investigation of language change.The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, were published between 1674 and 1913 and constitute a large body of texts from the beginning of Present Day English (almost 200,000 trials, ca. 134 million words). The Proceedings were digitalized by the social historians Robert Shoemaker (University of Sheffield) and Tim Hitchcock (University of Hertfordshire) and are searchable at the excellent Old Bailey Proceedings Online (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/), which also provides detailed background information on the Old Bailey and the publication history of the Proceedings.

This talk reports on a project that turned the Proceedings into the linguistic Old Bailey Corpus (OBC). Corpus linguistics relies on the statistical analysis of large collections of electronic texts to investigate language variation and/or language change. In the absence of recorded speech samples before the invention of the phonograph, language historians have turned to written text types that are close to spoken language. The Proceedings of the Old Bailey are particularly suitable for the study of spoken English as they were taken down by shorthand scribes, and their verbatim passages are arguably as near as we can get to the spoken word of the 18th and 19th centuries. The OBC identifies about 114 million words as direct speech from the 1720s onwards, of which 22 million words have received detailed mark-up for sociolinguistic (sex, profession, age, residence of speaker, role in the court-room) and textual variables (the shorthand scribe and publisher of individual Proceedings).

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The IHR Seminar in digital history is actively engaged in presenting and discussing new methodologies which have been made possible through the development of computational methods for the study of history. Further information can be found on the IHR Seminar page at http://www.history.ac.uk/events/seminars/321.  Follow us on twitter @IHRDigHist or join the mailing list for seminar announcements: http://groups.google.com/group/ihr-digital-history-seminar-announce

The proposal submission website for the 2012 NACBS in Montreal is now available at http://nacbs.ucmerced.edu/call-for-submissions

If you have any difficulties with the site, please email nacbsprogram@gmail.com.  Due to the late opening of the site, the deadline for submissions will be March 10.

Each year the NACBS awards twelve prizes of $100.00 each to the best essays on British topics submitted by undergraduates studying in American and Canadian universities.

Essays may be from any department –History, English, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, etc–as long as they relate to British Studies and date from 2011/2012.
Essays must have been written while the author was a degree-seeking undergraduate at a U.S. or Canadian college or university.

Essays should be no longer than 25 pages (please, no theses).

Submissions must be accompanied by a nominating letter from the professor who taught the course for which the essay was written. Nominating faculty must be current members of the NACBS. Please include the permanent mailing address and email contact information for the student.

Send a paper copy of the essay and the letter of nomination to EACH of the following 3 members of the adjudication committee by June 15th, 2012 (3 copies in total).

Dr Rich Connors
Department of History
University of Ottawa
155 Séraphin Marion Street
Ottawa, ON
Canada, K1N 6N5

Dr Guy Ortolano
101 Halcyon Hill Road
Ithaca, NY 14850
USA

Dr Lisa Surridge
Department of English
University of Victoria
Victoria, BC
Canada, V8W 3W1

The NACBS DISSERTATION YEAR FELLOWSHIP is awarded to support dissertation research in the British Isles on any topic of British (including Scottish, Irish and Imperial) history or British Studies. The Fellowship consists of a $8,000 stipend. The runner-up will receive a $3,000 travel grant. Each advisor may nominate one candidate, who should be a citizen or permanent resident of the U.S. or Canada, enrolled in a Ph.D. program in a U.S. or Canadian institution, and who has, at the time of application, completed all degree requirements save the dissertation.

•    The nomination must be made by the student’s dissertation advisor, supported by one additional letter of recommendation.   The nominating advisor must be a member of the NACBS.

•    The candidate must need to travel to the British Isles for the purpose of dissertation research. The awardee must conduct full-time research in the British Isles for an extended stay.

Procedures for Application:

1.    Application consists of the two letters of nomination and recommendation described above; a one-page curriculum vitae of the candidate; and a 1000 word research proposal written by the candidate, which should explain the importance of the topic to the field of British history and include a description of the relevant primary materials that are to be consulted in the British Isles.  Appended to the CV should be a list of the financial support (source, type and amount) received by the applicant since the beginning of graduate study, and an indication of any current pending applications for financial aid to support dissertation research.

2.    Letters of reference should address themselves not only to the student’s past record, but also to the importance of the topic and the need to pursue the research in the British Isles. The major advisor, in endorsing the candidate, is also confirming the ABD status of the candidate and the financial information requested above.

A copy of the application package should be sent to each member of the Dissertation Year Fellowship Committee listed below. Letters of reference should be placed in sealed envelopes, signed across the flap, and given to the applicant for inclusion in the application package. Applications must be postmarked by April 1, 2012. Send materials, including a current email address, to:

Professor David Campion
Department of History
Lewis & Clark College
0615 SW Palatine Hill Road
Portland, Oregon 97219, USA
Email: dave.campion@gmail.com

Professor Nancy Ellenberger
U.S. Naval Academy
History Department
107 Maryland Ave.
Annapolis, MD 21402
Email: ellenber@usna.edu

Professor Shannon McSheffrey, Chair
Department of History LB-1001
Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal, QC
Canada    H3G 1M8
Email: mcsheff@alcor.concordia.ca

WALTER D. LOVE PRIZE 2011 COMPETITION

The WALTER D. LOVE PRIZE in History is a $150 award given annually by the North American Conference on British Studies for the best article or paper of similar length or scope by a North American scholar in the field of British history.  The 2012 prize will be awarded to an article published during the calendar year 2011.  The prize journal article or paper, which may be published anywhere in the world, should exhibit a humane and compassionate understanding of the subject, imagination, literary grace, and scrupulous scholarship.  It should also make a significant contribution to its field of study.  Chapters from longer works are not eligible, but papers appearing in edited collections of essays are eligible.

All scholars who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States or Canada and living in either country at the time of the award are eligible to compete.  A copy of the nominated article or paper should be sent by April 1, 2012 to each member of the Prize Committee.  For prompt attention, mark packages “NACBS Prize Committee.”  Send submissions to:

Professor Sandra den Otter, Chair
Department of History
Queen’s University
Kingston, ON
Canada
K7L 3N6
Email: denotter@queensu.ca

Professor Ethan Shagan
Department of History
UC Berkeley
3229 Dwinelle Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-2550
Email: shagan@berkeley.edu

Professor Nicoletta Gullace
Department of History
University of New Hampshire
Horton Social Science Center
20 Academic Way
Durham, New Hampshire 03824
Email: nfg@cisunix.unh.edu

JOHN BEN SNOW FOUNDATION PRIZE 2012 COMPETITION

The JOHN BEN SNOW FOUNDATION PRIZE is a $500 prize awarded annually by the North American Conference on British Studies for the best book by a North American scholar in any field of British Studies dealing with the period from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century.  The author must be a citizen or permanent resident of the United States or Canada and be living in either country at the time of the award.  Nominations may be made by the author or by the publisher of the book nominated.  A publisher may nominate more than one title each year but should use discretion and not overburden the Prize Committee.

The 2012 competition covers books published in 2011.  Separate copies of the letter of nomination and of the book nominated should be sent by April 1, 2012 to each member of the Prize Committee (only books sent to every committee member can be considered).  For prompt attention, mark packages “NACBS Prize Committee.”  Send all relevant materials to:

Professor Ken MacMillan, Chair
Department of History
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, Alberta
Canada T2N 1N4
Email: macmillk@ucalgary.ca

Professor Linda Mitchell
Department of History
203 Cockefair Hall
University of Missouri-Kansas City
5100 Rockhill Rd.
Kansas City, MO 64110-2499
Email: mitchellli@umkc.edu

Professor Krista Kesselring
Department of History
Dalhousie University
6135 University Ave.
PO Box 15000
Halifax, NS
Canada B3H 4R2
Email: krista.kesselring@dal.ca