This panel focuses on the theoretical perspectives gained in “The Lyon in Mourning” Digital Humanities Project, a partnership project between the National Library of Scotland and Simon Fraser University’s Research Centre for Scottish Studies and Digital Humanities Innovation Lab focused on the digitization, TEI encoding and analysis of an eighteenth-century manuscript, “The Lyon in Mourning.” Compiled by Jacobite Episcopalian minister Robert Forbes after the suppression of the last civil war in mainland Britain, the 1745-46 Jacobite Rising, “The Lyon in Mourning” consists of 2148 pages of transcribed conversations, narrative accounts, poems, songs, letters, epitaphs and even material relics such as scraps of fabric and pieces of a boat. It is an extraordinary document in British history, compiled to preserve the memories of those on the losing side of the Jacobite conflict. It is also a remarkable document in the history of text encoding: not only do the ten volumes serve as an early “hypertext” with various cross-references and footnotes throughout the collection, but Forbes’s meticulously compiled manuscript also seems to anticipate the methodological protocols of the TEI, featuring careful documentation on the biographical, bibliographical and presentational metadata about his source material. This project unsettles standard histories of Britain as it focuses on the extent and nature of Jacobite activity in post-1745 Britain, highlighting the voices of women, Gaelic-speakers and labouring-class individuals in the manuscript. Our project also contributes to an alternative history of media as it suggests the importance of manuscript as an eighteenth-century form of modern information technology. An important part of this project has been the knowledge mobilization connected to it both locally and internationally.

The panel will consist of 5 presentations and a discussion of the implications of the research and the knowledge mobilization opportunities it has provided, locally, nationall and internationally from public talks, to radio programs, to workshops on transcription and quill pen writing.

Leith Davis (Professor, Department of English, Simon Fraser University and PI for the Project): “Introducing ‘The Lyon in Mourning’ Digital Humanities Project’: Unsettling British History Through Creating New Interdisciplinary Connections”

Joey Takeda (Developer, Digital Humanities Innovation Lab, Simon Fraser University): Short Online Tour of “The Lyon in Mourning” Project

Shauna Irani (English Department, Simon Fraser University): “Encoding the Unsung: Ned Burke and ‘The Lyon in Mourning’”

Abigail Streifel (English Department, Simon Fraser University): “Encoding Place in Robert Forbes’s ‘Seasonable Visit’ of 1769”

Julianna Wagar (Department of English, Film, and Creative Writing, University of Alberta): “2000 Oysters and 35 Dozen ‘Egges’: James Gib’s Meticulous Listmaking”