Preface

Abstract

On June 16 and 17, 2010 digital medievalists from many countries gathered at Barnard College, Columbia University in New York to discuss the implications of new digital technologies available to us for teaching and research. The event was held in honor of our esteemed colleague, Prof. Delbert Russell, who is now professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo. Together with Hannah Fournier (emeritus, University of Waterloo) and Jean-Philippe Beaulieu (University of Montreal), Delbert Russell was one of the founding members of the now internationally recognized MARGOT group, housed at the University of Waterloo. Prof. Russell was one of the early adopters of the digital humanities that John Unsworth refers to in his introduction. Already in the early 90s Delbert experimented with software originally written for the online Oxford Electronic Dictionary to adapt it to his goal of building a transcription database of otherwise inaccessible literary texts written by early modern French female authors. His desire to make available transcriptions of medieval texts to the broader public then led him to the development of an extensive database of medieval saints’ lives. This database of thirteen saints’ lives is used by many students and scholars today.

Keywords

• Medieval Studies
• French Studies
• Digital Humanities
• Margot Conference
• University of Waterloo
• Delbert Russell