TEI Without Tech: An Introduction to TEI Concepts

A Baker-Nord Digital Humanities Event

Text encoding allows researchers to closely explore texts using the XML mark-up language. Prior to processing the works they want to examine, tagging parts of speech, themes, places, characters, historical figures and more, scholars work to understand the key questions that undergird material texts as they are transformed into machine readable data. What are the important markers on a manuscript, text, or image? What does the visual layout of the text do to or for readers? Who are the speaking and writing voices in a text? What function does the layout have? How should marginalia be thought of versus the body of a text? What are the key units that make up a particular text?

This workshop, perfect for scholars and students with little or no knowledge of TEI or XML, will familiarize participants with the guiding principles of text encoding practice through a hands-on exploration of these and more key questions. Participants will be introduced to text encoding without XML and learn what research questions text encoding might help to answer. Exploring material texts and practices of close reading, this workshop is perfect for the humanities scholar who would like to broaden the methodological tools with which to approach text.


About the speakers

Lee Zickel

Taking his educational history — covering Biology, Literature, and Library & Information Science — and combining it with a love of games, Lee has developed, proposed, and been accepted to a Multidisciplinary PhD program that combines Information Systems and Organizational Behavior with Cognitive Linguistics. His work focuses on investigating the cognitive implications of small group collaboration in narrative co-construction during gameplay and explores the shifting notions and mappings of failure in non-game settings. In addition to his scholarship, Lee also serves as the Digital Humanities Manager of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. Lee is responsible for consulting on project design, guiding faculty to the appropriate service support, and raising the profile of digital humanities on campus.

Allison Schifani

Allison Schifani received her PhD from the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work explores literatures, media art, and urban intervention in the 20th and 21st Century Americas. Her dissertation, Biotechnical Ecologies: Urban Practice and Play in Buenos Aires and Los Angeles focused on extra-institutional ways of shaping the experience of the city and speculating on its digital futures. She is currently writing on emerging DIY media and art practices in Cleveland.


Additional Resources

Information about the TEI

A Very Gentle Guide to XML