) so I’m just gonna comment here.
Hmm, the comics/drawings which take me hours to complete definitely need more attention. After all, why else do i draw them for other than to entertain my readers (AND for praise). So yea, those and some of my pretty thoughtful post. I guess those only mean something to me.
p.s. Is there a plugin that displays posts which are in need of attention? Haha.. Seriously. Woke up with a fever and a sore throat. The brain feels foggy. So I took some drugs, drank some coffee, and watch soccer this morning. Between games, I checked my email and today was the day of the Winter 24 hour writing contest.
Hours ticked by. I got the topic. More hours ticked by. I didn’t write.
It was only $5 so not writing it won’t matter. Besides, you can only come up with one idea and killing your wife with a raccoon is not great literature.
But was that what I was going for or just actually doing some writing?
I turned off the TV, put on the overly expensive headphones and turned up my “The Fall for Every Season” station. A thousand words later, and I was done.
Crap, it’s only supposed to be 875 words. I wonder if tomorrow I’ll write a blog post titled “Not Editing”.
A (Ballad-)Inspired Jig Performance at the Newberry Consort!
An article in the Huntington Library Quarterly has inspired a ballad-infused performance of jigs at the Newberry Consort, "Will Kemp Returns: A Jigs Revival." Ballad scholar Roger Clegg's essay serves as the inspiration for this performance. From the program notes: "This year, an article by Roger Clegg entitled ‘The Relationship between the Broadside Ballad and the Dramatic Jig’ inspired the format of our program. Clegg asks: ‘If the dramatic jig was a sung-drama featuring props, disguising, and dance, to be acted out on the common stage when a play was done, might the broadside ballad also be a script to be acted out as a dramatic performance?’ We think so!" Check out the event posting here! Congratulations to Roger Clegg for his inspiring scholarship!
UC Santa Barbara graduate student Giorgina Paiella used the EBBA-affiliated Maker Lab on campus, with its recreation pull press, to set and print the title page of Mary Shelley's 1818 Frankenstein, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the seminal text. Read her blog post, "Stitching Texts, Stitching Bodies: On Printing Frankenstein (at 200)," here.
In her essay "Early Modern Memes: The Reuse and Recycling of Woodcuts in 17th-Century English Popular Print," Katie Sisneros brilliantly links the reuse of woodcuts in broadside ballads and other early printed literature to modern meme culture. Her essay features many EBBA ballads and woodcuts, and showcases our new Arch-V image matching technology! Click through to the essay to see her discussion of the images across our database, and how she connects this to memes in today's world.
EBBA's Newest NEH Grant Award Featured in the Santa Barbara News-Press!
In "UCSB music projects awarded grants," Brett Leigh Dicks congratulates two UCSB projects, including the English Broadside Ballad Archive, on their newest NEH awards. Thanks to the News-Press for publicizing our award!
EBBA Project Director Patricia Fumerton's latest project, the development of a print lab called the Maker Lab, has been featured in UC Santa Barbara's Current. Author Jim Logan focuses on Fumerton's acquisition of a recreation 19th-century Albion pull press for the lab, affectionately called "Mad Madge" by those involved in the project. Madge, made by Harry F Rochat, Ltd., a family-owned company in High Barnet, London, will be used in classes and demonstrations to help educate students, faculty, and community members about the history of print.
The University of Alabama's Digital Humanities Blog posted a review of EBBA's site, touting the usefulness of its recordings and praising its dedication to open access, which enables its use by "traveling scholars, those unaffiliated with a library with the funding for subscriptions, and members of the general public who have an interest in ballads." The post, written by Lauren Liebe, can be found here.
The English Broadside Ballad Archive received a glowing review by Yuri Cowan at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in SHARPNews 25.2 (2016), pp. 41-42, the publication for the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing.
Director Patricia Fumerton was interviewed for the KCLU news story "South Coast Based Project to Catalog Historic 16th, 17th Century Documents Gets Major Grant,” by Lance Orozco, Jun 1, 2016.
Director Patricia Fumerton and EBBA team members Theresa Covich and Katie Adkison consulting in the design of a ballad exhibition at St James's Market, for the London Design Festival, September 13, 2016 to March 31, 2017. The ballad featured in the installation is "The Handsome Butcher of St. James's Market" (EBBA 34198).
On August 25, 2016, the Verso blog for The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens announced a special issue of Huntington Library Quarterly edited by Director Patricia Fumerton with Assistant Director Megan E. Palmer. The blog post, "Ballads Galore," by Kevin Durkin, discusses the aim and contents of the volume, and can be found here.
On June 1, 2016, Central Coast local NPR station KCLU interviewed EBBA director Patricia Fumerton, and summarized our project and goals for listeners. An audio recording of the interview, which includes some of our ballad recordings, as well as a write-up of the interview, can be heard and read here.
On April 20, 2016, the UC Santa Barbara Current, the university's news magazine, profiled EBBA and our latest NEH grant. In addition to the article is a video, including both an interview with our director, Patricia Fumerton, and video of our Singing Team Manager, Erik Bell, recording a ballad. Both the article and the video can be seen here.
On November 18, 2015, EBBA Director Patricia Fumerton gave a keynote lecture and led a hands-on workshop at the University of Canterbury's Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Digital Humanities in Christchurch, New Zealand. The talk and workshop can be viewed here (timestamps for both can be found in the comments below the video). The program for the entire event is available here.
On April 12, 2015, the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts published a blog post, "English Broadside Ballads Enjoy Renaissance at UCSB," giving an overview of the project and featuring an interview with Director Patricia Fumerton.
On May 14, 2015, Allison Meier published an article, "Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century" in art e-zine Hyperallergic, focused on EBBA's archiving of Harvard's Houghton Library collections, and including comments by Director Patricia Fumerton. Read it online, or as a PDF.
On February 18, 2014, Minnesota Public Radio aired an interview with Katie Sisneros about early modern English ballad culture. Several of EBBA's ballad recordings appear.
On April 23rd, 2012, EBBA was the featured project for Day 5 of Preservation Week at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
On March 22, 2012, EBBA's success in securing a series of NEH grants was celebrated in a Santa Barbara News-Press article by Carolyn Bolton.
EBBA was featured in the Fall 2011 issue of the UC Santa Barbara Today magazine. Read the lavishly illustrated article by Eileen Conrad, "The Word on the Street," or see the entire issue here via the Office of Internal Affairs.
Patricia Fumerton's interview with Pav & Tim of KCSB's Radio Causeway was broadcast on August 31, 2010. An MP3 of the interview is available.
This August, 2010 article by Jennifer Howard mentions EBBA among a group of "cool digital archives" for scholarly browsing.
Patricia Fumerton's interview for David Cayley's CBC Radio series The Origins of the Modern Public, in an episode on "The Print Revolution," was broadcast on April 29th, 2010. A podcast of the interview was released on April 30th, 2010. For the complete Origins of the Modern Public series, visit David Cayley's website.
This announcement regarding EBBA's award from the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies appeared in the "Honors & Awards" section of 93106, the UCSB faculty and staff newsletter, on March 9, 2009.
This article, "Archive Preserves 17th-century Ballads," appeared in UCSB's 2008 Profiles in Research as part of the "Society and Education" section.
EBBA's award of a second NEH grant was announced in this article by Andrea Estrada in the July 14, 2008 edition of 93106.
On June 5, 2008 Lance Orozco of KCLU, the National Public Radio station in Santa Barbara County, conducted a phone interview with Patricia Fumerton, Director of EBBA, about the nature of the ballad archive. The