Alexander Gil / Profile
English Dept., PhD Candidate | Graduate Student
Home Page: http://www.archivescesaire.org
Currently working on a digital variorum of Aimé Césaire’s foundational play Et les chiens se taisaient. There are 5 witnesses at the moment, including an early manuscript, and the search continues for more. The texts are being encoded using TEI 5.0 and then transformed to HTML and rendered using a combination of CSS and XSLT 2.0. Ideally, the final archive should include a set of annotations, a critical apparatus and visualizations to aid the reader.
You can access some parts of the site using the URL above. If you need special permission to access the password-protected areas send me an email.
Current Focus
Before the year is over, I’m focusing on encoding the rest of the witnesses and transforming them for bare-bones presentation. I will also be creating the introductory pages for the texts and a basic navigational portal.
Future Goals
In January, I hope to develop a comprehensive search function. I will probably use Solr as the engine. My main obstacle right now is dealing with hyphenation in the transcriptions. Since I am working with documentary editions, the hyphens should be preserved, but I still need to figure out an elegant way to allow the search engine to recognize whole words.
History
Two of the texts have already been encoded and transformed, including the manuscript and the first published version of the play. Most of the encoding, I did during the summer of 2009. Learning XSLT provided the biggest challenge, and I’m still going at it.
Interests
This project is a logical continuation of my life-long commitment to construct an archive of literatures of the Caribbean. I have many ambitions for the Césaire module. If you are also working with collation projects and/or interested in the visualization of textual transformation and difference don’t hesitate to contact me.
- Scholarly Disciplines
- Caribbean Studies (1), Critical Theory (1), Genetic Criticism (1), Hemispheric American Studies (1), Literature (7), Postcolonial Theory (1), Textual Criticism (4)
- General Interests
- Caribbean Literature (1), Literature (7)
- Time Periods of Interest
- 20th Century (8), 21st century (5), World War II (1)
- Places of Interest
- Berlin (1), Caribbean (2), Cuba (1), France (5), Haiti (1), Martinique (1), New York (1), Paris (1), United States (11)
- Technologies of Interest
- CSS (5), TEI (1), XML (13), XSLT (4)
Organizations
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Scholars' Lab |
Publications
“La découverte d’un tapuscrit d‘Et les chiens se taisaient.” Actes du colloque en honneur d’Aimé Césaire, novembre 2008. Presses AUF (November 2009)
“Bridging the Middle Passage: The textual revolution of Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature. (Forthcoming 2010)
Review of Alfred Lopez’s Posts and Pasts: A Theory of Postcolonialism, The Comparatist, Vol. XXVIII (May 2004): 158-159.
Man, Woman, Hunger: A Translation of Daina Chaviano’s El Hombre, la Hembra y el Hambre. The Yalobusha Review, University of Mississippi Press (May 2003): 63-67. (This is an excerpt from my still unpublished translation of the novel)
Websites
Miscellaneous
Co-Editor of the Edition critique de l’œuvre complète d’Aimé Césaire (Critical edition of the complete works of Aimé Césaire). Presses AUF. 2009-present
Co-Editor of the e-text edition of Alexander Exquemelin’s Bucaneers of America. UVa e-text center. 2005
CV URL: http://people.virginia.edu/~ag7w/about/curriculum.html
Positions
- Ph.D. Candidate, University of Virginia
Education/Credentials
- B.A., Florida International University
- M.A., University of Virginia
Memberships/Affiliations
- Modern Language Association
Skills
Languages
Fluent in Spanish, French and Italian. Reading knowledge of German, Portuguese and Kreyol. HTML, CSS, XSLT and XML.
Mailing Address
120 Wahoo Way #114
Charlottesville
,VA
,22903
US
Direct Contact
| Email: | alexgil@virginia.edu |
|---|---|
| Home Phone: | (434) 563-3130 |
| Cell Phone: | (434) 547-9524 |
| Instant Message (IM): | elotroalex (Skype ) |
