Women Writers Project

WWP was founded in 1986 by English faculty members at Brown University and literary scholars from other institutions, but those involved were discussing the project as early as 1984.{{Cite journal |last=Woods |first=Susanne |date=1994 |title=Recovering the Past, Discovering the Future: The Brown University Women Writers Project |journal=South Central Review |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=17–23 |doi=10.2307/3189986 |jstor=3189986 |issn=0743-6831 }} The project was initially created to address the lack of access to early English women writers before the Victorian era and promote new research on the recovered writings. Scholars combined research and analysis strategies from early modern women's studies and newly-emerging electronic text encoding computational methods to display and disseminate women's writing for new interpretations.{{Cite journal |last=Jakacki |first=Diane K. |date=2017 |title=Review of The Women Writers Project |journal=Early Modern Women |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=140–144 |doi=10.1353/emw.2017.0011 |jstor=26431484 |s2cid=115670782 |issn=1933-0065 }}

One of WWP's earliest transcriptions was a 15-volume series "Women Writers in English, 1350–1850," completed in collaboration with Oxford University Press, which were released in print and for electronic use.

In 1993, with the publication of the expanded Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines, the WWP began a three-year period of research on how to use the new guidelines to represent early women's texts. During this time, few new texts were added to the collection, but a new set of encoding methods and improved systems of documentation were implemented, as well as intensive training for those working on the project.

From 1996 onwards, new texts were once again encoded with the new TEI standards. In 1997, WWP received a $400,000 grant over three years from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop "Renaissance Women Online." The project studied the impact of electronic texts on teaching and research.{{Cite news |last=Sweeney |first=Tracie |date=August 26, 1996 |title=Mellon Foundation awards $400,000 to Brown's Women Writers Project |work=Brown University News Bureau |url=https://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/1996-97/96-014.html |access-date=October 31, 2023}} The project included the creation of introductory materials for 100 texts, currently constituting a sub-collection of WWO.{{Cite journal |last=Hagglund |first=Elizabeth |date=May 2000 |title=Review of the Brown University Women Writers Project and the Perdita Project |url=https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/reviews/hagglund.htm# |journal=Interactive Early Modern Literary Studies |pages=1–9}} In 1999, WWO was released online.

In 2013 the WWP moved from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, to Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Women Writers Online, or WWO, is the digital collection of early English women's writing ranging from 1526 to 1850 maintained by WWP.{{Cite journal |last1=Wernimont |first1=Jacqueline |last2=Flanders |first2=Julia |date=2010 |title=Feminism in the Age of Digital Archives: The Women Writers Project |journal=Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=425–435 |jstor=41337287 |issn=0732-7730 }} As of 23 October 2023, the textbase contains more than 450 individual works. Viewing and usage of the texts are available only to individuals or institutions with paid subscriptions. Information about the textbase, such as document metadata, encoding practices, funding records, are freely accessible. The WWP offers a free month-long trial, and the textbase is usually open-access for the month of March, in honor of Women's History Month.{{Cite book |last=Ozment |first=Kate |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.5425955 |title=Teaching the History of the Book |date=2023 |publisher=University of Massachusetts Press |isbn=978-1-62534-732-9 |pages=36–43|doi=10.2307/jj.5425955 |s2cid=260598325 }}

The focus of the corpus is currently on hard to find or generally inaccessible texts from both well known and more obscure writers. Within this focus is a sizeable collection of religious writing from the Renaissance as well as works of early fiction, drama, and political commentary. Digitized writers include, among many others:

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld
• Aphra Behn
• Margaret Cavendish
• Queen Elizabeth I
• Margaret Fell
• Felicia Hemans
• Katherine Parr
• Mary Sidney
• Mary Wollstonecraft

In March 2012, the WWP released a new interface for WWO that expanded user's search capabilities.

WWO uses digital humanities theory and practice to solicit new interpretations of genre and form within feminist, literary, and digital humanities fields. Queries are entered into the textbase's search interface to find occurrences or relevant tagged texts, and these can be further sorted and analyzed using "keyword-in-context" (KWIC) or "Gobbet" display options. Users can toggle between a broader display and "reader mode," as well as situate the writing on a time slider for historical and literary context.

Since 2004, WWP has hosted several text encoding workshops and seminars held throughout the year for various skill levels.{{Cite web |title=Past WWP Seminars and Workshops |url=https://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/outreach/seminars/event_list.html |access-date=2023-10-26 |website=www.wwp.northeastern.edu}} In March 2011, WWP held their first seminar on XSL Transformations (XSLT) at Brown University.{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}}{{Cite web |date=March 8, 2011 |title=Women in the Archives: a Conference on the Role of Archival Materials in the Study and Teaching of Early Women’s Writing : Brown University Library Center for Digital Scholarship |url=https://library.brown.edu/create/cds/women-in-the-archives-a-conference-on-the-role-of-archival-materials-in-the-study-and-teaching-of-early-womens-writing/ |access-date=2025-02-15 |website=library.brown.edu}}

From 2008 to 2011, the WWP also hosted an annual conference titled Women in the Archives in collaboration with the Sarah Doyle Women's Center and several other groups at Brown University. The opening seminar held on 22 March, 2008, titled Revealing Women, introduced the seminar series as an exploration of how archived writings of early English women shaped the approach to research and pedagogy on the subject.{{Cite web |title=Women in the Archives |url=https://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/outreach/conference/ |access-date=2023-10-26 |website=www.wwp.northeastern.edu}}

September 2012, then-director Julia Flanders delivered a presentation at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities discussing the support available for educators and researchers new to XML technologies and TEI encoding through the TEI Archiving, Publishing, and Access Service (TAPAS).{{Citation |last=Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities |title=Julia Flanders: "Small TEI Projects on a Large Scale: TAPAS" |date=2012-09-21 |url=http://archive.org/details/dd_2012_09_21 |access-date=2023-10-17}}

In addition to the Women Writers Online collection, the WWP also offers some public resources helpful for researchers and teachers interested in early modern women writers. These include orientations for getting the most out of researching within the online collection, possible assignments that take advantage of the online user interface, and syllabi submitted by professors that incorporate the online texts and focus on courses in Renaissance and early modern literature, women's studies, and related subjects.{{cite web|url=http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/wwo/teaching/|title=WWP teaching and learning}}

• Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, Wikipedia Visiting Scholar, Women Writers Project (2017–)June 21, 2018, [https://dsg.neu.edu/interview-talking-wikidata-with-rosie-stephenson-goodknight-visiting-wikipedia-scholar/ "Interview: Talking Wikidata with Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, Visiting Wikipedia Scholar"], by Caroline Klibanoff, Northeastern University, University Libraries, Digital Scholarship GroupApril 12, 2017, [https://wikiedu.org/blog/2017/04/12/rosie-stephenson-goodnight-visiting-scholar-at-northeastern-university/ "Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight, Visiting Scholar at Northeastern University"], by Ryan McGrady, Wiki Education FoundationMarch 18, 2017, [http://www.lib.neu.edu/snippets/?p=246058 "Welcome to our Wikipedia Visiting Scholar!"], by Amanda Rust, Northeastern University LibrariesMarch 16, 2017, [http://dsg.neu.edu/welcome-wikipedia-visiting-scholar/ "Welcome to our Wikipedia Visiting Scholar!"], by Amanda Rust, Northeastern University Digital Scholarship Group

• List of women writers

{{Reflist}}

• {{Official website|https://wwp.northeastern.edu/}}
• [http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/wwo/texts/textlist.author.html List of texts in Women Writers Online]

{{Northeastern University}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:Brown University

Category:Organizations for women writers

Category:Text Encoding Initiative

Category:1986 establishments in Rhode Island

Category:Organizations established in 1986

Category:Northeastern University

Category:Digital humanities projects