The Theatre Library Association is now accepting plenary proposals for the 2013 ASTR/TLA Conference in Dallas, Texas, Nov. 7-10, 2013. The emphasis of this conference is to explore the research possibilities available by interacting with large digitized datasets in conjunction with theater and the performing arts.

The emergence of large digitized collections of humanities resources has made it possible to meaningfully address research questions that previously would have taken many lifetimes to answer. However, theater historians have undertaken relatively little of this kind of work. Despite large datasets of digitized theater reviews, industry news, and production information [cast lists in Playbill Vault or Internet Broadway Database], theater scholars have by and large continued to do close readings of texts and events – and have not yet attempted what Franco Moretti has called distant reading: analyzing not one small set of texts, but an entire corpus of digitized data.

For further information, visit: http://www.tla-online.org/events/conferences/tlaplenarycfp.html
Deadline for proposals is February 15, 2013.