The fragile, crinkling paper of centuries-old American literature can be found in libraries across the nation. But with increased access to digital archives, individuals can discover even more on their own.
Zachary Turpin, a University of Idaho assistant American literature professor, said he is in the early stages of writing a book about digital archivists and their work. He is influenced by potentially lost novels of Walt Whitman from the 1850s, as well as other authors.
“It’s fascinating,” Turpin said. “It makes me realize there is so little that we really know about our own literature — not only books, but periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets — that is miles and miles deep. Now is a really interesting time to be able to start excavating that literature.”
He said it’s presumed Whitman stopped writing fiction in the early 1850s, but there are all sorts of published manuscripts, especially in old newspapers, that indicate there might be more.
Austin Maas | Courtesy
Turpin pours over texts and facts to find what is interesting and compelling, as well as anything new.
He said plenty of people throughout history have been researchers, archive rats, book hunters or collectors. But many just repeat the same sort of work.
“It is good, strange work — and to me, that is always a good sign,” Turpin said. “When it starts to feel strange, I think that’s when it gets productive.”
Turpin said he became interested in archives and lost literature organically, and sort of fell into it. After playing around with key words and phrases in digital archives, he said he found the work to be productive and actually possible.
“Everyone we know are really key-word attuned people every day, if not every hour,” Turpin said. “It starts to really hone your mind down to this very specific, multi-tool mindset. With digital archives, that’s all you need, because it’s like you’re already pre-trained.”
During his time as a doctoral candidate, he said he was given leeway to pursue what he wanted, and pursuing lost American literature didn’t require any funding.
“I used to call it an obsession, but maybe that is too much of a pathological word,” Turpin said. “It is something that keeps me up at night … I don’t find it easy to stop thinking about — just the mountain of unknown literature out there.”
He said the great thing about working with UI students is how many possibilities there are for everyone. When he was working toward his doctorate, he said felt like he was perhaps joining the cleanup crew of American literature, with some odds and ends one might find or reinterpret.
“Because archives are increasingly opening their doors and digitizing, it’s almost like we are entering this golden age of rediscovery that’s really great,” Turpin said. “What is particularly nice about it is that it is increasingly democratized — you don’t need to have travel funds (or anything like that) — you can do this sort of stuff from your kitchen.”
Turpin said students should specifically care about this type of work because it puts American literature and literary culture in their hands — something he tries to teach them.
“Oftentimes when you take say a literature class at the University of Idaho, it can feel like you’re receiving something — you’re being given cultural knowledge and critical understanding — which is true,” Turpin said. “But this is a good way of inverting the class dynamic and saying, or demonstrating, that students are going to go on to determine what we mean when we say American literature.”
Austin Maas, a former student of Turpin’s and his co-instructor last semester, is not a digital archivist, but said he admires the profession. He said digital archive work requires a certain amount of rigor that not a lot of other professions can handle — dretrudging through document after document to find something.
However, Maas said it is much easier than it sounds, even though it is tedious and takes time. Most digital arhcivists utilizes software and search for key words or phrases.
“Some people may wonder if literature is stored digitally, then how is it lost?” Maas said. “So many writers wrote under different names, or quite often published their work without names at all. A large part of digital archivist work is not just finding the work, but connecting the work to its actual author.”
For anyone who is interested in learning bits and pieces about history, digital archivist work is like a fun house, Maas said.
English as a profession, or just as a hobby — whether it be creative writing or digital archive studies — is fascinating because it continues the process of rearticulating what it means to be human, he said.
Maas said creative writing is the articulation of experience, while literature is the critical thinking ability that allows someone to understand different experiences — no matter if they are personal or someone else’s.
“As a mentor in my life, Zach has shown me that not only is a future that I imagine for myself possible, but it’s totally doable if I have a bit of curiosity, compassion and really strong opinions about trashy TV shows,” Maas said. “That is Zach. He is the most compassionate and curious professor I know. He gives so much of his time to students outside of class — I don’t think I have ever texted him to get coffee and had him say ‘no’.”
Allison Spain can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter@AllisonSpain1