ANNOUNCEMENT: A Complete Works Critical Hybrid Edition of ruth weiss
We are ecstatic to announce that The Austrian Science Fund has granted EBSN member Thomas Antonic funding for a project to create a critical hybrid edition of the complete works of ruth weiss (1928–2020, name always in lower case). The edition brings together 20 volumes of poetry published by the Beat poet between 1958 and 2013, as well as 12 plays. Most of weiss’ volumes of poetry have been out of print for decades. The edition will also collect around 200 poems that appeared in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, etc. between 1950 and 2019 for the first time. An edition of ruth weiss’ unpublished works of approximately the same scope is anticipated as a follow-up project.
The project will produce a multi-volume annotated print edition alongside an online open-access edition with extended commentary and features. The online platform will include digitized original manuscripts, typescripts, first editions, and multimedia files such as recordings of weiss’ Jazz & Poetry performances, her film and stage work, and interviews. These resources will be freely accessible to both researchers and the general public. Additionally, the platform will offer detailed annotations and essays, providing context about weiss’ life, literary contributions, and cultural significance. The annotated factual information and chronology about weiss’ life and times will serve to further contextualize weiss’ works in terms of biography, literary history and literary sociology.
This pioneering project is a significant core research contribution to Beat Studies, specifically to textual recovery and preservation, the biographical examination of female Beat authors, in addition to its adding to the corpus of research into cross-genre literary processes in general. Moreover, it will provide resources for further research in a wide range of fields, such as Transnational Beat Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Exile Studies, and Ecocriticism. It is the first time that a complete, hybrid edition of works by a poet of the Beat movement has been compiled.
The project will run from June 2025 to May 2029, with funding of € 474,000 (approximately US $ 495,000). It will be conducted by Thomas Antonic at the “Archive of Contemporary Arts,” a research center within the Department for Arts and Cultural Studies at Danube University in Krems an der Donau, near Vienna, Austria. The project will collaborate closely with the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. A key international collaboration partner is Estíbaliz Encarnación Pinedo, the reknowned expert on female Beat poets and co-editor of the essay collection ruth weiss: Beat Poetry, Jazz, Art (De Gryuter, 2021).
Grant DOI: https://doi.org./10.55776/PAT4936124
