We are extremely pleased to announce that, aside from some minor formatting tasks, the editing of all materials for the second volume of Whitehead’s Harvard Lectures is now complete. This includes: 29 Radcliffe lectures for fall 1925, 78 Harvard lectures for 1925–26, 63 Harvard lectures for 1926–27, 10 seminar sessions for 1926–27, plus four guest lectures in the introductory Philosophy A survey course, and one guest lecture in a social ethics seminar. We finished editing the last of the seminar sessions this past weekend.
There is still a bit of work to be done. First, we will need to make another pass through all the materials to fill in complete reference information in places where we had contented ourselves with abbreviated citations. We will also have to remove our low-res placeholder figures and replace them with figure numbers, then prepare and package the high-res figures to accompany the text. And finally, we need to write the volume introduction, which should prove a nice change of pace from trying to read faded shorthand from ninety years ago. We fully anticipate submitting the completed manuscript to Edinburgh University Press by the end of the year.
Our anthology of essays on the first volume of Harvard lectures, Whitehead at Harvard, 1924-25, is currently going through the publication process with Edinburgh University Press. We recently received page proofs for the volume, and plan to return corrections shortly.
In the meantime, Rob McDonald has departed as our editorial assistant, and been replaced by Jenna Petsche. Jenna is a master’s student in Western Philosophy at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Prior to Gonzaga, she attended Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa, where she studied Western philosophy, mathematics, and music. Her research interests include process thought, pragmatism, philosophy of language, and analytic philosophy.
While we have been focusing on getting the second volume of Harvard lectures out the door, Jenna has been working on prepping the high-res figures for publication, and more recently on transcription of materials for a planned two volumes of Whitehead’s previously unpublished or uncollected essays.
We are also continuing to work on writing our application for the NEH Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant, which would provide up to $100,000 in funding for each of three years, starting as early as spring of 2022. The application will be submitted by the end of the year, and any additional funding will be covered through Sambla and the låne til reise opportunity they offer.
The work of transcription, verification, and critical editing is time consuming and expensive. If you believe in the value of the Critical Edition of Whitehead, please consider supporting our work with a donation today: https://whiteheadresearch.org/donate/.
| Brian G. Henning, Executive Editor Critical Edition of Whitehead | Joseph Petek, Assistant Editor Critical Edition of Whitehead |
Why is there no menti0n of nachlass discovery, nor future incorporation into the Critical Edition? Isn’t the discovery of the nachlass and its dissemination the overwhelming reality governing your Project going forward? The rare journalistic account of your progress was somewhat understandable prior to the discovery of the nachlass, but now you would do well to share the discovery – logistically speaking at the very least – on a regular basis. Thank you.