Nathan Houser, director of the Institute for American Thought Santayana Edition project staff: (left to right) Anita Snyder, Kristine Frost and Johanna Resler IAT staff include (left to right) John McKivigan, Nathan Houser and Leigh Fought.

The three projects—the Frederick Douglass Papers, the Peirce Edition Project and the Santayana Edition project are housed within the IU School of Liberal Arts’ newly established Institute for American Thought (IAT).

• The Douglass Papers project edits the writings of a man who escaped bondage as an African-American slave in the early 1880s and rose to fame as an abolitionist.

• Peirce Edition Project researchers are editing a chronological collection of the writings of Charles S. Peirce, the 19th- and 20th-century scientist, mathematician and philosopher, long considered one of America’s greatest thinkers.

• The Santayana Edition project is editing a 21-volume of the works of philosopher and poet George Santayana.

“These projects are producing works that will stand as landmarks of American thought and social development for generations to come,” said Nathan Houser, director of the IAT. “They are preserving and providing, both to future Americans and the peoples of the world, some of the pivotal works that have defined the American mind.”

Researchers work from the authors’ original manuscripts or from copies, playing literary detectives piecing together what they believe was the author’s intended text.

The end result—the process is known as scholarly or professional editing—is a publication as close to the author’s original writings as possible.

“We look at all external evidence and decide what we believe was the author’s final intention for a book,” said Kristine Frost, associate editor of the Santayana papers.

The researchers’ evidence includes various editions of a publication and the authors’ correspondence to publishers. Appendices in each publication include notations of any and all variations among different manuscripts of a work, along with any changes made in order to help the modern reader to understand the vocabulary, geographical settings and historical context mentioned.

“Over time, (readers) lose the sense of what exactly was going on,” said Leigh Fought, a Douglass researcher.

Each year, the Douglass, Peirce and Santayana papers attract national and international scholars to the IUPUI campus. To date, scholars from 25 other countries have done research using holdings in the three projects.

“IUPUI has built a reputation as a center for research on American thought, a center of scholarly editions,” Houser said.

The work is slow and meticulous. Ribbons of photocopies of Peirce’s writings hang from rods in the office suite that houses the Peirce papers. The paper chains aid researchers in chronicling the writings and sorting out duplications.

The National Endowment for Humanities recently awarded $100,000 each to the Frederick Douglass Papers Project and the Peirce Edition Project in the first round of “We the People” funding. The Peirce Edition Project also received an additional $50,000 in matching funds over a two-year period.

The Santayana project is being considered for a second-round grant under the “We the People” program, which encourages the teaching, study and understanding of American institutions, history and culture.

The IAT editing projects not only make the texts more understandable for modern minds, but also provide ready access to significant publications.

The IAT was established this year when the three editorial projects were consolidated with several interrelated academic units, including the Center for American Studies, the American Studies Program and the graduate certificate program in professional and technical editing.

http://www.iupui.edu/~douglass/

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/web/index.htm

http://www.iupui.edu/~santedit/