Digital Humanities Conference
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 | Conferences, News | 3 Comments
If the conference this past week at Barnard College (June 16-17, 2010) is any indication, medievalists are leading the way in the field of digital humanities. Illustrating this phenomenon, John Unsworth (Dean of Library and Information Science at Illinois) gave a plenary entitled, “Why have medievalists been early adopters of digital technology, and what can others learn from them?
The conference brought together participants from all over the world– a quick glance shows papers from the US, Canada, Wales, England, Scotland, France, Italy, Czech Republic, Australia, Denmark, Japan, and Switzerland.
Many of the papers focused on specific projects, like the Anglo-Norman online dictionary and the Global Chant Database project. Others dealt with teaching topics such as using GIS in teaching and research. Even work on very specific topics still managed to provoke ideas for use in other areas. Some of the projects that I found most exciting for SCGMA included the Digital Mappaemundi Resource at Drew University, using GIS in research (also from Drew University), and an interactive platform to teach medieval language that is currently under development by Serina Patterson of the University of British Columbia. The GIS project uses a tool called Simile from MIT (http://simile-widgets.org/exhibit/), a tool that should prove useful for the Discoveries of the Americas project under the SCGMA umbrella. Once the map is in place, users can add data and comment on specific spots. The digital mappaemundi project (http://bob.drew.edu/mappaemundi/) is an ambitious plan to digitize many medieval maps, which should prove invaluable to understanding how some medieval people envisioned the world. Finally, the language learning site, while very much at the beginning stages, is exciting for the social networking model that it employs.
Again, however, every session offered something valuable to the digital humanist, especially digital medievalists. An excellent conference!
Marguerite Ragnow: unique map collections
Thursday, June 17th, 2010 | News, Workshops | 2 Comments
On the afternoon of May 21st we walked to the James Ford Bell Library where curator Marguerite Ragnow was waiting for us for a presentation of the LIbrary’s wolrd-known collection of historical maps. The collection is arguably best known for being home to three rare portolan maps. As Lloyd Brown explains in his 1949 “The Story of Maps”, portolan charts “were much more than an aid to navigation; they were, in effect, the key to empire, the way to wealth”. This could well explain the rarity of these maps. One other factor is that these maps were made of vellum, which was expensive.
Ragnow is now planning the exhibition that will display - starting Sept. 15 - the most recent acquisition of the Library: the first map showing North America and China together on the same map, by Matteo Ricci. The exhibition will be entitled “Matteo Ricci and the Jesuits in China” and will likely generate a series of programs at UMN in relation to this piece. Still, and in the midst of the preparation to receive this rarity, Ragnow found the time to offer us a very informative tour of the Library’s historical maps. Pictured is one of the maps we saw: a beautiful plan of Istanbul published in a Jesuit Relation, Paris, 1668.
So you may want to plan a visit to UMN this Fall as starting in September, the already impressive James Ford Bell library collection will have Ricci’s new map, which may not be as valuable as the three portolan charts (valued at 3 to 10 million dollars, depending on the current market) but is unique in its meaning. Of the new historical map, James Bell said: “There couldn’t be any more iconic purchase for the library than the Ricci map”.
Marguerite Ragnow is the editor of TERRA INCOGNITAE a journal, published by the Society for the History of Discoveries.
Nina Ergin: all the senses
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 | Workshops | 1 Comment
For this Istanbul/Constantinople workshop, Nina Ergin traveled all the way from Koc University in Turkey back to UMN where she had attended her grad school. Ergin’s presentation focused on the olfactory, and audio aspects of the Ottoman Mosque Architecture, touching even on some taste elements of such spaces.
Her presentation stressed how a multi-sensorial portrait of the Ottomanist period is at the same time a multi-layered history of the built environment of that period.
_Surname-i Hümayun (Imperial Book of Processions)_, 1582, Topkapı Palace Library, H. 1344.
In the particular case of smell, the smellScape of sixteenth-century Ottoman mosques can be partially reconstructed based on documents such as charters about the administration and upkeep of the mosque complexes, which can be found in several archives in Turkey. These charters often document the employment of buhurcus or buhuris, who perfumed the mosque on holy days. The odors that worshippers sensed in the mosques included lamps fueled by olive oil and wooden Qur’an chests.
Ergin made a very interesting comment on the risk of losing sight of the urban quality of these architectural spaces in the (often shiny and perfect) spatial representation enabled by 3D software and architectural software. She noted that graffiti for example, was a urban element of such period, which is largely absent from 3D digital reproductions of these spaces.
By Ana Boa-Ventura
Mary Griep: using mixed media to beautifully re-create
Sunday, June 6th, 2010 | Workshops | No Comments
In the afternoon of Friday May 26, we had a treat waiting for us during lunch at the Alumni center. Mary Griep, a professor at the Art & Art History Department at St Olaf College, did a presentation on her “Sacred Spaces” project.
Griep’s work is part of collections throughout the United States. She was Field Supervisor for St. Olaf’s Term in Asia in 2000 and 2003. In 2004 she returned from a leave of absence in Chiang Mai, Thailand where she completed a series of large scale Southeast Asian temple drawings.
Watch this video to listen to Griep talk about her work (click on image; not on text links).
As the author says, her drawings ”are not purely descriptive. I feel that they start [...] with an accurate description of the place and then I think about what’s happened to those buildings over the years. Drawings can deal with space in terms of illusion but how does drawing deal with time?”
In her presentation during the workshop, Griep included beautiful drawings of:
- the Mosque Series (begun in 2007 as a study of the Ulu Camii (Great Mosque) of Divrigi, Turkey) ,
- the Southeast Asia series - works completed 2000 - 2004 while an artist-in-residence at The Center for the Study of Religion and Culture, Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
- the Mayan Series - 2005 - 10 - Late Classic Mayan sites from the Yucatan, Mexico
Brandon Schapekahm: serious games
Friday, May 21st, 2010 | Workshops | 1 Comment
Brandon Schapekahm is part of the Johnson Center for Simulation (JCS), which is part of the Pine Technical College in Pine City, Minnesota. JCS was founded as part of a regional project to extend East Central Minnesota’s technology infrastructure and services and their projects include scenario and procedural training applications, military immersive simulations, and game development.
For this session, Schapekahm chose some good examples of serious games that JCS has developed. An interesting discussion ensued, on comparing what Second Life and other 3D game engines such as UDK and Ogre can offer the historical reconstruction of historical sites. We saw some example of the kind of detailed textures allowed by UDL and discussed the pertinence of this vis-a-vis the social aspect of a (proprietary) platform such as Second Life.
I argued that there are always negotiations that need to be made: factors to be considered include the graphic resolution allowed , the accessibility, the proprietary/open sources aspects and the social aspect. I brought up Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking’s CHildren of Arcadia project where a 3d game engine much like Ogre was used to create a baroque environment reproducing Manhattan financial district. the environment can be modified by parameters from fed through the Internet such as the status of the stock market. This is something the IC project may be interested in looking into: rather than stock market we can have virtually any type of social media live ‘feeding’ the game environment, which would therefore be an organic entity in constant change.
This discussion triggered the idea that it would very useful to have the same historical site reconstructed using a number of engines (and approaches) so that the team can effectively evaluate the direction to pursue. We discussed the possibility of an award to be announced to both the social/serious games and the scholarly communities.
By Ana Boa-Ventura
Bissera Pentcheva: the aesthetics of the sea
Friday, May 21st, 2010 | Workshops | No Comments
The morning of the second day, Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford) made a wonderful and poetic presentation on ‘Hagia Sophia and the Asthetics of the Sea’, where she stressed the importance for the Byzantines of the integration of aural and visual experiences. Pentcheva stressed how central this interconnection of sound and sight needs to be in any modern attempt to experientially reproduce Hagia Sophia’s space.
She referred us to the texts by Deborah Howard on the importance of the interconnection of senses when considering the modern reproduction of sites.
William Phillips: “making the world available”
Friday, May 21st, 2010 | Workshops | No Comments
(from left to righ: Bissera Pentcheva, Susan Noakes, Rachel Gibson, Mary Griep, and Marguerite Ragnow.)
William Phillips, representing the SCGMA advisory board, gave a very autobiographic account of his interest in this project and community, with which he has been involved since the 1st workshop in 2007. He told us about his initial interests as a scholar in the Iberian Peninsula turned to a focus on trade and travel across the silk road in the Mongol times.
By then it was clear to him that there was the need for a global re-contextualization of the Middle Ages. It was around that time that Phillips first heard of the project through Geraldine Heng’s paper published on the Medieval Academy of America newsletter. Visiting the University of Texas at Austin, he had the opportunity of meeting and talking to some of the faculty members who had co-taught the course with Heng and participated in that unique experience.
Phillips stressed how current technologies, which can be easily applied to this project , such as GoogleEarth are accounts of the present and very incomplete and inaccurate (or even non-existing) accounts of the past.
On the other hand, examples that integrate this diachronic aspect of ‘places’ – such as the UCLA resconstrucion of Santiago de Compostela require large computing centers and that one actually is at UCLA to experience ‘being in Santiago’.
Phillips believes that one fundamental aspect of SCGMA will be to bring the global Middle Ages to anyone accessing from any laptop: “making the world available from our own computer units”.
By Ana Boa-Ventura
SCGMA: the Istanbul/Constantinople project kicks off!
Thursday, May 20th, 2010 | News, Workshops | 1 Comment
(Left to right: Brandon Schapekahm and Susan Noakes)
This week I am honored to be part of a meeting taking place at the Universiy of Minnesota. A small group of scholars is discussing the Istanbul/Constantinople project, part of a larger group and community: SCGMA.
SCGMA stands for the Scholarly Community for the Globalization of the Middle Ages, a multi-campus, international group of scholars from various disciplines including Anthropology, Archeology, History and Information Library Science and dedicated to the study of the Middle Ages.
The meeting is taking place at the University of Minnesota from May 19 thru the 23rd, and is the initial planning workshop for the SCGMA members working in the Istanbul/Constantinople project.
Susan Noakes is hosting this workshop. Unfortunately, Geraldine Heng cannot be present due to family reasons.
From Noakes’ introductory comments for the seminar, which I try to document next, I will stress two for those who cannot read this whole posting:
- The importance of friendship in academic collaboration and in the very genesis of a research project;
- SCGMA is a project with a 20 year timeline.
The genesis of a project
On Wednesday and kicking-off the workshop, Dr. Noakes made what Dr. William Phillips called the most detailed account of SCGMA genesis he had heard so far. It was also a very auto-biographic account of how Noakes met Geraldine Heng after reading her 2004 article entitled “Global Interconnections: Imagining the World, 500–1500″, reporting the experience of designing and teaching a course in global middle ages at the University of Texas in Austin.
A friendship developed between the two, as well as a wish to repeat that, which today would be called a very expensive curriculum! In fact, in spite of its size UT Austin did not have 6 scholars ready to teach this course. So, three scholars traveled from other parts of the country to teach their sections of the course. Given the cost of the curriculum, the College has not been able to afford to repeat this experience, which several students have referred to as a ‘life-changing experience’.
As Noakes stressed, the idea of studying the middle ages globally rather than European really started when Heng stated her course at the University of Texas at Austin. Heng wanted to begin pushing the borders of medieval studies and re-contextualize them.
Around the time that Heng conducted the course, Noakes became director of the Center for Medieval Studies at UMN. She invited Heng to UMN and both met with James Parente, Dean of Col. Of Liberal Arts. Lee Gayle DUbro, who headed the Graduate school UMN was able to fund a seminar that Heng conducted.
A 20 year timeline
During their meeting at UMN, Heng and Noakes thought that it would be good to have an initial focus on travel, trade, city planning; also the history of science as practiced outside the western as well as within the western world.
After the UMN seminar, both Heng and Noakes identified who was interested and who would have enough a commitment to this large project. This project will involve the massive digitalization of collections using methods that are not always recognized in this field’s scholarship. Only a focus on research could draw the commitment to the project by young faculty and doctoral students.
As Noakes noted though, archeologists, anthropologists of acoustics… are not used to working together. So these groups need to develop modes of collaboration and etiquette by developing ways of sharing, attribution, etc… in sum by investing in a commitment to work through and around those issues!
For all these reasons, this will be a project that will need to count on the continued commitment from a body of scholars, probably traversing several generations.
I will stop here - Susan Noakes offered a truly insightful recount of how SCGMA came to be. There could be so much more to say.
For this week, the short term goal for this SCGMA planning workshop is to get the Istambul/Constantinople project off the ground. One of the reasons to start with this are is that not many medievalists are up-to-date in the Byzantium.
One point I would like to leave my reader with is that both Noakes and Heng are adamant about ensuring the full participation from scholars originating from the areas being studied. As a rule of thumb, the decision was made right from the start that at least one third of participants should be from the part of the world being studied.
By Ana Boa-Ventura
SCGMA & Early Ottoman Workshop
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 | News, Workshops | No Comments
The initial planning workshop for the Constantinople / Istanbul project (part of the Scholarly Community for the Globalization of the Middle Ages) will take place at the University of Minnesota from May 19 to May 23.
We will be blogging the workshop as it takes place!
Location:
- History Department conference Center | 1210 Heller Hall | University of Minnesota
Dates:
- May 19 - 23, 2010
Digital Humanities Observatory - Dublin, June 2010
Friday, February 19th, 2010 | Resources, Workshops | No Comments
If you happen to be in Europe this Summer you may consider attending the Digital Humanities Observatory Summer School in Dublin.
This year, like last year, the Summer School happens in conjunction with NINEs and the EpiDoc Collaborative… And this year a novelty are mid-week, and one-day workshops.
A number of subsidised places are available for attendees at HSIS institutions. For more information about these places, please contact the DHO Consultative Committee representative at your institution. Names of representatives can be found at: http://dho.ie/committee
Full details of the workshop strands, lectures and guest speakers can be found on the Summer School website at: www.dho.ie/ss2010
One word on the EpiDoc collaborative on the next post!
Posted by: Ana Boa-Ventura
Digital media and learning competition to participate in President Obama new Science-Education effort.
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | News | No Comments
This just in… [quote from HASTAC-web listserv]
“HASTAC is playing a major role in the new White House campaign to encourage students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
The third-annual Digital Media and Learning Competition will award $2 million in support of participatory learning experiences that incorporate STEM principles. The competition launches Dec. 14 and winners will be announced in spring 2010.”
The competition is funded by the MacArthur Foundation, and will be administered by HASTAC. Awards will be given in two categories: “ 21st Century Learning Lab Designers” and ”Game Changers” awards.
Call for Papers: Essays on Welsh Mythology in Popular Culture
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | News | No Comments
Essays On Welsh Mythology in Popular Culture
Kristin Noone (UC Riverside) and Audrey Becker (Marygrove College), eds.
In recent years, interest in Welsh mythology and legendary figures has grown exponentially in popular culture, with appearances in diverse arenas ranging from fantasy fiction to role-playing games, from children’s literature to tourist sites and even Celtic-inspired rock music and heavy metal. We are seeking essays that explore the uses and appropriations of these legends into “popular” spaces, hoping to trace the patterns of interpretation and reinscription to offer some insight into what meaning “Welsh mythology” retains in an increasingly postmodern, global society.
Sample topics (contributors are by no means limited to these) may include:
Depression-era fantasy and Evangeline Walton’s Mabinogion Tetralogy;
children’s literature and Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising sequence;
Diana Wynne Jones’s otherworldly Wales in Howl’s Moving Castle;
Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series and/or the film The Black Cauldron;
translations and adaptations of Welsh legends over time;
Welsh influences in online role-playing games such as Mabinogi or World of Warcraft, or action-adventure games such as Legend of Zelda;
the 2003 Welsh film and graphic novel Y Mabinogi
Twm Sion Cati, or the Welsh Robin Hood;
Welsh mythology in music, for example the Moody Blues’ “Are You Sitting Comfortably?” or Spring’s “Grail”;
tourism and tourist sites such as Caerleon or Machynlleth
McFarland & Co. has expressed interest in publishing this collection as part of the Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy/Folklore and Mythology Series; therefore, we will be submitting an official proposal once we have made final decisions on all submissions.
Please send titles and descriptions (600-700 words, or full papers if completed), of proposed essay contributions to Kristin Noone (kristin.noone@email.ucr.edu) or Audrey Becker (abecker@marygrove.edu) by September 1, 2009.
Kalamazoo 2010: Sponsored Session - SCGMA
Friday, August 28th, 2009 | Conferences, News | No Comments
“Global Progeny: Medievalisms in Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature” - (Kalamazoo 2010)
Sponsored Session–SCGMA
Children’s and young adults’ fantasy works are often rife with
medievalisms, and in the past few decades the impact of globalization has emerged in the expanding scope of fantasy worlds.
For example, children’s literature often features a big desert to the south inhabited by turbaned, scimitar-wielding neighbors who are typically enemies. In recent years, these “others” have been brought to the forefront and are heroes/allies rather than villains.
Tamora Pierce’s feminist children’s fantasy series Protector of the Small, for instance, includes a cultural exchange with the “Yamani Islands’—basically a representative of medieval Japan. In addition, Linda Sue Park’ book A Single Shard (2002 Newberry Medal winner) details the life of a girl in mid- to late- 12th century Korea, while Kevin Crossley Holland writes about a boy’s experiences on the Fourth Crusade, and a girl’s on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in his Arthur trilogy and its companion book, Gatty’s Tale.
While we’ve detailed modern interpretations in this proposal, this session invites papers not only on modern re-interpretations of global perspectives of the medieval, but also presentations on medieval fantasy texts written outside of Britain/Europe addressed to or focused on children and young adults.
Please submit a 250-300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by 15 September 2009.
————
“Globalizing the Middle Ages?” - (Kalamazoo 2010)
The Scholarly Community for the Globalization of the Middle Ages’
mission statement indicates that it “seeks to reconceive the field of Medieval Studies not in terms of Europe alone but also in relation to Africa, the Middle East, Eurasia, and Asia.”
As scholars, we strive to bring a larger perspective into our work as well as our classrooms. When most of Medieval Studies is focused on western culture, how can we incorporate a global perspective—whether we study non-western texts directly or compare eastern and western texts as part of our studies?
This panel is open both to presentations on how to incorporate global texts/ideas into scholarly work and class settings, and also to papers which analyze global perspectives of western or non-western texts.
Please submit a 250-300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by 15 September 2009.
Visualizing the genesis of a medieval text, layer by layer
Monday, August 24th, 2009 | Resources | No Comments
 LLC 24 (3) cover |
In the study of urban life during the Middle Ages in Europe, municipal statutes can provide great insight. The latest issue of the Literary and Linguistic Computing Journal includes an article by Malte Rehbein (National University of Ireland) entitled “Reconstructing the textual evolution of a medieval manuscript”. The article shows how a multi-layered text can be used to organically show how a text evolved: in this case, the text is Göttingen’s ‘kundige bok’. Full reference: Rehbein, M. (2009). Reconstructing the textual evolution of a medieval manuscript. Literary and Linguistic Computing 2009 24(3):319-327 Posted by: Ana Boa-Ventura |
Visiting SDSC!
Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | Resources, Workshops | No Comments
…baby and teddy bear included!:)
Left to right: Astrid Ogilvie (U of Colorado), GH, Stephennie Mulder with baby Daniela (U of Texas), William Phillips (U of Minnesota), Benjamin Liu (U of California, Riverside), and Roger Hart (U of Texas).
Photos by Alan Craig
SCGMA Zotero 2.0 Group
Sunday, May 17th, 2009 | News | No Comments
With the release of Zotero 2.0, it’s now possible and easy to share bibliographies between people with similar interests. You simply need to register for an account, then find a relevant group or create your own. So, I created an SCGMA group that I hope you will join. It should allow us to share our current research interests, our finds from various databases, and discover new things to read. Of course, Zotero only works with Firefox, but since it is the best browser on the market, there’s yet another incentive to switch for those who haven’t.
While Zotero was relatively useful and interesting before, the bibliographies compiled through it were stuck on a single computer and restricted to a single person. Since both of those limitations are now gone, it promises to be a far more useful tool. 2.0 is still in beta, which means it may well have bugs remaining, but it should be useable already and will only improve as the bugs get ironed out. So far, the sync functionality works just fine for me.
Right now I’ve only shared one item (the book I most recently finished that’s also directly relevant to the Middle Ages), but I will continue adding items as I research and test out this new version. Because of its previous limitations, I had installed and tried Zotero, but never relied on it much. Now, however, since I’m trying to move almost everything I do onto the cloud (I work from at least 3 different machines), I suspect I’ll find it much more valuable. And, as with most collaborative tools, the more people who join in and try it out, the more useful the collected data becomes.
Posted by Michael Widner
Online archives on manuscripts: the popular vote
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment
WSJ page showing the 'Discuss' section
You may have received an email from me when I added you to this SCGMA blog. I maintain this blog, and in fact my interest in the Global Middle Ages project has a social media spotlight.
This is why last Friday’s May 8 Wall Street Journal article entitled ‘The Next Age of Discovery’ resonated with me… in particular, a small section featured on the side-bar, under “Discuss”…
The article describes some of the digital techniques used in the recovery of manuscripts. If you scroll down, under the “Discuss” section you can read (as you can see on the screenshot):”What are the best online archives for historical documents, art and artifacts? Share your favorite sources at Journal Community.”
If you select that area, you will be taken to a blog-looking section where you can post your favorite archives. By 4PM CST of May 12 there were (only?) 3 suggestions by readers.
I could not stop wondering that we do not see this type of popular vote in this type of topic. Though it is arguable how ‘popular’ the recommendations of the Wall Street Journal readers are… I was still intrigued about tools out there to assess (and effectively visualize) popular preferences in topics that are often thought of as being exclusive to the academic arena… and how that information is being incorporated in academic research.
Your thoughts are welcome, as always!
Posted by Ana Boa-Ventura
SCGMA scholars in Pittsburgh!
Friday, May 8th, 2009 | Workshops | No Comments
Photo by Alan Craig
SCGMA scholars return from Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center workshop (left to right: Anne Zimo, David Crane, Susan Noakes, Gabriela Ilnitchi Currie). Not pictured: Herbert Kessler. The group spent two days learning about TeraGrid and the possibilities it offers for research on the Global Middle Ages, especially tracing through iconography the migration of musical instruments westward through Western Asia and the Balkans and the mapping of Mediterranean trade and communications. Professor Kessler, President of the Medieval Academy of America, discussed prospects for connecting medievalists working in digital technology with TeraGrid.
Posted by Susan Noakes
Call for papers: Mapping Medieval Geographies
Thursday, April 30th, 2009 | Conferences, News | No Comments
Thanks to Dr. Anne Hedeman at UIUC we are posting this information on the following conference taking place next month
Mapping Medieval Geographies: Cartography and geographical thought in the Latin West and beyond: 300-1600
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Thursday May 28th - Saturday May 30th 2009
Full program Save the dates!
Posted by Ana Boa-Ventura
metadata for medievalists: 2 workshops
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | News | No Comments
The Medieval Academy of America’s Committee on Electronic Resources is organizing two workshops on metadata specifically in medieval studies.
If you’re working with data collections and/or in text analytics in this area you may want to attend any of these workshops, which will take place during the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, MI - May 2009).
Both workshops will be on Thursday, May 7 (sessions 54 and 166)
Complete conference schedule
Posted by Ana Boa-Ventura
Historical maps on GoogleEarth
Monday, March 2nd, 2009 | News | No Comments
GoogleEarth skipped the 3rd dimension and went straight into the 4th one. If you want to see historical maps - and if you have GoogleEarth installed in your computer, - you simply need to expand the Featured Content -> Rumsey Historical Maps (Layers panel).
Unfortunately, no Medieval maps are available yet. Some of the earliest maps available are of Asia 1710 , Paris 1716 and Africa 1787.
However, it would be technically possible to have a Middle Ages map. In fact, how interesting would it be to have the our perception of the world through time?…
I am not sure whether the modeling required for these layers that juxtapose to Earth are flexible enough to allow a justaposition of the Earth the way that Lactantius or Cosmas Indicopleustes proposed…
And this is where Digital Humanities becomes so wonderfully complex. A historical problem becomes a problem of Mathematics, CAD and programming. How to juxtapose a flat texture to an interactive 3D model?:) Maybe virtual worlds such as Second LIfe offer some interesting approaches, as they constanly need to map 3D structures on 2D surfaces.
Comments are welcome!
Posted by Ana Boa-Ventura
Best practices - scholarly use of historical digital images
Sunday, March 1st, 2009 | News, Resources | No Comments
At this time, I would like to call your attention to a recently Call for Open Access to Digital Images issued by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG).
The set of recommendations are aimed namely at the publication of historical digital images, which are core to the GMA project - hence, this post…
The MPIWG, which co-initiated the OpenAccess movement, just launched on its website a set of recommendations on the scholarly use of visual media. The material is the result of careful consultations the Institute conducted with scholars and representatives of leading museums, libraries, image archives and publishers.
More than best practices, the documents now published aims at creating “a network of mutual trust and cooperation between scholars and curators of cultural heritage collections with a view to facilitating access to and the scholarly use of visual media”.
This set of best practices are downloadable from the Institute’s website.
The document is addressed at curators - for example it exhorts them to accommodate scholars’ needs by porving access to hig-resolution images for a low cost (or no cost). It also addresses scholars exhorting them to recognise museums and libraries as the custodians of physical objects of cultural heritage. Furthermore, the document stresses the importance of the role of all stakeholders int he process as “guarantors of authenticity”.
Posted by Ana Boa-Ventura
Seeking partners in Canada and the UK for a NEH+NSF+JISC+ SSHRC co-funded grant: Digging into Data
Monday, February 9th, 2009 | News | No Comments
A group of researchers at UT Austin - in the Humanities and Advanced Computing areas - is seeking partners in Canada and the UK interested in applying to the Digging into Data Challenge, an international grant co-funded by the research agencies you may read on the subject.
Announcement of the grant here
Deadlines
Letter of intent - March 15
Final application(application form not yet available ) - July 15.
Our interests revolve around the topic of Holy War. We will use a number of databases (JSTOR being one of them) that we will query using a number of text mining processes. Depending on the specific interest of your institution we may look at the same databases and use
different processes or look other aspects of “war”- Cold War, colonial wars, etc.
If interested please comment this post or email anaventura@mail.utexas.edu or Dr. Geraldine Heng at heng@mail.utexas.edu
Thank you
Posted by Ana Boa-Ventura
Seminar at UCLA - Mediterranean Studies: East and West at the Center, 1050-1600
Monday, January 26th, 2009 | Conferences, News | No Comments
Mediterranean Studies: East and West at the Center, 1050-1600
Mediterranean Studies: East and West at the Center, 1050-1600 is a series of seminars organized by Professor Zrinka Stahuljak (UCLA French and Francophone Studies, and CMRS Associate Director for Medieval Studies) and funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
[The seminar] “will consider the Mediterranean as a geographical and environmental entity, the center for both East and West, and the site of a world system rather than a line of separation between the emerging “West” and an exotic “East.” ”
Schedule for upcoming seminars:
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Monday, January 26, 2009, 3:30-6:30 pm, Royce 306 |
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Monday, February 2, 2009, 3:30-6:30 pm, Royce 306 |
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Monday, February 9, 2009, 4-7 pm, Humanities Building 193 |
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009, 4:30-7:30 pm, Royce 306 |
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Monday, February 23, 2009, 4:00-7:00 pm, Humanities Building 193 |
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Monday, March 2, 2009, 3:30-6:30 pm, Royce 306 |
Posted by Ana Boa-Ventura
Hindu Hagiography, Secularism, Islam and Resistance
Sunday, January 11th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments
This is Ishan Chakrabarti, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. Broadly speaking, I work on medieval and early modern literature from South Asia to the Middle East (Sanskrit, Bangla, Hindi-Urdu, Farsi, Arabic) focusing on themes of religion and cultural difference. I am currently working on furthering two connected projects.
The first of these traces Muslim figures through a variety of Vaishnava Hindu hagiographical compendia produced in the 16th and 17th centuries, immediately before the colonial encounter. The majority of the Muslims one encounters in these texts are kings. The kings have heard of the fame of the poet-saints and summon them to court, asking them to sing their devotional songs and perhaps a praise-poem for the king. The saints all refuse to do so, rejecting the king’s authority by adhering to the higher authority of Krishna. The kings attempt to give the saints gifts, but the only gift the saint-poet wants is to never have to see the king ever again. The king, after getting over being angry, realizes that this refusal of power is the mark of true devotion.
Contemporary South Asian politics would read the above as disclosing communalism. It would see in this narrative proof that the origins of the present-day communal strife between Hindus and Muslims lie in the pre-modern period, and that the blame for such lies with Muslim rule. In this vision, our saints would use Hinduism to resist Islam, embodied in the figure of the Muslim king. But we must read otherwise, and we must do so for a whole host of reasons: political, literary, theoretical and more.
I track narratives in the same texts where the saints meet Hindu kings. In those narratives, the exact same things happen, in the exact same order: Hindu saints resist Hindu kings. The tale isn’t about communalism at all, but rather centers on devotion and asceticism as a mode of life that necessarily rejects power. The incidental Islamic identity of some of these kings is merely that: incidental.
The second of my projects crosses over from the world of the saint to the world of the king and examines Farsi and Arabic texts on ethics and governance in attempt to sketch a genealogy of another secularism. I understand secular to mean not just a division of powers between religious institutions and the state, but also to mean a particular attitude toward religious difference (tolerance partially describes such an attitude, but is inadequate to a theorization of the secular) and the elaboration of an ethics without direct reference to any particular religion.
The texts I read are Islamic philosopher al-Ghazzali’s 12th century text Nasihatu l-Muluk (Counsel for Kings) and Nasiruddin Tusi’s 13th century Axlaq-i Nasiri (Nasirean Ethics). The kings represented in the hagiographies extensively studied such texts: in governing over a largely non-Muslim population, the techniques of difference-negotiation theorized in these texts informed their praxis.
al-Ghazzali’s concern over the role of the Caliph (the religious head) in state affairs opened the discourse of secularism. In his theorization, the Sultan (political leader) had all constituent authority, but was to be appointed by the Caliph, and had to swear an oath of allegiance to him. It was a compromise between State and Religion that did not dispense with Religion altogether but moved it away from the work of the State, that is, from governance. In practice, the Caliph’s role was reduced to that of a figurehead: Saljuq-era coins depicted the Caliph’s face even as the Saljuq regents – and not the Caliph – governed the city of Baghdad, the seat of the Caliphate.
Another nexus for secularism lies in al-Ghazzali’s treatment of what I call Islam’s “virtuous pagans,” to borrow a metaphor from the European Middle Ages. al-Ghazzali highlights the pre-Islamic (Sassanian) Zoroastrian kings of Persia as the highest exemplars of justice. In his history, the Prophet Muhammad is glad to have the good fortune to be born during the reign of Anushirvan the Just. The “virtuous pagans” in al-Ghazzali’s text serve as a model of conduct for Muslims, and this influence permeates Islam from its very origins.
Nasiruddin Tusi, commissioned by Mongol non-Muslim kings, theorizes an ethics independent of religion that focuses on the concept of Love/Justice. The two are related insofar as Justice is the juridical name of Love: Justice supplements and makes up for the fact that Love does not necessarily exist between all subjects.
Tusi never mentions the word ‘Islam’ and only states that the king needs proper religion: he does not need to be of the proper religion. In order to sustain an irretrievably plural society consisting of many religions, the king must dispense justice without attending to religious difference, and the subjects in turn must love one another disregarding their differences. But such Love/Justice, aimed at the sustenance of the state, ends up as another name of power.
This is where my two projects connect.
The Muslim kings of the hagiographies utilize the Nasirean ethic: they tolerate, dispense justice to, love and appreciate their Hindu subjects. They believe that non-Muslims can be exemplars of an ethical life, and divorce their acts of governance from religion. This is why such kings call Hindu saints to their court. But the subjects do not return this love/justice: the saints refuse their audience, reject the king and ask only that he never come to them again. What happened to the subject’s love for the king?
I propose that devotion – called bhakti in Hindi, Bangla and other Indic tongues – forms another ethics: an ethics of resistance to power. As noted earlier, this has nothing to do with communal politics. The ascetic has no interest in sustaining an elitist and statist politics/ethics, but desires rather to upset and reverse the power structure of the king. The ascetic, then, resists such power, and uses religion to articulate this reversal.
Is this resistance limited to Hinduism? Certainly not. The word used for Love in Tusi is muhabbat, but there is another: `ishq. That word is more central to the world of devotional Islam (Sufi or otherwise). I wonder if those Sufi orders that resisted temporal powers did not articulate their resistance in terms of this other love, another love that perhaps – like bhakti - would not just be a name for power.
Thanks for reading, and I openly welcome any comments, criticism or suggestions. I have much more written on all of the ideas above, and if anyone would like to read it, I would be happy to send copies.
My next post will examine manuscript differences in the hagiography of Kabir: a non-Hindu and non-Muslim ascetic consistently eulogized in Hindu hagiographies. I seek to relate these minute shifts in manuscript to a history of communal difference. Such a task is all the more crucial given the urgency of the present political situation in India, where, in the name of fighting terrorism, communalism and hatred are once again on the rise.
Posted by Ishan Chakrabarti