News
Digital Humanities Conference
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 | Conferences, News | 7 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.
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 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.
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
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
Third Annual Sacred Leaves Graduate Symposium
Saturday, December 6th, 2008 | News | No Comments
February 19-20, 2009
University of South Florida, Tampa Library, Tampa, FL
Conference site
Posted by Susan Noakes
Conference News
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 | Conferences, News, Resources | No Comments
SCGMA will run 3 panels, including a roundtable forum, at the Medieval Institute’s 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies in May 2009.
SCGMA will also have a panel at the annual conference of the American Historical Association in 2010.