Digital Classicist
Encyclopedia
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
and to ancient world studies more generally. The project claims the twin aims of bringing together scholars and students with an interest in computing and the ancient world, and disseminating advice and experience to the Classics discipline at large. The Digital Classicist was founded in 2005 as a collaborative project based at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
and the University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
, with editors and advisors from the Classics discipline at large.
Membership
Many notable Classicists and Digital Humanists are on the advisory board of the Digital Classicist, including Richard Beacham (of the King's Visualisation Lab), Alan Bowman (Professor of Ancient HistoryAncient history
Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...
at University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
), Gregory Crane (of the Perseus Project
Perseus Project
The Perseus Project is a digital library project of Tufts University that assembles digital collections of humanities resources. It is hosted by the Department of Classics. It has suffered at times from computer hardware problems, and its resources are occasionally unavailable...
), Bernard Frischer (of the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory), Michael Fulford
Michael Fulford
Michael Gordon Fulford, CBE, FBA, is a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading,He studied Archaeology and Latin at Southampton University, where he was also awarded a doctorate...
(Professor of Archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at University of Reading
University of Reading
The University of Reading is a university in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The University was established in 1892 as University College, Reading and received its Royal Charter in 1926. It is based on several campuses in, and around, the town of Reading.The University has a long tradition...
), Willard McCarty (winner of the Lyman Award
Richard Wall Lyman
Richard Wall Lyman is an American educator, historian, and professor at the Stanford University School of Education.He served as the provost of Stanford University between 1967 and 1970. He then served as president of Stanford University from 1970 to 1980...
and Professor of Humanities Computing at Department of Digital Humanities), James O'Donnell (Provost of Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
), Silvio Panciera (of University of Rome La Sapienza
University of Rome La Sapienza
The Sapienza University of Rome, officially Sapienza – Università di Roma, formerly known as Università degli studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a coeducational, autonomous state university in Rome, Italy...
), Boris Rankov
Boris Rankov
Boris Rankov is a professor of Roman history at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was born August 9, 1954.Educated at Bradford Grammar School , then subsequently Corpus Christi College, Oxford , Professor Rankov is perhaps best known for his participation in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race,...
(Professor of Ancient History at Royal Holloway, University of London
Royal Holloway, University of London
Royal Holloway, University of London is a constituent college of the University of London. The college has three faculties, 18 academic departments, and about 8,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from over 130 different countries...
) and the late Ross Scaife
Ross Scaife
Allen Ross Scaife was a Professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky.-Life:...
(Stoa Consortium and University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
).
Blog
The Digital Classicist community have taken an active role in posting news to the long-standing blog of the Stoa Consortium http://www.stoa.org/, which concerns itself with both Classical and Digital Humanities topics. A particular focus seems to be the Open SourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
and Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
movements, and various communities of scholars with digital interests.
Discussion list
The Digital Classicist discussion list is hosted by JISCmail in the UK. Most list traffic consists of announcements and calls, with occasional flurries of more involved discussion.The Wiki
The main website of the Digital Classicist project is little more than a gateway containing links to the project WikiWiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
and a few static materials.
The project Wiki contains lists of digital Classics projects, software tools that have been made available for classicists, and a FAQ
FAQ
Frequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual...
that solicits collaborative community advice on a range of topics from simple questions about, e.g., Greek fonts and Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, word-processing and printing issues, to more advanced Humanities Computing questions and project management advice. The Wiki is hosted on the servers of the Centre for Computing in the Humanities
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
The Department of Digital Humanities is an academic department and research centre in the School of Arts & Humanities at King's College London. Its current address is 2nd floor, 26-29 Drury Lane, London, WC2B 5RL...
at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
Seminars and Publications
The members of the Digital Classicist community also report quite heavily on any conference and seminar activity that they take to reflect well on the project as a whole. Among the events cited are a series of summer seminars which have run each year since 2006 at the Institute for Classical Studies in London, and panels at the Classical AssociationClassical Association
The Classical Association is a British learned society in the field of classics, and a registered charity.The association was founded on 19 December 1903, and its objects are defined in its constitution as:...
Annual Conference in Birmingham 2007 and Glasgow 2009, and the Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts conference in September 2008. The Project was also among the sponsors of the Open Source Critical Editions workshop in 2006. In 2008 the Digital Medievalist
Digital Medievalist
Digital Medievalist is an academic project and community-building organization for those who are interested in the use of computers and computational techniques in the academic field of medieval studies, a sub-field of digital humanities.- History :...
published a collaborative issue of Digital Classicist articles in memory of Ross Scaife
Ross Scaife
Allen Ross Scaife was a Professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky.-Life:...
. More recently a collection of papers from the 2007 seminar series and conference panels have been published by Ashgate: Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity (Bodard and Mahony (eds) 2010).
See also
- Perseus ProjectPerseus ProjectThe Perseus Project is a digital library project of Tufts University that assembles digital collections of humanities resources. It is hosted by the Department of Classics. It has suffered at times from computer hardware problems, and its resources are occasionally unavailable...
- Digital Humanities
- Digital MedievalistDigital MedievalistDigital Medievalist is an academic project and community-building organization for those who are interested in the use of computers and computational techniques in the academic field of medieval studies, a sub-field of digital humanities.- History :...
- Thesaurus Linguae GraecaeThesaurus Linguae GraecaeThe Thesaurus Linguae Graecae is a research center at the University of California, Irvine. The TLG was founded in 1972 by Marianne McDonald with the goal to create a comprehensive digital collection of all surviving texts written in Greek from antiquity to...
- Digital ClassicsDigital classicsDigital classics is the application of the tools of digital humanities to the field of classics, or more broadly to the study of the ancient world.-History:...
External links
- The Stoa Consortium
- The Digital Classicist wiki
- Digitalclassicist discussion list (@JISCmail)
- Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
- UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, University College London
- Digital Medievalist 4 a special joint issue with Digital Classicist
- Diotima: Women and Gender in the Ancient World