Events / News


 
Information:
Editing Late-Antique and Early Medieval Texts. Problems and Challenges
International Workshop
University of Lisbon, 23-24 November, 2017

This workshop aims at fostering and promoting the exchange of ideas on how to edit Late-Antique and Early-Medieval texts. By presenting case-studies, participants will be encouraged to share the editorial problems and methodological challenges that they had to face in order to fulfil their research or critical editions. Troublesome issues will be addressed like how to edit, for instance,
- an 'open' text or a 'fluid' one (as in the case of some glossaries, grammatical texts, chronicles or scientific treatises),
- a Latin text translated from another language, like Greek, or bilingual texts (like some hagiographic texts, hermeneumata, Latin translations of Greek medical treatises, etc.),
- a text with variants by the author or in double recensions,
- a text with linguistic instability,
- a collection of extracts,
- a lost text recoverable from scanty remnants or fragments,
- a text transmitted by a codex unicus or, on the contrary, a text transmitted by a huge number of manuscripts,
- a text with a relevant indirect tradition,
- homiliaries and passionaires as collections of selected texts. Attention will be devoted as well to different aspects of editorial practice and textual criticism.

Call for papers; abstracts before May 30 2015: Dr. Erik Kwakkel
 



 



 
Information:
VIDI project 'Turning over a New Leaf: Manuscript Innovation in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance'

This project is concerned with the intriguing relationship between written culture and society, specifically how innovations in the technology of the medieval manuscript (the handwritten book, or codex, used before the invention of print) relate to cultural change. It will argue that the age of renewal known as the “Twelfth-Century Renaissance” (c. 1075 - c. 1225) produced a new manuscript format, custom-tailored for the age: during this period manuscript production turned over a new leaf, as did readers, who were introduced to new reading aids, page layouts and scripts. This proposal claims that the emergence of this new book is caused by shifts in the manner of reading and the texts that were read, as well as a changing intellectual profile of scholars. The project traces the roots of this new manuscript (the institutional homes of a new breed of European scholars), maps its development, and explains its elevation to new book standard. With its innovative blend of physicality and historical inquiry the project is anticipated to have significant implications for all medieval disciplines that use primary sources. As it is, primary sources are silent beyond the words on their pages: medieval scholars nearly exclusively turn to these sources for their contents. However, this project will show, based on a “field-tested” methodology, how observations related to the physical formats in which medieval texts were fitted (type of script, reading aids, layout of the page, etc.) can be “spun” and used as historical arguments. By showing how medieval primary sources can be exploited more fully, beyond the text they carry, the project demonstrates to medieval scholars from a variety of disciplines how to turn over a new leaf in their inquiries and look at familiar textual sources from a new perspective.

Contact: Dr. Erik Kwakkel
 



 



 
Information:
Lambeth Palace Greek MSS Descriptive Catalogue freely accessible

The Lambeth Palace Greek MSS Descriptive Catalogue, compiled by Dr Christopher Wright and Ms Maria Argyrou with the technical advice and support of Mr Philip Taylor at RHUL Hellenic Institute, History Department, in close collaboration with Lambeth Palace Library, is now freely accessible online in the public domain

The catalogue is dedicated to the memory of our teachers Julian Chrysostomides and John Barron, who guided and supported us in the first phase of the project, until their passing away in 2008.

Any comment? Please contact Charalambos Dendrinos
 



 



 
Call for papers:
Digital Scholarly Editions as Interfaces
International symposium
23.-24.9.2016, Graz (Austria)

The symposium will discuss the relationship between digital scholarly editing and interfaces by bringing together experts of DSEs and Interface Design, editors and users of editions, web designers and developers. It will include the discussion of (graphical/user) interfaces of DSEs as much as conceptualizing the digital edition itself as an interface. In this context, we are interested in contributions to the following questions and beyond:

  • How can DSEs take full advantage of their digital environment without losing the traditional affordances that makes an edition 'scholarly'? What is the role of skeuomorphic tropes and metaphors like footnotes, page turn and index in the design of DSEs and concerning the user interaction?
  • Do interfaces of DSEs succeed in transferring the complexity of the underlying data models?
  • Plurality in representation is a core feature of DSE. How do interfaces realize this plurality? Do we need different interfaces for different target audiences (i.e. scholars, digital humanists, students, public)?
  • How can user interfaces of DSEs succeed in transmitting Human Computer Interaction design principles like 'aesthetics', 'trust', and 'satisfaction'?
  • Citability and reliability are core requirements of scholarly work. Which user interface elements support them? How can we encourage the user to critically engage with the DSE?
  • What are the users of a DSE actually doing: are they reading the text or searching and analyzing the data?
  • Can we conceptualize machines as users? How can we include application programming interfaces (APIs) in the discussion on DSEs as interfaces?
  • Does the development of user interfaces for DSEs keep up with the rising distribution of small handheld devices? Will interfaces on tablets greatly differ from those on computer screens and perhaps encourage a larger readership?

Please submit your proposal for a talk at the symposium until April 17, 2016 to dixit@uni-graz.at. The proposal should not exceed 700 words.
There are funds to reimburse travel and accommodation costs. Please indicate with your submission if you need financial support.


 



 



 

Application open for: Medieval and Modern Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age (MMSDA)
funded by the Digital Scholarly Editions Initial Training Network (DiXiT) and run by King's College London with the University of Cambridge and the Warburg Institute
2 - 6 May 2016
Cambridge and London

The course is open to any doctoral students working with manuscripts. It involves five days of intensive training on the analysis, description and editing of medieval or modern manuscripts to be held jointly in Cambridge and London. Participants will receive a solid theoretical foundation and hands-on experience in cataloguing and editing manuscripts for both print and digital formats.
The first half of the course involves morning classes and then afternoon visits to libraries in Cambridge and London. Participants will view original manuscripts and gain practical experience in applying the morning's themes to concrete examples. In the second half we will address the cataloguing and description of manuscripts in a digital format with particular emphasis on the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). These sessions will also combine theoretical principles and practical experience and include supervised work on computers.

For further details contact dixit-mmsda@uni-koeln.de.


 


 

Letter to researchers on texts / editions of the filioque discussion

Filioque Graecum and Filioque Latinum are two of the outputs of the Research Project: "The Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries as Forerunners of a United and Divided Europe: Dialogues and Disputes between the Byzantine East and the Latin West". The project is hosted by Ca' Foscari University of Venice and University of Pisa (Alessandra Bucossi, Pietro Podolak, Anna Zago).

A comprehensive study which could provide a complete list of the writings on the controversy between the Greek and the Latin Churches does not exist; therefore, it is not possible to determine how many and which texts are published and how many and which are still in manuscripts.

We have created these two "working tools" to help those scholars who want to investigate the discussions on the Filioque (principally, but also writings on the Azymes are included), to edit new texts and to work on apparatuses of sources.

These two files are only "lists" of authors and their writings, principally on the procession of the Holy Spirit, from Photios to the end of Manuel Komnenos' reign ONLY.

You can find names in Latin (as they appear in Pinakes http://pinakes.irht.cnrs.fr/ and in English as they appear in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium for Greek authors); titles of texts (again as they appear in Pinakes for the Greek authors) and bibliographic references for the published editions.

This is NOT an exhaustive bibliography on the Filioque issue and does not want to be one! This is a "work-in-progress", so if you want to help us improving it, you are more than welcome, just write to greek.editions.translations@gmail.com.

Thank you!
Alessandra, Pietro e Anna.