Visualization is often the “way in” to our data, both for scholarly analysis and presentation to an audience. However, it is critical to understand the process of visualizing data: who is it for, and what questions does it answer? In this workshop, participants learn how to choose the right visualization for their data, how to prepare their dat…[Read more]

The American Religious Sounds Project, a joint effort from Michigan State University and Ohio State University, has been gathering sound recordings of American religious life since 2014. The project is undertaking a dual process of expanding to other institutions and ingesting the collection into the Vincent Voice Library at MSU.
With thousands…[Read more]

While the amount of cross-linguistic data is constantly increasing, most datasets produced today and in the past cannot be considered FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reproducible). To remedy this and to increase the comparability of cross-linguistic resources, it is not enough to set up standards and best practices for data to be…[Read more]

By reviewing a recent quantitative study of rhyme patterns in Mandarin Chinese, this study shows how data handling and data analysis in the study of rhyme patterns can be improved. Suggestions for improvement include (a) a consistent annotation of rhyme data, which is exhaustive and facilitates data reuse, and (b) emphasizes the importance of…[Read more]

The author proposes fairy-tale logic as a mode of magical thinking typified by the belief that certain functions, fulfilled correctly and in the right order, lead to predictable outcomes. Mapping similarities in implicit reasoning within “Beauty and the Beast,” the reality television program Beauty and the Geek (2005-08), and the misogynistic nar…[Read more]

This article examines the young girls aged between seven and eleven year old who are elected to serve in the cult of Athena Polias, patron deity of Athens, in the classical period (roughly 5 th century, BC). I look at the creation of the dress given to Athena at the yearly Panathenaia festival, the creation of which is the main activity of their…[Read more]

Numbers appear to have limited value for literary study, since our discipline is usually more concerned to explore differences of interpretation than to describe the objective features of literary works. But it may be time to re-examine the assumption that numbers are only useful for objective description. Machine learning algorithms are actually…[Read more]

This conference aims to bring together researchers applying network analysis to pre-modern manuscripts and manuscript texts. Key topics include:

• Theoretical reflections on the challenges and advantages of applying network analysis, including social network analysis, to pre-modern written cultures;
• Application of network analysis to cor…[Read more]

Almost nothing can be taken for granted when it comes to the direction of a text—not over the course of the previous five millennia and not in today’s digital world. Texts may mix languages. Languages may mix or change writing systems. Writing systems themselves may use idiosyncratic directional practices, and writers may be rule breakers. Thu…[Read more]

Public health in twenty-first century Ghana is mired with several issues ranging from the inadequacy of
public health facilities, improper settlement planning, insanitary conditions, and the inadequacy of laws
and their implementation. This situation compared to the colonial era is a direct contradiction.
Development in the pre-colonial era to…[Read more]

The act of classification has the widest implications for scholarship. Whatever the format, it involves the totality of our being. The use of our eyes indicates that decisions about whatever it is that we observe have already been made. Yet the interaction between the mechanical act of seeing and the mind or memory has rarely been registered. An…[Read more]

This is the peer-reviewed submission version of the essay, which focuses on the role that digital communication platforms can play in teaching and engaging with Wallace’s work.

Illustration of various features in the arrangement of Linear B tablets in the photo plates of Scripta Minoa II, and a proposed rationale in terms of underlying art.

A period of six months (Dec. 2017 to Jun. 2018) saw the launch of three digital platforms dedicated to the works of Fernando Pessoa, raising the number of such projects to seven published in a decade. Considering this virtual proliferation as a milestone for Pessoan studies, this article aims to reconstruct, at least as a sketch, the history of…[Read more]

On scholarly traditions, quantitative assessments, and academic malpractices in Italy – and how someone disagreed (Isis, Vol. 110, n. S1, pp. 15-17 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/707594)

Seventeen years ago, Brian Shefton wrote, “the distribution pattern of the Greek imports for the Hallstatt period has crystallized a number of years ago and is unlikely to be greatly modified in the future except on point of detail” (Böhr and Shefton 2000, 28). Indeed, publications describing Greek pottery have reached similar conclusions: Gree…[Read more]

In this paper, I explore how Greek and Roman poets alluded to the lamentatory background of elegy through the figures of the swan and the nightingale. After surveying the ancient association of elegy and lament (Section I) and the common metapoetic function of birds from Homer onwards (Section II), I analyse Hellenistic and Roman examples where…[Read more]

The two books of Robert M. Pirsig have been milestones for Design Theory through the development of a Metaphysics of Quality. This article analyses the design history of his two books that have been in print for more than 40 years. The editions range from cheap mass-market paperbacks to gilded collectors’ hardcovers. The underlying challenge for a…[Read more]