Digital Tools and Methods in Classical Studies Research
Digital Tools and Methods in Classical Studies Research
General Introduction:
Welcome to Digital Tools and Methods in Classical Studies Research. This course is for students enrolled in an undergraduate degree program in Classical Studies and Ancient History, or for anyone interested the topic of Digital Humanities more generally. Digital Humanities is a rapidly growing area of humanities scholarship. Over the last twenty years or so there has been a rapid increase in the number of open source digital collections of ancient texts, both in their original language and in translation. Similarly, there has been a proliferation of open source digital collections of ancient material culture. These developments have been nothing short of revolutionary for students scholars of Classical Antiquity. In the past, students typically only had access to the ancient texts, scholarly compendia and collections, peer-reviewed journals, and monographs that were available in library holdings of their home institutions. Students who attended the world’s largest and most well-funded institutions thus had a decisive advantage over students enrolled at smaller, more modestly funded universities, whose library holdings and collections were, and are, similarly modest. As for access to objets d’art and other forms of material culture, these traditionally had to be visited either in situ, or else in the major museum collections where they are housed. Such collections are again typically found in major metropolitan areas and are not necessarily easily accessible for students who enrolled at universities that are not as near to major collections of material culture. However, the rapid growth in the aforementioned online repositories has levelled the playing field to a considerable degree. Students no longer find themselves in a position where they must secure funds to cover the expense of travel in order to visit libraries with more extensive holdings, or to see major museum collections or archaeological sites in person.
Yet even though the increase in the number, accessibility, and sophistication of many online collections of ancient texts and objects has tended toward the general democratization of access to knowledge about the ancient world, it has also created certain challenges. Classical studies students have found it necessary to become increasingly tech-savvy, thus adding to the long and growing list of interdisciplinary skills required for modern Classical Studies research. While Classical scholars are not expected to become programmers, they are expected, at the very least, to develop a certain facility with the growing range of digital resources mentioned above, and to have some sense as to how the digitization of primary source material, both textual and material, might change the way we conduct research. The aim of this course is, then, to provide Classical Studies students with a general knowledge of how to conduct otherwise traditional Classical Studies researc