HC MID Devoted to the study of incompletely published primary sources

News

  • April 22, 2020: Holy Cross SGA names MID a 'Groundbreaking Organization'.

    Yesterday, at the online version of the Holy Cross Student Government Association’s end-of-year awards, HC MID was recognized as a “Groundbreaking Organization.” Congratulations to everyone who has taken part in a HC MID work session since the first informal gatherings in the fall of 2010!

    MID continues to break new ground. Today, as part of Holy Cross’ spring Academic Conference, instead of the planned oral presentations, we are offering two glimpses of work in progress here on our web site. In the faculty advisor’s note accompanying those presentations, I allude to innovations that MID members are already discussing as we continue to work out how to respond to the corona virus pandemic — restructuring research projects, and outreach to alumni. There will be more to say in the future, but gI am confident that you will see blog posts here announcing initiatives we would never have imagined before the virus.

  • April 17, 2020: Academic Conference, 2020.

    In Spring, 2020, the annual Holy Cross Academic Conference will be a virtual event.

    The Holy Cross Manuscripts, Inscriptions and Documents Club is hosting two presentations about our work on this site, at https://hcmid.github.io/academic_conference20/.

  • March 23, 2020: Zooming through Germanicus.

    “Regular” HC MID work sessions resume on Friday, March 27, from 2:00-6:00 (?) eastern time.

    We’ll use Zoom to meet at this Zoom meeting (meeting ID: 583 824 838). Zoom will let us organize work teams (that may change from week to week) in breakout rooms. With Zoom’s “Annotate” sharing, we can easily point to or scribble on windows with images of manuscripts. To prevent potential Zoombombing, meetings include a waiting room where participants can be added by a meeting host.

    We will focus on integrating work on Burgerbibliothek 88 (Germanicus’ Aratea) from our 2019 and 2020 manuscript hackathons in this github repository. Zoom! We plan to validate our work to current MID standards including automated morphological parsing with manual disambiguation of the results.

    You can add our meetings to your calendar by downloading and importing this iCalendar (.ics) file.

  • March 18, 2020: We're still here.

    Holy Cross has cancelled in-person classes, and will enter a “distance-learning” phase the week of Mar. 23-27.

    When Holy Cross courses are in session, HC MID is in session.

    We are beginning plans to experiment with “distance-hacking” on manuscripts. We’ll open up for business on the first Friday when classes resume, March 27.

    For now, we are staying in touch with a group chat on GroupMe and are planning to organize Google Meets for individual editing teams. We’ll post more on this blog as we work out new ways to collaborate remotely.

    GroupMe

    Stay in touch with this GroupMe

    Google Meet

    You can use this link to join a general HCMID Google Meet (requires a holycross.edu ID).

  • February 14, 2020: We're hacking again!.

    We’re offering our third annual free manuscripts hackathon for secondary-school students of Latin and their teachers tomorrow, Saturday, February 15, 2020, at Holy Cross.

    We’ll try to complete a digital diplomatic edition of the cool 9th-century manuscript last year’s team began: a beautifully illustrated poem about the constellations (Germanicus Caesar’s Aratea.) The final result will be submitted to a new publication series to be made availabe from the Holy Cross Library’s Institutional Repository.

    For more information, see the 2020 hackathon home page.

  • January 01, 2019: Free manuscripts hackathon.

    We’re offering another free manuscripts hackathon for secondary-school students of Latin and their teachers. This year’s event will take place on Saturday, February 2, 2018, at Holy Cross’ Hogan Center.

    We’ll collaborate on a digital diplomatic edition of a 9th-century manuscript with a beautifully illustrated poem about the constellations (Germanicus Caesar’s Aratea.) The final result will be published in the Holy Cross Library’s Institutional Repository.

    For more information, including how to register for the hackathon, see the hackathon home page.

  • December 05, 2017: Manuscripts hackathon.

    On February 24, 2018, HC MID will take over the third floor of Hogan Center to host an all-day manuscript hackathon for secondary school students and teachers.

    Club member Hannah Nguyen ‘19 has received funding from the Holy Cross Ignite Fund to make the event possible.

    We’ll collaborate on a digital diplomatic edition of a Latin bestiary known as “the Bern Physiologus” (part of Bern Burgerbibliothek codex 318). The final result will be published in the Holy Cross Library’s Institutional Repository.

    For more information, including how to register for the hackathon, see the hackathon home page.

  • May 31, 2017: End-of-year retrospective.

    It was another productive year for HC MID, and busy enough that it was hard to keep up to date with club members’ many accomplishments. Here are a few highlights from 2016-2017:

    • Melody Wauke was selected for a Fulbright to teach English in Greece next year, the fourth consecutive year club members have won Fulbrights.
    • Twenty-two club members presented results of their work at the April Academic Symposium!
    • The map of MID talks and presentations has now expanded to include ten countris, and six states in the US.
    • MID members continue to compete successfully for summer research opportunities, and for funding under new college programs introduced this year.

    MID members gave talks and led workshops at the following conferences:

    • May 2017, Charlie Schufrieder and Melody Wauke, “Recovering the history of Iliadic scholia: architecture and initial results from the Homer Multitext project” (Heidelberg, Germany: “Digital Classics III: Re-thinking Text Analysis”)
    • March 2017, with Stephanie Lindeborg ‘13 (Boston Latin Academy and Homer Multitext Project), Toni Armstrong (Clark University), Jeffrey Dickinson, Michael Raheb and Julia Spiegel, “Bringing Manuscripts into the Classroom.”
    • October 2016, Melody Wauke (with Neel Smith), “Data science in your Latin classroom,” Classical Association of Massachusetts.

    Club members have already had papers accepted at upcoming conferences:

    • July, 2017, Keystone DH (Philadelphia, PA): Claude Hanley, Julia Spiegel, Zak Sowerby, “The Homer Multitext Project and the Development of Greek Accent Notation”
    • October, 2017, CAAS (New York). Richard Ciolek, Jeffrey Dickinson, Melissa Gryan, Michael Raheb, and William Walker, “A Diplomatic Digital Edition of Pliny the Elder’s Bamberg Manuscript”
    • October, 2017, CAAS (New York). Workshop with Stephanie. “Using Manuscripts in All Levels of the Latin Classroom”, Toni Armstrong, Clark University, Jeffrey Dickinson, Allyn Waller with Stephanie Lindeborg ‘13

    Under new programs through the Center for Liberal Arts in the World, Rich Ciolek worked as a Research Associate with Professors Joseph and Smith on a corpus of Free Latin And Greek (HC FLAG). Three proposals from MID members were funded for the coming year:

    • Liam Prendergast, “Parsing Greek hexameter”
    • Melissa Gryan, “Ancients in the Worcester Art Museum”
    • Hannah Nguyen and Hanna Seariac, “Manuscript Hack-a-thon”

    In addition, alum Alex Simrell ‘16 talked about his experience MID to Croatian colleagues hoping to create a similar extra-curricular club:

    • March 2017, Alex Simrell, “The Holy Cross Manuscripts, Inscriptions, and Documents Club: What We Do and How You Can Too!” (Dubrovnik, Croatia, Classical High School).

    Alex also stayed busy with his work on a digital corpus of Croatian Neo-Latin, and spoke several times about that extension of his experience with MID:

    • May 2017, Alex Simrell, “The Importance of Citation in “Digital Humanities”: Producing a CTS Version of Tyrolean Neo-Latin Texts” (Innsbruck, Austria, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies).
    • April 2017, Alex Simrell, “Alex Simrell (Zagreb): Digitalna analiza imena mjesta u Bunićevu epu De raptu Cerberi” (Split, Croatia: Marulićevi Dani Conferene).
    • January 2017, with Neven Jovanovic (University of Zagreb), Alex Simrell “Digital commenting on place names in early modern Latin texts” (Leipzig, Germany: “Global Philology – Digital Infrastructure for Named Entities Data”)
  • November 15, 2016: Museum roadtrip.

    On Saturday, MID hit the road for the distributed exhibit of manuscripts, “Beyond Words,” with stops at the Houghton Library and at Boston College.

    And here we are!

  • July 17, 2016: MID in Kraków, Poland.

    Conference notes from faculty advisor Neel Smith: MID in Kraków, Poland, for DH2016

    HC MID was represented by three entries in the program for Digital Humanities 2016, the annual meeting of the ADHO, where members of seven scholarly societies from around the globe gathered.

    The MID reunion brought together (L to R, with Wawel Castle in background) Brian Clark ‘15, Melody Wauke ‘17, Claude Hanley ‘18 and Stephanie Lindeborg ‘13.

    On Wednesday, Brian, Claude and Melody first presented their poster on “Using Digital Editions to Analyze Iliadic Text Reuse and its Poetic Tradition” at the conference Poster Slam. That evening at the open poster session, they were at home fielding questions from a steady stream of visitors (The published abstract of their paper was co-authored with Charlie Schufreider ’17.)

    When we went out for dinner afterwards, they were still smiling, and still fully badged up!

    On Thursday, Alex Simrell ‘16 was colisted on the program with his mentor in Zagreb (when Alex will be a Fulbright Scholar next year), Neven Jovanović. Seen here asking Stephanie a question at her presentation, Prof. Jovanović presented their join paper “Implementing Canonical Text Services in the Croatiae Auctores Latini Digital Collection.” (Abstract here.)

    In the following session, Stephanie and I spoke on “Comparing Digital Scholarly Editions”. (Our abstract is here. ) Stephanie was completely calm before our presentation, and was able to keep smiling when it was my turn to talk.

    Stephanie and I also took advantage of the official DH2016 conference cut out.

    And of course we all ganged up for a Purple Photo.

    But with MID classes of ‘13, ‘15, ‘16 and ‘17 on the program, I can’t help but ask: class of ‘14, don’t forget us! We want to stay in touch with you, too!

    Neel Smith (faculty advisor to MID)

  • April 05, 2016: More Fulbright Scholarships for MID members.

    For the third consecutive year, MID members have won Fulbright Scholarships. Chris Ryan ‘16, who studied in Athens during his junior year, has received a Fulbright to teach English in Greece next year. Alex Simrell ‘16 will work next year with Latinists at Zagreb University in Croatia on a collaborative research project, the Croatiae auctores Latini (CroALa). Alex’s research project involves appyling the methodology he and other MID members have helped develop for the Homer Multitext project to CroALa’s large digital corpus of Latin texts.

    Alex is the third consecutive MID member to receive a Fulbright to continue and extend work begun in MID. He follows Nik Churik ‘15 (currently a Fulbright Scholar at Leiden University in the Netherlands), and Christine Roughan ‘14 (Fulbright Scholar at Leipzig University, Germany, in 2014-2015).

    Congratulations to Chris and Alex!

  • March 06, 2016: MID alum at Oxford conference.

    Nik Churik ‘15 spoke last week at the Oxford University Byzantine Society’s 18th International Graduate Conference, “Trends and Turning-Points: Constructing the Late Antique and Byzantine World (c. 300 – c. 1500).” (Here is the full program for the conference.)

    Nik’s paper “Greek Explicating Greek: A Study of Metaphrase Language and Style” grows out of work he did at Holy Cross as an MID member, and compares work he did last year on vocabulary and syntax of a Homeric paraphrase with other “metaphrases” of the Iliad.

    The United Kingdom is now the eighth country where current and former MID members have presented work begun on the fourth floor of Fenwick Hall. (See a map of MID outside of Worcester.)

  • February 08, 2016: MID trifecta in Kraków.

    MID will be represented at Digital Humanities 2016 in Kraków, Poland, this July by three presentations.

    • Brian Clark ’15, Claude Hanley ’18, Charlie Schufreider ’17 and Melody Wauke ’17 will present a poster on their research entitled “Using Digital Editions to Analyze Iliadic Text Reuse and its Poetic Tradition”.
    • Alex Simrell ’16 is co-author of a paper with Prof. Neven Jovanovič (University of Zagreb) on “Implementing Canonical Text Services in the Croatiae Auctores Latini Digital Collection”.
    • Stephanie Lindeborg ’13 and MID advisor Neel Smith will co-present a paper on “Comparing Digital Scholarly Editions”.

    This year’s conference had a record number of submissions (more than 650). Congratulations to all three groups for their successful applications.

    Put another point on the “MID outside of Worcester” map!

  • November 10, 2015: MID at Bucknell conference.

    Congratulations to club members Claude Hanley, Stephanie Neville, Charlie Schufrieder and Alex Simrell on their presentation Saturday at the conference “Collaborating Digitally: Engaging Students in Public Scholarship” at Bucknell University on Saturday. Here’s a link to the abstract of their talk on “Digital Editions of Primary Documents: A Collaborative Modern Approach to Ancient Texts.”

    Put another point on the “MID outside of Worcester” map!

  • October 02, 2015: Projects for fall 2016.

    Several projects started work in September. Here is an overview of fall semester plans for three of our larger groups.

  • September 10, 2015: Work (and more) at Grenoble conference.

    Conference notes from MID advisor Neel Smith

    Last week, Nik Churik and I spoke at the conference “Digital Humanities: the example of Antiquity” at the Université Stendhal-Grenoble 3 on “Testable distant reading in scholia, lexica and paraphrases.” Our talk was based on Nik’s senior project at Holy Cross, but incorporated new work by MID club members who, as part of their summer research at Holy Cross, classified different uses of interior scholia in the Venetus A manuscript. Thanks to Alex Simrell, Brian Clark, Charlie Schuhfrieder, Melody Wauke, Stephanie Lindeborg and Claude Hanley for that important contribution. we present

    The Homer Multitext project was also represented by Lenny Muellner’s talk. Nik (class of ‘15) and Lenny (CHS, emeritus Brandeis Univeristy) nicely illustrated the multigenerational aspect of the HMT team’s work. multigenerational HMT

    As at every successful conference, some of the most valuable interaction took place at the (sumptuous) meals and coffee breaks. coffee break university cafe

    Grenoble (or Gratianopolis to the cheerfully anachronistic) was also a delightful city to visit in September. I squeezed in a trip on the funicular to the imposing fortications of Grenoble’s Bastille.

    funicular view of Grenoble from Bastille

    In the opening plenary session of the conference, Nik was named one of a small group of promising young scholars to receive a bursary that covered his travel expenses from Leiden, where is a Fulbright Scholar this year. We both would like to thank the organizers of the conference for this support. I only wish more American conference organizers would adopt this laudable practice.

    Neel Smith (faculty advisor to MID)

  • August 26, 2015: New hardware in the St. Isidore lab.

    The St. Isidore of Seville Research lab in Fenwick 406 is home for a lot of HCMID’s work. Last week, the aging carpet in Fenwick 406 was replaced, and yesterday, the six client machines in the lab were upgraded with new iMacs. Here’s a brief summary of resources available to club members there, as Holy Cross students return to campus. Are we missing anything you need for your HCMID projects?

    Thanks to ITS and the Dean’s office for our physical and digital home on campus, and to Physical Plant and the house keeping staff for keeping it in top physical shape.

  • May 21, 2015: HCMID at the Classical Association of Canada / Société canadienne des études classiques.

    Stephanie Lindeborg and Neel Smith spoke at HCMID at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of Canada / Société canadienne des études classiques about “Building a sustainable digital project” based on examples of projects from HC MID. They were part of a panel on the theme “Let’s Get Digital.”

    Add a pin for Toronto to the HC MID map!

  • May 12, 2015: Fulbright for Nik Churik '15 to study MSS in Leiden.

    Four-year MID member Nik Churik has won a Fulbright to extend his research on Byzantine paraphrases of and glosses on the Iliad at the University of Leiden (Netherlands) next year. As a member of MID, Nik participated in the Homer Multitext seminar at the Center for Hellenic Studies, and twice was funded for summer research at Holy Cross on the Homer Multitext project. He has presented his research at a large number of events outside of Holy Cross, most recently in Bern, Switzerland, with Brian Clark ‘15 at the conference “Scholarship in Software, Software as Scholarship”, where they spoke about “Composing living scholarship: applying automated acceptance tests to scholarly writing.”

    This is the second consecutive year work at MID has led to Fulbrights. Christine Roughan ‘14 is in Leipzig, Germany, this year, expanding on her undergraduate work on editing mathematical texts with diagrams in a project entitled, “Open Euclid,” a part of the larger “Open Greek and Latin” initiative at Leipzig.

  • May 11, 2015: Academic Conference, 2015.

    The program from the 2015 Academic Conference is now available on line here. The session was well attended, and the juxtapositions of related research generated very stimulating questions and discussion. Thanks to all who attended, congratulations to all who presented, and especially to graduating seniors.

  • May 08, 2015: Before/after photos.

    MID meets every Friday HC is in session – even in exam period. Here’s a before/after comparison from Friday of exam period:

    Friday afternoon, May 8, in the St. Isidore lab

    before

    Holy Cross parking lot, May 8, when MID quits at 6:04 pm

    after

  • March 08, 2015: MID outside of Worcester.

    Check out an interactive map of HC MID presentations outside of Worcester!

    Thanks to github for making it easy to embed geojson in your web pages.

  • March 08, 2015: MID at Grenoble conference.

    Current club member Nikolas Churik has received a bursary to attend a conference in Grenoble, France, from Sept. 2-4 entitled “Digital Humanities: the example of Antiquity,” where he and co-author Neel Smith will present their paper on “Testable distant reading in scholia, lexica and paraphrases.”

  • February 25, 2015: Schedule for 2015 academic conference.

    The proposed schedule for HCMID’s session at the the spring, 2015, College Academic Conference has now been announced. See the program here: http://hcmid.github.io/hof/hcacad/ The ten presentations by 15 HCMID members from first years to seniors.

  • February 19, 2015: MID at CANE 2015.

    MID will be well represented at this year’s Classical Association of New England annual meeting. Stephanie Neville ‘17 will be speaking on Saturday, Mar. 14, about “Tracing the Scribal Tradition in the Manuscripts of St. Jerome’s Chronicle” – immediately following Stephanie Lindeborg ‘13 on “Why Open Access to Manuscripts Should Matter to More than Palaeographers”! In addition, MID alum Michael Roberts will be giving a paper on Friday, “Hostis Romae: Literary Depictions of Roman Enemies in the Late Republic.”

    For the full schedule, see the meeting program.

  • February 18, 2015: Welcome to our new web site.

    HC MID’s web site is now hosted on github – just like all of our editorial work!

    New content includes a “Hall of Fame” page with links to conference papers, funded research, etc., and a new atom feed, http://hcmid.github.io/atom.xml, if you want to keep up with the latest from MID in that format.

    (The theme is of course in Crusader purple.)