Doing Digital Classics: Theory, Approaches, and Research Methods

CLAS 490W 2:30-5:00pm, Andrews 241

Prof. Sarah C. Murray
Office Hours: M 10:30am-12:00, Tu 3:00-5:00pm & by appointment
Office Location: 232 Andrews Hall; Phone: 650-906-1576
Email: smurray9@unl.edu
I. Explanation of the Course
1. Course Description
During the last several decades, the practice of humanistic research has been transformed by the
existence of new technology. While this transformation has had an impact across all disciplines,
researchers in Classical Studies have (somewhat surprisingly) long been radically ahead of the
game. Classicists have been busy using computers to make research faster and more efficient,
and to transform parts of the field entirely, since before the original TRON hit theaters in 1982.
In this course we will explore the possibilities, limitations, and implications of Digital Classics.
During the first ten weeks of the course, we will cover an overview of the kinds of digital
projects, tools, and methods currently being used by Classicists. In the final six weeks of the
course, we will focus on learning how to use these tools and methods to generate an original
proposal for a digital Classics project, with the specifics determined according to student
interests. Students will take away from the course some substantial computational abilities as
well as a strong understanding of what computers can and cannot do for the Classics.
2. Readings and Course Materials
All readings not available online or will be provided as pdfs or handouts by the instructor, and
will be available on the course Blackboard site. Those with a particular interest in digital
humanities methods and their applications in Classical Studies may be interested in reading the
following in their entirety or acquiring a copy for personal use.
Bodard, G. and S. Mahoney (eds.) 2010. Digital Research in the study of Classical Antiquity.
Burlington, VT.
Bodenhamer, D., J. Corrigan, and T. Harris. 2010. The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future
of Humanities Scholarship. Bloomington, IN.
Solomon, J. (ed.) 1993. Accessing Antiquity: the computerization of classical studies. Tucson.
Vandendorpe, C. and P. Aronoff. 2009. From Papyrus to Hypertext: Toward the Universal
Digital Library. Champaign, IL.
3. Course Goals (ACE 10 OUTCOMES)
As per university policy, this ACE 10 certified course is designed to guide students in the
generation of a creative or scholarly product that requires broad knowledge, appropriate
technical proficiency, information collection, synthesis, interpretation, presentation, and
reflection.
In this course, we will achieve these goals as follows:
1. The course will introduce you to the broad concepts involved in digital humanities,
including best practices in data collection, presentation, and synthesis during the first half

2.
3.
4.
5.

of the semester. You will pass an exam on this basic information in order to ensure that
you have fully digested it.
You will complete a few semi-weekly lab assignments, each designed to equip you with
the technical proficiencies appropriate to digital Classics, through the first half of the
semester.
For your final project, you will think of an idea for a creative or scholarly project that
suits your interests. The instructor will work closely with you during the second half of
the semester to develop a mock grant proposal for this project.
You will present your project proposal to the class and to me in a professional manner.
For the duration of the course we will reflect on the past, present, and future, and the
benefits and drawbacks, of computational approaches to Classics.

4. Requirements
Weekly
-Complete assigned readings (make sure you do not fall behind, even if you cant manage each
reading for every class period).
-Appear in class on time.
-Remained engaged in the material at hand.
-Participate actively in classroom discussions.
-Remain open-minded and willing to learn new skills that may be entirely foreign to you
Semester
-Complete one exam on basic concepts and approaches in digital Classics.
-Generate a short paper critiquing an existing visualization.
-Generate an original grant application for a hypothetical Digital Classics project.
-Work through occasional assigned lab exercise keyed to the relevant tool of the week.
5. Grading
Breakdown
10%: Course Citizenship
10%: Short Digital Humanities Literacy Exam (n=1)
25%: Semi-weekly assignments/labs (n=5)
15%: Short Visualization Critique Paper
40%: Final Project (a grant proposal for a viable digital Classics project)
Grade Scale: A = 94-100; A-= 90-93.9; B+ = 87-89.9; B = 83-86.9; B-= 80-82.9; C+ = 77-79.9;
C = 73-76.9; C-= 70- 72.9, etc. You need to cross the threshold decisively to receive the next
higher grade. Dont expect your grade to be rounded up.
Policy on Late Work: A large portion (40%) of your grade will come from your final project.
Other graded assignment combine in class and independent work. I expect you to meet all
deadlines unless you have a legitimate conflict or crisis
1. You have a final project proposal due at the end of the semester projects that are late
with no excuse will be docked letter grade per day late. If you really cannot hand
something in on time, please get in touch with me before the due date so that we can
work out an alternative solution.

2. Your semi-weekly assignments/labs cannot be handed in late unless you have a valid
reason and have cleared it with me before the date in question. If you miss the deadline,
you will receive a 0 for that assignment
3. You must be present in class for your digital humanities literacy exam. No make-ups will
be given, unless theres really a really real emergency.
6. Explanation of Assignments
A. Class Citizenship
Grade assigned based on regular attendance, participation in discussions, and the ability to
behave like an adult both inside and outside of the classroom.
B. Occassional Weekly Lab Assignments (weeks 3-10)
A primary goal of this course will be to get you up to speed on the main tools available to the
digital classicist. During most weeks of the first part of the semester, we will work together to
learn the basics of a particular type of encoding, software, or imaging technique and you will be
required to complete short lab assignments, in which you demonstrate your general grasp of
how the nuts and bolds of these tools function.
C. Digital Humanities Literacy Examination (week 10)
During the first half of the semester you will digest a large amount of information about where
the digital humanities has been and what the main directions and trends in digital humanities are
currently. At the end of this introduction, you will be required to demonstrate your
D. Critical Visualization Analysis (due in week 4):
For this short critical paper, your task will be to choose a preexisting visualization of some kind
of data created by or for Classicists (ideally one that is of potential value to those engaged in
your particular subject area of interest), and to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses. Whatever
way you choose to organize your thoughts, you will want to address each of the following
questions:
1. What is the intended purpose of this visualization?
2. How well does it accomplish its stated goals?
3. What improvements would you suggest to make this visualization more useful to the
average student or researcher?
E. Final Project: Mock Grant Proposal (weeks 11-16)
You will generate a proposal for an original digital Classics project that would either use an
existing
digital
humanities
tool
or
generate
and
analyze
original
data
collected/synthesized/created from new readings of ancient primary sources. You will present
your project proposal orally to the class. Your proposal will accrue to the guidelines for the
National Endowment for the Humanitiess Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant program. I will
work with you during the second half of the semester to arrive at a project proposal appropriate
to your personal interests and skills
II. Things to Know
1. To do well, you will need to faithfully attend class sessions and complete assigned

readings according to the schedule provided in this syllabus. This is an upper level course
and you are expected to commit fully to the intellectual project of our classroom. Nuff said.
2. It is not my goal to make you suffer unduly. If you are having trouble with the material, if
certain deadlines prove difficult to meet, or if there are any problems in your life that are
affecting your ability to complete your assignments with a quality that you find to be acceptable,
please communicate openly with me about these issues so that we can work out a solution before
larger problems arise. I will try to work with you as best I can to ensure that you get as much out
of this class as possible, even if obstacles arise.
3. YOU NEED NOT BE A COMPUTER GENIUS TO SUCCEED IN THIS COURSE. This
course is designed to give you a very gentle introduction to the basic methods and approaches to
digital classics. You will not be required to show extraordinary computing acumen I only
expect that you will have an open mind to new technologies and the willingness to consider how
these technologies might alter the manner in which we think about and study humanistic
material. Your final project need not be a professionally curated digital humanities tour-de-force.
Rather, I am interested to see that you can come up with an idea that has merit and generate
something modest that shows your grasp of the issues at stake in doing digital Classics.
III. Honesty & Special Accomodations
Students who sign up for this class are obliged to abide by the highest standards of academic
honesty. Students found to be violating the statutes listed in section 4.2 on Academic Dishonesty
in the UN-L Code of Conduct will be subject to disciplinary measures, according to the judgment
of the professor and the egregiousness of the offense. This is an issue of respect, responsibility,
and maturity, and I take it seriously.
Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact me for a confidential discussion of their
individual needs for academic accomodation. It is the policy of the University of NebraskaLincoln to provide flexible and individualized accomodation to students with documented
disabilities that may affect their ability to fully participate in course activities or to meet course
requirements. To receive accomodation services, students must be registred with the Services
for Students with Disabilities (SSD) office, 132 Canfield Administration, 472-3787 voice or
TTY.
IV. Weekly Course Schedule

Part I: INTRODUCTION

Week 1: Introduction: What is Digital Classics? (January 13th)

Topics: Syllabus, Logistics, Philosophy of the course
Reading:
Terras, M. The Digital Classicist: Disciplinary Focus and Interdisciplinary Vision, in Digital
Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity: 171-190.
Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg, Engaging the Humanities, Profession (2004):
42-62.
J.M. Wing, Computational thinking, Communications of the ACM (2006), Vol. 49, No. 3, pp.
33-35.

Tufte, E. Envisioning Information. (pdf)

Rogers, S. 2012. Anyone can do it. Data journalism is the new Punk.
< http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/24/data-journalism-punk>
Week 2: The History of Digital Methods in Classics (January 20th)
Topics: Chronological outline, early pioneers
Reading:
Borges, Jorge Luis. "The Library of Babel." Collected Fictions (1998), 112-18.
Brunner, T. "Classics and the Computer: The History of a Relationship," in Accessing Antiquity:
The Computerization of Classical Studies (1993).
Busa, Roberto. (1980). The Annals of Humanities Computing: The Index Thomisticus,
in Computers and the Humanities 14:83-90.
Websites to peruse:
http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Main_Page
http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/
http://www.tlg.uci.edu/about/history.php
Part II: APPROACHES TO DIGITAL CLASSICS
A. TEXT ANALYSIS
Week 3: Digitizing Texts (January 27th)
Topics: Why digitize? The meaning of digitization. Philosophical issues. Epistemology of close
vs. distant reading.
General readings:
[Selections from] Moretti, F. Atlas of the European Novel. (pdf)
Bolter, J. 1991. The Computer, Hypertext, and Classical Studies, AJP 112.4: 541-5.
Mylonas, Crane, Morrell, and Smith, "The Perseus Project: Data in the Electronic Age" in
Solomon, Accessing Antiquity
Crane, G. et al Composing Culture: The Authority of an Electronic Text + Comments &
Reply, Current Anthropology 32.3 (1991): 293-311.
Examples/Articles/Tools to Review:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
http://www.tlg.uci.edu/
www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/contents.html
http://europeanatravel.eu/downloads/ETravelD2%202final.pdf
http://cts.dh.uni-leipzig.de/wo/projects/
http://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/showcase/539-rappers-sorted-by-size-ofvocabulary
http://greekmythcomix.wordpress.com/comic/deaths-in-the-iliad-a-classics-infographic/
Digital Competency Acquisition of the Week: TEI (Text Encoding Initiative)

Week 4: Philological Tools for Textual Analysis (February 3rd)

Topics: What can we do with text once it is digitized? How do we use it to understand
history/language/culture better? Best practices in digital analysis of texts.
General reading:
University of Nebraska-Lincoln "By text-mining the classics, professor unearths new literary
insights." ScienceDaily (2012)
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120827073906.htm>
Crane, G. Opening up Classics and the Humanities: Computation, the Homer Multitext Project,
and Citizen Science.
<http://sites.tufts.edu/perseusupdates/2014/09/29/opening-up-classics-and-thehumanities-computation-the-homer-multitext-project-and-citizen-science/>
Tupman, C. Contextual Epigraphy and XML: Digital Publication and its Application to the
Study of Inscribed Funerary Monuments, in Digital Research in the Study of Classical
Antiquity. 73-86.
Online Tools/Reports to Review:
http://www.homermultitext.org/
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/loeb/digital.html
http://nrabinowitz.github.io/gapvis/ - index
Digital Competency Acquisition of the Week: Treebanking with Greek and Latin
<http://nlp.perseus.tufts.edu/syntax/treebank/>
Visualization Critique DUE in class February 3rd
B: IMAGE ANALYSIS
Week 5: Analyzing Images of Texts with Computers (February 10th)
Topics: What did images used to be like? What are digital images? What can we do with them
that we couldnt do before? Technical hurdles to capturing and manipulating images of text
General reading:
Netz, R. et al. 2007. The Archimedes Codex.
Powers, J., K. Clinton et al 2004. X-Ray Flourescence Recovers Writing from Ancient
Inscriptions, <http://staff.chess.cornell.edu/~smilgies/refs/Inscriptions.pdf>
Imaging the Linear B Tablets <http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/news/newsDetails/
advanced-imaging-of-linear-b-tablets-from-pylos>
Online Tools to Review:
http://archimedespalimpsest.org/
http://sirarthurevans.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/collection/linearb/
http://papyri.info/
http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Advanced_Imaging_Techniques
http://paleographie.castellanie.net/
http://www.free-ocr.com/
http://emel-library.org/gallery/sinai-palimpsests-processed-images/

Digital Competency Acquisition of the Week: Photography, Photoshop, Photogrammetry

Week 6: Art History and the Digital Image (February 17th)
Topics: The universal museum, digitization and democracy, enhanced imaging in the study of
technique and techne
Reading:
Terras, M. Image Processing in the Digital Humanities, in Digital Humanities in Practice
<http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/dh-in-practice/chapter-4/>
Macdonald, L. 2006. Digital Heritage: applying digital imaging to cultural heritage.
Isbrand, P. et al 2013. An Evaluation of Decorative Techniques on a Red-Figure Attic Vase
from the Worcester Art Museum using RTI and Confocal Microscopy with a Special
Focus on the Relief Line. Studies in Conservation 58.4: 338-360.
Online Resoures/Tools to Review:
http://www.kvl.cch.kcl.ac.uk/wall_paintings/
http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/digital_collections/index.html
http://sites.museum.upenn.edu/monrepos/
http://www.artofmaking.ac.uk/
http://cdm.reed.edu/ara-pacis/contents.php
Digital Competency Acquisition of the Week: RTI
C: SPATIAL ANALYSIS
Week 7: Mapping and Modeling the Ancient World (February 24th)
Topics: Thinking spatially; geographical vs. non-geographical space; sources for geodata;
methods of compiling and viewing geodata
Reading:
Bodenhamer, David, The Potential of Spatial Humanities, The Spatial Humanities, pp. 14-30.
Karen K. Kemp, Geographic Information Science and Spatial Analysis for the Humanities,
The Spatial Humanities, pp. 31-57.
Braude, M. Humanities thinking about data visualization, <http://hestia.open.ac.uk/palladio
humanities-thinking-about-data-visualization/>
White, R. 2010. What is spatial history, Stanford Spatial History Lab Working Papers
<http://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=29>
Online Tools/Sites to Review:
http://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/index.php
http://orbis.stanford.edu
http://digitalaugustanrome.org
http://awmc.unc.edu/wordpress/
http://awmc.unc.edu/wordpress/alacarte/
http://imperium.ahlfeldt.se/

Analytical InfoMap of Piedmont

Digital Tool Acquisition of the Week: QGIS
Week 8: Geospatial analysis: case studies and critique (March 2nd)
Topics: Best practices in spatial humanities, failures and successes in mapping and modeling the
ancient world
General readings:
Alcock, S. Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece. Cambridge.
Bevan, A. and J. Conolly. 2004. GIS and Archaeological Survey Data: Four Case Studies in
Landscape Archaeology from the Island of Kythera (Greece). Journal of Field
Archaeology 29: 123-8.
Clinton, M, S. Murray, and T. Tartaron. 2014. GIS in Action: Analyzing an Early Bronze Age
Coastal Landscape on the Saronic Gulf. in R. Laffineur (ed.) Physis: Natural E
Environment and Human Interaction in the Prehistoric Aegean (Leuven).
Elliot, T. and S. Gillies. 2009. Digital Geography and Classics, in Changing the Center of
Gravity: transforming Classical studies through Cyberinfrastructure. 3.1
Websites and projects to investigate:
http://orbis.stanford.edu
http://www.fastionline.org/
http://nolli.uoregon.edu/
http://digitalcrete.ims.forth.gr/index.php?l=1
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/6773.html
Digital Competency Acquisition of the Week: PostGIS; SQL
Week 9: The Ancient World in Three Dimensions (March 9th)
Topics: 3D vs. 2D, Reconstructing architecture, 3D landscapes and immersive environments
Readings:
Olson, B., R. Placchetti, J. Quartermaine, A. Killebrew. 2013. The Tel Akko Total Archaeology
Project, JFA 38.3: 243-262.
Oetelaar, T. 2014. Reconstructing the Baths of Caracalla, in Digital Applications in
Archaeology and Cultural Heritage 1.2: 45-54.
Online Site/Projects/Tools to Review:
http://romereborn.frischerconsulting.com/
http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Forum
http://74.220.219.72/~thrdhis1/GladiatorsiPad.html
http://www.ancientathens3d.com/arxikiEn.htm
http://www.mayaarch3d.org/
https://sketchfab.com/
http://www.123dapp.com/search/make

Digital Competency Acquisition of the Week: Sketchup; Photogrammetry

E: NETWORK ANALYSIS
Week 10: Social Networks in the Ancient World (March 16th)
Topics: Theorizing and visualizing social networks, utility of network mapping, data sources,
best practices
Readings:
Alexander, M. and J. Danikowski. 1990. Analysis of an Ancient network: Personal
communication and the study of social structure in a past society, Social Networks 12.4:
313-335.
Malkin, I., C. Constantakopoulou, and K. Panagopoulou (eds.) Greek and Roman Networks in
the Mediterranean. London.
Ruffini, G. 2008. Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt. Cambridge.
Malkin, I. 2011. A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean. Oxford.
Online Tools/Websites to Review:
http://hestia.open.ac.uk/
http://www.chlt.org/VisualExplorer/Agamemnon.html
http://republicofletters.stanford.edu/
http://atheniansproject.com/
Digital Competency Acquisition of the Week: GEPHI
Week 11: SPRING BREAK, NO CLASS
PART III: DOING DIGITAL CLASSICS
Week 12: Project Proposals (March 30th)
Topics: Students will work with instructor to determine an appropriate final project topic; Lab
work on honing computing skills needed for projects and initial data gathering & library research
to begin; students will propose projects to one another and conduct peer evaluations
Exam: Digital Literacy Exam on material from weeks 1-10.
Week 13: Project Proposal Work in Lab/Private Meetings as Appropriate (April 6th)
Week 14: Project Proposal Work in Lab/Private Meetings as Appropriate (April 13th)
[Professor away at Conference]
Week 15: Project Proposal Presentations (April 20th)
Week 16: Proposal Presentations & Concluding Discussion
Topics: Reflection on the benefits and drawbacks of digital humanities in Classics