Digital Humanities Summer Institute

This is just in from the Renaissance Society of America. –Anna

 

The Renaissance Society of America is pleased to announce that it will partner with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) in 2016, to offer five tuition scholarships (each for one week) to current RSA members who wish to attend the institute.

Additionally, all current RSA members will have the opportunity to register for one of the institute’s courses (one week) at a discounted rate.

The DHSI (dhsi.org) will be held on 6–10 June and 13–17 June 2016 at the University of Victoria, Canada. Participants may choose to attend one or two weeks of the institute. Each week will include a training workshop as well as a selection of colloquia, unconferences, panels, and institute lectures.

Tuition scholarships

Note: If you’re applying for a tuition scholarship, do not register for any course until after the RSA informs you of the result of the scholarship competition. This is because, in the event that you win a scholarship, DHSI cannot refund registrations.

Eligibility: Applicants must already be an RSA member in 2015, and if they win a scholarship, they must renew their membership in 2016.

Deadline: 30 November 2015

The committee will select two non-doctoral scholars, two junior scholars (including adjuncts and independent scholars), and one senior scholar (including adjuncts, independent scholars, and retired scholars).

The scholarship covers the cost of tuition only; transportation and lodging costs are the responsibility of the winner.

Application:

1. Fill out a very brief form that asks for name, email address, mailing address, affiliation, academic status, and discipline.
2. Submit documents by email (as attachments, to DHSIapp@rsa.org):
   • Resume (no more than two pages)
   • One-page letter indicating which DHSI course you propose to attend and how it meets your overarching research aims. Please also identify a second course choice, in the event that your first choice is unavailable.

Discounted registration rate for RSA members

Note: If you’re applying for an RSA tuition scholarship, do not register for any course until after the RSA informs you of the result of the scholarship competition. This is because, in the event that you win a scholarship, DHSI cannot refund registrations.

Before 1 April 2016, RSA members can register for either weeklong course at the discounted rate of $300 for students and $650 for nonstudents. To view a list of all forty-three courses, please go to dhsi.org. Because the most popular courses will fill before April, we recommend that you register in December or January, as soon as the results of the scholarship competition are known.

To register at the discounted rate, you must be a current RSA member (2015) and you must renew your membership for 2016.

• Follow the link from http://dhsi.org/registration.html to the registration system for the DHSI week you have selected. (Note: The schedule, at http://dhsi.org/schedule.php, lays out the general flow of the time, and the courses are listed at http://dhsi.org/courses.php.)
• Register by [1] entering your email address, [2] selecting a course, and (once a course is selected) [3] using the RSA’s discount code. The code is listed here, at http://dhsi.org/registration.html#SponsorRegistration.

Advertisement

Virtual Paul’s Cross Project website is now available for exploration!

About a year ago, EMOB devoted a post to several NEH-funded digital projects. John N. Wall, Project Director and Professor of English Literature at NC State University, has let us know that the Virtual Paul’s Cross Project website is now available for exploration at http://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu. We provide below the press release announcing its availability and invite EMOB readers to explore and comment.

The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project uses visual and acoustic modeling technology to recreate the experience of John Donne’s Paul’s Cross sermon for November 5th, 1622. The goal of this project is to integrate what we know, or can surmise, about the look and sound of this space, destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666, and about the course of activities as they unfolded on the occasion of a Paul’s Cross sermon, so that we may experience a major public event of early modern London as it unfolded in real time and in the context of its original surroundings.

The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project has been supported by a Digital Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Virtual Paul’s Cross Project has sought the highest degree of accuracy in this recreation. To do so, it combines visual imagery from the 16th and 17th centuries with measurements of these buildings made during archaeological surveys of their foundations, still in the ground in today’s London. The visual presentation also integrates into the appearance of the visual model the look of a November day in London, with overcast skies and an atmosphere thick with smoke. The acoustic simulation recreates the acoustic properties of Paul’s Churchyard, incorporating information about the dispersive, absorptive or reflective qualities of the buildings and the spaces between them.

This website allows us to explore the northeast corner of Paul’s Churchyard, outside St Paul’s Cathedral, in London, on November 5th, 1622, and to hear John Donne’s sermon for Gunpowder Day, all two hours of it, in the space of its original delivery and in the context of church bells and the random ambient noises of dogs, birds, horses, and crowds of up to 5,000 people.
There is a Concise Guide to the whole site here.

In keeping with the desire for authenticity, the text of Donne’s sermon was taken from a manuscript prepared within days of the sermon’s original delivery that contains corrections in Donne’s own handwriting. It was recorded by a professional actor using an original pronunciation script and interpreting contemporary accounts of Donne’s preaching style.

For John Donne’s Paul’s Cross sermon for November 5th, 1622 (in 15-minute segments), as heard from 2 different positions in the Churchyard, go here.

On the website, the user can learn how the visual and acoustic models were created and explore the political and social background of Donne’s sermon. In addition to the complete recordings of Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon, one can also explore the question of audibility of the unamplified human voice in Paul’s Churchyard by sampling excerpts from the sermon as heard from eight different locations across the Churchyard and in the presence of four different sizes of crowd.

For excerpts of the sermon from eight different locations and in the presence of different sizes of crowd go here.

The website also houses an archive of materials that contributed to the recreation, including visual records of the buildings, high resolution files of the manuscript and first printed versions of Donne’s sermon for Gunpowder Day 1622, and contemporary accounts of Donne’s preaching style. In addition, the website includes an acoustic analysis of the Churchyard, discussion of the challenges of interpreting historic depictions of the Cathedral and its environs, and a review of the liturgical context of outdoor preaching in the early modern age.

To see the visual model in detail on a fly around video go here. This is especially dramatic if viewed in HD video and at Full Screen display.
This Project is the work of an international team of scholars, engineers, actors, and linguists. In addition to the Project Director, they include David Hill, Associate Professor of Architecture at NC State University; Joshua Stephens, Jordan Grey, Chelsea Sacks, and Craig Johnson, graduate students in architecture at NC State University; John Schofield, Archaeologist at St Paul’s Cathedral and author of St Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren (2011); David Crystal, linguist; Ben Crystal, actor; Ben Markham and Matthew Azevedo, acoustic engineers with Acentech, Inc; and members of the faculty in linguistics and their graduate students at NC State University, especially professors Walt Wolfram, Erik Thomas, Robin Dodsworth, and Jeff Mielke.

Wall’s team is now planning a second stage of this Project, with the goal of completing the visual model of Paul’s Churchyard, including a complete model of St Paul’s Cathedral as it looked in the early 1620’s, during John Donne’s tenure as Dean of the cathedral. This visual model will be the basis for an acoustic model of the cathedral’s interior, especially the Choir, which will be the site for restaging a full day of worship services, including Bible readings, prayers, liturgies from the Book of Common Prayer, sermons, and music composed by the professional musicians on the cathedral’s staff for performance by the cathedral’s organist and its choir of men and boys. They will be competing for our attention, as they did in the 1620’s, with the noise of crowds who gathered in the cathedral’s nave, known as Paul’s Walk, to see and be seen and to exchange the latest gossip of the day.

Text Encoding Initiative Seminar at Brown

Readers may be interested in the following announcement from Julia Flanders about a special NEH-funded “Taking TEI Futher” institute.  Additional information is available at the WWP’s webpage for their Seminars on Scholarly Text Encoding.

The deadline is approaching for applications to the introductory TEI customization workshop in the NEH-funded “Taking TEI Further” institutes. Please note that the dates for the “Publishing and Transforming TEI Data” seminar have been changed.

Taking TEI Further: TEI CustomizationBrown University, May 8-10, 2013Guest instructor: Trevor Muñoz, University of MarylandApplication deadline: February 15, 2013Taking TEI Further: Teaching with TEIBrown University, August 21-23, 2013Guest instructor: Jacqueline Wernimont, Scripps CollegeApplication deadline: June 1, 2013Taking TEI Further: Publishing and Transforming TEI DataBrown University, November 20-22, 2013 [note the date change!!]Guest instructor: David Birnbaum, University of PittsburghApplication deadline: August 15, 2013

**Travel funding is available of up to $500 per participant, up to $1000 for graduate student participants.**These seminars assume a basic familiarity with TEI, and provide an opportunity to explore specific topics in more detail, in a collaborative workshop setting.

These seminars are part of a series funded by the NEH and conducted by the Brown University Women Writers Project. They are aimed at people who are already involved in a text encoding project or are in the process of planning one, and are intended to provide a more in-depth look at specific challenges in using TEI data effectively. Each event will include a mix of presentations, discussion, case studies using participants’ projects, hands-on practice, and individual consultation.

The seminars will be strongly project-based: participants will share information about their projects with the group, discuss specific challenges and solutions, develop encoding specifications and documentation, and create sample materials (such as syllabi, docmentation, etc., as appropriate to the event). A basic knowledge of the TEI Guidelines and some prior experience with text encoding will be assumed.For more detailed information and to apply, please visithttp://www.wwp.brown.edu/encoding/seminars/