The Recognition and Enrichment of Archival Documents (READ) project is developing new technology to enable computers to recognise handwritten historical material.  With Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology, computers can process any kind of document – from the Middle Ages to the present day, from old Greek to modern English.  This research has huge and exciting implications for the accessibility of the written records of human history.  It allows users to search in the full-text of large historical collections and also to extract information such as person names or data stored in tables and forms. 

   

Anyone interested in finding out more about the project can now consult presentations which were given by the READ partners at the co:op project’s ‘Technology meets Scholarship’ conference. 

 

Text transcripts and slides from the READ presentations are available here: 

http://read.transkribus.eu/2016/03/31/presentations-from-the-read-partners-now-available/

 

Videos of the READ presentations can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLElrWLCQvZaRny2G_gXAINGpCtNrpPBBO

 

For an introduction to HTR technology, try watching Dr Roger Labahn (University of Rostock) on ‘Handwritten Text Recognition.  Key Concepts’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLElrWLCQvZaRny2G_gXAINGpCtNrpPBBO&v=3d-Iru6qLRc

 

For more information visit:

READ website:http://read.transkribus.eu/

Transkribus website: https://transkribus.eu

Transkribus github: https://github.com/Transkribus/

Or contact: email@transkribus.eu

CFP: Medieval Vernacular Architecture

by Alexander Harper

Society of Architectural Historians

2017 Annual International Conference

June 7-11 Glasgow, Scotland

Session Chair: Alexander Harper, Princeton University

Scholarly interest in vernacular architecture has gained increased traction in the past few decades. As the editors of the 2005 volume Vernacular Architecture in the Twenty-First Century noted, vernacular architecture no longer is understood solely as domestic architecture, rural architecture, or architecture built by romanticized non-professionals—in other words a product counterpoint to “polite” building—but as a cultural process specific to a location, whether rural or urban, or to a people that reveals how builders within that group engage with ecological, technological, and cultural variables. In the same vein, in his 2010 book English Houses: 1300-1800, the archaeologist Matthew Johnson argued that vernacular architecture is an anthropological style, one in which a people, their histories, and priorities can be read through the building form.

Much work on vernacular architecture focuses on building from twentieth century through the present. This session seeks papers that address the study of buildings through the lens of the vernacular from the Middle Ages, defined roughly as the fifth through fifteenth centuries. Subjects are welcome from any part of the world and may include studies of domestic spaces, but in the aim of expanding the definition(s) of vernacular architecture, in particular so that its study can engage with other disciplines, the session encourages papers with anthropologic understandings of the vernacular that examine relationships, specific to an area or group, between builders, patrons, and their surrounding environments that contributed to cultural continuity. As such, this session is interested particularly in papers that address construction processes, lived experience, workshop practices, material and environmental analyses, and the impact of regional integration on local building within specific cultural, social, and historical environments, whether urban or rural, “polite” or domestic. In addition, papers that employ or discuss new technologies for analyzing medieval vernacular buildings are welcome.

Submit your paper here.

CFP Deadline: June 6, 2016

Organizers are pleased to announce a call for applicants to two digital humanities and manuscript studies workshops, running concurrently in fall 2016.

Digital Editing and the Medieval Manuscript Roll

&

Digital Editing and the Medieval Manuscript Fragment

18-19 November 2016
Yale University

Please see the attached call for information and application instructions; more information, syllabi and application links can be found on our website, www.digitalrollsandfragments.com/workshops/. Applications are due by July 15, 2016.

Please feel free to circulate this call.

9th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age

November 17-19, 2016

Save the Date! Registration opens at the end of the summer.

Reactions: Medieval/Modern

In partnership with the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies (SIMS) at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries is pleased to announce the 9th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age. This year's theme, "Reactions: Medieval/Modern," gives us space to explore the many and varied ways that people have reacted to, and acted upon, manuscripts from the Middle Ages up to today. Reactions take many forms. They include the manipulation of physical objects through, for example, the marking up of texts, addition of illustrations, the disbinding of books or rebinding of fragments, as well as the manipulation of digital objects, thanks to new technologies involved in digitization, ink and parchment analysis, virtual reconstruction, among many other processes. This symposium will also tackle how popular culture has reacted to manuscripts over time as witnessed by their use and appearance in books, games, and films. Our keynote speaker will be Michelle P. Brown, Professor emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and former Curator of Manuscripts at the British Library.

For more information and a list of speakers, visit the website:http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/lectures/ljs_symposium9.html.

New News of the Week!

Angel Mosaic in Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem-absolutely gorgeous

More on Polish archaeologists discover a medieval hermitage in Egypt

563rd Conquest of Istanbul Prayer Fest

That Study on the impact of the Black Death Back in the News

History of Wales in 12 Maps

Rare Shakespeare Edition Sold

Medieval Monks and Revenging Rabbits

Offa Coin Discovered

Cross Donated to Durham

Digitizing Monastic Chants

Mongols Didn't Like Europe's Wet Weather

Codroy Valley Norse Settlement (i. e. Canada people!)

OKIE DOKIE....Not only no Dark Ages, but Charlemagne's a Fiction!

> CALL FOR PAPERS - ABSTRACT DUE JUNE 1
> 
> Conference: "The Material World of the Early Middle Ages"
> Pacific University, Forest Grove, Oregon
> October 7 - 9, 2016
> 
> Keynote Speakers:
> 
> Paul Edward Dutton
> Simon Fraser University
> 
> Robin Fleming
> Boston College
> 
> Thomas F.X. Noble
> University of Notre Dame (Emeritus)
> 
> Scholars have long relied upon material evidence in order to understand the early Middle Ages. With the “material turn” of recent years in Medieval Studies, we invite early medievalists of all disciplines and specialization to a conference meant to examine, question, and build upon recent work on materiality. We seek to explore the whole world of the early Middle Ages by including papers that discuss the ways in which early medieval people experienced, altered, and were transformed by the material. By “material,” we include objects, artworks, buildings, texts, and other tangible items that survived as well as the “materials” discussed in texts or found in the natural world that we know existed but have been lost to time, decay, and change. We welcome a range of papers that will investigate this “world” expansively from a variety of vantage points such as the natural world, the materiality of the human body, the built environment, society, religion, and the imagination.
> 
> Please send an abstract of 250 words and a CV to Valerie Garver (vgarver@niu.edu) or Lynda Coon (llcoon@uark.edu) via email attachment. On your abstract please provide name, institution, and the title of your proposal.
> 
> Abstracts are due June 1, 2016.
> 
> 
> Dr. Martha Rampton
> Professor of History
> Director-Center for Gender Equity
> Pacific University
> 2043 College Way
> Forest Grove, Oregon 97116
> Phone: 503 352 2772
> Fax: 503 352 3195
> CGE site: www.pacificu.edu/cge

CFP for special issue of Medieval Feminist Forum: Women’s Arts of the Body

 

Edited by Irina Dumitrescu (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

 

Email: irinaalexandradumitrescu (at) gmail.com

 

At the beginning of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Philosophy arrives to drive out the Muses from Boethius’ cell. It is often said that the Philosophy is female because Latin philosophia is a feminine noun, and, indeed, the dialogue that follows continues a masculine tradition of inquiry and authorship. And yet, woven into this scene are not only female figures, but traces of women’s craft. Philosophy is a cloth-maker, having woven her own clothes, the Muses are described as actresses and whores, and both Muses and Philosophy aim to cure the sick Boethius with their healing arts. Although the dialogue that follows aims to teach the ailing man how to distance himself from worldly things, it begins with feminine craft and arts of the body.

 

For a special issue of Medieval Feminist Forum, contributions are invited that reflect on arts of the body associated in with women at any given point or place in the Middle Ages (with some flexibility towards the Renaissance). Such “arts of the body” might include: spinning and weaving; needlework, knitting, sewing, quilting; cooking, baking, confectionery; brewing, distilling; pottery; cosmetics, hair-dressing; dancing, singing, acting; medicine, home-remedies, first aid; making perfumes and poisons; birth control, abortion, midwifery; sex-work.

 

Some questions you might consider include:

 

-           Which arts of the body are associated with women or men, and when?

-           In what cases do arts or crafts that had belonged to women become the purview of men, or vice versa?

-           How do women’s arts of the body intersect with race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability?

-           How are women’s arts of the body appropriated as metaphors for men’s work?

-           When does women’s work count as work? When does women’s art count as art?  

-           What biases do we find against feminine arts of the body, and how are they expressed in texts?

-           Under what historical circumstances do feminine “arts of the body” make it onto the books? When are they institutionally recognized, inscribed, recorded, or even just mentioned?

-           What effects do we notice due to the lack of a historical record? What kind of reconstruction or myth-making fills the archival gap?

-           How have women’s arts of the body been taught or passed down? What can be recovered about women’s teaching practices?

-           What kinds of gendered spaces are created or used for women’s arts of the body?

-           What interpretative or historical tools can be used to recover and/or reconstruct lost arts of the body?

 

 

Format:

 

Full-length scholarly essays are welcomed from any discipline, and will undergo peer review. Also welcome for this issue are shorter creative or experimental pieces addressing the issue topic. Please submit an abstract or proposal (250 words maximum) for either kind of work by August 1, 2016 to irinaalexandradumitrescu (at) gmail.com .

 

Please feel free to get in touch via email if you have any questions about the topic or the feasibility of a particular approach or format.

 

Working timeline:

 

August 1, 2016 – Abstract deadline

 

September 1, 2016 – Essay solicited

 

January 1, 2017 – Drafts of solicited essays due

 

May 1, 2017 – Final drafts of accepted essays due

 

Fall 2017 – Projected publication date