Author Archives: Gregory Crane

Where did faculty in US Classics Departments with top-ranked graduate programs get their own PhDs?

Programs would do well to pay close attention to the ways in which the new graduate program at the Institute for Study of the Ancient World had begun developing a broader view of the ancient world and including new digital methodologies in the research that they support [.] Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on June 11, 2015
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The Big Humanities, National Identity and the Digital Humanities in Germany

Two busy years of residence in Germany has allowed me to make at least some preliminary observations but most of my colleagues in Germany have spent their entire careers here, often in fields where they have grown up with their colleagues around the country. I offer initial reflections rather than conclusions and write in order to initiate, rather than to finish, discussions about how the Digital H Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on June 8, 2015
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And the News for Greek and Latin in France is not good either

Tweet Gregory Crane Comments to gcrane2008@gmail.com May 2015 Just as I had finished off a blog about bad news on enrollments for Greek and Latin in the US (and Germany), I came saw a story on Al Jazeera about big … Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on May 19, 2015
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Bad News for Latin in the US, worse for Greek

According to statistics published by the Modern Language Association in February 2015, between fall 2009 and fall 2013, enrollments in Ancient Greek and Latin at US postsecondary institutions suffered their worst decline since 1968, the earliest year for which the MLA offers such statistics. The number of enrollments in Greek and Latin declined from 52,484 to 40,109, a drop of 24%. This precipitous and rapid decline may reflect the lingering aftershocks of the financial crisis of 2008, which certainly raised student anxiety levels and may have driven students away from intellectually idealistic activities such as the study of Ancient Greek and Latin. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on May 19, 2015
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Getting to open data for Classical Greek and Latin: breaking old habits and undoing the damage — a call for comment!

This blog post addresses two barriers that prevent students of historical languages such as Classical Greek and Latin from shifting to a fully open intellectual ecosystem: (1) the practice of giving control of scholarly work to commercial entities that then use their monopoly rights to generate revenue and (2) the legacy rights over critical editions that scholars have already handed over to commercial entities. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on March 4, 2015
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A Tenure Track Job in the US, Anti-Islamification Demonstrations in Germany, and the Redefinition of Classics

It would be hard to imagine a humanities field that is more challenging or more cut off from the often perceived realities of educating students to survive in a competitive world. It is hard enough for many to justify investing the time that it takes to master Ancient Greek or Latin — languages in which you will negotiate no contracts and by which you will not immediately advance the technological competitiveness of your nation. When you add the need to understand Classical Arabic as well as Greek and/or Latin, you find yourself in a very learned — and very very small — community. How can we justify investing a precious tenure track position in such a field of research? Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on January 20, 2015
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Perseus Open Publication Series

The Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University and the Open Philology Project at the University of Leipzig announce plans for the Perseus Open Publication Series (POPS), a new venue for open access and open data publications in any format and in any language that the Perseus Digital Library can support. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on October 2, 2014
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Opening up Classics and the Humanities: Computation, the Homer Multitext Project and Citizen Science

Increasingly powerful computational methods are important for humanists not simply because they make it possible to ask new research questions but especially because computation makes it both possible — and arguably essential — to transform the relationship between humanities research and society, opening up a range of possibilities for student contributions and citizen science. To illustrate this point, this paper looks at the transformative work conducted by the Homer Multitext Project. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on September 29, 2014
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The Digital Loeb Classical Library — a view from Europe

The Digital Loeb Classical Library has gone live and many students of Greek and Latin are testing it. “The Digital Loeb Classical Library — a view from Europe” considers some of the issues that the new DLCL raises. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on September 22, 2014
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