Category Archives: Announcement

Perseus 6.0: Beyond Translation — the first version of a next generation Perseus

ShareTweet Gregory CraneMarch 15, 2023Medford MA, USA Five years after the March 15, 2018, announcement of the Scaife Viewer, we are announcing Beyond Translation, the first version of the sixth generation Perseus (Perseus 6.0). The current NEH-funded phase of work … Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on March 15, 2023
Posted in Features, Release, Technology | Tagged , | Comments Off on Perseus 6.0: Beyond Translation — the first version of a next generation Perseus

Spring 2023 Course on Natural Language Processing and the Human Record

Tufts University will introduce a new course in spring 2023: “Natural Language Processing and the Human Record.” Students at Boston College and Boston University can already cross-register to take this course for credit but, insofar as space allows, it will be open to others in person and to a wider potential audience participating online. This project-based course will not only provide opportunities for students of Greek and Latin, but also for students of other historical languages. It also addresses a major gap between the curricula to which most students of historical languages have access and the realities of doing research in a digital age. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on October 31, 2022
Posted in Course(s) | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Spring 2023 Course on Natural Language Processing and the Human Record

Why study intro Greek? You could produce compelling performances of Greek poetry and prose in one semester.

If you are an accomplished performer, you should be able to begin performing Greek poetry and prose, with an understanding of every syllable of what you are reading, by the end of one semester. I base that on the preliminary results that my collaborator Farnoosh Shamsian observed after 30 hours of instructing Persian speaking students Homeric Greek. We desperately need passionate and compelling performances of Greek and other languages to bring these sources to life. We can use podcasts and YouTube videos to reach a global audience. We have compelling sources. We need performances in different voices by people from different backgrounds. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on April 10, 2022
Posted in Ancient Greek, Contribution, Course(s) | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Why study intro Greek? You could produce compelling performances of Greek poetry and prose in one semester.

Course on Arabic Sources by West African scholars about the Mali and Songhai empires: Digital Humanities and a new model of Classical Studies at Tufts

At Tufts University, the course on Classical Historians (Classics 141 — details in the departmental course booklet) will focus on Classical Arabic sources composed in, and about, pre-colonial West Africa. While we will consider Arabic sources produced outside of West Africa and accounts of European travelers, we will focus primarily on two different historical sources from West Africa istself: the Tārīkh al-Sūdān and (what has traditionally been called) Tārīkh al-Fattāsh. Our goal is not just to learn about the Mali and Songhai empires but to use what we learn to create openly licensed, digital sources of various kinds that will help others explore a major historical period that has attracted far too attention in the teaching and research. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on April 1, 2022
Posted in Ancient Greek, Course(s), Digital Humanities | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Course on Arabic Sources by West African scholars about the Mali and Songhai empires: Digital Humanities and a new model of Classical Studies at Tufts

Perseus and new, enhanced introductions to Ancient Greek: Fall 2022

Tufts University will offer two different sections of introductory Ancient Greek in fall 2022, each of which takes a complementary approach. Both sections of the class have been designed to exploit increasingly powerful digital tools for understanding Ancient Greek and other languages — the skills that you learn will also help you exploit, and go far beyond, what you can do with translation, whether those are literary translations by human beings or the product of systems such as Google Translate or DeepL. Both sections build directly on an emerging new version of the Perseus Digital Library. Neither section has any prerequisites. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on March 25, 2022
Posted in Ancient Greek, Course(s) | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Perseus and new, enhanced introductions to Ancient Greek: Fall 2022

Center for Hellenic Studies Team Converts Plutarch’s Moralia for Open Greek & Latin

I am writing to report that the Perseus Digital Library had the honor of receiving support for an NEH Digital Humanities Level 3 Project: “Beyond Translation — new possibilities for reading in a digital age.” While this is just one project with limited funding, it reflects a larger potential shift for the study of Ancient Greek and other languages. When I began my career as a graduate student, more than a generation ago, specialists in languages such as Ancient Greek could only direct full scholarship at other specialists. Now, however, we are in a position to frame our understanding of such languages in a form that makes sources immediately accessible to non-specialists. From my perspective, this reflects a fundamental shift in the audience and the realizable goals for those of us privileged to earn a living as specialists on earlier languages from the human record. Continue reading →

by Lisa M. Cerrato Posted on June 12, 2020
Posted in Contribution, Release, Scaife Viewer | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Center for Hellenic Studies Team Converts Plutarch’s Moralia for Open Greek & Latin

Looking for a new language? Consider Ancient Greek.

Are you interested in studying a new language in fall 2019? Whether you want to try something different for your language requirement or you have a year — or even a semester — you have an opportunity to travel thousands of years into the past and to confront the oldest sources in the continuous tradition of European literature.This is not your parents’ language class, and it is not high school Latin. You have an opportunity to participate in the reinvention of an ancient field and the development of a new track within the humanities as a whole. And you also have a chance to begin developing a research agenda of your own, one that can bring together the humanities and emerging fields such as data science. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on August 25, 2019
Posted in Ancient Greek, Course(s) | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Looking for a new language? Consider Ancient Greek.

Digital Editions in Practice, A Two-Day Workshop

ShareTweet Call for applications: Digital Editions in Practice, A Two-Day Workshop The Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University will host a two-day workshop that provides an overview of a sample, practical digital editions creation workflow. This will feature both an … Continue reading →

by Lisa M. Cerrato Posted on January 31, 2019
Posted in Call for Participation, Digital Humanities, Workshop | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Digital Editions in Practice, A Two-Day Workshop

Its alive! Perseus and the Scaife Digital Library Viewer

On March 15, Eldarion released the initial version of the Scaife Digital Library Viewer. The release is, of course, a first step, but this first step changes the world in at least two fundamental ways: (1) Perseus is alive — it can finally include new materials on an on-going basis; (2) the Scaife Digital Library Viewer provides a foundation for an environment that can publish a growing range of born-digital, openly licensed, and networked (and fully networkable because they are openly licensed) annotations and micro-publications that cannot be represented in the incunabular digital publication systems that still internalize the limitations of print publication. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on March 19, 2018
Posted in Features, General, Release, Scaife Viewer | Tagged | Comments Off on Its alive! Perseus and the Scaife Digital Library Viewer

First Version of the Scaife Digital Library Viewer goes live: building the future while remembering a friend

I am pleased to announce the first release of the Scaife Digital Library Viewer, a reading environment for source texts that follow the Canonical Text Services (CTS) data model. Our initial focus is on pre-modern sources, but the underlying approach applies to source texts of all periods. CTS provides a framework within which we can cite particular words in particular versions of particular texts — whether a version is a papyrus, manuscript, or a critical edition, whether versions of that text derive from a single lost original (as is the case for many ancient Greek and Latin texts) or the text itself appears in many versions, each of which has comparable authority (as is the case for many medieval sources). Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on March 15, 2018
Posted in General, Release, Scaife Viewer | Tagged , | Comments Off on First Version of the Scaife Digital Library Viewer goes live: building the future while remembering a friend