Category Archives: Instruction

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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Why we need user profiles and a new Perseus

Alison Babeu called my attention to a recent blog by a Princeton Classics undergrad that really captured a major challenge and opportunity for a new Perseus. Solveig Lucia Gold described her own reaction to the ups and downs of using the reading support that Perseus has offered for Greek and Latin for decades (and, indeed, since before many of our undergraduates were born, if we consider the CD ROM versions of Perseus). The situation will be even better — or worse — when we finally integrate treebanks and alignments between the source texts and the translations. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on August 18, 2017
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Update on the new MA in Digital Tools for Premodern Studies at Tufts

Beginning in Fall 2017
Applications due: February 15, 2017
General information: http://ase.tufts.edu/classics/graduate/digitalTools.htm

In September 2016, we announced the creation of a new MA at Tufts University (“Considering a post-bac in Classics? Think about the new MA in Digital Tools for Premodern Studies at Tufts.” This new program builds upon the established programs in Ancient Greek and Latin, as well as Sanskrit and Classical Arabic (which faculty in the Tufts Classics Department also already support), students are not limited to working with only these languages.
Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on January 9, 2017
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Considering a post-bac in Classics? Think about the new MA in Digital Tools for Premodern Studies at Tufts.

Two years ago I published a blog entitled “So you want to become a professor of Greek and/or Latin? Think hard about a PhD in Digital Humanities.” Here I talk about something that we have done at Tufts to improve the situation, creating an MA in Digital Tools for Premodern Studies that allows students to address two common challenges: the need to read more Greek and Latin and to familiarize themselves with the digital methods upon which their teaching and research will increasingly depend in the decades to come. Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on September 26, 2016
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Announcing the Digital Tools for Premodern Studies program at Tufts University

ShareTweet We are pleased to announce the Digital Tools for Premodern Studies program at Tufts University. Applications being accepted now. http://asegrad.tufts.edu/academics/explore-graduate-programs/digital-humanities

by Lisa M. Cerrato Posted on September 20, 2016
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Collaborating Courses on Fifth-Century Greek History in Spring 2016?

ShareTweet Call for Collaboration Gregory Crane Leipzig and Tufts Universities September 1, 2015 This is a preliminary call for comment and for participation. I expect to be teaching an advanced Greek course in Spring 2016, quite possibly on Thucydides. I … Continue reading →

by Gregory Crane Posted on September 1, 2015
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