Semantics in Cultural Comparison: Late Antiquity, London

Seminar on Semantics and Semantic Constructs in Cultural Comparison: The Case of Late Antiquity

Digital Classicist & Institute of Classical Studies Seminar 2011

Friday July 8th at 16:30
Court Room, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU

Timothy Hill (New York University)
Semantics and Semantic Constructs in Cultural Comparison: The Case of Late Antiquity

As increasing numbers of historical datasets are made available online, the question of how best to mediate among them becomes more pressing. But the standard computational approach to such mediation, the creation of a unifying framework ‘over’ the datasets, is problematic in the context of historiography: often, for historians, the question of overarching ‘frame’ is itself the point at issue. This paper explores, with particular reference to Late Antique urban culture, the potential for electronic tools to free the historian from this reflexive bind, and facilitate an ‘experimental’ research approach to history, as advocated by e.g. Marcel Detienne and other classicist anthropologists.

The seminar will be followed by wine and refreshments.

ALL WELCOME

For more information please contact Gabriel.Bodard@kcl.ac.uk, Stuart.Dunn@kcl.ac.uk, S.Mahony@ucl.ac.uk, or see the seminar website at http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2011.html