Last Tuesday, April 30, was the formal launch party for the Aurelius Digital Humanities Initiative. We had a “soft launch” in the fall to let people know Aurelius existed, but Tuesday’s event was a glimpse into two of the projects that we are currently working on. (Both of these projects happen to be mapping projects, but we’re certainly open to other kinds of projects!) I gave a brief introduction about the definitions of DH and the kinds of projects Aurelius can support, then I turned it over to our speakers.

Our first presenter was Dr. Annika Thiem, an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy. Annika’s project will investigate the role of New York City as a “shadow-protagonist” in Uwe Johnson’s Jahrestage (Anniversaries) tetralogy (published from 1970-1983), in which the main character Gesine Cresspahl navigates her way around the city while relating her own and her family’s memories. The idea for this project is to create a searchable, interactive map of locations, historical layers, and topics. This project is in its earliest stages, so we do not have a projected launch date, but you can see a screencap of the mockup website below.

The second presenter was Dr. Craig Bailey, an associate professor in the Department of History. Last year, Craig taught a junior research seminar that focused on local history and this year we’ll be bringing that course into the digital realm. Students will have the opportunity to explore the history of Ardmore, PA, through census data, maps, and other archival materials and use their findings to compile an interactive map of the region. We’ll be working with Craig to develop the course so that students will get hands-on experience in Falvey Library’s Special Collections and Digital Library. We’ll be running this course in the fall semester, so stay tuned for more details. For now, you can see a screencap of the website mockup below.

David Uspal, Aurelius’s Digital Humanities Technology Developer, then gave a brief overview of some of the technology he’s been developing to support these two projects, including the interactive map and timeline tools.

I was very excited to see such a great turnout and interest for this event. Stay tuned to hear more as these projects progress and please be in touch if you have your own DH project idea you’d like to collaborate on!