I am forwarding this message on behalf of our colleague Elisabeth Burr of the
University of Duisburg, in the hope that response will be immediate and appropriate
(and effective!).
George Ferzoco
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Dear colleagues of Humanities Computing,
our university is facing a very heavy cut in posts (167). It has been proposed that
Romance studies should go. At the moment a rescue plan is being put forward which,
however, excludes Italian studies completely. Italian is considered, by my colleagues
in the Romance department to be a minor (in some respects inferior)language. But, as
you all know, above all inside the Italian department humanities computing has been
pushed forward. This is because, despite being a specialist in Romance linguistics,
my base is the Department of Italian.
If the Italian department is closed all the work in:
- corpus building: Italian, French and Spanish newspaper corpus 1994; the Italian
newspaper cor- pus 1989 part of which you can get from the Oxford Text Archive or on
the CD of ECI,
- computer aided teaching of the linguistics of the Romance languages (some of you
have seen my presentation in Edinburgh or at King's; you might also have a look at:
http://www.uni-duisburg.de/FB3/ROMANISTIK/PERSONAL/Burr/burr.htm
or at our semester program under
http://www.uni-duisburg.de/VV/ss99/iv-0303.htm
in order to see who is trying to use, if at all, the media at our disposal),
- on-line computer aided textual analysis:
http://www.uni-duisburg.de/ FB3/ROMANISTIK/PERSONAL/Burr/humcomp/tacthome.htm
(by the way the web pages of our department themselves are my own doing:
http://www.uni-duisburg.de/FB3/ROMANISTIK/)
- collaboration with ACO*HUM ecc. will be closed down, too.
If there is anything in the above you consider worthwhile, I would like to urge you
to send an e-mail of protest to our Rector:
Prof. Dr. Wolff
[log in to unmask]
or if you prefer to send a fax:
An den Rektor der Gerhard-Mercator-Universitaet Duisburg Prof. Dr. Wolff +49 203 379
3500
urging him to seriously consider the consequences of closing down the only
department at Duisburg University which has made a con- tribution to the development
of good practice in Humanities Com- puting.
As the decision of closure will be taken the 7th of May, I urge you to send such an
e-mail as soon as possible and by all means by the 6th of May.
For those of you who are involved in literary studies I would like to add that a
landmark History of Italian literature has just been published by the head of the
Italian department, Prof. Dr. Manfred Hardt.
I thank you all in advance for your support
Elisabeth Burr
------------------------------------------- PD Dr. Elisabeth Burr FB 3/Romanistik
Gerhard Mercator Universitaet-GH Duisburg Geibelstrasse 41 47048 Duisburg Tel.: +49
203 3791957 fax: +49 203 3793122 e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.uni-duisburg.de/FB3/ROMANISTIK/PERSONAL/Burr/burr.htm Editor of:
http://www.uni-duisburg.de/FB3/ROMANISTIK/home.html
http://www.uni-duisburg.de/FB3/SILFI/home.html http://www.uni-duisburg.de/FB3/DRV/
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