Date: May 12–13, 2017

Venue: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Karlsplatz 4, Heidelberg, Germany) 

Concluding conference of the project Der digital turn in den Altertumswissenschaften: Wahrnehmung – Dokumentation – Reflexion 

(Stelios Chronopoulos, Felix K. Maier, Anna Novokhatko)

Digital text analysis is increasing in prominence throughout the humanities. The ever growing availability of data has opened scholars to the possibilities of quantitative text analysis as a method of learning about the form and content of text. Greek and Latin text analysis in particular poses new questions through the development of text analysis tools and technologies.

The 2-day conference is planned to discuss best practices in methods, methodology, tools and technology and hermeneutical reflections on text analysis. 

This Call for Papers is oriented particularly to all kind of digital projects on Ancient Greek and Latin texts based on central questions such as 

• levels and techniques for the analysis of large bodies of texts: morphosyntactical, style/register determining, textual-critical, content, hermeneutic
• criteria for defining and recognizing items (letters, words, phrases and reference methods)
• multimodal and multicodal capabilities of text
• the relationship between text, e-text, and hypertext
• the methods and perspectives of semiotic and semantic analysis of text/graphic relationship

The focus of the conference is an evaluation of the status quo in the digital analysis of Greek and Latin texts (literary and documents, papyri, manuscripts, inscriptions) – what sort of questions have been asked/answered/not yet answered/cannot be answered? Some speakers from non-classical fields have been invited, such experts in text analysis who can contribute to a broader overview of the issues.

We call scholars from all academic levels to submit abstracts (max. 500 words, for a 20-min paper followed by a 20-min discussion) by December 20, 2016 to Dr. Anna Novokhatko ([log in to unmask]). In particular, we are interested in theoretical and methodological approaches to analyzing classical texts either in research or for teaching purposes. 

Confirmed invited speakers (provisional titles included):

Rodney Ast (Heidelberg) The Humanities’ place in the Digital Humanities. A case study in Papyrology

Lou Burnard (Oxford) title to be specified

James Brusuelas (Oxford) Neural Classics? The wonders and problem of automation

Gregory Crane (Tufts/Leipzig) Greek and Latin in an Age of massive collections and global philology

Milad Doueihi (Paris) Digital materialism

Chiara Fedriani/Maria Napoli (University of Eastern Piedmont) Methodological and theoretical issues in the construction of a corpus for Greek/Latin bilingualism

Jan Christoph Meister (Hamburg) Digitizing the hermeneutic circle: Parameterizing 'context' in hermeneutic text annotation  

Bénédicte Pincemin (Lyon) Introduction to textometric methodology

Charlotte Schubert (Leipzig) Editing and Un-editing in Digital Classics

Tariq Yousef (Leipzig) Creating Dynamic Lexica through Bridge Languages

Schedule:

December 20, 2016: submission deadline

February 20, 2017: notification of acceptance/refusal deadline

May 12–13, 2017: conference in Heidelberg