Wednesday, November 17, 2010

“Mapping the Republic of Letters” Featured in NY Times

Mapping the Republic of Letters,” a major collaboration between Stanford scholars and researchers at institutions around the world, was featured in the recent New York Time’s article “Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities.” The article looks at the new trend in humanities scholarship towards using technology to enhance liberal arts research and quotes at length project co-leader and former fellow Dan Edelstein. A graphic in the left sidebar highlights the project’s visualizations and summarizes some of its key findings.

In addition to the article, the Times devoted an Arts Beat blog entry to “Mapping” that features a video about the project and explains how to use the publicly available visualization.

“Mapping the Republic of Letters” is led by former Humanities Center fellows Paula Findlen (1998-99) and Dan Edelstein (2008-09) and the Center’s academic technology specialist, Nicole Coleman. Other former fellows on the team include Caroline Winterer (2008-09), Giovanna Ceserani (2007-08), and Keith Baker (2005-06). Groups of researchers are combining data from curated correspondence collections and other archives with tools for visual analysis to better understand the circulation of people, letters, and objects during the 17th and 18th centuries.

“Mapping the Republic of Letters” receives support from the Stanford Humanities Center and is funded by Stanford’s Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities as well as a National Endowment for the Humanities “Digging into Data” grant.

RELATED INFORMATION

Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities (New York Times)

Digitally Mapping the Republic of Letters (New York Times Arts Beat entry)

Multimedia Feature on Mapping the Republic of Letters (New York Times)

Chicago Press Blog (features a response to the NY TImes article by Dan Edelstein)

“Mapping the Republic of Letters” Website

Monday, November 8, 2010

Center Names New Associate Director

The Stanford Humanities Center is delighted to announce the appointment of Katja Zelljadt as the new associate director of the Center. She will come to Stanford for the beginning of winter quarter 2011.

Zelljadt currently heads the Scholars Program at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, running the fellowship and academic programs for approximately fifty researchers in the broad field of art history. She helped found the Getty Research Journal, a peer-reviewed venue for scholarly writing, and has been its managing editor for the last three years.

Director Aron Rodrigue praised Zelljadt’s work at the Getty Research Institute, highlighting her “professionalism, unique background experience, and enthusiasm.”

Zelljadt received her PhD in German history from Harvard University, taught at the University of Southern California, and has worked at various museums such as the Harvard Art Museums and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin. Her interests and publications have focused on historiography, collecting, display, and museum history, as well as urbanization, historic preservation, and photography. Her current project looks at picturing trades in the sixteenth century.

Zelljadt succeeds Matthew Tiews, who served as associate director of the Humanities Center from 2005-10. He left the Center at the end of September to assume the new university position of executive director of arts programs.