Support for Computational Research and Online Publication

The staff of the Forum for Digital Culture provide consultation, software training, data management, and other technical support for the digital projects of faculty and students. For more information or to schedule a consultation, contact the Forum’s Director of Technology, Sandra Schloen (sschloen@uchicago.edu). 

The Forum for Digital Culture supports projects in every branch of the arts and humanities through all phases of the project, from the initial acquisition of the project’s data through the stages of managing, analyzing, and publishing the data and then archiving it in a standards-compliant fashion so it is preserved long into the future. This is done in a cost-effective and sustainable manner by means of two sophisticated, professionally maintained computational platforms that have been designed by scholars and are tailored for research in the humanities.

Online Publication of Scholarly Data

Online publication of the fruits of their computational research remains a challenge for scholars, who badly need a reliable mechanism for publishing on the Web the digital materials they have created in such a way that these materials are:

• Free and open-access for researchers and students to use for non-commercial academic purposes.
• Edited and peer-reviewed to ensure the quality and coherence of both the data and its mode of organization.
• Citable and reconfigurable as individual items of information at a high level of granularity.
• Kept accessible over the long term by professional system administrators in an institutional setting with a sustainable funding mechanism.

The Forum for Digital Culture is in the process of establishing an innovative Online Publication Service to meet this need, in close collaboration with the University of Chicago Library. For more information, contact the Forum’s Director of Online Publications, Miller Prosser (mcprosser@uchicago.edu).

Projects Supported by the Forum

The following projects involving researchers at the University of Chicago are receiving or have received computational support from the staff of the Forum for Digital Culture (non-UChicago projects supported by the Forum are not listed):

• Antiwar Sabotage in Russia (Ania Aizman, Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of Chicago)
• ARTFL: American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (Robert Morrissey and Clovis Gladstone, Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Chicago)
• CAMEL: Center for Ancient Middle Eastern Landscapes (Mehrnoush Soroush, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Capturing the Stars: Women’s Networks and the Advancement of Science at Yerkes Observatory, 1895–1940 (Richard Kron, Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Chicago; Kristine Palmieri, Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, University of Chicago)
• The CEDAR Initiative: Critical Editions for Digital Analysis and Research (the individual CEDAR projects are listed separately below)
• CEDAR: Beshrew Me! Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Early Modern Domestic Culture (Ellen MacKay, English Language & Literature and Theater & Performance Studies, University of Chicago)
• CEDAR: Egyptian Book of the Dead (Foy Scalf and Brian Muhs, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago; Rita Lucarelli, University of California, Berkeley)
• CEDAR: Epic of Gilgamesh (Christopher Woods, University of Pennsylvania [formerly UChicago]; Abraham Winitzer, University of Notre Dame)
• CEDAR: Hebrew Bible (Jeffrey Stackert, Simeon Chavel, Sarah Yardney, and Doren Snoek, Divinity School, University of Chicago; Ronald Hendel, University of California, Berkeley)
• CEDAR: Herman Melville (John Bryant, Hofstra University (emeritus); Christopher Ohge, University of London; Wyn Kelley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Eric Slauter, English Language & Literature, University of Chicago)
• CEDAR: Indigenous American Sign Systems (Edgar Garcia, English Language & Literature, University of Chicago; Claudia Brittenham, Art History, University of Chicago; Jon Clindaniel, M.A. Program in Computational Social Science, University of Chicago; Mark Payne, Classics and Comparative Literature, University of Chicago)
• CEDAR: Piers Plowman and Late Medieval England (Ian Cornelius, Loyola University Chicago; Timothy Stinson, North Carolina State University; Julie Orlemanski, English Language & Literature, University of Chicago)
• Chapakhana: Mapping the Spread of Print in South Asia (Ulrike Stark, South Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago)
• The Chicago Demotic Dictionary (Janet Johnson and Brian Muhs, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• The Chicago Hittite Dictionary (Theo van den Hout and Petra Goedegebuure, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Cinemetrics (Yuri Tsivian and Maria Belodubrovskaya, Cinema & Media Studies, University of Chicago)
• CRANE: Computational Research on the Ancient Near East (Timothy P. Harrison and David Schloen, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago; Lisa Cooper, University of British Columbia; Michel Fortin, Laval University, Québec; Sturt Manning, Cornell University; Graham Philip, Durham University, U.K.)
• Cyrillic Unicode font conversion (Meng Li, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago)
• Database of Afro-Asiatic Basic Lexicon (Brendan Hainline, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago)
• DeepScribe: AI for Cuneiform Tablets (Sanjay Krishnan, Computer Science, University of Chicago; Susanne Paulus, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago; Miller Prosser, Sandra Schloen, and Jeffrey Tharsen, Forum for Digital Culture, University of Chicago; Edward Williams, independent scholar)
• Demotic Ostraca Online (Foy Scalf and Brian Muhs, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Digital Dictionaries of South Asia (Gary Tubb and James Nye, South Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago)
• Digital Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese 古漢語詞源字典 (Jeffrey Tharsen, Forum for Digital Culture, University of Chicago)
• Dispersed Chinese Art Digitization Project (Wu Hung and Katherine Tsiang, Art History, University of Chicago)
• The Excavation of Antioch-on-the-Orontes 1932—1939 (Alan Stahl and Julia Gearhart, Princeton University; Andrea De Giorgi, Florida State University; Asa Eger, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Tasha Vorderstrasse, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Ashkelon, Israel (Lawrence Stager†, Harvard University; Daniel Master, Wheaton College; David Schloen, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Cerro del Villar, Spain (José Suárez Padilla, University of Málaga, Spain; David Schloen, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago; Carolina López-Ruiz, Divinity School and Classics, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Corral Redondo, Peru (Maria Cecilia “Nené” Lozada, Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Gobero, Niger (Paul Sereno, Organismal Biology & Anatomy, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Idalion, Cyprus (Pamela Gaber, Lycoming College; Andrew Wright, Forum for Digital Culture, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Nippur, Iraq (Augusta McMahon, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Tell Keisan, Israel (David Schloen, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago; Gunnar Lehmann, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Bernd Schipper, Humboldt University of Berlin)
• Excavations at Tell Tayinat, Turkey (Timothy P. Harrison, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Tel Yaqush, Israel (Yorke Rowan and David Schloen, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Tiwanaku, Bolivia (Alan Kolata, Anthropology, University of Chicago)
• Excavations at Zincirli, Turkey (David Schloen, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago; Virginia Herrmann, University of Tübingen; Kathryn Morgan, Duke University)
• Genomes, Migrations, and Culture in the Early Civilizations of the Middle East (John Novembre and Maanasa Raghavan, Human Genetics, University of Chicago; James Osborne and David Schloen, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• HARP: Hoard Analysis Research Project [for ancient Greek coin hoards] (Alain Bresson, Classics, University of Chicago)
• Intertextuality: Zhuangzi versus the Taishō (Haun Saussy, East Asian Languages & Civilizations and Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago)
• LEM: Language, Events, and Mind Lab (Monica Do, Linguistics, University of Chicago)
• Marathi Online (Philip Engblom†, South Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago)
• Megiddo 3: Final Report on the Stratum VI Excavations (Timothy P. Harrison, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Messkataloge Digital Database (David Kretz, Ph.D. candidate, Germanic Studies and Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago)
• Metapictures (W. J. T. Mitchell, English and Art History, University of Chicago)
• METEOR: Middle Egyptian Text Editions for Online Research (Janet Johnson, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Modern Philology Metadata (Timothy Campbell, Timothy M. Harrison, and Josephine McDonagh, English Language & Literature, University of Chicago)
• An Organon for the Information Age (David Schloen, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago; Samuel Volchenboum, Pediatrics, University of Chicago; Malte Willer, Philosophy, University of Chicago)
• Ottoman Inscriptions Project (Hakan Karateke, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago)
• Persepolis Fortification Archive Project (Matthew Stolper, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago; Annalisa Azzoni, Vanderbilt University; Mark Garrison, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas; Wouter Henkelman, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris)
• Perseus under PhiloLogic (Helma Dik, Classics, University of Chicago)
• Primed to (Re)act: Can Changes in Procedural Language Prevent Adverse Events between Police and Minority Male Youth? (Christopher Graziul, Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago)
• Ras Shamra Tablet Inventory (Miller Prosser, Forum for Digital Culture, University of Chicago; Dennis Pardee, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago)
• Shang Clan Signs Project (Yung-ti Li, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago)
• Sign and Gesture Archive (Diane Brentari, Linguistics, University of Chicago; Susan Goldin-Meadow, Psychology, University of Chicago)
• Slavic Graduate Student Resource List (Anne Eakin Moss, Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of Chicago)
• South Side Home Movie Project (Jacqueline Stewart, Cinema & Media Studies, University of Chicago)
• Spoken Yucatec Maya (John Lucy, Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago)
• Textual Optics Lab (Hoyt Long, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago; Robert Morrissey and Clovis Gladstone, Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Chicago)
• Village Harmony: South African Choral Music (Mollie Stone, Music, University of Chicago)
• Visualizing Renaissance Florence (Niall Atkinson, Art History and Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Chicago; John Padgett, Political Science, University of Chicago)
• Washo Documentation Project (Alan Yu, Linguistics, University of Chicago)