Seminar 7 Worlds of Dante and Tibet

Introduction to the Digital Liberal ArtsMDST 3703 / 7703

Fall 2010

Business

• Midterms are available on Collab– In the Resources tree

• About Tuesday …– As a result, synthetic posts not due this week– You may write a post for extra credit

Review

• Text and Image– Contextual mass achieved through juxtaposition of

text and image• Classification and the role of categories– Connecting– What else?

Parker and Germano want their sites to

evoke worlds.

What do they mean by “world”?

Hermeneutics, the Study of Wor(l)ds

• We’ve mentioned the hermeneutical circle– Grammatical vs. Psychological meanings

• More generally: human beings inhabit worlds, not just environments– Worldview

• Origins in interpreting the Bible and Roman Law– The “records left by man [sic]” bear the imprint of these

worlds• Scholarship is about remembering these worlds to

our contemporaries– Remembering them, rearticulating them

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created

equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable

Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of

Happiness.”

Texts “contain” worlds

Is this idea found in hypertext?

Operationalizing the concept

• Worlds consist of “symbols and meanings”• Symbols and meanings– Encode categories – Are expressed by both words and images– Are created and “owned” by communities and

societies• We can represent these in the digital medium

Symbol Sign

Let’s look at how worlds are

represented for Dante and Tibet

World of Dante

• Third Generation IATH project• Deborah Parker, Italian• Focuses on putting the Divine Comedy in

context—evoking the world– Dante is like Blake and Milton in this respect

• How does the site accomplish this?– Visit site and begin reading …– Ask: who is Beatrice?

Maps

Music

Timeline

Resources

SEARCHText, Category LIST

Gallery

IMAGERECORD

CATEGORYRECORD

Inferno | Purgatorio | Paradisio

CANTO VIEWER

English, Italian, Categories

Submenu Main MenuCore Content

Information Architecture of WOD

World Views

• Maps categories onto text• Maps images onto categories

Tibetan & Himalayan Library

• Third Generation IATH project• David Germano, Religious Studies• Builds on UVAs position in Tibetan Studies• Focuses on putting Tibet in context– Also takes advantage of context—how?

• Built around the library metaphor (alas)– Projects, Collections, Places (Map room),

Encyclopedias, Reference, Community, Tools

Key Elements

• Media– Images, video, etc.

• Categories (Knowledge Maps)– Rituals, Economics, etc.

• Maps– Interactive Maps, Place Dictionary

• Literature– Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Translator, etc.

• Community– Projects, How to Contribute, etc.

Exercise

• Group A: Compare the representations of Virgil and Beatrice in the text. Who are they and how many times does each appear in the text?

• Group B: Compare image representations of Virgil and Beatrice

• Group C: Locate the Tibetan city of Lhasa and learn about it place in Tibetan culture

• Group D: use the Knowledge Maps to find out how many kinds of Tibetan rituals there are. Do any have images associated with them?