Future Philologies: Digital Directions in Ancient World Text

This article first appeared in ISAW Newsletter 20 (Winter 2018).

Conference organized by Patrick J. Burns (ISAW Assistant Research Scholar, Digital Projects)
April 20

As any classicist will tell you, the study of Greek and Latin has benefited tremendously from the work of a small but dedicated cadre of early digital humanists. Scholars in other areas of antiquity are now beginning to draw on this experience and resources developed by digital humanists and computer scientists working on modern languages to a broad array of historical languages. The ISAW Library is organizing “Future Philologies” as a forum for leading scholars to discuss common challenges and new directions in the development of digital corpora, resources, and tools for ancient languages. The aim is not only to find common ground on technical matters, but also to promote dialogue between and across languages and scripts, extending ISAW’s scholarly mission to the digital plane by offering “an unshuttered view of antiquity across vast stretches of time and place.” Participants will present on digital text and language projects in Greek, Latin, Coptic, Arabic, Classical Persian, Classical Chinese, and languages represented in cuneiform scripts. Computer and information scientists will also present technical perspectives on innovations in language research certain to have an impact on the next generation of philologists.

The conference is co-sponsored by ISAW, the NYU Center for the Humanities, the NYU Division of Libraries, the NYU Center for Ancient Studies, and the NYU Classics Department.