Constantinople as Palimpsest: Archiving Dossier Narrative

Abstract

The Constantinople as Palimpsest Project is a collaborative, online, interactive, topographically-indexed teaching encyclopedia of the city of Constantinople from AD 330 to 1453. It was created through and is hosted on the web 2.0 tools of ArcGIS online (https://www.arcgis.com). It is curated by Jesse W. Torgerson (College of Letters, Wesleyan University). It was and is created, maintained, and updated by the co-curatorial, editorial, and design work of research students in the Traveler’s Lab at Wesleyan University (https://travelerslab.research.wesleyan.edu). The content was written by undergraduate students as a part of their required coursework for Wesleyan University classes from 2015 to the present. The Constantinople as Palimpsest encyclopedia uses the “Map Notes” feature of ArcGIS online to provide click-able notations on a topical series of digital maps of the historical city of Constantinople during the period in which it was the capitol of the Roman Empire (AD 330-1453). These notations are written by students for students as brief encyclopedia entries on the places, structures, items, and events in the history of Constantinople. The goal of the project is to provide a tool to create a historically-informed mental topography in which to imagine figures in and events of Constantinople in a comprehensive and integrated context.