Archiving Dossier Narrative: Constantinople as Palimpsest

Project Catalogue Record: https://osf.io/preprints/bodoarxiv/ehmkx

Persistent Identifier DOI: 10.34055/osf.io/ehmkx

Launch Date: 02/01/2015

Archive Date: 01/25/2021

Updated: 05/17/2021

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.

Constantinople as Palimpsest: the Place-Based Encyclopedia of Byzantium [Alpha]

Launch Date: Spring 2017

Link: https://wesleyan.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=15245e242e0846c8a00da0238996470d

This is an in-progress place-based encyclopedia of Byzantium.

It was created by the 2015 and 2017 Wesleyan University students of Prof. Jesse W, Torgerson who were integrated with and supported by the student researchers and GIS tutors working in the Traveler’s Lab. It is the first sustained Traveler’s Lab project that fully blends the ongoing work of students in the lab with a stand alone, one-semester course.

The goal of this web-based encyclopedia is to present to the public—in a layered, interactive format—what interdisciplinary scholars of Byzantine Studies have uncovered about the medieval life of the city of Constantinople (or Byzantium).

A “palimpsest” is a term that refers to a page that has been erased (or, in the case of leather parchment, scraped with a knife) to remove an original text and make way for a new one. As a metaphor, palimpsest “lends itself especially well to the interpretation of architectural monuments and landscape sites” (see: Aksamija, Maines, Wagoner) because it encourages us to always be mindful of changes in appearance and usage over time. While this beta version of our place-based encyclopedia is not able to take time into account (presenting every item from the millenium-long history of the Byzantine Empire as equally present at the same time) this remains a primary goal for our next instantiation.

Constantinople as a Palimpsest: The Place-Based Encyclopedia of Byzantium [Beta]

Launch Date: January 26, 2021

Link: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bc9adba5de7348c185e553c40b0df83a

Teaching Constantinople as a (Pixelated) Palimpsest

Published: October 7, 2022

Author: Jesse W. Torgerson

PDF: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/7B04AE50AF1A247069DEF65813E20B8F/9781802700152c4_p77-98_CBO.pdf/teaching_constantinople_as_a_pixelated_palimpsest.pdf

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781802700152.005

Published in: Morreale, Laura K., and Sean Gilsdorf, eds. Digital Medieval Studies – Practice and Preservation. of Collection Development, Cultural Heritage, and Digital Humanities. Amsterdam University Press, 2022.

Historical Practice in the Era of Digital History

Published: December 20, 2022

Author: Jesse W. Torgerson

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12276

Published in: History & Theory, Volume 61, Issue 4, December 2022

Abstract:

The current digital historical moment is an opportunity to formulate a new theory of historical practice. Our field’s long-standing passive reliance on the widespread explanation of historical practice as deriving information from “primary sources” is unhelpful, incoherent, misleading, and an active inhibition to new opportunities. Our reliance on an incoherent explanation means our students are not given a precise description of our historical practice but instead learn to imitate us by gradually adopting disciplinary norms conveyed through exemplary models and the critique of work performed. Furthermore, our reliance on a misleading explanation of method means we lack a common terminology with which we all can coherently explain to our peers what we actually do. We know this, and yet we have provided no alternative. The current moment offers an opportunity to provide a theory of the practice of history that encompasses contemporary, traditional, and even ancient historical methods: capturing sources, producing data, and creating facts. Wide acceptance and implementation of a sources-data-facts model of historical practice will accelerate student understanding, improve communication with other disciplines, erase the apparent distinction between (so-called) analog and digital history, and provide a framework for the publication of historical data as a valuable end in and of itself.

Visualization, Mapping, and the History of mobility in the Middle Ages

Received: August 29, 2022

Published Online: November 30, 2023

Authors: Sean T. Perrone, Adam Franklin-Lyons, David Gary Shaw, Jesse W. Torgerson

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00182370.2023.2262868

Published in: The Historian, Volume 84, Issue 3, 2022

Abstract:

This paper reviews digital methods of scholarship for visualization and mapping, and it then shows how creative and experimental visualization can help us to study the extensive networks that lay behind human mobility, from trade to war, communication, pilgrimage, migration, and much else. In the process, the paper will familiarize historians with the key aspects of digital methods from amalgamating large quantities of data to finding patterns within that data. This discussion of visualization along with the sample maps should demonstrate that digital methods offer a new tool to enhance traditional scholarship and shape richer facts and arguments.