Digitizing the University of Pennsylvania's Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, 1000-1600

Recipient: Shawcross, Nancy M (Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206 USA) in affiliation with University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA)

Goal: The digitization of 800 codices, documents, and fragments constituting the entirety of medieval and Renaissance primary sources held by the university's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Description: Penn proposes to produce & make freely available on the Internet digital facsimiles of its collection of European manuscripts from 1000 to 1600. With a total project cost of $790,272, Penn requests $292,958 from NEH to fund salary & fringe benefits for 2 years for 1 full-time digital data coordinator & 2 full-time digital camera operators. Penn???s collection comprises approximately 800 discrete items, totaling approximately 320,000 pages and offers important research material in the fields of art history; English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish literatures; European political, social, and economic history; the history of science and technology, including alchemy; the history of witchcraft; legal studies; music; religious studies; and philosophy. The project will provide 3 entry points for the facsimiles: access through a hot link in the WorldCat and local cataloging records, access via Digital Scriptorium, and access through a project-specific website with faceted searching.

Grant: 194389 / PW-50296-09,   Division: Preservation and Access,   Program: Humanities Collections and Reference Resources,   Year Awarded: 2009

Representations of the "Other": Jews in Medieval Christendom

Recipient: Resnick, Irven M (Chattanooga, TN 37403 USA) in affiliation with University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (Chattanooga, TN 37402 USA)

Goal: A five-week institute to be held at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (UK) for twenty-five college and university teachers to examine the evolution of medieval European conceptions of alterity.

Description: This proposal seeks funding to hold a five-week summer institute to be held July 2, 2010 - August 11, 2010. The summer institute will allow participants to gain a better understanding of changes in the legal status, economic conditions, cultural stereotypes and depictions of Jews as the most visible and problematic minority group in medieval Christendom.

Grant: 197410 / EH-50188-09,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for College and University Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2009

The Canterbury Tales and Medieval Culture

Recipient: Patterson, Lee W (North Haven, CT 06473 USA) in affiliation with Yale University (New Haven, CT 06520 USA)

Goal: : A six-week school teacher summer seminar for sixteen participants on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and its cultural context.

Description: This six-week Summer Seminar for School Teachers provides an opportunity to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales both as literary masterpiece in its own right and as a way of understanding the central values and practices of late medieval culture. Members of the seminar will learn to read the work in the original Middle English, will have the opportunity to discuss each of the Tales in detail, and will read historians' accounts of the central issues of medieval culture that the Tales explore. The goal of the seminar is to empower the participants with a secure understanding both of Chaucer and of medieval culture so that they can return to their classrooms confident in their ability to teach the literature and history of the period.

Grant: 197378 / FV-50205-09,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Seminars for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2009

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Recipient: Raybin, David (Charleston, IL 61920 USA) in affiliation with Eastern Illinois University

Goal: A four-week school teacher summer seminar for sixteen participants on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, to be held in London.

Description: We propose a four-week Seminar for School Teachers on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to be team-taught in London, England. The Seminar will explore how Chaucer looks out upon the world, as participants consider the relevance of Chaucer's poetry for readers now, that is, how his vivid ideas on human relationships and desires mesh with and yet challenge modern attitudes. As we progress through the tales, we will join together in making discoveries about the distance that separates us from the lived details of Chaucer's fourteenth-century England; about the continuities of artistry, philosophy, emotion, and meaning that render Chaucer's writings still important; and about the variety of responses to Chaucer that combine to achieve understandings inherently richer than those reached by reading alone. Participants will read the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, and we will visit historical sites in London, Canterbury, and Oxford relevant to an appreciation of the text.

Grant: 197376 / FV-50203-09,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Seminars for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2009

Enhancing Byzantine Studies at the University of Notre Dame

Recipient: Noble, Thomas F.X (Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA) in affiliation with University of Notre Dame

Goal: Endowment for two professorships, acquisitions, conferences, and visiting lectures in Byzantine Studies.

Description: For over a millennium (330-1453) Byzantium integrated and disseminated the rich cultures of Classical and Hellenistic Greece, Ancient Rome, Asia Minor, Early Christianity, and the Slavic worlds. It was a great civilization at the crossroads of interchange between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. To understand the history and thought of Byzantium is to better understand the cultures and religious dynamics of those regions and religions today. Unfortunately, Byzantine Studies is a discipline often overlooked and misunderstood by academics in the West. The University of Notre Dame requests $1 million from the NEH to establish one of the strongest Byzantine Studies programs in North America. The proposed challenge grant will endow two new tenure-track positions in Byzantine history and theology; two graduate student fellowships in Byzantine Studies; conferences and visiting lecturers; and library acquisitions. Notre Dame will raise $4 million from external sources to match the NEH grant.

Grant: 186204 / CH-50443-08,   Division: Challenge Grants,   Program: Challenge Grants,   Year Awarded: 2008

Dante's Commedia

Recipient: Stephany, William A (South Burlington, VT 04503 USA) in affiliation with University of Vermont (Burlington, VT 05405 USA)

Goal: A six-week seminar for fifteen school teachers on Dante's Commedia in Siena, Italy.

Description: A six-week Seminar for School Teachers on Dante's Commedia in Siena, Italy.

Grant: 191938 / FV-50179-08,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Seminars for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2008

Dante's Divine Comedy and the Medieval World: Literature, History, Art

Recipient: Kleinhenz, Christopher (Madison, WI 53711 USA) in affiliation with Medieval Academy of America (Cambridge, MA 02138 USA)

Goal: A four-week seminar for fifteen college and university faculty to travel to Prato, Italy, and study Dante's Divine Comedy through close reading, research, and site visits.

Description: The four-week Seminar, which will take place at the Monash University Center in Prato (Italy), focuses on Dante's Divine Comedy from an interdisciplinary perspective and contextualizes it within the medieval literary, historical, and artistic traditions. Four full-day excursions to relevant sites of Dantean interest (Florence, Siena-San Gimignano, Lucca-Pisa, and Ravenna) will complement the seminar discussions. The remarkable literary, historical and artistic resources in the area will enrich the intellectual experience of the participants and enhance their research capacity and pedagogical effectiveness. The seminar topic should be attractive to teachers wishing to 1) incorporate Dante in their courses and research and/or 2) gain greater knowledge of Dante's Comedy as a way of shaping and enriching their own teaching and research. Seminar results will be disseminated through conference presentations (e.g., the Medieval Congress at Western Michigan U.) and published scholarship.

Grant: 191899 / FS-50176-08,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Seminars for College Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2008

The Thirteeth Century "Lives" of St. Francis of Assisi

Recipient: Cook, William (Geneseo, NY 14454-1460 USA) in affiliation with SUNY Research Foundation, College at Geneseo (Geneseo, NY 14454 USA)

Goal: A six-week summer seminar, convening in Siena and Assisi, Italy, for fifteen school teachers to study the life, works, and representations of St. Francis of Assisi.

Description: For six weeks, we shall study several versions of the life of St. Francis of Assisi that were written and painted in the 13th century. The texts will be three 13th century lives of Francis that had official status in the Order--the two versions by Thomas of Celano and the Leganda Maior of Bonaventure. The narrative paintings are now in Pescia, Pistoia, Florence, Siena, and Assisi. For three weeks, the seminar will meet in Siena and then move to Assisi where Francis lived and died. We will usually meet four times per week and will visit all of the paintings listed above. Each participant will create a written project and present a version to the group. For projects focusing on a particular work, on site presentations will be arranged.

Grant: 191937 / FV-50178-08,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Seminars for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2008

Retrospective Digital Editions of Print Editions Published by the Medieval Academy of America, 1925-2001

Recipient: Szarmach, Paul E (Cambridge, MA 02138 USA) in affiliation with Medieval Academy of America

Goal: The first phase of the retrospective online publication of thirty-eight scholarly print editions of the Medieval Academy of America. (24 months)

Description: The Medieval Academy of America published 38 scholarly editions among the 105 titles in its main book series, Medieval Academy Books, between 1925 and 2001. All of the texts date from the Middle Ages (ca. A.D. 500-1500) and originated in Europe or North Africa. They were written in Latin or in one of the various vernacular languages of the period: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, and Welsh are all represented. All of the texts are of lasting value in understanding medieval culture. Grapevine Publishing Services of Madison, Wisconsin, will produce searchable digital ditions of these works. The Academy will make the digital editions available permanently on its Web site free of charge to all noncommercial users.

Grant: 191443 / RQ-50325-08,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2008

The Isle of Man: Crossroads of Medieval Cultures and Languages

Recipient: Atchley, Clinton P (Arkadelphia, AR 71999 USA) in affiliation with Henderson State University (Arkadelphia, AR 71923 USA)

Goal: A five-week seminar in Britain for fifteen school teachers to explore the cultural, literary, and linguistic diversity of the Isle of Man in the Middle Ages.

Description: The purpose of this five-week NEH seminar for school teachers is to provide participants with an enriched appreciation for the multicultural reality of the British Isles and Ireland (the Irish Sea cultural province) in the Middle Ages. While early British literature and culture is sometimes thought to be exclusively Anglo-Saxon, Britain was, in fact, rich in cultural and linguistic diversity. During the seminar, we will focus on five distinct cultures: the Irish, the Scots (and Picts), the Welsh, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Norse. Situating ourselves in an important nexus of these cultures on the Isle of Man, we will focus on the Irish Sea as a microcosm of cultural connection rather than as a barrier. The ultimate goal of the seminar then is to make Medieval literature and culture accessible to high school teachers and to utilize this avenue to make the variety and complexity of the Middle Ages accessible to their students who will ultimately be the primary beneficiaries.

Grant: 192041 / FV-50198-08,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Seminars for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2008

Piers Plowman Electronic Archive

Recipient: Duggan, Hoyt N (Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121 USA) in affiliation with University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA)

Goal: Continued development of the B critical edition and completion of an archetypal text, as well as completion of documentary editions of A and C manuscripts. (24 months)

Description: We propose to continue the development of the /Piers Plowman Electronic Archive/, specifically to complete and publish our edition of the archetypal text (the putative lost manuscript from which all extant witnesses have descended), to continue development of the critical edition of the *B* version of /Piers Plowman/, and to prepare further documentary and color facsimile editions of the remaining *A* and C manuscripts. The latter will serve as the bases for the archetypal and critical editions of the *A* and *C* versions.

Grant: 191472 / RQ-50354-08,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2008

Carolingian Canon Law Project: A Collaborative Initiative

Recipient: Firey, Abigail (Lexington, KY 40506-0027 USA) in affiliation with University of Kentucky Research Foundation (Lexington, KY 40506 USA)

Goal: The establishment of encoding standards and digital access for multiple versions of medieval Latin legal manuscripts, including bibliographic information, annotations, and English translations.

Description: The Carolingian Canon Law Project (CCL) gives access for the first time to a vast quantity of important medieval legal material, hitherto known only partially, and only by scholars who have been able to consult manuscripts in repositories scattered across Europe, or who have used texts published before the twentieth century. This project initiates digital presentation that matches the dynamic nature of the material, which varies in each manuscript. It will also establish basic "industry standards" for encoding transcriptions of medieval legal manuscripts. This project thus will offer a model for any venture in the Humanities that involves study of multiple versions of a text. The CCL also supplies vital bibliography, annotations, and translations into English of these Latin texts. This project is intensively collaborative, and is designed to sustain collaboration among future as well as present scholars. Level II funding is requested from September 2008 through August 2009.

Grant: 192220 / HD-50429-08,   Division: Digital Humanities,   Program: Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants,   Year Awarded: 2008

Becoming a Capital in Medieval South Italy: Naples from the 9th to the 12th Centuries

Recipient: Bruzelius, Caroline (Durham, NC 27708 USA) in affiliation with Duke University

Description: Our project intends to write a history of the transformation of Naples from one of many autonomous city-states of South Italy into a major European capital. Why did this happen here? What was it about this city that inspired Frederick II to found in Naples, in 1224, the first university south of Bologna, and for the city to be selected seventy years later as the new capital of the Kingdom of Sicily? We shall propose that the emergence of Naples as a major city was the result of a series of fundamental institutional changes that took place beginning in the 9th century. The wealth and power of several large monastic institutions played a primary role in the economic and urban development of the city, and in particular led to the creation of an excellent port and a strong defensive system around the most densely inhabited parts of town. A network of commercial contacts was established throughout the Mediterranean. The threat of Norman occupation led the city to establish new systems of civic administration that were dedicated to defending its autonomy. Once the city fell to the Normans in 1130, a new administrative institution of "sedili" was introduced which took control of trade and defense. The "sedili" were under the control of a network of aristocratic families, who also managed sectors of industrial production (such as the processing of raw linen), and trade. These social and political institutions provided the network of administrators and managers who were later fundamental for the transformation of the city into a European capital.

Grant: 194582 / RZ-50968-08,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2008

St. Francis of Assisi and the Thirteenth Century

Recipient: Cook, William (Geneseo, NY 14454-1460 USA) in affiliation with SUNY Research Foundation, College at Geneseo (Geneseo, NY 14454 USA)

Goal: A six-week summer seminar in Rome, Siena, and Assisi, Italy, for college teachers to study the life, works, and representations of St. Francis of Assisi.

Description: The seminar will meet for six weeks in Rome, Siena, and Assisi, Italy. Participants will all examine primary sources for the life of St. Francis and his influence in the thirteenth century; selected scholarly literature, especially biographical literature concerning St. Francis; and the major 13th-century works of art that narrate the life of Francis. There will be several focused site visits, and participants will have access to the most important Franciscan and art history libraries. Each applicant will be expected to propose a research project and/or plan to develop a new or revised college course or section of a course.

Grant: 187063 / FS-50146-07,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Seminars for College Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2007

Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES

Recipient: Raybin, David (Charleston, IL 61920 USA) in affiliation with Eastern Illinois University

Goal: A four-week summer seminar for fifteen school teachers on Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, to be held in England in London and in Canterbury.

Description: We propose a four-week Seminar for School Teachers on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to be team-taught in England in London and Canterbury. The Seminar will explore how Chaucer looks out upon the world, as participants consider how his vivid ideas on human relationships and desires mesh with and yet challenge modern attitudes. As we progress through the tales, we will join together in making discoveries about the distance that separates us from the lived details of Chaucer's fourteenth-century England; about the continuities of artistry, philosophy, emotion, and meaning that render Chaucer's writings still important; and about the variety of responses to Chaucer that combine to achieve understandings inherently richer than those reached by reading alone. Participants will read the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, and we will visit historical sites relevant to an appreciation of the text.

Grant: 187024 / FV-50138-07,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Seminars for School Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2007

Digital Edition of Cambridge, Pembroke MS 25

Recipient: Hall, Thomas (Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA) in affiliation with University of Notre Dame

Goal: An electronic edition of Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 25, an eleventh-century collection of Latin sermons from which many Old English translations were produced. (12 months)

Description: This project will produce an online image-based edition of Cambridge, Pembroke MS 25, an eleventh-century homiliary copied at Bury St. Edmunds. This manuscript is the earliest and best surviving witness to a ninth-century sermon collection known as the Homiliary of Saint-Pere de Chartres and also the fullest example of a Latin homiliary used by Anglo-Saxon clergy for writing sermons in Old English. Building on the methods and procedures of Edition Production and Presentation Technology (EPPT) developed at the University of Kentucky to publish digital editions of BEOWULF and the Old English BOETHIUS, this digital edition of Pembroke 25 will bring to light full editions of ninety-six sermons accompanied by select modern English translations, notes, indexes, a glossary, digitized color images of all 181 folios of the manuscript, and essays on the background of the collection and its ties with Old English literature.

Grant: 186292 / RQ-50287-07,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2007

The completion of a critical edition of Henry of Ghent's Quodlibet IV

Recipient: Wilson, Gordon (Asheville, NC 28804-3251 USA) in affiliation with University of North Carolina, Asheville (Asheville, NC 28804 USA)

Goal: Completion of preparation for publication of Quodlibet IV, the medieval philosopher Henry of Ghent's longest work, written in 1279. (12 months)

Description: Gordon Wilson and Girard Etzkorn have been invited by Leuven University to produce a critical edition of Henry of Ghent's Quodlibet IV, volume VIII in the Leuven series HENRICI DE GANDAVO Opera omnia. 45 volumes are anticipated in this series; 16 are already in print. These editions have become the standard texts for translations, secondary studies, and conferences. They have generated a renewed interest in many of Henry's ideas and have highlighted Henry as a major thinker of the Middle Ages. Henry's Quodlibet IV was written at the height of Henry's academic career and many of Henry's mature ideas in this text influenced John Duns Scotus. Because of his originality and influence scholars repeatedly have been promised new editions of his works since the 1880s. Leuven University Press has taken on the printing of the series, and publication is assured. In 2004 the NEH funded two years of research on this volume (all goals were met); one final year is necessary to finish the volume.

Grant: 186264 / RQ-50259-07,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2007

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages: A New Edition

Recipient: Gade, Kari Ellen (Bloomington, IN 47405-7103 USA) in affiliation with Indiana University, Bloomington (Bloomington, IN 47405 USA)

Goal: Preparation of volume two of a proposed nine volume annotated translation and edition of Old Norse Skaldic poetry from c. 1036 to 1300. (12 months)

Description: The corpus of poetry concerned is the work of Norwegian and Icelandic skalds (poets) from the 9th to the 14th centuries, the earliest extant evidence for both material and non-material aspects of Scandinavian culture. As such, it is of great importance to philologists, literary scholars, and numerous other users, including linguists, metricists, runologists, historians, historians of religion, folklorists, anthropologists, and archaeologists. This corpus is currently only available in two outdated early 20th-century editions, accompanied by a translation into Modern Danish. The present international collaborative project will produce an authoritative modern edition with English translation (and notes) of the entire corpus of skaldic poetry. The work of the project will result in the publication of a nine-volume edition (printed as well as electronic) which will be published by Brepols Publishers (Turnhout, Belgium) as a staggered series of volumes from 2007 to 2011.

Grant: 186311 / RZ-50679-07,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Collaborative Research,   Year Awarded: 2007

Middle English Texts Series

Recipient: Peck, Russell A (Rochester, NY 14627 USA) in affiliation with University of Rochester

Goal: Preparation of multiple volumes of a series of editions of important Middle English texts. (24 Months)

Description: The University of Rochester, the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS), and Medieval Institute Publications of Western Michigan University, have been collaborating over the past fifteen years in the preparation and publication of scholarly editions of Middle English and Early-Modern English texts that are suitable for classroom and individual use by students of Medieval Literature at all ages of study - from beginners to the most advanced scholars. With the assistance of three grants from the NEH, we have thus far published fifty-two volumes, which remain in print indefinitely, and all of which are available online with free access to individual users. The impact of the Series has, thus far, been monumental in opening up possibilities in the depiction of medieval literature and culture within the classroom, with specificities previously unimaginable. The range of texts in print and online cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries between departments of literature, history, religion, politics, and art. What had originally been conceived of as a series of pedagogical texts aimed toward an undergraduate audience has become, especially in the last half-dozen years, a respected resource for authoritative critical editions. With an additional twenty volumes on the immediate horizon, and twenty-five others in the works, each a potentially significant contribution to the canon, we are applying for continued NEH support. The texts are prepared at the University of Rochester, where an expert editorial staff monitors with care the several stages of the production of each volume.

Grant: 181343 / RQ-50194-06,   Division: Research Programs,   Program: Scholarly Editions,   Year Awarded: 2006

The Cathedral and Culture: Medieval York

Recipient: Szarmach, Paul E (Cambridge, MA 02138 USA) in affiliation with Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI 49008 USA)

Goal: A four-week institute for twenty-five college and university teachers on medieval life and culture at University of York and York Cathedral in the United Kingdom.

Description: The Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-saxon and Manuscript Research at the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, working with faculty and staff from the Centre for Medieval Studies at York University, proposes a Summer Institute for College and University Teachers on "The Cathedral and Culture: Medieval York," to be held at York Minster and collateral units of York University, June 18 thru July 13, 2007. Dr.'s Dee Dyas and Paul Szarmach will direct the institute. Using York Minster as a teaching laboratory, the institute will focus on two major units: 1) Anglo-Saxon England and Northumbria; 2) Late Medieval York. Verbal, visual, and material evidence will combine to give participants an interdisciplinary perspectivefor their teaching and research. The Medieval Institute will offer participants venues for the publication and dissemination of their work.

Grant: 182103 / EH-50077-06,   Division: Education Programs,   Program: Institutes for College and University Teachers,   Year Awarded: 2006