AJ Kelton, Director of the Center for the Digital Humanities, noticed this disparity and knew that creating a training course could potentially solve this issue. So for the Fall 2018, he asked the senior members, those who have completed their training the semesters prior, to help create a training module. His vision for the training course included having the students create, run, and monitored by the students. The students, who took the lead in creating the training course, used inspiration from their prior experience working at CDH and from other classes to create a hybrid of the two.听

Each module consists of a 鈥榞enre鈥� or technology type, including video editing, audio manipulation, programming languages (HTML), etc. Within these modules consist of assignments that are more specific that each student must complete before moving on to the next module. There is a module dedicated to video manipulation that has assignments specifically tailored to video manipulation with programs like Imovie, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Premiere Pro. Each module is set to train a specific field of skills but within the module are different programs used within that field. At the end of each module, there is a test that quizzes the trainees on everything contained in the respective module. Student trainees must pass in order to move to the next module.

Looking back at a year鈥檚 worth of work, the training modules are still being updated with corrections. The student team is constantly going back and making sure that the modules are error-free, which is something they consistently have to do because the work environment is always changing. The team in charge of the training course also receives input from the trainees after they finish the training modules. Within the last year, these modules have been completely rearranged. This allows for a better flow of the training course and so the modules don鈥檛 face issues.听

The team has created a space at the CDH where everyone has a consistent level of training. The impact of teaching 精品成人福利在线 University students these skills move beyond their years at this school. These are transferable skills that can be utilized anywhere and for almost all fields of work.听

It all started at CDH, where the team brainstormed alongside the Student Services department on a white board. The board contained ideas for 鈥淭he Pulse鈥� logo, where project members, Gregory Matos took the lead. He and other team members filmed talking head segments, B-roll scenes of various places on campus, as well as other necessary footage.听The scenes were filmed in our very own听 鈥淨uiet Room鈥� with a green backdrop, stands, and fluorescent lights. The initial scenes filmed for this project were rough cuts. 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听听

According to our team lead Gregory Matos, 鈥淎 rough cut is usually the raw pieces of video and audio, edited to tell the story. There’s no color adjustments done or audio adjustments. It’s the most important cut, because once the rough cut is approved, you can set a “Picture Lock” which means the progression of story in the video has been seen as perfect/ready for audience. Now you just polish it with all the good stuff: color correction, color grade, audio mixing and audio mastering.鈥�

The B-roll locations that听were planned and filmed were Dickson Hall, School of Business, University Hall, Blanton Hall, Schmitt Hall and the Student Center. In the rough cut of the video, additional听 B-rb roll was filmed, however, in each video, not all B-roll made it to the final cut of the video.

They also recorded audio for the video. Bridget Dodge aided in the project with video editing software such as Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premiere Pro. Our Communications team, also participated by making motion graphics for the logo and other graphic overlays. The video, in and of itself, is brief, yet informative for all students, especially first year students for what upcoming events CHSS offers and is apart of for the month. Our team members worked hard on this project because it was collaborative from the filming to the graphics to the editing.

Gregory Matos had this to say about working on The Pulse, “Being able to provide engaging content that keeps the college’s student body informed is extremely fulfilling. As a member of the Center for Digital Humanities, I’ve been wanting to apply the skills I’ve developed, since I joined last year. And this ongoing project has been a complex and fun first opportunity to do that.”听

The Center for the Digital Humanities has many other exciting video-related projects planned for this year. Stay tuned.听

To see the latest 鈥淭he Pulse鈥� episodes, check out the .听

You can find the site at听

We are looking for contributors/editors, so if you have expertise you鈥檇 be willing to share, please do be in touch! ()

PS: You can find us on Facebook听. On Instagram听听and on Twitter as听.

Why Mapping Dante

顿补苍迟别鈥檚听颁辞尘别诲测听is shaped by the structure of the three realms of afterlife (Hell, Purgatory and Heaven), conceived of according to late medieval geography, cosmology, and theology. Many diagrams and drawings have been made meant to supplement the reading of the poem. 顿补苍迟别鈥檚 extreme precision in describing his journey as a living man through afterlife generated a multitude of diagrams and pictures meant to guide readers but also to illustrate 顿补苍迟别鈥檚 all-encompassing vision. Yet, the construction of fictional spaces is just one aspect of 顿补苍迟别鈥檚 geographical imagination. The path through听Inferno,听Purgatorio, and听笔补谤补诲颈蝉辞听is full of听references to places in听the 鈥渞eal鈥� world. The portrait of Dante made by Domenico di Michelino in the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence, 1465) visualizes this two-fold geography by having in the same frame the pit of Hell, the mount of Purgatory, the spheres of Heaven, and the city of Florence: this world and the other, together.

To study 顿补苍迟别鈥檚 geographical imagination, we can use a map to visualize of the places he mentions and observe their distribution both in the 鈥渞eal鈥� world鈥� and in the course of his long poem. Hell, Purgatory and Paradise cannot be incorporated into modern cartography (even if they could be marked put on pre-modern maps). What we can translate into a map are the cities, town, regions, mountains, rivers, lakes and seas Dante refers to.

Maps and repertoires听of听places are not a novelty in Dante studies: the effort of translating his geographical knowledge into spatial representations has been supplementing the reading of the听颁辞尘别诲测听for a long time. 听The static nature of traditional maps and lists, however, has limited the potential of literary cartography: on a printed map (or an electronic map based on that model) only a small amount of information can be written, and very few connections can be drawn among a variety of elements. See for examples this map of 顿补苍迟别鈥檚 Italy from Charles Singleton鈥檚 commentary of the听Inferno听(click to enlarge).听Other examples are available on the website听.

Digital tools give us the opportunity to create visualizations that are multi-layered and dynamic. A text can be approached from a variety of angles, with听different combinations of close and distant reading, of qualitative and quantitative analysis.听The text remains the center of the readers鈥� experience, but its discourse can branch off into a wider range of forms and directions. Digital literary mapping is one of them: it can enhance our approach to a text (or a corpus of texts) by extracting a network of references which, in turn, become part of the larger network of the 鈥渞eal’鈥� world鈥檚 geography. This is not an automatic process: the task of a digital humanist working with literary maps is precisely to use cartography as an opportunity to explore the texts and ask them new questions (or ask old questions in a different way). At the same time, the potentialities and limitations of digital tools must be adapted to the structural and historical configuration of texts.

So what could be a possible effective way to write into a map the geographical data inscribed into a text such as 顿补苍迟别鈥檚听Comedy, whose narrative does not travel the surface of the real world and yet constantly refers to its landmarks? What could be the shape of a cartographic repertoire of a medieval literary text for XXI-century readers constantly turning from a printed page to a digital screen and back?

Here comes the idea of听Mapping听Dante.听With this interactive digital听, the first of its kind, users are able to visualize and sort places according to a number of literary, cultural, and geographical categories, in order to explore the connections between 顿补苍迟别鈥檚 text and geography. The map allows both distant and close reading of the mentions of places in the听Comedy: on one hand it displays their overall distribution within an extent that goes from Scandinavia to Africa, and from Gibraltar to the Urals; on the other hand, the specificity of map听听and the information included in pop-up cards describe in detail each Dantean reference to a place.

Dataset

The first step听was to compile a list of听. Taking note of every city, town, region, mountain, lake, river and sea mentioned over the poem鈥檚 100听cantos, I put together a total of听340 items听and听724 mentions. Commentaries, both ancient and modern, have been essential to the identification of places, which are not always clearly identifiable on a map, for a number of reasons (ambiguity of textual reference, ambiguity of identification in 顿补苍迟别鈥檚 time, destruction of a place, etc.). When multiple identifications are possible (i.e. 鈥淭ambernicchi鈥� in听Inf. 32.28), or when the reference听is irremediably vague in cartographical terms (i.e. 鈥渕ontagne Rife鈥� in听Pur. 26.43), I looked for听the most reasonable approximation in light not only of听Dantean commentaries but also of听gazetteers and repertoires out of the field of Dante Studies.

Constructing the spreadsheet of my database was an exercise in close reading. Any mention has been described through a series of categories which later served as a basis for the configuration of the map:听kind听of geographical听item (specific places like towns or mountains, extended areas like regions of different scale and mountain ranges, and waters like rivers, seas and lakes),听historico-cultural aspects听(visited by Dante, classical, mythological, biblical), and听rhetorical features听(mention by periphrasis, adjective, simile or听direct speech). For each entry I also took note of its cantica, canto and line, and transcribed its听terzina听both in the original Italian text and in the English translation (I chose to quote from Robert Durling鈥檚 version, clear in its prose and handy in its paragraph divisions corresponding to the original听terzine).

When it comes to the yes/no logic of computing, it is not always possible to account for nuances and ambiguities that lie within the real world or in the literary text. The classification of a place as classical or mythological, for instance, cannot be automatically applied to all of its mentions: that is the case with Rome, which may be recalled in classical/mythological terms but also as a post-classical/medieval place. Or how can a river be referred to as classical? My strategy was to read it as 鈥渃lassical鈥� only when mentioned in a clearly classical context (as it happens for example in听Inf. 20 or听Par. 6). The very division between regions 鈥渓arge鈥�, 鈥渕edium鈥�, and 鈥渟mall鈥� is听a practical听compromise between the fluidity of medieval geography and need for differentiating the regions鈥� proportion. Striving for the best approximation is often the rule. In the case of places 鈥渧isited 听by Dante鈥� I had to deal with scarce historical documentation and some hypotheses of greater or lesser uncertainty, mostly following biographical evidence provided in Giorgio Inglese,听Vita di Dante. Una biografia possibile听(Roma: Carocci, 2015)听and in the entries of the听Enciclopedia dantesca听(Roma: Istituto dell鈥橢nciclopedia Italiana, 1970).

Map-Making

The听听was built through ArcGIS, a powerful and versatile GIS (Geographical Information System) software. The reason to choose it among various GIS options available today was it allows for high number of manageable layers as required by the project. The map was started with the Desktop version of ArcGIS, and then fully developed and finalized on the platform of听ArcGIS Online, with a free public account. I made a point of building听Mapping Dante听as a low-cost project, the outcome of which depended on experimentation and design more than on an abundance of resources. Choosing to use听a free version of the software posed some technical limitations, though: some have been overcome with effective workarounds, some other are still been worked on.听The听current version of the map includes everything except for rivers, lakes and seas, which will be added later. A look at the layers of听Inferno,听Purgatorio听and听笔补谤补诲颈蝉辞听on听the map will show that, while specific places like town and mountains are marked by a pin that gives an adequate idea of their limited extension, larger areas (from small valleys to large territories) are marked by a circle which obviously does not approximate听their real extension: the reason is two-fold, technical (the fractal nature of many borders would have consumed more than the amount of memory available to the map) and geo-historical (boundaries in medieval Europe were incomparably more ambiguous and fluid than today, thus not suitable to the precise identification protocol required by GIS-based mapping).

The layers of the map correspond to the descriptors included in the pop-up cards of each mention of a place. Every layer offers an overall view of the distribution of a feature; every marker on a layer on speak about a place and its mentions. To know more about the options allowed by the map, please read the instructions about听.

Graph and Charts

Further visualizations of the dataset are possible. to enhance the user鈥檚 experience in her/his exploration of the geographical encyclopedia of 顿补苍迟别鈥檚听Comedy. For now the website of听Mapping Dante听include a graph and a set of chats that translate in a different way the contents of the map. The听听visualizes听the听network of听relations between places and cantos (in the network, places and cantos are represented as nodes: every time a mention occurs, a connection is drawn, with a node鈥檚 size proportioned to its number of connections). and gives visual priority to the geographically densest cantos and to the most frequently mentioned places.听The听听offer additional representations of places and cultural/rhetorical features according to quantitative criteria.

Text

Pop-up cards on the map contain only a听terzina: more text would not be easily readable. Yet, to make sense of a mention in a specific passage it might be essential to have access to a larger portion of text. This is why I have added to the site the complete Italian text of the 100 cantos of the听Comedy. It can be accessed from the 鈥淟ink to Canto鈥� 听entry from the map pop-ups (directed to a specific canto and line), or it can be browsed from the听听section. Before the beginning of each canto there is a list of places mentioned; clicking on one of them will lead you to the specific passage,

Andrea Gazzoni

Updates & News

• May 2016: launch of map and website.
• October 2016: complete text of听,听and听with links to passages where places are mentioned.
• November 2016: page with links to online听听about Dante and digital mapping.
• December 2016: short听听and听听introducing the project (compiled and published by听OMNIA听All things Penn Arts &听Sciences).
• January 2017: paper听鈥淒igital Mapping of听顿补苍迟别鈥檚听Comedy through Its Place-Names: An Experiment in Literary Geovisualization鈥� presented at the MLA Convention, Philadelphia, January 5-8 (session:听Digital Editing and Medieval Texts).
• February 2017:听Mapping Dante听is awarded the听. Presentation of the project at the听, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, February 25.
• December 2017: article 鈥溾�� published in听Humanist Studies & the Digital Age听5 (2017): 82-95.