Humanities at Stanford

Digital humanities projects harness the power of technologies to conduct research and to facilitate the sharing of information. Current projects include the digitization of print and sound archives, the creation of 3-D models of historical structures, and the development of virtual research forums so scholars from around the world can interact online.

Arcade

In the academic sense, a salon is a gathering of intellectuals who engage in thought provoking discussions. Taking a cue from the social media trend, a group of humanities scholars have created a new and improved virtual incarnation of the salon.

The new interactive website, entitled "Arcade," is the first widely accessible platform for intellectual networking in the humanities. Arcade is a place for readers and writers interested in literature, the humanities, and the world. We aim to publish a broad range of the most exciting research in the humanities, from the accessible to the esoteric, across languages, historical periods, and generations.  

Go to Arcade

The Journal of Transnational American Studies

The Journal of Transnational American Studies, the brainchild of English Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin, is a peer-reviewed online journal sponsored by the American Studies Program at Stanford, of which Fishkin is director, and the American Cultures and Global Contexts Program at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Fishkin is also founding editor of the journal.

Go to the Journal of Transnational American Studies

Renaissance Body Project

The Renaissance Body Project is a comprehensive archival and pedagogical website focusing on the representation of the body in early modern literature, the arts and medicine. Part archive, part coursework, part creative workshop, the site features a collective blog, course material, personal e-diaries, biographies, and a digital “iconotheque” of more than three hundred digital scans of medical plates, architecture drawings, and literary works accessible through a sophisticated search engine. Created with the help of graduate and undergraduate students, one of its goals is to integrate teaching and research in new ways.

Go to the Renaissance Body Project

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is a freely-accessible  online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. The SEP was initially developed with U.S. public funding from the NEH and NSF. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the  field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide. Apart from its online status, the encyclopedia uses the traditional academic approach of most encyclopedias and academic  journals.

Go to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Spatial History Project

The project brings together scholars working on projects at the intersection of geography and history using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in their research.  The overarching goal of the Spatial History Project is to create dynamic, interactive tools that can be used across the spectrum represented by these research projects –from economic and technological changes, to social and political changes, and changes in science and the environment– and bring them all together to enable the creation of new knowledge and understanding of historical change in space and time and the possibilities for our present and future that may be found in the past.

Go to the Spatial History Project web site

Current Spatial History Project Research

How the West Was Shaped

Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History

This project is developing a large database and computer graphics tools to study and represent visually how people's experience of space and time was dramatically shaped by railroads in the North American West in the 19th century. The project aims to construct a dynamic cartographic model of these changes using historical railroad freight tables. The final product will be an interactive, and publicly available digital visualization of historic railroads capable of representing both absolute and relational space and a large database of geo-rectified materials as well as visualization tools available to other researchers.

Terrain of History: The Social and Cultural Geography of Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro

Zephyr Frank, Assistant Professor of History

This project seeks to combine past efforts and enable future collaboration among three urban history/geography research groups. All three projects focus on detailed reconstructions of urban spaces and histories in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the nineteenth century. When combined and, to the extent possible, harmonized along a common geospatial rubric, these three research projects will provide the most detailed and complete geohistorical archive ever assembled for a city in South America.

Critical Habitat: Interactive Digital Environmental History of California

Jon Christensen, Ph.D. candidate in History

This project is a re-examination of the history of the threatened Bay checkerspot butterfly as a test case for interactive digital environmental history.  It relies on a new spatial and temporal analysis using a newly digitized database of records from a consortium of 16 academic herbaria in California, along with additional historical observations from the 19th century and early 20th century. This work is also part of a larger project and a set of collaborations exploring the creation of an Interactive Digital Environmental History of California.

Humanities Research Network Projects

The Humanities Research Network was launched in AY 2004-2005. The program is a model for group distance collaboration in support of humanities research with an emphasis on low-cost and ease-of-use. There are two components to the Research Network program: direct support (both financial and technical) and web-based tools for group work. The Network Projects are Stanford affiliated groups that are provided with the necessary hardware and services for distance communication as well as funding for face-to-face meetings. The web presence, humanitiesnetwork.org, is a standalone group workspace.

Go to the Humanities Research Network Projects web site

2008-2009 Projects

Anglo-American Antiquarians and Early Modern Science

Michael Shanks, Classics
Giovanna Ceserani, Classics

The Assemblies of Lovers: Art, Poetry, and Religion in Persianate Islam

Shahzad Bashir, Religious Studies

Intimate Encounters, Postcolonial Engagements: Archaeologies of Empire and Sexuality

Barbara Voss, Anthropology

Knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment: Producing the Encyclopédie

Keith Baker, History
Dan Edelstein, French and Italian

Law and Society in Egypt from Alexander to the Arab Conquest, 332 BC – 640 AD

Joe Manning, Classics

Literary and Cultural History of Contemporary Europe

Amir Eshel, Comparative Literature and German Studies

Poetries in Contact: The Encounter of Perso-Arabic and Sanskritic metrical traditions

Paul Kiparski, Linguistics

Relative Clauses and Noun-modifying Clauses: A Cross-Linguistic Investigation

Yoshiko Matsumoto, Asian Languages

Researching the Unpublished James Joyce

Carol Shloss, English

Speed Limits

Jeffrey Schnapp, French and Italian