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featured, News, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers

Physics, Philosophy, and the Nature of Time

Interdisciplinary research projects offer innovative approaches to making work in the arts and humanities more visible. Zach Zito, a student at Utah State University, has been working hard on a project that combines physics and philosophy. His work focuses on quantum mechanics and relativity of time. We reached out to him for an interview to learn more about his research.

CURAH: What is the nature of your research?

ZZ: I have the privilege of engaging in research with Dr. Brittany Gentry (philosophy) and Dr. Charles Torre (physics). Our research centers on the role of time in physical systems. It is an interdisciplinary endeavor, drawing heavily on concepts from the relevant philosophic literature as well as modern physical theories.

From Aristotle to Newton to Einstein, great thinkers have established diverse ways of viewing the physical word based on different conceptualizations of time’s nature. In physics, one’s assumptions about the nature of time play a role in how scientific theories are structured. Interestingly, two of today’s most important disciplines within physics — relativity (which describes the cosmos) and quantum mechanics (which describes the sub-atomic) — make use of different and irreconcilable notions of time. This is puzzling because both theories make remarkably accurate predictions and are fundamental to modern technology and our understanding of the universe. How could two theories, both of which serve us so well, contradict one another? This is the question at the heart of our research.

Digging into the literature, we thought hard about the metaphysical status of time: what we are truly referring to when we speak about temporarily. Inspired by the work of Barbour and Bernoulli (two prominent physicists), we set out to find a way to describe particle systems (not unlike those studied in quantum mechanics) in a manner that is in harmony with the findings of relativity. We have made some promising advances in this regard. Today, we are working on establishing canonical methods for defining a relativistic rime metric in systems that share more and more qualities with full-fledged quantum mechanical systems.

CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you did?

ZZ: Philosophers and physicists alike have been thinking about the metaphysics of time for… quite some time. This made it relatively easy to find high quality literature related to the subject in question. We looked at several works from prominent thinkers to round-out and purify our conception of clocks, motion, and time to establish a solid basis on which to proceed. the most difficult part was synthesizing all the material, crystallizing our findings into mathematical expressions and robust metaphysical explanations to describe our models. Despite the difficulty, Dr. Torre, Dr. Gentry, and so many great thinkers before us, we were able to come to a satisfying conclusion.

CURAH: What kinds of things did you learn? (about your topic, about scholarship, or about yourself)

During this research, I had the opportunity to learn more about the existing literature on the philosophy of time and change as well as advanced methods in physics for analyzing and describing systems. Particularly, I learned about the intricate relationship between temporal succession and motion and about the importance of symmetries and conserved quantities in physics. This alone felt like a top-rate educational experience and affected the way I see the world around me and how I interact with the academic disciplines of philosophy and physics. On a deeper level, I learned how engaging serious investigation into deep questions can be. I was surprised at the high level of collaboration that took place across disciplinary, spatial, and temporal boundaries. I hope to continue to participate in this ongoing conversation, exploring the secretes that nature has in store through creative synthesis of experience, mathematical rigor, and careful consideration.”

CURAH: Did you make any discoveries along the way?

ZZ: Yes! We established a framework through which to view change, time, and matter and discovered an equation that describes simple motion in a model-universe without reference to the type of “assumed” time that relativity theory demands we abandon. Functionally, we found a way to mathematically convert a complicated combination of measurements into a clock which is internal to the system under study. We did this by examining the quantities of the systems that are conserved due to symmetries and exploiting them to craft a mathematical clock. This means that in principle, systems can be coherently understood without external reference, suggesting that a deeper understanding of the very early universe may prove accessible. As of now, we are searching for a similar result that can be applied to more complex systems involving quantum properties and more interacting particles.

CURAH: How has the project helped you in your career goals?

ZZ: This project allowed me to grow personally and learn a great deal about unique spaces in physics and philosophy and about research in general. Because my career goals include future work in both philosophy and physics research, this project has been of utmost value to me in that regard. This project has also given me a look into the details of research work in these fields, which helped give me a better sense of what exactly I’d like to focus on in my career and hence what I should be studying and investigating now in preparation.

Zach Zito talking with his Physics and Philosophy mentors about his research.

Interested in hearing about more undergraduate students and their research? Check out our page dedicated to these profiles!

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featured, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers

Reassessing Murder at the High Gate: Ramesses III’s Royal Women Emerge from the Shadow of Anti-Feminist Scholarship

When Chloe Landis first examined the images of Pharaoh Ramesses III from the high gate of his mortuary temple, Medinet Habu, she knew there was an untold story in their depictions of women. Landis, an undergraduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles with a double major in Art History and Egyptology, had studied early scholarship on the site. These scholars viewed the women as mere footnotes to Ramesses III’s sensational murder by members of his “harem.” Landis’ work led her to recount a far more complex story, one that emphasized the lived experiences of these women in ancient Egyptian society and their relationship with the Pharaoh. Landis is also the winner of the Trimmer Travel award from CURAH and the 2019 UCLA Dean’s Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Research. Her faculty advisor was Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney. CURAH caught up with Landis in the midst of the pandemic to ask about her research.

CURAH: What was the nature of your project?

CL: My research focuses on a monumental gate structure that stands at the entrance of Pharaoh Ramesses III’s mortuary temple called Medinet Habu. This gate, referred to as the Eastern High Gate, has a series of rooms with an unusual series of reliefs on the interior walls depicting Ramesses in attendance by royal women. These images depict Ramesses in in intimate poses with the women, poses which are not only extremely unusual for Egyptian art but are odd given the context of the entrance into the pharaoh’s temple. My project involved studying the High Gate through an art historical lens. I wanted to fill in gaps in our conception of how the High Gate functioned as a ritual space for the pharaoh. I also wanted to understand the relationship between the king and the royal women depicted in the images.

Chloe Landis, UCLA

CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you did?

CL: I think accessing sources was probably both of the easiest and hardest parts of the project. It was incredibly challenging to understand the reliefs with only a partial picture of them, as I could not visit the High Gate in Egypt and relied solely on excavation photos and line drawings of the reliefs made by epigraphers. Black and white photos from the 1930s are not useful when you’re looking for visible paint remnants or trying to understand orientation and spatial analysis of the reliefs within the High Gate. These problems left some gaps in my analysis.

On the other hand, The Epigraphic Survey from the Oriental Institute of Chicago has excellent excavation photos and an entire volume of documentation of the High Gate in its entirety, including line drawings of the entire gate and translations of texts. The Oriental Institute has incredible online access to their excavation images and publications that were invaluable in my study of the High Gate. Their records also include multiple volumes of documentation of the entire Mediet Habu temple complex. Working through their records gave me crucial context to the High Gate’s purpose and let me compare images to reveal the artistic style under Ramesses III.

CURAH: What kinds of things did you learn? (about ancient Egypt, about scholarship, or about yourself)

CL: I learned that the Eastern High Gate was possibly the site of the murder of Ramesses III, an event which served as the catalyst for my project. Ramesses III was murdered in a plot by members of his so-called harem, their extended families, and officials. It was all documented in a collection called the Turin Judiciary Papyri. These accounts were confirmed by a scan of the king’s mummy that showed his throat had been slit. Because Ramesses’ death was so salacious and possibly occurred within the High Gate, often the reliefs are used almost as footnotes in articles about Ramesses’ murder, rather than discussed in their own right.

I also found much of the early scholarship frames the women as the villains of the story and out for their own ambitions, without reflecting on the complexities of the political atmosphere of the reign of Ramesses III and the involvement of the women’s extended families. When I discovered the biased way these women were discussed in scholarship, they became the passion of my project. I wanted to understand their role in society and how they functioned vis-a-vis the king.

This became the most prevalent when I realized how debated the term “harem” is in the field of Egyptology. Many scholars believe this term, does not capture the realities of the ancient Egyptian institution. A “harem” is a problematic orientalist image, which conjures an idea of women lounging around and only meant to serve the king sexually. But in ancient Egypt it housed royal women and was where royal children were raised. Early European egyptologists named the institution  based on their understanding of the Ottoman harem and 19th-century harem paintings. The amount of colonial, orientalist and sexist baggage within egyptology is astounding, but it was essential to work through in beginning to untangle the perception of the women in the High Gate reliefs from their likely purpose.

CURAH: Did you make any discoveries along the way?

I made some very interesting discoveries along the way! I found that through the iconography of the reliefs there are allusions to the king’s sexual power and sexual ability. These allusions broaden our understanding of how the High Gate functioned, not only within the mortuary context, but also as a functional space. Few texts are preserved inside the High Gate, which necessitated greater art historical analysis and this brought me to my most intriguing finds. Ramesses and the women are seen holding and giving each other various fruits, mostly pomegranates, which often are a symbol of fertility. The most interesting plant that I was able to identify was the mandrake. This small yellow plant is believed to have aphrodisiac qualities and has been linked to sexual iconography by Egyptologists who found similar mandrake iconography on objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun. In one scene, Ramesses is not only holding a mandrake tightly to his lap, but appears mostly unclothed, an allusion to his body and sexuality.

The clothing or lack thereof was another discovery I made. The women especially appear to be completely nude, though scholars argue their clothing may have been painted over the nude representation. My analysis showed trace evidence of garments in only a few reliefs. The emphasis on the body is only heightened because the gestures made by the king are sexualized. Scenes show the king caressing the women. In one scene that has been purposely damaged, Ramesses’ hand is placed directly in front of the woman’s genital region.

These visuals of sexual activity and fertility demonstrate Ramesses’ ability to reproduce and regenerate life, a vital attribute for every king in ancient Egypt. But the display of images such as these suggests a social and political need for the king to have these images publicized in monumental stone. Rituals certainly occurred between women who held priestess roles and the king, long before Ramesses and the High Gate was built, but images like these have never been published on a monumental scale. I argue the public presentation of these images demonstrate that the king felt a need to visually display his sexual ability, perhaps to coincide with the rites which occurred within the High Gate or to ensure the act of reproduction would continue forever since it was preserved in the walls. The heightened tensions of Ramesses’ reign that ultimately led to his death may explain why the king would need to reveal his ability to procreate and the royal women’s role in these rituals.

CURAH: How has the project helped you in your career goals?

Though I’ve decided not to follow a path in traditional academia, I’m so grateful for this project in expanding my research skills and igniting my passion for future avenues of research. This project truly put my analytical skills and language knowledge to the test, while providing me with archival research experience that was truly invaluable. I would like to go into the museum education field. This is not directly applicable to egyptology, but I feel that so many of the hard skills I developed have already demonstrated how transferable they are.

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featured, News, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers

Mapping Underrepresented Microhistories in Southeast Asian Art

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It isn’t often when undergraduates are granted the opportunity to connect family heritage and independent student research while bringing awareness to underrepresented fields. Sofia D’Amico, an art history major with a concentration in Asian art at Fordham University has been given this very opportunity in her project studying the work of artist Tiffany Chung. CURAH recently interviewed Sofia to learn more about her project.

CURAH: What was the nature of your project?

SD: My research focuses on the work of contemporary Vietnamese-American artist Tiffany Chung, especially her cartographic works which study global migration, displacement, conflict, and urban development, and their relation to history and cultural memory. Chung was born in Danang, Vietnam in 1969 and became part of the post-1975 Vietnamese Exodus of refugees to the United States, following the communist siege of South Vietnam. She currently lives and works inHouston, Texas. Her maps, rendered in attractive pastels and jewel-tones, invite viewers to question information often taken for granted, like historical memory, as tied to place, and the accuracy of conventional systems of knowledge. 
 
I explored her work in three different spaces in 2018: a group exhibition at Asia Society Houston titled New Cartographies, which explored maps as an artistic medium, her solo-booth of work at Miami Art Basel, and her major solo-exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum: Vietnam, Past is Prologue. I considered what her works achieve in these shows, as well as her transnational artistic identity as a Vietnamese refugee, and how her life experiences have oriented her work towards an international, historical focus. I investigated such questions as, Does Chung’s work transcend nationality? What are some of the obstacles that artists from Southeast Asia encounter in establishing relevance to US audiences? And at the same time, how does Chung’s work depart from precedent and tradition? As a Vietnamese refugee is Chung expected to create work about the Vietnam War? How do Americans understand the Vietnamese, apart from the war and its cultural exports? Is it reductive to attach the label of Vietnamese-American artist to Chung when she works hard to be international in her perspective?

Sofia D’Amico, Fordham University

CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you did?

SD: Of course, Southeast Asian art history is a developing discipline, and my research on Tiffany Chung necessitated that I conduct my own art historical study. But even in the 20th century, many Southeast Asian countries have undergone tremendous hardships.  And the reverberations of European colonial legacy (stemming as far back as the 1500s) are still felt in the study of Southeast Asian art history: most writing on Vietnamese art history, for instance, has been done in French and from the perspective of European colonizers––which can of course be problematic.
 
Since the establishment of an independent Vietnamese state in 1945, little money has been disbursed for such cultural projects. Besides listing painters in official registries of artists, little effort has been made to maintain archives of artworks or art movements in Vietnam; certainly, as compared to western countries or even the monolith cultures of East Asia like China and Japan. But because Vietnamese art history records are rarified, there is a greater need to interview living artists than to consult written documents. I’m excited to explore this going forward. 

In short, the hardest part of the research project is really its most interesting feature: that is, understanding the multiplicity of Southeast Asian art, learning about it largely independently, and communicating my findings in a way that is accurate, respectful, and sensitive to those it relates most to. Especially as an undergraduate, it’s intimidating to put research findings and original ideas out there in the global sphere. But it is also incredibly exciting to become informed in topics you were once simply curious about, which I think was the easiest part of the work. Having a connection to the work and being passionate about the topic made it easy and enjoyable to search for resources and interview specialists. I think the nature of Southeast Asian artists being understudied made it all the more encouraging to dive in.

Tiffany Chung, courtesy of the artist and Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York

CURAH: What kinds of things did you learn?

SD: Because my research interest was prompted in part by my own heritage, I was able to use my family history as a springboard for learning about Southeast Asian art. My mother is a Vietnamese immigrant, and, incidentally, grew up in the same city and around the same time as Tiffany Chung. I didn’t learn much about Southeast Asia and Vietnam in school (apart from the war), so as I grew up, I would ask my mom about Vietnam. But her experience as a refugee made her understandably sensitive to some topics. I grew up, like most people, knowing little about Southeast Asia and thinking that artistically it had little to offer the world. Despite majoring in art history and concentrating in Asian art, I knew virtually nothing about the art of Vietnam.
 
With encouragement from my professor of art history and mentor, Dr. Asato Ikeda, as well as support from my school, Fordham University, I started doing independent research. And I couldn’t believe what I had missed out on! I interned at Tyler Rollins Fine Art in Chelsea, New York––the only art gallery in the country dedicated to contemporary Southeast Asian artists. Rollins and his gallery taught me how fascinating Southeast Asian culture and history really are, as the confluence of South Asian, Indian and Hindu influences, and East Asian Confucian, Daoist, and Chan Buddhist society. And, as such, Southeast Asian and diasporic artists create work that is wholly unique in perspective, context, and content. There is so much to both say and write on the subject.

CURAH: Did you make any discoveries along the way?

SD: I definitely made discoveries which encouraged me to keep going! As simple as it is, one thing I discovered as I went deeper into my project, was how much work and research still needs to be done in this field, and similar fields to it. There is so much interesting phenomena––some tragic, some triumphant––that evade contemporary consciousness.
 
I began my work by focusing on one contemporary Vietnamese-American artist, but ended up branching into Vietnamese art history, clearly under-researched. From there I learned about contemporary Vietnamese history, like the Japanese occupation of Vietnam and artists who were half-Vietnamese and half-Japanese, creating art about their families’ experiences: pieces of history I had no idea about. When I found out about this occupation, I was able to bring it forward to my mother, who opened up about our family’s interactions with Japanese soldiers. This research ultimately helped me, in my study of art, as well as personally, in understanding complicated and difficult parts of history. 
 
From here, another important discovery for me was the possibility of doing research in a way that parallels the artists’ practices that I am interested in: by sharing microhistories, individual narratives, and family experiences, and exploring what a radical act that can be. 
 
While researching Tiffany Chung, I witnessed a four-channel video installation titled The Specter of Ancestors Becoming (2019) by artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, which chronicles the descendants of Senegalese French colonial soldiers once stationed in Vietnam tirailleurs Sénégalais — and features stories written by three members of a Vietnamese community in Senegal. One portion of the video observed the tense confrontation between a half-Vietnamese half-Senegalese boy with his Senegalese soldier father, who whisked him away from Saigon at a young age and never allowed him to know his Vietnamese mother. This piece allowed viewers like me to connect with a small community and especially with individual families’ experiences, as they were affected by war and colonialism. I thought it was radical and moving to have this focus on smaller units of research like individual communities, people, and events. I’d like to carry this awareness of microhistory forward with me throughout future research in my academic career.

Tiffany Chung, courtesy of the artist and Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York

CURAH: How has the project helped you in your career goals?

SD: It is due to this project that I have found my art historical focus and ongoing research interest in making more familiar, to myself and others, the peripheralized stories of Southeast Asian artists within Asian art and the world’s art histories more broadly. It has helped me realize that I would like to be a part of a larger movement academically, whether that is Southeast Asian art historians, researchers of Asian diaspora, or scholars of socially-engaged contemporary art. 

It’s also made more clear the need for further diversification of US art spaces. Visual culture and art act as some of the most powerful ways people understand each other transnationally. I would love to see the development of more robust Southeast Asian curatorial
programming in museums and galleries in the future, and I hope to help contribute to it someday. And it’s encouraging to see institutions like Fordham actively supporting these art historical projects. The voices of emerging undergraduate researchers are wanted and our work is important on so many levels.

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Tips for Students and Faculty

Using Exhibitions for Undergraduate Scholarship

By Ian F. MacInnes, Alexa Sand, and Lisandra Estevez

Curating exhibitions is genuine research work that allows students to work collaboratively, engage the community, and practice public humanities scholarship. Exhibitions can teach students the fundamentals of research in a discipline while focusing on small and achievable outcomes, like bibliographic descriptions and short interpretive explanations. Exhibitions can help students understand and articulate the value of the public humanities. They allow students to practice making a persuasive visual and textual argument for a general audience. And finally, working on an exhibition is inherently collaborative, a model of humanities scholarship that is becoming more prevalent. Planning and mounting exhibitions can be resource and time intensive, but students tend to embrace the challenge. The public venue inspires them to do their best work.

An exhibition itself may be real or virtual, though whenever possible your students should have access to the actual objects they will be curating. Here are some things to be aware of if you are considering adding an exhibition project to your class.

Be open to different sources of material

The material for your exhibition is an opportunity to think creatively about the collaborative work you envision. Libraries and museums are obvious sources (and venues), but so are local historical societies. Smaller museums and libraries often have interesting collections of uncurated material, giving students an even more meaningful experience. Libraries also often have unadvertised collections of objects that can supplement documents. If local archives don’t have what you need, it is sometimes surprisingly easy to collect items yourself. Major auction sites, like eBay, are inexpensive sources of fragmentary material. Roman glass, Greek pottery sherds, pages from early print sources, and modern ephemera are all probably within reach of your budget. Finally, don’t forget that students can create facsimiles and replicas to build out an exhibition, either working on their own or with the help of experts on campus.

Prepare the ground with your collaborators

Whether working with a departmental or college gallery space, a campus museum, your library, or another on- or off-campus venue, start discussions long in advance of the first class meeting. Think about scheduling: when will the exhibition be installed or beta-tested? When will it open and will there be an associated event? When will it close and who will be responsible for taking it down and cleaning up? Are there special considerations to be taken into account in handling materials or working in the space, or the digital environment? Who will be responsible for what aspects of student support? For example, if display “furniture” such as supports or hanging hardware need to be constructed or installed, will the students do this, or will it be delegated to a preparator, and if so, is the service gratis, or fee based?

It’s a good idea to have all of this worked out ahead of time. That way, you can give student curators a comprehensive “map” of what their responsibilities will be, and what support they can expect from staff or curators employed by the exhibition venue.

Scaffold the needed skills into the class material

Exhibitions are daunting assignments from a student’s perspective, so it’s extra important to build student skills slowly from a base. Scaffolding, along with clear benchmarks, gives students a better sense of direction of where to start with this project. It is especially important in working with students who might have little experience with research in our disciplines.

Some early steps include

More complex later steps include

  • Interpretive descriptions;
  • Transcription and translation;
  • Introductory explanation for the entire exhibition;
  • An exhibition catalog;
  • Posters advertising exhibition; and
  • Oral script of presentations for exhibition opening.

While scaffolding undergraduate research assignments might seem time-consuming, it actually allows for better time management for both students and instructors. By providing clear goals from the start, students get ongoing feedback regarding the progress of their project. Scaffolding also helps to model the research process for students step-by-step. They begin with a question, transform it into a statement or thesis, and carry out research for a bibliography. They then produce a substantial, thoughtful project that can be shared with the academic community.

Remember you are part of the team

As instructor, you are responsible for evaluating and assessing student work associated with the exhibition, but don’t forget that your name will also be publicly associated with the results. This means that you should consider yourself part of the team as well as an outside judge. While you normally avoid editing students’ work for excellent pedagogical reasons, you should not be shy about revising material that will be made public. Doing so not only helps create a better outcome but lets your students know that you are willing to work alongside them on a successful event.

Know your tools

Mounting an exhibition, whether actual or virtual, requires technical skills. As for most pedagogy, don’t evaluate your students on skills you don’t have yourself, including digital skills. And try to stick with exhibitions you feel confident about mounting yourself if you had to. Having a committed collaborator is often helpful, but don’t expect your IT department or your archivist to fill in for skills you lack.

Leave time for installation

It is tempting to think that final installation will go quickly since it’s just a physical event. But installations, whether physical or digital, take time, care, and can run into obstacles that may require time to fix. If you expect students to include replicas, make sure you plan for the time, space, materials, and expertise to help them achieve these goals. When possible, set aside some class time for installation. It’s practically the only time you can actually require all students to be present.

Plan your publicity

The more public your exhibition, the more your students will be inspired to do their best. Make publicity part of the project. Consider setting aside time and money for a “grand opening” event that includes campus stakeholders and influencers. As Chip and Dan Heath reveal in The Power of Moments, celebratory milestones can give students a sense of achievement and closure. And dissemination is a key element of undergraduate research: students should have the opportunity to interact with public visitors to their exhibition.

Further reading

Several models for curatorial work are discussed in this CUR Quarterly essay by Alexa Sand, Becky Thoms, Darcy Pumphrey, Erin Davis, and Joyce Kinkead of Utah State University, where the university’s library and art museum have often been the venues for student curatorial projects, and where the expertise of the library and museum staff are a critical factor.

Furthermore, a couple of great resources for composing museum labels and texts and creating inclusive exhibitions can be found here.

A comprehensive source for labels:

Serrell, Beverly. Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

Didactics:

Writing Text and Labels (Australian Museum)

The V&A Ten Point Guide to Gallery Text

Quick Guide to Adult Audience Interpretive Materials (The J. Paul Getty Museum)

The Inclusive Museum

Cognitive underpinnings:

Heath, Chip and Dan, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact . Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Check out our other best-practice guides for faculty:

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featured, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers, Resources for faculty

Undergraduate Computer Engineer Delves into the Digital Humanities

Timothy (TJ) Scherer, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University ’22, is majoring in Computer Engineering at the University’s Daytona Beach campus. In November 2018, he became the student web designer for Dr. Debra Bourdeau’s Hogarth Online website and entered the world of digital humanities, something he never expected as a student at an aviation-focused university. Scherer modernized the site over the past year and has begun adding content this academic year.

Bourdeau is Chair of English, Humanities and Communication for ERAU’s Worldwide campus. She received an internal grant to revitalize the project, which had remained relatively unchanged since 2004. Because Dr. Bourdeau lives in the Atlanta area, project meetings occur by Skype; she and TJ have had to learn to work virtually.

CURAH recently caught up with TJ to ask how the project is going.

CURAH: Tell us about your project.  What has been your role?

TJ: The Hogarth Online project was started with the goal of creating a more widely accessible resource for William Hogarth’s works. More often than not, commentary on Hogarth’s works is highly detailed and not welcoming to newcomers. This project is aimed at those who want to learn about William Hogarth but lack the expertise many existing resources assume. From home to classroom, I hope that this project will serve as a resource to students and professors alike. To accomplish this, I have compiled commentary and observations to help explain the individual elements of each artwork in a sophisticated yet simple manner. I want to provide the necessary background information to enrich people’s understanding of Hogarth.

My role in this project is to modernize the original website, improving the aesthetics and functionality using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This mostly consists of reorganizing the large amount of content using more recent web development techniques, along with adding in new content as the project grows. My greatest focus in this project has been adding as much functionality as I can to make the website a valuable classroom resource, providing different ways to view both the artworks and the associated commentary so that it can easily adapt to lesson plans and the technology in the classroom. From personal experience, this tends to be a frustrating issue for many students, and I believe that I have been successful in mitigating it.

Timothy Scherer, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, ’22 Computer Engineering

CURAH: What have been the greatest challenges in the work you are doing?

TJ: Going into this project, my experience with HTML and CSS was fairly limited, and beginning to build the infrastructure for a website requires a significant amount of knowledge to maintain an organized structure that can be expanded upon in the future. It took a lot of research and practice to fully understand the best ways to structure the code, but once the foundation was in place, I had lots of room for experimentation to find the best layout for the site.

Once I had determined a general layout, I had to address the problem of organizing and displaying a large amount of content . After some research and experimentation using HTML and CSS, I decided that it would not be enough. Further research suggested that JavaScript had the answer to my problem, but I had never used it before. Using guides and example snippets of code, I was able to gain enough understanding of JavaScript to create a solution.

Beyond these technical challenges, I encountered some small difficulty in transferring the content because I was new to Hogarth. I was very fortunate to have Dr. Bourdeau available whenever I needed. Every time we talked she taught me a little more about Hogarth and his historical background.

CURAH: What have you learned (about Hogarth, digital humanities or yourself)?

TJ: Over the duration of this project, I have learned several things.

  • Engraving on a metal plate is a very interesting process, and the result is quite stunning. It absolutely amazes me how much effort has to go into each plate. The planning and the amount of detail involved is quite inspirational.
  • There is a surprising lack of documentation of Hogarth’s works. It took a decent amount of time to locate high resolution images of each of Hogarth’s plates that are included in the project.
  • I far prefer tasks that require research and creative thinking to achieve a goal. I enjoyed solving the problems I encountered while modernizing the website much more than I enjoyed transferring all of its contents to the new website.

CURAH: What has surprised you about this project?

The most surprising part of this project is the sheer amount of effort needed to produce this website. There are so many resources out there with similar levels of detail and content that it becomes easy to take them for granted. I can’t count the number of times a website’s design has frustrated me as a user, but being on the other end of the interaction is very eye-opening. From obtaining grants to compiling information, there is so much that goes into preparing to take on such a project, and even more to actually execute it. I was surprised to realize that it takes all of this effort just to make a single website, and it has given me a greater appreciation for each website I visit.

CURAH: How do you think this project will help you in your career or future studies?

The technical skills that I have developed from this project are probably the most notable way in which this project has already benefited me and will continue to in the future. By improving my understanding of the languages required to take on this project, I am simultaneously improving my skills in other programming languages. Further, the effort I put in to develop these skills has shown very good results, and now I think I will be more willing to put the same level of effort into future endeavors. Beyond this, the experience in communication and collaboration with Dr. Bourdeau is something I anticipate being very useful in the future, and that I am very thankful for.

Hogarth Online, before its revitalization
The revitalized Hogarth Online
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featured, Profiles of Undergraduate Researchers, Resources for faculty

Humanities and STEM Come Together in Scholarship on the Astrolabe

Sometimes undergraduates have an advantage over more senior scholars: pursuing two majors can make them more radically interdisciplinary and more open to unconventional combinations. Olivia Brock, Utah State University ’21, is a double major in mathematics/statistics and art history, interests that combined in her recent project on the astrolabe, that most beautiful tool of late medieval mathematical and astronomical thought. Olivia recently spoke with CURAH about her work.

CURAH: Tell us about your project.

Olivia: My project is designed to answer a question: how can interdisciplinary conversations between humanities and STEM fields be facilitated through the examination of material/visual culture? In particular, I am answering this question by studying the astrolabe, a medieval scientific instrument that puts into question the historical categorization of objects. As an object that is scientific, artistic, religious (and I’ll even add pseudo-scientific), the astrolabe presents a slew of interpretive challenges. I am examining the ways historians of visual and material culture have categorized these objects, and how their categories can limit our ability to fully understand astrolabes as the unique, specific, and complex objects that they are.

In addition, I hope to create an interdisciplinary dialogue that allows artists, scientists, scholars, and others to interact with intellectual ideas that may not be familiar. Ideally, through the dissemination of these ideas in writing and presentation, I can help the widest disciplinary audience connect with a single object and learn about new fields or ideas.

Olivia Brock, Utah State University
Olivia Brock, Utah State University

This particular goal is really important to me. As both a math/stats and art history student, I get a lot of questions about why I decided to do both majors, and comments regarding how disparate these fields are. Though these fields are quite different, and a traditional undergraduate education in either makes the bifurcation even more prominent, I have found that there are a lot of ways that these fields complement each other. It just takes a conscious effort to find these connections. This is why I’m so excited about this project: it allows me to pursue the connections I’ve found in a ways that go beyond traditional art history or math classes.

CURAH: What are the easiest and hardest things about the work you’re doing?

Olivia: There are a few bumps that I’ve run into over the course of this project that have really stood out to me. First, methodology. I work as a writing tutor in the Science Writing Center here at USU, and a big part of my job is helping students with their “Methods” sections. These are strict, orderly, pre-determined methodologies that make predicting the course of scientific research much more feasible. For me, as a scientifically-minded person, the more subjective methodological approach to my art historical research has been difficult to adapt to. I can’t create a step-by-step guide to my research as one might for a lab experiment.

The next bump I ran into was while working to develop an overall thesis for my project. How do I come up with an original and interesting claim, while at the same time ensuring that I can ground my ideas with established literature and evidence? The balance between originality and credibility has been difficult for me to maintain. Fortunately, in Dr. Alexa Sand I have a great and experienced mentor who has really helped me achieve this balance.

I’m not sure there’s been anything I’d specify as being “easy” for me. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. But I love the work and subject matter, and that makes it easier for me to stay excited and motivated about this project.

CURAH: What kinds of things have you learned? (about astrolabes, about scholarship, or about yourself)

Olivia: I learned

  • that even the most basic object can have a plethora of intangible functions and relationships that become apparent when you look at the object in a different light.
  • that the astrolabe is just a single example of the arts and sciences working in tandem: there are so many interesting multidisciplinary interactions that can be found over the course of history. They just require someone to look for them.
  • that scholarship is hard, but it’s worth it. The knowledge that I can take an idea and pursue it as far as it can be pursued is incredibly rewarding.
  • that I may love sharing my ideas a little more than I love pursuing them. I’ve really enjoyed this process, but my favorite parts, so far, have been the times when I’ve gotten to interact with my research community and share my ideas and knowledge with other curious students.

CURAH: Have you made any discoveries along the way?

Olivia: I didn’t make anything that I would call a “discovery.” However, I never had the expectation of major discovery. My goal for the project is to pursue an idea that is personally important to me and important to the academic community at Utah State. I’m not trying to answer any major questions or problems but rather working to create discussion among my peers.

Because of this goal, however, I have helped some other students make small discoveries. Many students “discovered” the astrolabe for the very first time upon our conversations. Others may have discovered that there are a number of connections between the humanities and STEM that they may not have been aware of before. And others may have even discovered that there is a place in the research realm for even the most bizarre or disparate of interests. I also made personal discoveries about myself and my interests that will undoubtably change the course of my academic and professional career.

CURAH: How do you imagine the project will help you in your career goals?

Olivia: I must admit that my career goals are a bit unclear right now. However, through this project, I have become much more open to pursuing academic scholarship, at least through graduate school, and maybe into a career. This project also taught me that I love talking and writing about science in a non-scientific way, which has sparked ideas about potential careers in scientific communication or scientific journalism.

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featured, Resources for faculty

Face to Face and Hand to Hand: Undergraduate Archival Study at the LMA

These days, study of the archives often begins with digital images, but an in-person visit to an actual manuscript remains a powerfully transformative scholarly experience, especially for undergraduates. Sheridon Ward, Ohio State University ’21, was lucky enough to spend time working through a massive and dense wardmote inquest book at the London Metropolitan Archives (the LMA). Sheridon has a double major in Medieval & Renaissance Studies along with Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology. CURAH caught up to her after her visit to the LMA.

CURAH: Tell us about your project.

Sheridon: During the autumn semester of 2018, I took a class that explored popular culture in 16th and 17th century London with Professor Chris Highley. As the final project, we were assigned to write an article for the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), a map based on the Agas map that was drawn around 1561 and reprinted in 1633. Professor Highley introduced me to wardmote inquest books as a possible theme-based entry for MoEML, specifically the St. Dunstan in the West inquest register. Though it started as more of a term paper than anything else, I have continued working on the project since then, and I finally got to visit the book itself when I was in Europe over the summer.

Sheridon Ward pictured on a trip to England that featured work at the London Metropolitan Archives.
Sheridon Ward, Ohio State University, ‘21

Originally, I worked using photos that Professor Highley had taken during his visit at the LMA, and I started to decipher the pages in the massive volume that spans from 1558 to 1823. I only studied pages within the early modern period in the first volume. These pages detail the sessions of the wardmote inquest for the Faringdon Without Ward. It names the inquest members, lists prominent businessmen (the licensed and unlicensed victuallers–sellers of alcohol– for example), and then “presents” people who have committed offenses to the Lord Mayor of London for redress. These offenses can range from petty complaints against poultry dealers for their baskets protruding too far into the road to accusations of adultery.

Overall, my archive project summarizes and explores the wealth of knowledge of everyday life that can be found in the pages of the wardmote inquest book. It reveals their priorities and values, how government on the smallest level worked, and how they systematically and scrupulously organized these sessions. Additionally, it addresses questions of social mobility and social standing by studying how aldermen were affected by their participation and what infractions were and weren’t punished.

CURAH: What are the easiest and hardest things about the work you’re doing?

Sheridon: The greatest obstacle that I faced during this project was unquestionably deciphering the secretary hand in the documents and coping with the fact that English spelling wasn’t yet standardized. I frequently had to use the OED Online to verify the spelling of the word that I thought I was seeing in order to link it to the modern spelling of the word.

Another obstacle was the monotony of the court proceedings. While snippets of information were fascinating to read, most of the items dealt with defective pavements or improper weights and measures. When each sentence is a struggle to decipher, it makes skimming for the more unique items much more difficult.

The easiest part of my research was finding the resources that I needed. Prof. Highley would send me frequent emails with articles related to wardmotes, and the LMA created a welcoming environment for looking at these documents. I was originally intimidated by handling a document so old, and I was terrified that they wouldn’t even let me into the archives to look at the document, but I was surprised at how painless the process was even though I’m just an undergraduate.

CURAH: What kinds of things have you learned, about the early modern period, about scholarship, or about yourself?

Sheridon: Through this project, I’ve learned a lot about early modern social structures and how they parallel our current structures and preoccupations. When I was exploring the part of London that I was studying, I came across a sign that listed the current aldermen of the Faringdon Without Ward. While some of these aldermen are now alderwomen, it was surprising to learn that these government structures still exist so similarly 400 years later.

I also learned that no matter how much passion and inspiration you have for a project in scholarship, you still need determination and discipline. Otherwise, you miss those small snippets of unique stories and information that actually breathe life into the document. And although technology has evolved to give scholars greater access to important materials, nothing compares to handling the material artifact itself. It provides a wealth of information in its own right, even before you read the words on the page.

CURAH: Have you made any discoveries along the way?

Sheridon: While I haven’t found any groundbreaking information, one thing that struck me was just how intrusive some of these documents seem. The extent to which the rest of the community is involved and watchful of everyone else seems like an invasion of privacy to my modern sensibility, but it was entirely normal then. They kept track of who came to church regularly and reported people who failed to attend church as “recusants.” However, even though this is the type of issue that would be presented to the Lord Mayor, the frequency with which some people were reported seems to suggest that it wasn’t effectively handled or simply wasn’t a priority.

Henry Lusher, for example, appears almost every year as a recusant from 1621 to 1651. However, in 1622, he was named as a petty juryman, and the fact that his recusancy continues for likely more than 30 years is puzzling and raises questions as to how important regular church attendance really was in the early modern period.

CURAH: How do you imagine this archive project will help you in your career goals?

Sheridon: Learning how to read secretary hand early on in my career is a very valuable skill to have, and I have gained experience in reading court documents that are more informal and less bogged down with technical terminology as kind of an introduction to other handwritten legal documents.

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Resources for faculty

Gallery founder reflects on her undergraduate research experiences

Undergraduate research experiences can prepare students for the future in ways they might not expect. Hannah Litvan graduated with art and creative writing majors from Albion College in 2015; within two years she had founded the Ice House art gallery in Evanston, Illinois. Starting a business required skills not typically included in studio art or creative writing, but Litvan found that her undergraduate research experiences in particular had made her more articulate, more adaptable, and with a larger perspective on the core value of art.

Ready For Anything

Litvan says she founded the Ice House gallery because she saw a need: “I noticed my hometown community was lacking a representation of fairly priced, quality local art for sale, though it had plenty of artists looking for a place to show and sell their work.” But starting a gallery would be challenging. “As much as I learned about art and myself as an artist [in my college coursework], I learned nothing about art as a business or about being a business owner,” Litvan says. She quickly found herself having loan meetings, pitching ideas, and meeting with large and varied groups of people.

Presenting her undergraduate research project, a study of comics and art, helped her communicate with her new audience. “It was good to hear feedback and questions from a larger audience,” she says, an audience “who thinks differently than me, who would ask questions I may not have thought of, and think about my idea in their own way thus giving me a different perspective. That happened both in my undergraduate research experience and early groundwork for the gallery. Even now I work with the city and large groups of people in each of my shows. I have to make sure I cover a lot of ground as far as what I show in order to appeal to more people.”

Hannah Litvan, Founder Ice House Gallery, former undergraduate scholar

Working on a complex and evolving project also turned out to be something Litvan had experience with by way of her undergraduate project. “My research idea started off a lot more simplistically than what it turned into,” she says, “and that was true of my gallery too. I thought a nice little local art gallery would be nice, then a whopper of a space fell in my lap and I needed to be much more than a gallery. There are artist studios, classes, workshops, concerts, performance art, constantly changing shows and collaborative events with other businesses and the city. It still has the base value of what I wanted to present, but now on a much larger scale.”

Balancing Art and Business

Being an entrepreneur doesn’t mean abandoning your core values, even if the day-to-day work sometimes can seem far from the reason you began. As Litvan says, “I’ve always placed a large value on art, and have always pushed for art appreciation, sales, features and for serious treatment of that profession. I wanted to convey that in my undergraduate research as well as with my gallery.”

Litvan considers herself primarily as an artist rather than an entrepreneur, although her future goals certainly draw on the business skills she’s learned. “Opening and operating my own gallery has its ups and downs. I love coordinating group shows, setting up and installing shows, talking about art as well as selling it. These are all skills that I learned both in my education and on the job. Now I have all the experience and knowhow all those other jobs wanted me to have straight out of school, and I can be my own boss.”

“But it is not a ‘dream come true,'” she adds. “Owning a business leaves little time for personal time, especially when it comes to creative time. I am slowly reclaiming that as my business stabilizes. I don’t know where I will be in 5 years or what type of career I will have, but I know I always want to be involved in and with art.”

Hannah Litvan participated in Albion College’s Foundation for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (FURSCA).

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Resources for faculty

Student researchers contribute to the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML)

Large digital humanities sites can offer great opportunities for undergraduate scholarship. One model project is the University of Victoria based Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), a blend of history, geography, and literary study focused on London in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. MoEML usually relies on advanced scholars, but through its pedagogical partnership program  MoEML also invites mentored undergraduate contributions. It is perfect for contributions from undergraduates who are just beginning true humanities scholarship. And its strong peer review process and insistence on faculty mentoring mean that student contributions are always of high quality. Here two recent undergraduate scholars reflect on their work with MoEML.

Emily Allison, at Albion College, researched early London’s brothels. During the course of a summer project she wrote and encoded the entry for the Cardinal’s Hat in Southwark. Her faculty mentor was Dr. Ian F. MacInnes.

Ashton Davenport, at North Carolina State, researched Stationer’s Hall with fellow students during a recent class with Dr. Maggie Simon.

CURAH:What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you did?

Emily: The easiest thing about the work I did for the Map of Early Modern London was how immediately captivating the research was. I completed my MoEML articles with the help of a summer research grant at Albion College. That meant I was able to treat the project like a full-time job. Even logging 40+ hours a week on my research, I very rarely felt like the process was boring or tedious. Each day I was met with a renewed sense of purpose. I felt like working on the map was a puzzle that I had to assemble before the summer was over.

Emily Allison, Albion College, '18 in Victoria, home of MoEML
Emily Allison, Albion College, ’18 in Victoria, home of MoEML

I found that the most frustrating thing was how my research was never complete. I would think that I had exhausted every source I could find and then stumble across a new one that would bring with it new contradictions and complexities.

Ashton:The easiest part of the project was finding the general research surrounding Stationer’s Hall. It was the location of the governing body for the printing industry in its prime, so hundreds of primary and secondary sources mentioned it. It was also very easy to work with my classmates. We were all in the same major and knew each other. Therefore creating our draft proved easier than I thought it would be. The hardest part of the project was narrowing down our research to only a few sentences. We didn’t want the draft  to be too long and tedious. Our group had five pages of research after we were done! We had grown to love every fact we learned about Stationer’s Hall; having to depart from some of those facts and only include the essential ones was heartbreaking.

Ashton Davenport, North Carolina State University, '18
Ashton Davenport, North Carolina State University, ’18

CURAH:What kinds of things did you learn? (about the early modern period, about scholarship, or about yourself)

Emily: Prior to my work with the Map of Early Modern London, my knowledge of the early modern period was minimal at best. Therefore, before I could delve into the specifics of brothels in early modern London, I had to do a fair amount of research to lay groundwork. Even with this extra layer of research, I found that I could successfully set a schedule for myself and stick to it. That came as a surprise, since up until that point I’d never conducted such an extensive research project. It made me feel like I could handle taking on larger projects in the future. I also learned that independent research can sometimes be lonely and totally overwhelming; I was grateful for the frequent reassurance I received from my advisor that I was taking the proper steps and doing enough, even when it felt like I wasn’t.

Ashton: I had never done research quite like this before, and I learned quickly that there is an abundance of information available regarding anything one wants to  research. That’s why narrowing down the research that pertains to your specified subject can be difficult. The filters and advanced search techniques our NC State librarians taught us were helpful. Databases like Early English Books Online (EEBO) were also important. As far as the early modern period itself, I learned about the Great Fire of London, one of the most important events we encountered. The fire burnt down Stationer’s Hall and destroyed most of its important documents. I learned many things about myself, but the most lasting thing I learned was my passion for early modern research. I had always loved it (I have an affinity for King James I), but this project fed my passion. It allowed me to explore some of London’s greatest buildings while also focusing on one small one that had a big impact during my favorite period of history and literature.

CURAH:Did you make any discoveries along the way?

Emily: During my research, I attempted, with increasing difficulty, to find the exact locations of the brothels listed in John Stow’s Survey of London. I came to learn that brothels were often conflated with other public houses (such as taverns and inns), and the more I tried to parse out what brothels were and how they functioned in the early modern landscape, the harder it was to draw clear distinctions between the various types public spaces. This idea of geographical ambiguity formed the basis for my Honors thesis, as I analyzed Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure with the knowledge I had acquired about prostitution in early modern London.

Above all, MoEML helped me understand London’s history—and history in general—in new ways. My research forced me to conceptualize history with geography at the forefront, which was something that I had never done before.

Ashton: My group discovered a source that proved to be everything we needed and more: Cyprian Blagden’s The Stationer’s Company: A History, 1403-1959. This detailed history gave us facts we would use for the majority of our project. Stationer’s Hall moved locations four different times during the early modern period. After the Great Fire of London, the Stationer’s Company set up headquarters in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital for 28 months during the reconstruction of the hall. At the end of the 17th century, the Hall generated revenue from renting out the premises for dances, dinners, and lotteries. This information was the most essential, and it steered our research into the right direction. The discovery of this source was pivotal for our research.

CURAH: How has the project helped you in your career goals?

Emily: My work with MoEML taught me a breadth of new skills that I use at my current place of employment. For instance, part of my job requires that I carefully examine primary source documents to verify historical dates and events. Verification was a major component of my brothel and prostitution research. Conduct ing thorough research and dealing with conflicting ideas also are useful abilities. They help with my work at a state historical society.

MoEML also gave me insight into the nature and intensity of humanities research, which is useful given my plans to attend graduate school in the near future. If I had any doubts about continuing my education, doing research for MoEML solidified not only that I would be able to do it, but also that I might actually be able to do well at it.

Ashton: I am now a high school English teacher in my hometown, and the things I learned from this research project have helped when teaching my students about how to conduct their research. I encourage them to stick with it and not get overwhelmed when presented with the abundance of information, something I had to learn to do myself. My next step is to go to graduate school and achieve a Master’s in English, and surely my research with MoEML will resurface and the tools I used within this project with help me with my further research projects in graduate school.

CUR Councilor Ian F. MacInnes is MoEML’s U.S. Agent for Pedagogical Partnerships. If you have an interested student or are thinking of working with MoEML in the classroom, please contact him.

cover photo: Programmer Joey Takeda, Student Emily Allison, and MoEML Director Janelle Jenstad with a replica of the Agas Map of London in the University of Victoria offices of MoEML

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Resources for faculty

Creating a Web Version of a Medieval Book of Hours: Reflections from Student Researchers

Sometimes a single item in the archives can be the basis for an extended student project. This is how Kathleen Dusseault at Truman State University found herself creating a web version of a medieval book of hours in the library’s special collections. Dusseault worked with mentors Dr. Jon Beck (computer science) and Amanda Langendoerfer (library). Drawing on translations created by a former Truman student, Lauren Milburn, Dusseault designed and created a permanent addition to the library’s website. CURAH tracked down both Kathleen and Lauren and asked them about their work.

CURAH:How did you get involved with the project?

Kathleen Dusseault, Truman State University

KD: I became involved with the project due to a frequent exposure to the materials located in Truman State University’s Special Collections and Museums Department from a couple of different art history courses. As I continued to pursue a degree in Art History I needed to complete an internship that involved elements of art history in some way. I also started working in Special Collections starting in the fall of 2017, and over the course of that year I reflected on what I could do for an internship. In the spring of 2018 I took a week long digital humanities class that taught the students some html and worked as a class to develop online resources that helped make something more interactive or easier to use. My group worked on making a site that would allow for students to see all the art prints that can be checked out visually instead of having a list of artist and title. While I did not work on the coding for that website, I found myself interested in developing something that would be useful for future students and others while at the same time working on a new skill.

This brings me to the project itself. I knew that I wanted to create a website (something that I had never done before), but I wasn’t sure on what precisely or where. I brought the idea up with the head of Special Collections and Museums, Amanda Langendoerfer, and she suggested several different books or exhibits that would work well for such a project. I was drawn to our one Book of Hours because of my previous interactions with the manuscript due to my art history classes and the work that former student Lauren Milburn had completed on it.

LM: As I was pursing my Classics degree, I developed an interest in sacred religious texts. When it came time for me to complete my

Lauren Milburn, Truman State University

Capstone, my Classics department mentors suggested that I examine The Book of Hours in Truman’s Special Collections. After an initial examination of the manuscript we decided that transcribing and translating the text would be a challenging endeavor that would benefit future students. At the time having a digital copy of the manuscript was a long-term goal. Kathleen’s dedication and hard work made this dream a beautiful reality.

CURAH: What exactly was your part in the creation of the website?

KD: Years earlier the scans of the manuscript were taken in TIF format (for preservation) and a JPEG format (for uploading digitally) excluding certain blank pages. One of my goals, however, was to have the book be viewable outside of Special Collections just the way that it would be seen within, except digitally. With the help of Annie Moots (the Special Collections digital librarian) I got to scan the original pages that were missing (all of which were just blank pages not included in the original scan). I inputted all the JPEGs into a plugin called 3D FlipBook which accomplished this goal. I then researched Books of Hours in order to add content to several pages. I placed all content onto the WordPress site myself. The only other thing that I was not a part of was the translations by Lauren Milburn. In order to create that portion of the website labeled as Translation and Transcription I added the already written content myself but kept the way that Lauren formatted the writing (for her capstone). Originally, however, they were two separate text documents. The biggest change I made was placing the transcription on the left, the corresponding scan of the manuscript, and the translation on the right.

LM: For my Capstone project, I transcribed and translated the Latin within the manuscript. In addition, I deciphered and indexed abbreviations, decoded the format of the text, and created footnotes to provide context for the readers.

CURAH: What were the easiest and hardest things about the work you did?

KD: The easiest part to this project was adding content to the website. After looking at several books on the subject I found it easy to narrow a focus down on what sort of information I wanted to provide. I also had a lot of fun at the end of my project doing some user testing with library staff and friends who volunteered. I found that as I went along with the project I knew where to click to find certain information and it didn’t seem to work the same way with those who tested out the site at the end.

The hardest part that I had was working with Lauren Milburn’s transcription and translations. I was unfamiliar with the structure of quires (which is how Ms. Milburn had divided the content of her translation and transcription). In order to accomplish the task of putting the work online I first needed to understand how she had created the translation and transcription. Once I became more familiar with her work this was no longer an issue.

Formatting was another thing I struggled with on occasion. This was due to my lack of experience with WordPress, but after working on a couple of different pages and developing pages with a website builder plugin called Elementor I wasn’t finding this to be as much of an issue.

LM: The easiest part of working on this project was engaging with the subject matter itself. As a Roman Catholic I found translating the familiar prayers and sections of scripture exceptionally enriching. It also felt incredibly humbling to connect with a text that was a sacred source of meditation and prayer for the original owners. The hardest part of working with the text was deciphering the abbreviations and learning the writer’s Latin shorthand. Certain phrases and words were often shortened within the text because the prayer or piece of scripture had been stated in–full earlier within the Quire.

CURAH: What kinds of things did you learn?

KD: There are many different things that I learned while working on this project. As I only had a beginners knowledge on what a Book of Hours is and its purpose there was a lot of content that I learned in order to make the website. I also learned a significant amount about how to work with WordPress, which I think will be beneficial later on in life, and I learned quite a few things about myself. At the beginning there were three goals for my project. I wanted to make the Book of Hours visible outside of the reading room at Truman State, have the transcription side by side with original pages, and add the additional content for those who would like to learn more about such a manuscript. It’s from gathering this content and presenting it that I learned more about myself, surprisingly. I found that altering my perspective on the information was difficult for me. What I mean by this is that having even the slightest knowledge on the subject had me skipping over important pieces of information that would be necessary to people just learning about what is a Book of Hours. I found myself constantly looking over the information to find these gaps and sometimes completely missing them. To combat this I had users that volunteered to test out the site and read the content within it to find these spots where I may have missed crucial information. Watching users read the content and listening to their questions also let me know where information should be located or added. Due to this project I also thought more about future careers and potentially going into the field of museum registrar or an education route (such as history or museum).

LM: This project enabled me to learn about the process of creating Books of Hours and their accompanying illuminations. In addition, I learned how to carefully work with and handle the fragile vellum. In doing so, I was able to honor the past while working to provide a resource for students in the present.

CURAH: Did you make any discoveries along the way?

KD: This kinda relates back to what I learned, I probably wouldn’t say that I learned anything earth shattering about the Book of Hours that I worked with, but I did learn a lot about myself. I really enjoyed creating educational content that can be used by a variety of different people (i.e. researchers, students, faculty, scholars, anyone really). I also note in the site that within the border design on two of the illuminations have a particular flower in the border. That was an interesting tidbit that felt a little bit like a discovery to me.

LM: One fascinating aspect of working with this text was coming into contact with little French notes written in in the margins and in the back of the manuscript. Discovering these notes written by the owners made this project magical. The process of analyzingthe illuminations was another intriguing facet of this experience. Particularly, in regards to the ways in which ritual played a part in the owners’ mediations. For example, there is an illumination in which the face of Mary (the mother of Christ) has been “rubbed” away. I learned through this process that the owners must have repeatedly touched the illumination in this spot as they were praying.

Finally, the greatest discovery I made while completing this culminating project was the immense value in studying Classical languages. The time I spent studying Latin, Greek, and working on this Capstone project at Truman shaped who I am as a human and teacher. I am currently finishing a graduate degree in Applied Behavior Analysis and I still utilize the tools I cultivated as a Classics student every day. Specifically, this project and field of study enabled me to develop problem solving skills and the ability to analyze complex texts. I am extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from all of the professors in Truman’s Classics department and to have had their mentorship throughout this project. The trajectory of my life and career has been profoundly impacted by their support and knowledge. I am also exceedingly grateful to Kathleen and her dedication to digitally preserving this manuscript. She has done such stunning work and has given an amazing gift to our university.

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