Ancient / Classical History - Future on the WWW

A Half Dozen Webmasters Plus Sallie Goetsch

I've gotten so much into the habit of doing research on the WWW that I sometimes forget what useful books I own.
-- (http://didaskalia.berkeley.edu) Sallie Goetsch

I know, I should have set up a form letter and sent exactly the same question to each, but I didn't, so the paragraphs below answer slightly different questions. The gist of my request was that they briefly tell who they are and explain their vision of the future of Ancient History/Classics on the Internet.

Why is Sallie Goetsch singled out? Because in addition to answering my questions, her biography shows how seemingly unrelated lifelong interests can meld into a career in classics.

My internet presence: owner of the Atrium, editor of the AWOTV and Explorator, owner of Epigraph-l, and Osiris-l.

I basically think the internet provides the best opportunity for the continued survival of Classics as a discipline in a world where such things seem less important every day, both as a means of scholarly communication and as a means of outreach for layfolk with an interest in the ancient world. Unfortunately there are problems at both ends: in academe there still remains a fairly large contingent of folks who are skeptical of or even afraid of the internet and while they do a lot of talking about things, only a relatively small sector are actually doing anything to integrate this medium into their classes and/or daily lives. At the other end, there are a sizeable number of layfolks who have put up sites of their own in regards to the ancient world, but unfortunately they often are characterized by shoddy research, a somewhat 'esoteric' perspective, or are just plain misleading. The solution for both these problems is for academics to more fully embrace the web and take it seriously, both as a teaching tool and as a means for presenting research both to colleagues and the public.

I believe the future of Classics and Archaeology on the net lies largely in on-demand audio and video technology (e.g. (http://web.idirect.com/~atrium/rostra.html) RealAudio, RealVideo) and in the fall I hope to demonstrate this by putting up a series of 'on demand' lectures which folks can access when they want it; I'm hoping that such things will be used both in schools and in private homes around the world.

... the internet provides the best opportunity for the continued survival of Classics as a discipline in a world where such things seem less important every day ....

David's (http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassicism/) [2005] Rogueclassicism site.

Andrew Wilson
Andrew Wilson, aka Loxias, webmaster of the (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/oldindex.htm) Classics Pages. I am a lifelong teacher of Classics at an English Independent School.

For me the web is the greatest teaching and learning opportunity the world has yet seen. In school, I have perhaps as many as 100 students of Classics at any one time. Over a career maybe there have been a thousand - and many of those were lukewarm, reluctant, passive. In 18 months since The Classics Pages started appearing, there have been at least 12,000 visitors, of which over 500 have actively communicated - joining in discussion, requesting information, sharing their enjoyment of things they've found on the site. And that's why I do it: the exhilaration that comes from sharing a problem or a quest - and above all sharing enthusiasm for the wonders of the ancient world.

And that's why I do it: the exhilaration that comes from sharing a problem or a quest - and above all sharing enthusiasm for the wonders of the ancient world.

Roger Dunkle
Roger Dunkle is a Professor of Classics and Department Chair at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He has been teaching at the College since 1966. His main scholarly interests are Greek and Roman Epic along with athletics of the Greco-Roman world.

His interest in the Internet dates only to the fall of 1995, when a brief lesson in HTML code led to his developing a home page for the Classics Department. Professor Dunkle at first saw the home page as a method of letting the rest of the College and persons outside of the College know what was going on in the Department. His view of the home page, however, began to change. He soon realized that this Web site could also provide help to students studying Classics at Brooklyn College and at other campuses. The first move in this direction was a link providing access to a (http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/dunkle/studyguide/studygde.htm) study guide that Professor Dunkle completed in 1986 for Core Studies 1: Classical Origins of the Western World (published by Brooklyn College Press). This study guide supplies pertinent background for various representative works of ancient literature and seeks to engage the student in a close reading of these texts. The latest is a Roman (http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/gladiatr/index.htm) gladiator page that served as an adjunct to a lecture on that topic to students in his Rome: City of Empire class. In general, Professor Dunkle sees such pages as exciting enhancements through text and images of the student's classroom experience.

In general, Professor Dunkle sees such pages as exciting enhancements through text and images of the student's classroom experience.

Ross Scaife (March 31, 1960- March 15, 2008)

Ross died on March 15, 2008, of cancer, in Lexington, Kentucky: Obituary

Scaife hopes and expects that many of the exclusionary assumptions of modern academic life will be shattered by the iconoclastic power of IT.

David Camden
(http://www.forumromanum.org/index2.html) Praise to the person who thought of this! It's good to be reminded that there are people behind all of these great sites. I'm flattered that you chose me as one to be featured. As requested, here's my info:

I am currently a student at Heritage High School in Lynchburg, Virginia. Latin class sparked my interest in classics, but I've gathered most of my knowledge through personal research. I plan to pursue a classics degree in college and perhaps go into teaching at a university level. The (http://www.forumromanum.org/index2.html) Forum Romanum is a way of sharing my interest in ancient Rome while I organize the information I have gathered. It is history for beginners and experts alike, as I attempt to hold the attention of all age groups. Not everyone's a scholar, but that doesn't mean they should be turned off to scholarly material. The daily messages of thanks I receive from elementary to college students and teachers are proof to me that ancient history is relevant in everyone's lives.

It's good to be reminded that there are people behind all of these great sites.

David's (http://www.forumromanum.org/about.html) Forum Romanum. [Note: as of 2005 David Camden is an A.B. candidate in Classics at Harvard University.]

Bill Thayer
(penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/home.html) I'm a layman with a strong interest in cultural heritage. The Internet was originally conceived by the US military as a safety device for preserving a minimum of civilisation; I feel I'm contributing to extending that function, and see the role of serious web presences, in any field, as being analogous to that of the medieval monks who preserved culture by copying texts and disseminating them. Decentralisation has time and time again proven the key to cultural preservation: the loss of the library of Alexandria in ancient times, but also of the University of Louvain and the Museum of Kabul in our own age, are typical of the eventual results of centralisation. The designers of the Internet, by creating a modern version of the medieval scriptoria and the constant and active exchanges of texts of that time, have given us a tool of cultural survival.
(http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Umbria/Terni/Stroncone/S.Simeone/church/home.html) Endangered Heritage: S. Simeone di Stroncone, a terrible example.

The designers of the Internet, by creating a modern version of the medieval scriptoria and the constant and active exchanges of texts of that time, have given us a tool of cultural survival.

Bill's (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/home.html) Lacus Curtius site.

Skip Knox
I'm a bit self-conscious about that since I am not an ancient historian. I am was trained in medieval and early modern history. I received my MA from the (http://www.utah.edu/) University of Utah in 1980 in medieval history, and my PhD from the University of Massachusetts in early modern history. I have been teaching fully virtual classes since 1995 and have taught the (http://history.idbsu.edu/westciv/renaiss/00.htm) Renaissance and the (http://history.idbsu.edu/westciv/crusades/00.htm) Crusades on-line, in addition to my (http://history.idbsu.edu/westciv/class.htm) Western Civ class. I am adjunct faculty at Boise State University. My day job, however, is in computers. I am the webmaster at BSU, having previously been a computer support consultant for about ten years prior to my current position.

E.L. Skip Knox
Boise State University
(http://www.idbsu.edu/people/sknox) www.idbsu.edu/people/sknox
cogito ergo spud: I think therefore I yam

Sallie Goetsch
(http://didaskalia.open.ac.uk/) Okay. Well, I fell into the Classics Vortex at 14 when I first learned Latin. I went to (http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Classics/) Brown University meaning to get a degree in psychology and graduated with an AB in Classics. I'd spent 2 years as president of the Classics Club and added Greek to my Latin. I also spent a term at the (http://www.gettysburg.edu/project/abroad/aff/intercollegiate.html) Intercollegiante Center for Classical Studies in Rome (known familiarly as the Centro). The teaching wasn't up to Brown's standards, but we got to see everything. That summer I spent 6 weeks in Greece and had the opportunity to see a play ( Oedipus Tyrannos , as it happens, done by the Open Theater) in the theater at Epidavros. The moon was just rising over the back of the (http://didaskalia.open.ac.uk/stagecraft/greek.html) theatron as the show closed. From that time on I was increasingly interested in ancient theater. I wrote my senior thesis about the character of Klytaimnestra in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, (http://www.ucd.ie/~classics/Arkins95.html) Seneca, (http://www.ac-orleans-tours.fr/lettres/Ac-Giraudoux.html) Giraudoux, (http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1964-1-bio.html) Sartre, and (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/theater/reviews/mournrev.htm) O'Neill.

It was at the (http://www.umich.edu/~classics/) University of Michigan, where I was a PhD student, that I began translating and directing ancient plays (I had done a bit of acting in them as an undergrad, and my interest in theater goes back to early childhood). The first was Auricula Meretricula, a simplified Roman comedy written by a couple of classicists to make teaching Latin more fun. I'd first read it when I was 15. It was performed in Latin with a cast who knew no Latin for an audience only half of whom knew Latin--with a budget of $50. It was enough of a success to encourage me to proceed on to tragedy.

I had spent the summer of 1990 living in Nafplion, Greece, and studying the theatrical festival at Epidavros, interviewing as many of the directors as would talk to me. (About half of them, and usually in Modern Greek, which I had squeezed into my undergraduate schedule.) While there I made thetranslation of Aeschylus' Eumenides which I directed (and produced, and house-managed, and board-opped, and designed costumes for) in November of 1991. This was enough of a success that even my department began to be interested in production. (My supervisor's first words on the subject were "I've never seen a production of a Greek tragedy from which I learned anythin... Greek tutor said to him in 1945 at Oxford: "My dear Peter, don't you think it's awfully vulgar to consider how the plays were performed?")

In 1993 I collaborated with (http://didaskalia.open.ac.uk/back_issues/vol1no2/Mendeloff.html) Kate Mendeloff of U-M's Residential College Drama Program (and holder of an MFA in directing from Yale) on a production of Euripides' Bacchae. I was then a fellow at the Institute for the Humanities, which helped immeasurably with both funding and publicity. In my off hours I was writing my dissertation, on Eumenides. Bacchae was a commercial as well as critical success. I did a presentation on it at the King's College London conference on 'Tragedy and the Tragic.'

I also spent a lot of time traveling the US to see productions of ancient plays, including Mnouchkine's Les Atrides. I made contact with a number of scholars in the field (there aren't that many of us), most especially Oliver Taplin. And when he suggested that there ought to be an electronic newsletter to publicize modern productions of Greek plays, a colleague nominated me.

I didn't know much about computers at the time beyond word processing and basic e-mail--and the U-M e-mail system was hideously primitive. The WWW didn't really exist yet. But even in ASCII format for ftp, the internet was the best way to distribute listings, etc (it was my idea to include reviews and features) to people who were widely scattered across the globe. (There's a fairly dense concentration of them in Britain, which is part of why I moved here, but otherwise it's much a matter of one or two in the biggest departments--a couple on each coast of the US, a couple in South Africa, a scattering across Australia and Canada, etc.)

We had published three issues when I moved to Britain. Most of the technical stuff was handled by my co-editors, Ian Worthington and Peter Toohey, who had founded Electronic Antiquity (still an ftp journal) about a year earlier. I had discovered the WWW by then and was definitely interested in moving Did onto it--theatrical production is very hard to discuss without pictures. I got a lot of help from (http://www.warwick.ac.uk/) Warwick's Computing Services department, and our first HTML issue went out in December of 1994.

I began to get more and more ideas for the website, which eventually developed a fairly dense core of information in addition to the published issues--which got to be published less and less often. Like many academics, I had vastly underestimated how much work was involved in running an electronic journal. Though there are no printing and distribution costs (within a university), the labor involved in creating the thing is just as great. I've never been paid for my work on (http://didaskalia.open.ac.uk/) Did and my editorial board contributes primarily in the area of refereeing articles. I'm trying to work out ways of delegating markup and other tasks which I don't really have to do myself--there's just no one else to do them at the moment. I've gotten to the point where I would happily consider a commercial sponsor.

I've been amazed at the range of people who use (http://didaskalia.open.ac.uk/) Didaskalia. Despite its faltering condition it is still very popular. I get enquiries from all over the world on quite a variety of subjects. Some of the features I've added have been for the benefit of my own students (I have been teaching Ancient

• (http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/Theatre_S/BA/year3/ATOMS) Theatre on the Modern Stage
  and
• (http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/Theatre_S/BA/year2/tragedy) Greek Tragedy

Warwick's library isn't all that strong in Classics, and the WWW has been a good way of expanding the research materials available to my students. And to other people's students. I've gotten so much into the habit of doing research on the WWW that I sometimes forget what useful books I own.

Graphics by your Ancient/Classical History Guide, David Camden, David Meadows, Bill Thayer, and the Didaskalia site.

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