Week 6: Overview

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En provenance du cours de University of Colorado System

Deciphering Secrets: The Illuminated Manuscripts of Medieval Europe

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University of Colorado System

Deciphering Secrets: The Illuminated Manuscripts of Medieval Europe

58 notes

Perhaps no other relic of the European Middle Ages captures our imagination more than illuminated medieval manuscripts, or those documents decorated with images and colored pigments. Serving as windows unto a lost world of kings, ladies, faith, war, and culture, they communicate complex visual and textual narratives of Europe’s collective cultural heritage and patrimony. In this fashion, illuminated manuscripts are dynamic messages from our communal past that are still relevant today in fields like graphic design and typography. In this seven-week course, students will explore the material creation, content, and historical context of illuminated medieval European manuscripts. Students will acquire an introductory knowledge of their distinguishing characteristics, their cataloguing and periodization (when they were created), the methods utilized to produce them, and their historical context and value. Student achievement will be assessed using not only traditional multiple-choice quizzes, but more importantly will be evaluated based on individual student projects. In their final projects students will either (1) produce a board of commented images about medieval manuscripts or (2) prepare a physical manuscript using medieval methods. The best of these peer-evaluated projects will be posted on the Deciphering Secrets website, which is our collective citizen scholarship web presence that encourages and supports our global citizen scholars appreciation and contributions to transcription of medieval manuscripts. Finally, we wish to highlight that this course is an exciting international collaboration between the University of Colorado (USA) and Universidad Complutense Madrid (Spain).

À partir de la leçon

EXPLORING THE GLOBAL MIDDLE AGES AND ONLINE COLLECTIONS AND CODEX DECORATION

WEEK #6

Week 6: Overview12:56

Rencontrer les enseignants

Dr. Roger Louis Martínez-Dávila
Associate Professor
History
Ana B. Sanchez-Prieto
Dr. in Medieval History, Dr. in Education Sciences
Historiographical Sciences and Techniques

[MUSIC]

Welcome to week six.

This is our final week of historical investigations in this class.

So during week seven that's coming up, I won't see you.

So this is kind of my farewell to you.

And I'm so glad that you participated in this class.

And I hope that you've enjoyed it, but before we finishe up,

we've got a little bit more work to do.

So week six, what are we doing this week?

Again, continue with this last kit of element a course, which is setting

the middle ages, but now bringing it into this era where we live now.

We'll do a little bit more of what we were calling the digital humanities, which is

this interaction between the traditional study of literature, history, the arts.

But in the context of today, technology and

the Internet of organizing data into databases, some things like that.

So we will do two things, first is I will show you a little bit

of information about how we do digital searches.

So as you can appreciate most of the materials from the middle ages,

whether those are coins, or they're manuscripts like Dr.

[INAUDIBLE] are showing you.

Or artifacts that might be a woodcarving of a saint.

Most of those things really don't exist as digital forms right now.

You have to either go to a museum, or an archive, or an individual site,

to see them, to experience them and study them.

But increasingly, across Europe and across the United States,

large state institutions, as well who were funded by tax payers.

But also private foundations are giving funds to make these documents,

these artifacts, more accessible to a larger public.

And in this respect, I just want to point to you.

Point out for

you a couple of search techniques that can work in terms of looking for documents.

So again, I know you're interested in the Middle Ages, and

generally my experience is folks that are interested in the European Middle Ages.

And is kind of the romantic notions that come with it,

are often interested in genealogy too.

They're interested in their families.

They're interested in telling stories.

The basis for that word history.

History, they're interested in stories.

So I'm going to give you a couple of considerations,

five essential considerations for digital investigations.

And these are important because just like some of you are attorneys, or

some of your are potentially bakers, or

you are whatever kind of task, or you're a homemaker, and

you know how to do certain things that I don't know how to do.

Well I want to share with you some of the tricks of the trade that I've learned and

shared with my colleagues about how to look for documents and artifacts online.

And so it's everything from understanding how a topic or theme of investigation

might be represented and documented evidence or material cultures.

So this idea of of understanding how a theme might be represented.

So for instance, if you're interested, and

demonstrations of public pike, another way of saying, see how religious people work.

How they showed it?

Did they wear crucifixes?

Do they sign themselves with the cross and went by a church?

Those types of things.

Well then you kind of want to understand.

Well then, how is that information represented?

So in some ways, if I mention crosses people might wear,

well then, that might lead you in the direction of a museum collection.

And you want to see, well,

does this museum collection keeps mementos from families or things like that?

Or in terms of churches, and

maybe someone making the sign of the cross while they walked by one.

Could that be reflected in manners relating to the practice of religion?

So this could be prayer books.

These could be all kinds of documents that might be generated at

the local level by a church.

Or even by maybe a council of bishops that is reorganizing the way a mass is set.

So that's one of the pieces.

Then we also will learn about how documents are accumulated into

collections.

Most collections that we think about archives.

They're not what we would call archives with integrity.

And that doesn't mean they're not an important, they're not valuable.

But these are archetypes that were created

after the period in which the documents were created.

So specifically, if I'm looking at a medieval document,

let's say from Sabio, or Charlamade, or something like that.

It wasn't Charlemagne or even his staff that placed them in the archive.

Somehow or another, it was collected and catalogued and

found its way into a specific collection.

So understanding that process about how things get to other places is important,

because you don't know where to look.

So you have to figure out how would these things find their way into an institution?

And that is sometimes just knowing where to look is the hardest part.

We'll also think about how to do exhaustive electronic searches online,

you have to do little trick of the trade.

Understanding how institutions actually use digital formats, so

how did they organize the documents?

And then also lastly, understanding this idea as we get more technical, but

it's important.

It's the issue of when you do a search for

something online, and let's say you do a Google search for your family name.

Maybe, let's say that's Ramirez or it's Baker, and you do a search.

Well, it comes up with everything, right?

Everything, Baker can come up with bakers that are actually baking things or

it could be the name or it could be variations, who knows?

So in that respect, we have to understand how this information

is stored in different places, and then how it relates to each other.

So, part of it is actually kind of finding the right place.

So we find the archive that has maybe something about the Baker family.

Then after that, we start to look down different little pathways to understand,

the Baker's might be referred over here in this document.

But you can't find them over here because they're not interconnected,

there's no relationship between this piece and this piece,

because that's not the way the data's organized.

So it's amazing you can find incredible documents, electronically and

online, As well as onsite by changing just the way that you study things.

So we'll look at that.

And what will be quite fun is we'll have you take a look at two collections.

We'll look at one online collection known as Pothys, and

not just pointing the direction giving a little bit of details about it.

Pothys is the main portal for archival collections in Spain.

And I have a particular interest in this area,

but they are equivalents for each of the different national archives.

And in England, and in France, where you can kind of look through their documents,

do searches.

And then the other one we'll look at in addition in Spain is one called set as.

And it's actually involve the museum kind of collections that have been digitized.

So those are kind of exciting to take a look at because

as our course is moving towards conclusion, if you're like me,

I think you're probably just naturally a curious person.

And so I want you to go to good sites.

I want you to, it's fine to start with Wikipedia,

it's fine to start looking there, and you can find good information many times.

But if you want really accurate information, the best of it,

the best artifacts, the best collections, you go to the sources.

And so this will kind of give you a sense of, well how do I, if you see that Spain

has museum collections, and you see that it has library collections online.

Well, now actually then you think, I bet the city of Florence has these things.

And sure enough, you type in Florence, or Firenze, and

you type in museum, and then next thing you know, you're in a museum website and

you're experiencing a digital collection.

So you can be a good steward of your own learning, and

your own kind of discovery along the way.

And I want you to do that.

The last piece this week, which I've been seeing along the way is,

one last look at digital humanities in terms of broader world.

So, like many other historians or literature professors or

artists, I actually work in collaboration with other folks.

The study of history, the study of the humanities,

has changed really rapidly since the advent of the computer and networking.

And so now I work with a collection of colleagues across the world,

with a group called the Global Middle Ages Project, or GMAP.

It's basically University of Texas, at Austin, where I received my doctorate.

And where I work with Dr Geraldine Heng, in the English department,

who writes about the Middle Ages.

interestingly, she writes about the Middle Ages.

In terms of it's development of ideas of race.

When were the first elements of what we started to have a sense of who was who but

based on ethnic and racial lines.

But in this context, Gerald Dean was a really big thinker and brought together

Geographers, philosophers, all types of folks to say, well you know what?

Do we really want to be so European specific for the Middle Ages?

Shouldn't we be thinking about a global period?

Because yes, the Middle Ages is a time period,

roughly 500 to 1500 in Europe, but what else is happening across the world,

in the Americas, or happening in Africa or in China?

Do they have comparable periods?

Or do they label them in some way, or no?

And more specifically, what are the connections?

So you will be able to explore a number of other digital humanities projects.

You already experienced one, which was my virtual presencia.

But I just going to let somebody otherwise very quickly that you will get to visit.

Part of your assignment this week is to go visit at least two of the eight projects

in GMAP, so you can see what this broader world looks like.

So one project is called Discoveries of the America.

A digital portal for visitors to explore pre-modern cultures and

their technologies and the myths that led to enthusiasm for exploration.

So quite interesting, this connection to the Americas.

Or another colleague of mine is working on Ottoman doctors.

And this project brings together scattered

evidence from Ottoman archives from present-day Turkey.

>> So that's pretty interesting.

Or, this is really a fun one, the peregrinations of Pastor John,

that creates up a global story course 600 years.

And is a visual interaction of this journey of Pastor John locating these

fictitious, mythical king that lived far to the east that might be held to help

Christians and meetable Europe.

And their efforts to bring Christianity to our broader world,

and to compete with other populations.

Those are just some of the projects that are inside of GMAP.

And I'm going to be encouraging you to visit those sites and

to be discussing them.

So thank you very much for participating in the course.

I really enjoyed having you.

More importantly, as you can see, I really tried to limit much of my

work inside this MOOC, so that we could really concentrate on what is

Dr's Sanchez incredible work with the manuscripts.

And the creation of the manuscripts and the whole process.

And that was the point, was to kind of collaborate, and bring something new to

you, and to also kind of put it in context with the history.

Okay, have a lovely week, and I look forward to seeing you in the future.

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