Projects

Over the past ten years, a series of freely accessible networked resources for late Medieval and Early Modern Italian Studies have been developed at Brown. They include:

The Garibaldi / Risorgimento digital archive seeks to provide a comprehensive resource for the interdisciplinary study and teaching of the life and deeds of one of the protagonists of the Italian unification process (1807-1882), against the historical backdrop of 19th-century Europe, reconstructed with the help of materials from special collections at the Brown University libraries. The project will devote particular attention to the way Garibaldi's figure, his actions and the Italian Risorgimento as a whole were portrayed in contemporary media. At the heart of this digital archive is a dynamic visualization of the library's Garibaldi panorama, which paired with a narrative based on the transcription and philological interpretation of its accompanying manuscript, will allow users to re-live the original spectacle of its display.

The Virtual Humanities Lab (@Brown University) supported by NEH (2004-06) provides a platform for the development of a mini-corpus of model-texts: Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica; Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron and Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante; and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones Nongentae Disputandae.

The Decameron Web, an online archive of textual and contextual materials for the studying and teaching of Giovanni Boccaccio?s Decameron (1375), conceived as an encyclopedic gateway into late Medieval life and culture. The DW was awarded two consecutive NEH grants for the years 1998-2002.

The Pico Project, a collaborative online edition and commentary of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on Human Dignity (1486), focused on Pico's idea of a fundamental convergence among major theological and philosophical traditions (Muslim, Jewish and Christian).

The Florentine Tratte and Catasto (also supported by NEH) a searchable database of tax information for the city of Florence in 1427-29, with information about office holders of the Florentine Republic during its 250-year history (1282-1532).

Heliotropia, a peer-reviewed electronic journal created to provide a widely and readily available forum for research and interpretation to an international community of Boccaccio scholars.

Lectura Dantis, a journal of Dante research and interpretation, originally published twice a year, in the Fall and in the Spring, by the Italian Program, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Virginia from 1987 to 1998.

Together, these projects provide valuable primary tools for studying and teaching the literary, intellectual, economic and social history of Early Modern Italy (Florence in particular). We are now ready to enter a new phase. With the continuing support of the NEH, we plan to develop these diverse digital resources into an experimental model for collaborative scholarship and pedagogy, a “virtual laboratory” for the humanities.

Web resources from Brown's Internet Seminar