Digital Humanities at Fordham

Fordham University faculty are involved in a variety of innovative digital humanities projects, including the development of digital archives, open source text resources, wiki collaboratories for open pedagogy, and social network visualizations. Some of these projects are profiled here. We host an informal working group of faculty and staff pursuing projects in the digital humanities that meets regularly. We welcome inquiries from colleagues working in similar arenas. Contact Dr. Micki McGee for more information.

  • The Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP) is dedicated to uncovering the cultural, political, economic, and religious histories of the more than 500,000 people of African descent in the Bronx. The project has captured the stories of hundreds of Bronx African Americans who have transformed the borough’s character since the 1930s. Consisting of downloadable audio files and verbatim transcripts of interviews conducted from 2002 to 2013, they are available to the public in a new digital archive.

  • DigitalHudson is an electronic archive focused on the history and culture of the Hudson River one of America's national symbols. The archive includes digitized paintings, prints, photographs, manuscripts, account books, and diaries, maps, guidebooks, timetables, scientific reports, nature studies, histories, novels, and poetry. Developed by Dr. Roger Panetta and hosted by Fordham University's Walsh Library, DigitalHudson is a freely accessible and searchable electronic archive for scholars, students, teachers, and the general public.

  • The French of England Website facilitates access to material centering on the French documents of England. In addition to providing extensive bibliographical information on a wide variety of Anglo-Norman literary, historical, legal texts, and related secondary sources, the website includes a glossary of terms and definitions, syllabi for French of England courses, description of the FOE publication projects, and links to other relevant Anglo-Norman web sites. The website is part of the French of England Project at Fordham University and is published by the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University.

  • Between the early twelfth and the late fifteenth centuries, many French texts were written by Italian-speaking authors or in geographic locales where early Italian dialects were the main mode of oral communication. The French of Italy Website focuses on these texts and the communities where they were written by providing background information and commentary on individual authors and texts, bibliographic lists of primary and relevant secondary sources, and a monitored discussion list. This site is authored and maintained by Dr. Laura Morreale, and published by the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University.

  • The advent of permanent settlements in the lands of the East (Outremer) introduced not only a new political presence (the western Crusaders) but also a novel social construct where the French language developed. The French of Outremer Website allows users to explore the French-language sources coming from the Outremer by source type (legal, narrative, poetic, religious) or by locale (according to time, place, and author). The side is authored and maintained by Dr. Laura Morreale, and published by the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University.

  • The Internet History Sourcebooks Project makes available a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts for educational use. It is divided into three main Sourcebooks (Ancient, Medieval, and Modern), from which nine subsidiary Sourcebooks are formed (African, East Asian, Global, Indian, Jewish, Islamic, Lesbian/Gay, Science, and Women). It was created and is edited by Dr. Paul Halsall, and published by Dr. Maryanne Kowaleski and the Department of History, Fordham University.

  • The Internet Medieval Sourcebook provides access to thousands of public domain and copy-permitted texts of primary sources for use in teaching all disciplines and periods of the middle ages. Designed for teachers, the site contains both older (copyright free) translations and newly translated texts, many only available here in e-text form. It was created and is edited by Dr. Paul Halsall and is published by the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University.

  • The Keywords Collaboratory provides an online space where classes or groups can work collaboratively on projects that take their method, focus, or inspiration from the sixty-four essays published in Keywords for American Cultural Studies. Keywords editors Dr. Bruce Burgett and Dr. Glenn Hendler invite visitors to engage in a collaborative discussion of the evolution of language, just as Raymond Williams invited readers of his 1976 Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society to engage in an ongoing interrogation of the language that we share.

  • The Latin Works of John Wyclif aims to make publicly available and freely searchable the Latin philosophical and theological works of John Wyclif, the Oxford scholar who was condemned as England's first heresiarch. Wyclif’s Latin corpus is currently accessible only in the decaying late-19th-century editions of the defunct Wyclif Society. This site is currently under development by Dr. Patrick Hornbeck, Brian Boston, and Dr. Penn Szittya, with additional support from the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

  • Magazine Stacks lists the tables of contents of historical periodicals, Festschriften and collected volumes, largely in German. Its strengths are in economic and legal history (German and English language publications),German dissertations in history and related fields, and German local history. In addition, a modest collection of constitutional documents relating to the medieval Empire and the Hanse has been added recently. The site is published by the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University, and authored and maintained by Dr. Stuart Jenks, University of Erlangen, Germany.

  • The Online Medieval Sources Bibliography provides a searchable database of texts that were written in the middle ages and are now available online or in printed editions and translations—from private letters, chronicles, and household accounts to literary works, philosophical treatises, church records, and a host of other documents. Fully annotated entries allow users to evaluate the suitability of the modern edition to their needs. The site is authored, edited, and maintained by Dr. Maryanne Kowaleski and Morgan Kay and published by the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University.

  • Designed for use by teachers, students, and scholars, the bilingual and interactive Vistas DVD and companion website introduce readers to the visual culture of colonial Spanish America. Examining works of high art as well as the material culture of daily life, Vistas explores the cross-pollination and cultural diversity that defined the colonial period in the wake of the Spanish conquest of indigenous America. Offering an unprecedented wealth of visual material, the Vistas DVD includes access to a gallery of over three hundred high-resolution annotated images, a collection with a range and richness unavailable from any other source. Vistas was developed by Dr. Dana Leibsohn (Smith College) and Dr. Barbara E. Mundy (Fordham University) and is published by the University of Texas Press.

  • The Yaddo Archive Project combines archival research and social networks visualization software to develop an interface that allows scholars, students and a broad cohort of fans and aficionados of American arts and letters to chart the relationships among the artists, writers, composers, and other intellectuals affiliated with the Yaddo, one of America’s oldest and most distinguished artists’ communities. Conceived by Dr. Micki McGee, the project's beta-visualization has been developed by Asik Pradhan, Graham Dostal, Jack S.K. Chang, Lindsey Pettyjohn, Robert Karuga at Dr. Katy Börner's InfoViz Lab at Indiana University–Bloomington in consultation with Dr. Richard L. Edwards.