Volker Menze
Medieval Studies
Experimental Wrtitten Culture
My application for a teaching grant is due to the fact I would like to revive ancient writing techniques for my class in order to combine knowledge acquired through readings with manual experiments.
For the MA in “Cultural Heritage” I teach at the moment a mandatory elective class on “Written Culture” and developed a course entitled “Gospels, Graffiti, Grocery Lists: Writing Culture and its Material Evidence in Antiquity and the Middle Ages”. It starts with the beginnings of writing in the Near East and the development of alphabets but then focuses particularly on epigraphy, papyrology and codicology. In other words, I discuss texts and their material evidence as we found them inscribed especially on stone all around the Mediterranean in the Roman Empire, papyri found in Egypt from the Pharaonic to Islamic times and the beginnings of book culture in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Students learn from the papyri but also from the Graffiti in Pompey and the wooden tablets from Vindolanda/Britain about everyday life, from dedicatory inscriptions or Gospels on parchment about religious and literary developments etc. However, foremost they understand the intricate links between the material evidence, the various forms of writing and the content of the different texts.
I intend to teach the class again next fall, and I would like to give this a more material basis: replica of Roman wax tablets, papyri (as stripes from the plant in order to makes our own papyri leaves), parchment, wooden tablets (like those found in Vindolanda), carbon ink, styli etc. can be bought today in a few very specialized stores. The idea is not just to make history “tangible” but to understand the peculiarities of each writing material so that students experience the process. The easiness in the use of wax tablets would probably make obvious why they are considered the “note-books” of the ancient world. We would also write on papyri, on wood and on parchment with an ink that is similar to the ink used in the ancient world. This allows students a) to grasp the value of palaeography and the usage of different cursive scripts (different from how we print Greek or Latin today) b) to understand why papyri have a recto and verso (and usually only the recto was used because of the texture of the material); c) to make their own palimpsests: rather than “scratching” off the ink, especially with parchment, the ink was washed off as carbon ink used until the time of the high Roman empire was less adhesive on parchment than the later used metallic ink (I would like to see this myself!!).
Dissemination: I have worked before on “book culture”, and actually did a book burning at CEU a few years ago: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xitsjfi51vyr9wl/Volker%20Menze.mp4?dl=0
The result was not exactly what I expected, and therefore I am persuaded that also producing papyri and writing on these different ancient and medieval materials will have some surprises in store for me. The article that came out of this book burning experience (which was actually prompted by an unpublished 6th century letter) is used in class for a session on transmission of written culture/book culture ((together with Kutlu Akalın) “Kann man Bücher verbrennen? Severus of Antioch’s Letter to Nonnus Scholasticus, a Heretical Codex, and a Late Roman Autodafé,“ Oriens Christianus 97 (2013/14), 1-23.).
As some of the material (except the papyri stripes that will be used to produce papyri leaves as well as the wooden tablets) can be reused, the investment is certainly “sustainable” and can at least in parts be used in future classes. I discussed the idea with this year’s students, and they loved the idea – I would assume that such manual experiments to visualize the ancient & medieval writing culture within academic classes could attract students to take this class.
In addition to these in-class experiments, the class will go one week to the National Museum and look & analyze some of the inscriptions in the basement. In case I find a bookbinder who knows how to produce pre-modern parchment codices, I would also consider taking students there.
I do apply now for the next academic year because I have to order the material from abroad, and I certainly have to experiment first for myself of how to make papyri.
Read the report about the completed project here.
Michael Szell
Center for Network Science
Teaching with hands-on programming challenges and data research case studies
I will start teaching the course “Statistical Methods in Network Science and Data Analysis” from January 2018, previously taught by Rosario Mantegna. This course aims to introduce students to the statistical and computational tools needed to analyse network-related data quantitatively. Following my experience with this material and the feedback of network science students who took the course previously, teaching the theory and available tools in a mostly frontal approach is not effective and does not prepare students for realistic research or business situations where hands-on know-how is needed.
Therefore, I intend to make at least 30% of my classes hands-on, computer-room exercises of programming challenges, implementing statistical algorithms in Python, and exploring and analysing statistical phenomena and real data sets, as researchers would do in a realistic situation. To implement this teaching approach, I ask financial support for an assistant, who will perform the following tasks, closely supervised by me:
- Testing programming challenges, based on data sets, before being used in class
- Testing programming challenges, before being given as homework assignments
- Elaborating the results of a survey, to get feedback from students
- Assisting during classes, observing and taking notes of the reaction of students involved in the programming challenges
To make sure the Python programming challenges are at the appropriate level for all the students, I will take inspiration from online platforms that develop programming skills, like http://adventofcode.com/, https://www.codecademy.com/, https://checkio.org/, www.codewars.com.
I expect to be able to implement this hands-on intensive teaching approach only with an assistant, as the situation will be complicated by an expected group of students coming from a variety of disciplines, with and without quantitative background (e.g. students in Network Science, Mathematics, Economics, Cognitive Science, but also Social Sciences), and having a diversity of programming skill differences. To be able to
assist in teaching this diverse pool of students, the necessary qualification of the assistant is Python programming knowledge beyond a beginner level. I expect this empirical, playful approach to prepare students much better for the challenges of data analysis they will encounter in research and business.
Dissemination: This course will provide not only theoretical concepts and skills. Rather, by basing a substantial part of the teaching on applications, examples and challenges, I will show the use of data in practical contexts and realworld situations, providing attendants with ideas and inspiration on how to spend and apply the acquired skills and knowledge. If the teaching approach is successful, it can be used in other courses held at CEU, for example in economics classes, also in Python, or similar programming languages such as R. Such a course is timely and contributing to the image of CEU as a modern university operating at the cutting edge of teaching and research in modern topics such as data science.