Rodney Ast (University of Heidelberg) and Holger Essler (University of Würzburg), in cooperation with Heidelberg’s Center for Cultural Heritage, are offering in Summer Semester 2016 an online seminar on Greek literary papyri. Special emphasis will be placed on philosophical texts. Out of a total of 550 texts published so far, 45% were found at a single site, the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, the remainder coming from various places in Egypt. Comparison of the two groups suggests itself and it will be greatly facilitated by the Digital Corpus of Literary Papyri (DCLP) (a bilateral project led by the University of Heidelberg and NYU, with the involvement of the University of Leuven, Duke University, and the University of Würzburg); it already contains 95% of the philosophical texts from Herculaneum. The seminar will focus on philosophical texts from Egypt preserved on papyrus only (for an example click here). Participants will use the DCLP for instruction and to create digital editions, but other databases and approaches will be discussed as well. In particular, we will explore questions of editorial decision-making and technique, transmission, paleography, and the socio-cultural context in which the texts were copied.
The course is free of charge and will take place Thursdays, 16:15–17:45, Central European Time. The first meeting will be the 14th of April and the last the 7th of July. The language of instruction is English, and good knowledge of Greek is required. Participants should already have a Skype account set up by the first session. Certificates will be issued upon successful completion of the class.
Those interested in taking part should send a statement of interest and CV to Michaela Böttner, boettner@uni-heidelberg.de, by March 4th. Questions about the course can be directed to Rodney Ast (ast@uni-heidelberg.de) and/or Holger Essler (holger.essler@uni-wuerzburg.de).
The number of participants will be kept to a maximum of 12.
