The Library welcomes visitors to a Commencement Forum on Saturday, May 28, 2016 at 11 a.m. in the Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab and Sidney E. Frank Digital Studio at the Rockefeller Library.
As part of Brown University’s new Digital Publishing Initiative, Professor Tara Nummedal will present on her upcoming publishing project. Project Atalanta will bring a multimedia seventeenth century text to life in digital form. This innovative digital publication will produce a dynamic, enhanced digital edition of Michael Maier’s extraordinary text, Atalanta fugiens (1617/18): an alchemical emblem book that re-casts the myth of Atalanta—the fleet-footed virgin—as a series of fifty emblems. Comprised of text, image, and music, each individual emblem engages sound, sight, and intellect; read together, these emblems serve as an interlocking guide to alchemical theory and the production of the philosophers’ stone.
As a pilot project of the Digital Publishing Initiative, Project Atalanta seeks to bridge the gaps between the readers of today and their seventeenth century counterparts. By transforming the Atalanta fugiens into a dynamic digital object through the collaboration of historians, musicians, rare book curators, linguists, scientists, artists, and other scholars Project Atalanta reflects a dynamic, emergent form of interdisciplinary scholarship. The University Library invites visitors to come and hear about this unique multimedia text, and explore along with Professor Nummedal the implications of reading across time, cultures, and technologies.
Tara Nummedal is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the History Department. She is the author of Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire and is currently completing her second book, “The Lion’s Blood: Alchemy, Gender, and Apocalypse in Reformation Germany.” Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and, most recently, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She is Past President of the New England Renaissance Conference and a member of the editorial board of the journal Ambix. She teaches courses in early modern European history and the history of science.
Date: Saturday, May 28, 2016
Time: 11 a.m.
Location: Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab, Rockefeller Library, 10 Prospect Street, Providence