Willis Monroe (University of British Columbia) will give a lecture on New Methods in Quantitative Religious History: The Database of Religious History.
Time: Wednesday, 11 March, 14:00-15:30
Place: Faculty of Theology hall, Fabianinkatu 24, room 524
This talk will introduce the audience to the database of religious history, a large international and inter-disciplinary digital humanities project based at the University of British Columbia. We're attempting to catalog the wide variety and detail in religious traditions across the historical record. While this is no small task, we've designed a platform and methodology which works with historians to produce a source of data which is reliable and reproducible. The database serves as a research platform for scholars within the core humanities as well as quantitatively oriented social scientists. The melding of these approaches has been at the core of how the database has grown over the past few years. This talk will address the history of the project, its core methodology and where we see the project growing in the near future.
Professor Craige B. Champion (Syracuse University) will give a lecture on Empire, Colonies, and Democracy in Classical Athens.
Time: Tuesday, April 28, 14:15-16:00
Place: Faculty of Theology hall, Fabianinkatu 24, room 524
At the height of its fifth-century empire, Athens established numerous colonies, or cleruchies, among its subjects. As widely recognized, the expropriated lands served to deter revolt. This paper focuses on the colonies' domestic effects. It is likely that cleruchies enriched some elite Athenians, provided land for non-elite Athenians, and took these citizens out of political processes in Athens. The phenomenon of the cleruchy, therefore, tested egalitarian political institutions in the imperial democracy.
Craige B. Champion is Professor of Ancient History in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is the author of Cultural Politics in Polybius's Histories and The Peace of the Gods: Elite Religious Practices in the Middle Roman Republic; editor of Roman Imperialism: Readings and Sources; and one the founding general editors of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Ancient History.