On this Remembrance Day: Cecil Elliott

A few years ago, I lived in Italy. I received a letter from a gentleman from my community back home, who heard I was in Rome. Cecil Elliott had fought with the Canadian Army in the Italian Campaign (see also CBC archive), and wanted to know if I could find out for him the burial place for two of his friends, who had fought with him. I contacted the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and when I came home that Christmas, I was able to pass the information along.

Cecil didn’t really want to talk about the war; but he did want to talk about Italy, and Italians – he had a love of Italy that shone through. He recounted how once, as his platoon walked into a hill-top town, and Italian man came walking along towards them. Behind him, his black-clad wife, carrying a tub of potatoes on her back. Cecil’s comrades picked the tub up from his wife, and held the man until he picked up the tub, and carried it himself.

We talked for a couple of hours. Cecil told me how after the war, while he was at the creamery at Stark’s Corners one day, the men were all puzzled by what a ‘DP’ was trying to tell them – a displaced person. Cecil recognized the language as Italian, and began speaking with the man, forming a fast friendship that lasted for the next couple of years, until the man moved on.

Cecil was typical of the men around here, loving a practical joke. When they were forming up in England, he and ’some other Pontiac lads’ used to tell the rest of the men how it took them three days by dogsled and canoe, just to get to the recruiting office!

Cecil passed away a few years ago, but on this Remembrance Day, I remember him.

 

 

 

Let’s write a textbook

I’ve been talking with the folks at Flatworld Knowledge about the kinds of textbooks they’re looking for, and it was suggested that a world history textbook might be just the ticket. These things are typically in two volumes – before and after 1500. Who wants to write a textbook?

To my mind, writing another textbook that does the usual roundup of periods/cultures is not perhaps useful. As the Barenaked Ladies are wont to say, ‘It’s all been done before! ‘ A new medium of producing, distributing a textbook – a medium that allows for the content to be remixed by instructors at the coal-face, to suit their needs (read Flatworld’s material for more on that) it seems to me, needs a new approach. The folks at Grand Text Auto did a blog-based peer review for this book; perhaps a new world history textbook could be written via blog-based posts & peer review? Also, could it be written in such a way as to foreground networks & connections between times, places, and peoples: a 21st century textbook? Horden and Purcell’s volume from a few years back is apposite here; also is Urry’s Sociology beyond Societies…

…I’m just thinking out loud. Your thoughts?

The Ancient History Encyclopedia

Jan van der Crabben is a name you might be familiar with if you’ve played any of the mods or other community-built content for Civilization IV. Jan has a new project under way, called ‘The Ancient History Encyclopedia‘, and he’s looking for content and editors. And, in a lovely twist not often seen, he’s willing to pay contributors. His note is below:

The goal is to become the number one source of information on ancient history — for students, academics, enthusiasts, and the general public alike.

I believe that this is achievable due to our unique way of presenting information: The website is centered around tags (which are essentially the entries in a printed encyclopedia), with each tag having a definition, articles, a timeline, illustrations, and external links / book references displayed. Like this, one finds several different kinds of information at the same time, in a modern format. When you visit the website, you will be able to see this organization best on the “Babylon” page, simply because it is the page with the most content at the moment.

The website address is http://www.ancientopedia.com and I would be happy if you could visit it and have a look. Please be aware that it’s far from complete! There isn’t very much content yet, we clearly need a lot more content to make this website a success. Also, you are among the first people to be using this website, so there might still be bugs. If something doesn’t work, or doesn’t work as you would expect, please email me what you were doing, what happened, and why it’s not what you expected.

Please register at the website (the “Register” link is at the top), and start adding content wherever you can! Content is submitted through the website, using the existing online forms. You can add/edit a definition, an article, or an illustration. You can also contribute timeline entries. Look for the “Add”, “Edit”, and “Upload” buttons in the relevant sections of the site (generally on the right of the section headline).

You can choose what you want to write about… We need definitions, articles, and illustrations. Please be careful not to infringe on any copyright, so only submit your own work. Of course you are allowed to submit work that you’ve already written, as long as you hold the copyright to it (this might be a grey area if it’s published in an academic publication, for example). You can also submit work that falls under a Creative Commons or GFDL license (such as images from Wikipedia), as long as it is attributed and licensed correctly. Please do not copy & paste any text from Wikipedia or other websites, only images are fine to copy under a CC or GFDL license.

All content that you submit is reviewed and possibly edited. Before the review process is complete and your content has been approved it will not show up on the website. So if you don’t see something you’ve written, be patient. If it doesn’t show up within a few days, please contact me. There will be a more formal system that allows the contributors and editors to communicate through the website in the future.

The website makes money through book sales (via Amazon, we get a commission), as well as advertisements (which aren’t online yet). As I’ve mentioned before, the 100 first contributions will be paid at a rate of US $10 per article and US $5 per definition. For definitions, only new definitions are paid, edits do not count. You will be paid when the initial paid submission period is over and we’ve got 100 contributions. Payment will be conducted via PayPal. After the initial paid phase, you will be able to earn advertising revenue on your content using Google AdSense and possibly other revenue sources.

There are no deadlines: You can submit work at any time, on any subject you choose (subject to review). The more you submit, the more money will you receive.

I did ask him how he feels this will differ from Wikipedia, which is pretty solid on many things ancient. He responds that it is in the backend, and in how the information is served up with the ancillary materials. I’ve explored a bit, and I like that for any given article you can see who authored it; a little difference there with the big W; perhaps some sort of reputation-tracking mechanism would be useful. One thing I noticed is the feed from Amazon will serve up ‘pyramidiot’ and other nonsense they classify as ‘ancient history’ – 2012 anyone?  I don’t know how well those materials can be filtered before they’re displayed.

Check it out. I’m always ready to applaud new initiatives that make our subject better known to the wider world – good on you, Jan!

Historical Maps, GIS, and Second Life

I’ve just come across a presentation (in three parts) given by David Rumsey, over a year ago. Worth a view!

“A talk given by David Rumsey at the March 6, 2008 launch of his historical map library and exhibition in the virtual world of Second Life. The talk was delivered at the Rumsey Map Islands in Second Life. All of the maps in the talk can also be seen and downloaded from Rumsey’s free online map library at www.davidrumsey.com“

Part I

Part II

Part III

Conference: Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World, 1-3 Oct 2009

As I don’t expect I’ll be in Oxford any time soon , maybe somebody could take notes on William Harris’ presentation on the timber trade in the Roman world? Many thanks! I’ve been interested in that trade for a while – it is woefully underexplored – and I have some thoughts on it coming out in the Cambridge Companion to the City of Rome (due out soon, I believe!), but these are mostly cursory. I’m imagining someone like Harris probably has some very interesting things to say…

Conference: Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World

Oxford Conference on Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World
1–3 October 2009

The Oxford Roman Economy Project will be holding a three-day conference
on trade, commerce, and the state on 1–3 October, with sessions on
institutions and government stimuli, trade within the empire, and trade
across imperial boundaries. Attendance is free, but, in order for us to
plan numbers, please register with Gareth Hughes
(gareth.hughes@ orinst.ox. ac.uk).

Thursday 1 October 2009

Government intervention or stimulation through fiscal instruments,
markets, subsidies for military, long-distance supply etc.

10:00–10:30 Coffee and registration

10:30–13:00 Morning session

• Philip Kay, Oxford —Financial institutions and structures in
the last century of the Roman Republic

• Alan Bowman, Oxford —Taxation and fiscal controls

• Boudewijn Sirks, Oxford— Law, commerce, and finance

13:00–14:00 Lunch

14:00–15:30 Early-afternoon session

• Elio Lo Cascio, Rome Sapienza— Market regulation and
transaction costs in the Roman Empire

• Jean-Jacques Aubert, Neuhâtel—respondent

• General discussion

15:30–16:00 Tea

16:00–18:00 Late-afternoon session

• Hannah Friedman, Oxford—Supplying the Faynan: local resources
vs imperial will

• Salvatore Martino, Lecce —Transport in the Roman
Mediterranean: an integrated system

• Colin Adams, Liverpool — respondent

18:00 Drinks

Friday 2 October 2009

Trade and manufacture within the empire.

9:00–10:30 Early-morning session

• William Harris, Columbia — Trade in timber under the Roman
empire

• Ivan Radman, Arh. Mus. Zagreb —Prices and costs in the textile
industry in the light of the lead tags from Siscia

10:30–11:00 Coffee

11:00–12:30 Late-morning session

• Ben Russell, Oxford — Moving mountains: contextualising the
imperial stone trade

• Emanuele Papi, Siena — Import and export in Mauretania
Tingitana: the evidence from Tamusida

12:30–13:30 Lunch

13:30–15:00 Early-afternoon session

• Danièle Foy, Aix-Marseille —Lacirculation du verre en
Méditerranée antique : matières premières, produitsfinis,
vaisselle, vitres et contenants

• Michael Fulford, Reading — The pull of the north: Gallo-Roman
sigillata in Britain in the 2nd and 3rdcenturies

15:00–15:30 Tea

15:30–17:30 Late-afternoon session

• Michel Bonifay, Aix-Marseille — The diffusion of African
pottery under the Roman Empire: evidence and interpretation

• Paul Reynolds, Barcelona — Supply networks of the Roman East
and West: interaction, fragmentation, and the origins of Byzantine
economy

• Andrew Wilson, Oxford—respondent

17:30–18:00 General discussion

18:00 Drinks

Saturday 3 October 2009

Eastern and Red Sea trade, India, Arabia and the deserts.

9:00–11:00 Early-morning session

• Dario Nappo, Oxford — Costand profit in Red Sea trade

• Jennifer Gates-Foster, Texas — Eastern Desert trade

• Steven Sidebotham, Delaware —respondent

11:00–11:30 Coffee

11:30–13:30 Late-morning session

• David Peacock, Southampton — The Roman Red Sea ports and the
Chinese connection

• Barbara Davidde, ISCR Rome — The port of Qana, a junction
point between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea: the underwater
evidence

• Roberta Tomber, British Museum—respondent

13:30–14:30 Lunch

14:30–16:00 Early-afternoon session

• David Graf, Miami — The Silk Road between Syria and China

• Raffaela Pierobon Benoit, Naples Frederico II — From Palmyra
to Northern Mesopotamia: the archaeological evidence

16:00–16:30 Tea

16:30–18:00 Late-afternoon session

• David Mattingly, Leicester — Rome and the Garamantes:
practicalities and realities of Saharan trade

• General discussion

18:00 Drinks

Canadian Historical Review – article on game for history

I’m happy to say I had a hand in this article.

History computer games have become an economic and cultural phenomenon, and historians should seize the opportunity to participate in their development. Players of history games are interested in the past and in the big questions that drive historical scholarship. In this way, games have the potential to draw players into the discipline if we can discover the best way to express history though simulation. But what research do we draw on as we study how to accomplish this transformation? This essay is the product of a meeting of historians, educators, and gamers who joined previously separate lines of inquiry to identify literature and models that we believe form the foundation for developing a theory of good history through gaming.

Résumé:

Les jeux vidéo à thème historique sont devenus un phénomène économique et culturel, et les historiens devraient saisir cette occasion de participer à leur développement. Les personnes qui jouent à des jeux historiques s’intéressent au passé et aux grandes questions qui mobilisent la recherche historique. Par les jeux, il est peut-être possible d’attirer les joueurs dans la discipline, si nous parvenons à découvrir la meilleure façon d’exprimer l’histoire par la simulation. Mais à quelle recherche faisons-nous appel quand nous étudions les moyens de réaliser cette transformation? Cet essai est le produit d’une réunion d’historiens, d’éducateurs et de spécialistes du jeu qui ont relié des pistes de recherche jusque-là indépendantes afin de repérer les études et les modèles qui, croyons-nous, serviront de base à l’élaboration d’une théorie de bonne pratique de l’histoire par le jeu

Don’t Knock the Aztecs: Civ for History, WoW for German

Still have folks in your department who dismiss games as…, well, games? Then you need to check out this article in the latest edition of the Escapist.  Todd Bryant has been experimenting with using games like Civ IV in history classes. This is no unthinking use of the game, though. For Bryant, the value lies in exploiting the gap between ‘real’ history, and the way that history is modelled (or argued, as it were: see Bogost) in the game:

A student came to my office last week and asked for help setting up a LAN game of Civ IV in one of the college’s computer labs. He was going to play my Age of Conquest mod scenario with some friends that afternoon. While I showed him in the menu how to set up a multiplayer game, he shared his strategy to play Spain and attack the Aztecs. It’s a bad idea.

[...]

For the class, students had to play the game in addition to their readings and discuss whether the scenario accurately represented the period. One of the key concepts students should have learned about was the role of belief systems as described in the book “The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other.” In essence, the book and the game make the same argument: Had the Aztecs viewed the world differently, their clash with the Spanish conquistadors would have been radically different.

He goes on to describe exploration of language teaching through immersing students in a German server for World of Warcraft. Mein Gott! Das ist wunderbar! (all that I remember from a freshman German class; that and a song set to the Blue Danube… perhaps if I’d been gaming language, things would be different…)

There are people doing similar things with Latin, as it happens (I had experimented with old school text adventures for Latin teaching, but this might be a bit more *sigh* exciting) … sign the petition now!

Interacting with Immersive Worlds Conference II – registration open

The second edition of Brock’s Interacting with Immersive Worlds Conference is taking place this summer. Registration is now open. I was able to attend last year, and it was the highlight of my conference season. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend this year, so I’m going to miss out on some brilliant sessions.

Interacting with Immersive Worlds
An International Conference presented at
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario
JUNE 15-16, 2009

Register to attend at: www.brocku.ca/iasc/immersiveworlds

Focusing on the growing cultural significance of interactive media, IWIW will feature academic papers organized along four streams:
-Challenges at the Boundaries of Immersive Worlds features creative exploration and innovation in immersive media including ubiquitous computing, telepresence, interactive art and fiction, and alternate reality.
-Critical Approaches to Immersion looks at analyses of the cultural and/or psychological impact of immersive worlds, as well as theories of interactivity.
-Immersive Worlds in Education examines educational applications of immersive technologies.
-Immersive Worlds in Entertainment examines entertainment applications of immersive technologies, such as computer games.

The IWIW conference also features 4 keynote speakers:
-Janet Murray, Director of Graduate Studies, School of Literature, Communication and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
-Espen Aarseth, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communication, IT University of Denmark
-Geoffrey Rockwell, Professor, Department of Philosophy and Humanities Computing, University of Alberta
-Deborah Todd, Game Designer, Writer and Producer, and Author of Game Design: From Blue Sky to Green Light

Visit the conference Web site at www.brocku.ca/iasc/immersiveworlds

Organizing Committee:
Jean Bridge, Centre for Digital Humanities, Brock University, jbridge@brocku.ca
Martin Danahay, Department of English Language and Literature, Brock University,
mdanahay@brocku.ca
Denis Dyack, Silicon Knights, Catharines, Ontario, denis@siliconknights.ca
Barry Grant, Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, bgrant@brocku.ca
David Hutchison, Faculty of Education, Brock University, davidh@brocku.ca
Kevin Kee, Department of History, Brock University, kkee@brocku.ca
John Mitterer, Department of Psychology, Brock University, jmitterer@brocku.ca
Michael Winter, Department of Computer Science, Brock University, mwinter@brocku.ca
Philip Wright, Information Technology Services, Brock University, philip.wright@brocku.ca

Teaching with Interactive Fiction

I and some collaborators have a paper on using Interactive  Fiction in the classroom, for promoting straight-up literacy (not to mention computer literacy) skills. Hopefully, it’ll be coming out soon (ish). In the meantime, Jim Aikin has been using Inform 7 in his teaching: one to watch!

From his blog:

My first three-month adventure teaching interactive fiction to kids has come to an end, and a new class is scheduled to start next week. It’s tricky to generalize on the basis of one group of eight students; maybe these kids (ages 11-14) are unusually intelligent or motivated. But my impressions so far are completely positive. And I think maybe I understand why they enjoyed the process.

With interactive fiction (IF), it’s not just the end product — the text-based computer game — that’s interactive. The process of game development is also extremely interactive. That may be the key ingredient. If you’re, say, 12 years old, writing a conventional story may very easily look like drudgery. You may have some neat ideas. You may write a few paragraphs, or even a few pages. But then the stuff you’ve written will just lie there, on the paper or on the screen, staring at you. It’s static. It doesn’t come alive.

When writing IF, you can create a few rooms and a few objects and then take your work for a test drive. You can walk around in the little world you’ve imagined and experience it as a participant. The computer responds to you, and what you’ve written also responds to you. All this makes the process of creativity more involving.

If there are bugs in your code (and there will be…), you have a little puzzle to solve. You can make changes in what you’ve written until it works as you intended. You’ll go through this cycle over and over. This fosters a feeling of mastery and control that isn’t readily available to the author of static fiction. With static fiction, the question of whether it works is not just subjective but altogether murky [...more...]

Jim’s thoughts mirror many of my own, when it comes to the value of Interactive Fiction for teaching. IF for historical literacy – now that’s my longer-term goal…

Vespasian Rocks. For 2000 Years.

I’ve always been fond of the Emperor Vespasian (honestly, who isn’t?) So I’m glad to see Rome is throwing a party for his birthday. From the Independent:

His name is immortalised in modern Italian as the word for a public urinal, but tomorrow that humiliation will be forgotten as Rome sets about throwing a massive party for the Emperor Vespasian’s 2,000th birthday. Naturally enough, the celebratory bash – which takes the form of a 10-month exhibition – is focused on the building for which he is most famous, the Colosseum.

By far the largest amphitheatre the ancient Romans built, it is capable of holding at least 50,000 and perhaps as many as 70,000 screaming plebs. When it was inaugurated, in the reign of Vespasian’s son and heir Titus, 5,000 wild animals were put to the sword over 100 days for the amusement of the punters, and despite the halt called by Constantine, the emperor who converted to Christianity, bloody gladiatorial combat remained standard fare until it was banned early in the fifth century.

As the crowning monument of a civilisation, the Colosseum has always had its detractors. Some scholars of the ancient world regard it as hideous, without architectural merit. On its own terms, however, the mega-structure known originally as the Flavian Amphitheatre, after Vespasian’s family name, Flavius, was a great advance on what it replaced. It was located close to the heart of the grounds of Domus Aurea, the “House of Gold” built for the Emperor Nero, the great monument to his vanity and greed. Vespasian expropriated those grounds and, in place of Nero’s self-indulgence, provided the greatest forum ever built for the self-indulgence of the multitude: aesthetically crude perhaps, lacking in delicacy and taste, but stunningly bold. And an appropriate monument to an extraordinary man.

Look at the surviving marble busts of Vespasian and the centuries fall away. You can see his descendants in any Roman street. He was burly and thick-set with a bald, bull-like head, steely eyes and a tense, frowning mouth, teeth clenched in determination. One of his contemporaries remarked that he looked as if he was sitting on the lavatory, and having a hard time of it. Above all it is a common face. There was nothing aristocratic about this emperor. He was Roman social mobility incarnate.

His full name was Titus Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus and after his death, like all deceased emperors, he was worshipped as a god. He started out his life in an altogether different key, born the grandson of a centurion and the son of a tax collector in the rustic district of Sabina, north of Rome. He had only a mediocre education; in later life they made fun of him for his poor grasp of Latin. But you can read Vespasian’s ticket to glory in his simple, powerful face: he became a first-rate soldier, and beloved of the men he commanded.

He was in his early thirties when he made his mark, participating in the second invasion of Britain, seizing the Isle of Wight for Rome, and developing tactics for overcoming the Britons’ formidable defensive earthworks. Back in the Eternal City in furlough, he was ill at ease among the corrupt ruling class. AD66 he went to Greece as a member of Nero’s entourage but made the serious error of falling asleep during one of the megalomaniac emperor’s singing recitals. He saved his skin by fleeing to a remote province.

The following year the faux pas was forgiven when Nero realised that he had need of this man. Rebellion had broken out among the Jews in Judaea and the Roman forces were having a frustrating time trying to oust them from their walled cities. Vespasian’s success in winkling out the walled-up Britons was remembered and he was sent to Judaea with orders to suppress the rebellion and bring the Jews to heel. He did exactly that, and although many Jewish towns were destroyed and thousands of people killed, he was remembered as a fair and honest administrator. The defeat of the Jewish rebellion was the making of Vespasian. He was the hero of his army, and the loot he amassed would later go into the building of the Colosseum.

Rome descended into chaos and civil war after Nero’s suicide, getting through four emperors in a single year. All this time, Vespasian was plotting his path to power. With his devoted army at his back, and with two grown sons offering the promise of dynastic continuity, he was acclaimed emperor twice, first by his army in July AD69, then nearly six months later by the Senate. Vespasian would always be respectful and attentive to the Senate but he never had any doubt about the source of his power, and dated his accession from the first acclamation, not the second.

In the judgement of one contemporary historian, Vespasian was the first emperor whose character actually improved after he attained the throne. He took drastic measures to restore sanity to the Roman Empire’s finances, which had been emptied by Nero’s extravagance.

He raised taxes steeply, making himself instantly unpopular, and famously introduced a tax on public urinals, which is why in Italy they are associated with him to this day. When his son Titus remonstrated with him over this measure, the emperor held out a handful of coins for him to sniff. These come from the urinal tax, he said, “Pecunia non olet” (money has no smell). It was his most famous aphorism.

Vespasian retained his simple martial tastes despite all the temptations of his position; when a youth to whom he had given an important promotion came to him reeking of perfume, he sent him away in disgust, saying “I’d rather you stank of garlic”, and cancelled the new position.

Yet in his achievements he succeeded in transcending his humble origins and the brutalising years of military service: he created schools for grammar and oratory – thus laying the foundations for classical education all over Europe. He recruited a new class of administrators from the business class to run the empire on more professional lines.

And he set in train the greatest building boom of the century. When he came to power, Rome was full of ruins and abandoned sites, the result of the civil war that had preceded his coronation. To bring the city back to its former glory, Vespasian gave anyone with the desire and the necessary funds the right to build on those sites. The result was many of the breathtaking buildings in and around the Roman Forum that tourists still admire to this day. They include the Temple of Peace, the Domus Flavia and the Temple of Divo Vespasiano, his own cult.

To mark Vespasian’s big day, Rome is breathing new life into the ancient city he did so much to change. Busts, bas-reliefs, weapons, coins and paintings are among the 110 archaeological treasures that will be exhibited from today until next January in the Colosseum, the Curia in the centre of the Forum and the Criptoportico, a building on the Palatine Hill that has never before been open to the public. There will also be a new guided route through the Forum, with explanatory panels shedding light on the buildings for which the emperor was responsible.

Filippo Coarelli, the curator of the extravaganza, commented: “The element of chance in Vespasian’s success cannot hide the profound manner in which that success resonates with the whole history of Rome: the mobility which was intrinsic to that society, which allowed it to access the energy of emerging classes.”

Despite these achievements, and despite the Colosseum, which was still under construction when Vespasian died in 79, it was his determination to tax Romans to the hilt for which they most remembered him, the image of the stingy, money-grubbing son of a tax-collector that stuck.

During his elaborate funeral, the procession was led by a popular clown called Favor who mimicked the dead emperor. “How much did this funeral cost?” he demanded of the organisers at one point, according to Suetonius. “A hundred thousand sestertii,” came the reply. To which the Emperor’s caricature retorted: “Give me a hundred and chuck my body in the Tiber!”