IATH NEWS
2016-2017 IATH Fellows
August 22, 2016
IATH is pleased to announce the 2016-2017 Resident Fellow and Associate Fellows. Fotini Kondyli, Assistant Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology, is the new Resident Fellow. Her project, Inhabiting Byzantine Athens, is challenging traditional approaches to studies of urban life and development in Byzantine Athens. The project will examine the architecture of the Byzantine period (4th-15th centuries C.E.) to trace changes in function use of residential areas and public spaces. A more thorough understanding of the topography, spatial layout, and living conditions will fill in our understanding of Byzantine cities and the role that the non-elites played in building and shaping the urban environment. The project will be using archaeological data recovered by the Athenian Agora Excavations, particularly the Agora's legacy data, archival and printed material accumulated since excavations began in 1931. The excavations, run by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, uncovered a large Byzantine and Frankish residential area overlaying the ancient Greek Agora and its famous monuments, as well as hundreds of Byzantine houses and thousands of Byzantine artifacts, including pottery, coins, sculptures.
The three Associate Fellows are studying the intersection of civil rights and pedagogy, and looking to expand our understanding of the history of reading, and the use of poetry in 18th and 19th-century public discourse.
Derrick Alridge, Professor of Education (Curry School of Education), continues his collaboration with IATH on his Teachers in the Movement project (TIM). TIM is gathering oral history interviews with elementary, secondary, and university teachers and educators who taught during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in Virginia and throughout the U.S. South, to look at the role teachers played in the movement, their classroom pedagogy, and their experiences teaching during that time period.
Andrew Stauffer, Associate Professor of English, is researching inscriptions, marginalia, and inserts in 19th century books. His Book Traces project is surveying circulating print collections in academic libraries, seeking evidence of the history of reading and book use between 1800-1923. From the same department, Professor John O’Brien, is working to identify and extract poetry from digitized archives of 18th and 19th century English-language newspapers. These newspapers frequently included poems commenting on current events, excerpts from long poems, and verse written by local readers, as part of public discourse. Image analysis tools and methods offer great promise for retrieving this lost body of verse.
IATH's two-year Resident Fellowship includes half-time teaching release in the first year, office space at the Institute, equipment and software, training, computer programming, budget resources, research assistants, and development assistance to raise additional grants and gifts to support the research project. Associate Fellows lasts one academic year, and includes consulting services on project design and technical issues, equipment loans, and development assistance. Interested applications are encouraged to review the guidelines for applying for fellowship and contact IATH about future deadlines.
