IATH News

IATH Announces New Fellows for 2007-2009

June 22, 2007

mapping IATH has announced a new Resident Fellow and three new Associate Fellows for the 2007-2009 period. Kurtis Schaeffer, Associate Professor of Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, is the new Resident Fellow. His project, Mapping the Dalai Lamas, integrates digital texts of classical Tibetan-language biograpies of the lives of the Dalai Lamas with digital animated maps, timelines, and images. The project will illustrate both the Dalai Lamas and the manner in which their biographers helped invent the tradition of the Dalai Lamas over the centuries. His tenure will include funding and departmental support, partial support for a graduate research assistant, use of computer equipment and software, and intensive technical support from the IATH staff.

The new Associate Fellows are Cristina Della Coletta, William D.Williams, and Dorothy Wong. They will be receiving IATH technical and administrative support for project design and development.

Cristina Della Coletta, Professor of Italian in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, will be building a digital archive called The World's Fairs in Italy Project. The archive will be designed for users studying technologies exploited by and for the illusory worlds of the World's Fairs.

William D. Williams, Associate Professor of Architecture, is continuing his work on The Dresser Trunk Project, which began as an cooperative art exhibition centered around train travel by black travelers in America during segregation. The digital version will focus on Amtrak's Southern Crescent line, which runs from New Orleans to New York, and will focus on the hotels, nightclubs, and other destinations that were safe havens for black travelers.

Dorothy Wong, Associate Professor of Art, is studying the movement and exchange of Buddhist art and deity cults along the Silk Road. Her project, Silk Road: The Path of Transmission of Avalokitesvara, will explore the transmission of Avalokitesvara (the Bodhisattva of Compassion), one of the most important Buddhist deities, on the Silk Road.

These four join Lisa Reilly, Associate Professor in the Department of Architectural History, the 2006-2008 IATH Fellow, and Jenny Strauss Clay, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Classics, a 2006-2008 Associate Fellow. Professor Reilly's project, English Medieval Architecture: A Model for Design Process Analysis, is using digital models to study the development of English medieval ecclesiastical architecture. Professor Clay's project, Homer's Trojan Theater, reconstructs complex battle sequences in the Iliad in order to study Homer's use of visualization as an aid to both the narrator and the audience.