Digital Humanities Work Research Articles

Recognition and Assessment of Digital Scholarly Outputs in the Humanities

Watch VIDEO. In recent years we have observed an increase in digital practices and outputs in scholarship, which should be understood as a standard evolution of scholarly practices to take advantage of digital technologies. And although written genres, such as the monograph or essay, remain dominant in the humanities, the range of technological possibilities allow scholars to redefine those forms of expression and enrich them with other media or genres. However, as the opening example showed, this innovation is not supported by the assessment system, or even sometimes takes place in spite of it. A change in attitude requires recognition of three key aspects of digital humanities work: (1) its interdisciplinarity in borrowing tools and methods from ICT or social sciences; (2) the new research practices which should be recognised as valid scholarly work; (3) innovative scholarly outputs that go beyond the traditional genres but provide valid research results. This presentation discusses the recommendations of the ALLEA E-Humanities Working Group with regards to the assessment of novel scholarly communication genres in the humanities. The work is based on the group’s previous report, Sustainable and FAIR Data Sharing in the Humanities, which provided recommendations on data practices in the humanities. The current focus is on attuning institutional policies to emerging scholarly needs in connection to current research assessment reform (CoARA). The recommendations are prepared in close cooperation with stakeholders and the research community. It underwent an open consultation whereby we collected more than 200 comments from the public. The final draft is under preparation and will be published in fall 2023. The ALLEA E-Humanities Working Group recommendations are meant to serve as guidance for institutions and evaluators to embrace innovative outputs in the humanities and thus create space for their development. The Working Group has prepared tailored recommendations which could be divided into two main groups. First, the group focuses on the cross-cutting issues pertinent to digital practices in the humanities, which are (1) linking studies with underlying data, (2) updating and versioning of the outputs, (3) collaboration and authorship, (4) training and competence building, and (5) reviewing. Next, we discuss particular case studies of innovative outputs where cross-cutting issues manifest themselves, such as digital scholarly editions, extended publications, databases, visualisations, code and blogs. The overall conclusions provide some general remarks on recognising and evaluating digital practices in the humanities.

Analyzing Recent (2019) Kashmir Socio-Political Issue: A Voyant Sentiment Analysis of Tweets

Computational Textual Analysis (CTA) is an effective way to analyze large texts by incorporating computational tools, such as, Voyant. The current study takes computer-assisted textual analysis (mixed method) to investigate the sentiments on tweets through Voyant computational method, in order to grasp the emotions of the global public who have tweeted about the recent (2019) Kashmir issue. This research is based on the conceptual framework of Ortony, Clore, and Collins (OCC) model and the keyword approach. For this purpose, different tweets have been analyzed to check the level of sentiments as either positive, negative or neutral. The findings suggested that sentiments were neutral towards the issue of Kashmir and negative towards the Indian government. Voyant has also presented the word count, density, and correlation of phrases within the larger text context. Voyant procedures like; cirrus, trend and summary showed the results based on quantitative and qualitative measures. These toolsets are easy to use without any programming skills and seem to be the best for researchers of social sciences and humanities who are trying to work in digital humanities. The study also recommends Voyant as an operative tool for textual analysis for Computational Linguists, Postmodernism, Critical Discourse Analysis, English Literature, History, Sociology, Theology, and any other field of knowledge that falls under the domain of digital humanities.

Notes on Global Shakespeares and Online Learning

Abstract: This piece explores the impact of current Global Shakespeares databases. Using the extant structures of massive online objects (MOOs) and massive open online courses (MOOCs), it examines the implications of digital Shakespearean inquiry both before and after the global pandemic and offers pedagogical, accessibility-minded suggestions for the field. Discord, an MOO-esque application, emerges as a possible site for innovative Global Shakespeares approaches and a platform for virtual intellectual exchange that is not beholden to the conventional boundaries of the nation-state. How might multilevel, accessible Global Shakespeares study merge existing digital humanities work and the growing need for virtual spaces for scholarly discussion without reifying hierarchical textual frameworks?

The Precarious Practitioner of Moravian Digital Humanities

ABSTRACT This article explores precarious academic employment’s effect on the work of doing digital humanities work, specifically in the context of Moravian studies. The article documents the author’s experience of working on a digital humanities project. It focuses on the Moravian’s Boarding School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The article explores how the work of the digital humanities cannot be done without the broad support that comes from academic employment and access to resources, both technical and monetary. The author situates these issues within the context of how precarious academic employment will potentially affect the field of Moravian studies.

Digital Moravians

ABSTRACT This Forum includes seven articles by scholars working in the field of Moravian Studies reflecting on their work with “Digital Moravians,” either in their scholarship or in the classroom. The articles cover everything from the nature the archivist’s work in a digital age (Paul Peucker), to the painstaking work of georectification and historic sound reproduction (Mark Sciuchetti and Sarah Eyerly, respectively), to new forms of scholarly editions of archival materials as open and public facing scholarship announced on social media (Martin Prell), to the use of digital manuscripts to invite history undergraduates behind the curtain to actively participate in the work of the historian (Jared Burkholder). Additional articles consider the challenges of digital humanities work for the growing ranks of precarious scholars who lack institutional support for the types of collaborative work required (Gregory Specter) and the innovative technical digital humanities scholarship possible when a scholar is backed by an institution committed to supporting and showcasing digital scholarship and pedagogy (Katherine Faull at Bucknell University). These articles will provide inspiration to scholars working in—or wanting to explore—archives-based digital historical scholarship and pedagogy, whatever their subfield.

A Comparator for the First and Second Editions of John Milton’s Paradise Lost

In this article, Cunningham offers a non-programmer’s approach to building a means of examining the differences between the ten-book first edition of Paradise Lost and the subsequent twelve-book second edition. The Comparator referenced in the article title will form part of what, in effect, will be a new kind of online scholarly edition, one that facilitates student annotations of texts while also asking salient questions about how the commonplace tool of a web browser might help transform how we interact with texts. Cunningham’s workflow in building the Comparator suggests that this kind of successful and useful digital humanities work can be achieved with modest means and only a modest level of DH knowledge.

Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England by Brandon W. Hawk

Reviewed by: Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England by Brandon W. Hawk Natalie Whitaker Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England. By Brandon W. Hawk. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. In Preaching the Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England, Brandon W. Hawk disrupts traditional scholarship on Anglo-Saxon sermons, preaching, and religion by examining the use of apocryphal material in Anglo-Saxon media through a confluence of methodology that includes media studies and network theory. Early medieval scholars acknowledge the value of cross-linguistic transmissions between Latin and vernacular texts, but Hawk takes this a step further by building a methodological frame that can allow for developing a deeper understanding of not only these early medieval texts but also modern culture and media, “demonstrating how media across centuries are ineluctably connected and mutually help us to make sense of past and present” (21). Considering the current state of the early northern medieval field, and its problematic past, this scholarly intervention is valuable both as a change from traditional scholarship and as a way to become more politically aware of the effects of our studies. In this latter sense, its methodology can benefit not only those in early medieval studies but also scholars of other fields who study premodern texts, digital humanities, and media. In the introduction, Hawk asserts that this project “rests at the intersection of scholarship on Old English sermons, apocryphal sources, and transmission studies” (5) and importantly uses the term afterlife when referring to the texts, emphasizing the merit of this methodology not only for studying these particular texts within the limited field of early medieval English scholarship but also for transmission, translation, media, and network studies. He acknowledges from the beginning that there have been invaluable studies on Anglo-Saxon apocrypha and preaching, yet those look at the individual trees rather than the forest. This study takes a more outward look at the broader cultural intersections of these texts—how their use and adaptation reveal cultural contexts and implications. Hawk’s research follows the precedent laid by Samantha Zacher in Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse by focusing on the process of authorial reshaping of apocryphal texts and how this process of adaptation reveals important information about the culture beyond the text. Hawk lays out the first aspect of his disruption: that he is challenging the normative scholarly assumptions about apocrypha in Old English sermons. Previous scholarship has [End Page 158] taken an anachronistic perspective when it comes to apocrypha or has overgeneralized and inferred from Aelfric’s negative comments about them, assuming that Anglo-Saxons would all view apocrypha negatively. Hawk does not discount previous scholarship but synthesizes it within his study and with historical context. His approach makes this monograph not only valuable as an introductory text for those new to Anglo-Saxon religious and medieval apocrypha studies but also useful to those more versed in the field who are interested in reexamining these texts from a different perspective and innovative methodology. Following the introduction are five chapters that model Hawk’s methodology in varying ways, telescoping in and out from big data to the microcosm of specific texts while staying true to the organizational thread that the author has framed around the conceptualization of media networks and the transmission of apocrypha in sermons. In chapter 1, Hawk sets up his forest view of the study and examines the broader picture of networks and media in early medieval Europe. Rather than following previous scholarship focused on Irish influences, he takes the less traveled road of continental sources and transmissions of sermons. He explains further his methodology in the context of media and network theory, describing the multiple layers of media—in this case, sermons, preaching collections (homilaries), and manuscripts. These media are all interrelated yet hold different information that must be examined: a manuscript holds more information (its material information, marginalia, and so on) than does a collection of sermons or an individual sermon itself. With this perspective, the communication structure becomes just as rewarding to analyze as the content of the sermons is. The chapter also integrates work in digital humanities, drawing on the conceptualization of media networks for examining both Latin and...

Defining Digital Theology: Barthian Reflections on the Role of Open Access and Electronic Publishing in the Theological Toolkit

As a student member of the Atla Press Coordinating Committee, the presenter has spent the past eight months evaluating, developing, and implementing digital tools to support the Press' initiatives in open access scholarship. This session frames those efforts in the context of theology's status as a "minor participant" (Hutchings 2015) in the digital humanities as well as the emergence of a trans-disciplinary domain increasingly identified as “digital theology” (Phillips 2014). Drawing on Anderson’s (2018) analysis of theology’s disciplinary distance from the main body of digital humanities work, the presenter outlines a case for the distinctive primacy of digital publishing tools and open access commitments in digital theology, as compared with the broader suite of research tools and methods that constitute the “cultural capital” (Schroeder 2016) of digital humanities as generally understood. Particular attention is paid in this regard to Karl Barth’s vision of a “proclamation-centered” (Hector, 2015) theological method as the basis for an ecclesiological critique of closed access publication models.

Reframing, Rethinking, and Remembering: Considering the Digital Harrisburg Project

ABSTRACT The Digital Harrisburg Initiative, with its electronic resources and webpages dedicated to the city's early twentieth-century history, represents some of the best contemporary work in digital humanities. This study of Harrisburg highlights the power of place over time and emblazons the minds of modern people with important findings and models for action gleaned from the past.

Partnering through Collections in Digital Humanities: Looking at Researchers’ Needs

Recent years have seen cultural heritage organizations undergo a cultural shift as part of an agenda with an increased focus on digital innovation and audience engagement. Opening up collections through digitization and making them accessible to scholars, students, and the general public has been a strategic priority for many institutions. Alongside the technological advances of the past decades, the proliferation of various types of digital information objects has brought large changes to traditional scholarship in the Arts & Humanities. The emergence of Digital Humanities has been a result of the possibilities offered by the digital age, while the characteristics of the field reflect the shifting nature and role of scholarship in a modern society. More specifically, interdisciplinarity, openness, and collaboration are some of the core characteristics of scholarship in the field that make it distinct from scholarly practice in more traditional Arts & Humanities areas.[1] Moreover, as part of the nature of Digital Humanities work, scholars create, use, and communicate various types of digital data in previously unimaginable ways.

Entornos digitales: Conceptualización y praxis ed. by Beatriz Trigo and Mary Ann Dellinger

Reviewed by: Entornos digitales: Conceptualización y praxis ed. by Beatriz Trigo and Mary Ann Dellinger Margaret Boyle Trigo, Beatriz, and Mary Ann Dellinger, editors. Entornos digitales: Conceptualización y praxis. Editorial de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, 2017. Pp. 213. ISBN 978-8-49451-063-2. In Entornos digitales: Conceptualización y praxis, editors Beatriz Trigo and Mary Ann Dellinger bring together, through nine essays and an introduction, a range of approaches to the theory and practice of Digital Humanities within Hispanism. Topics vary widely, including for example, representations of technology within a variety of literary and filmic texts, the impact of digitization projects, the place of technology in the classroom, and more. Digital technology, the book argues, does not only have the potential to alter methodology and approach to scholarship within the humanities, but can also serve to contextualize or bolster the value of humanities within a world increasingly reliant on statistics and quantifiable data. Additionally, the book points to the ways in which digital humanities has increased interdisciplinary collaboration within and across universities. Part one “La digitalización de las humanidades” describes a variety of perspectives concerning the “digitalization of the humanities” and the manifestations of this development within a variety of academic settings today. The first essay, “Las humanidades digitales: qué, quién, cómo,” by Beatriz Trigo, is focused on how digital humanities work has shaped scholarly approaches within Hispanic Studies, arguing that digitalization and quantification of information through technology has served to increase accessibility, collaboration and breadth of scholarship. One of the most innovative contributions of this volume, in fact, is Trigo’s ability to succinctly summarize and translate into Spanish recent developments within Digital Humanities, signaling the ongoing need for digital representation of non-Anglophone cultures, as well as the creation of academic venues that could better support multilingual digital humanities projects. This part also includes an interesting contribution by Daniel Escandell Montiel on the intellectual diaspora of the twentieth century. Part two “Transmedialidad” is focused on the varying interpretations of “transmediality” as a concept, meaning the confluence of different medias relating to one topic and its effect on twenty-first-century audiences. Authors of chapters in this second part are Jonatán Martín Gómez, Nuria Ibáñez-Quintana, María Cristina C. Mabrey, Thomas Deveny, Mary Ann Dellinger, and Michele C. Davila Gonçalves. While all chapters are certainly worth reading, likely of most interest to audiences of Hispania is the concluding essay of the volume, titled “Youtube como antídoto contra la ansiedad durante el proceso de adquisición del español como segunda lengua,” which examines the efficacy of visual aids in facilitating or impeding oral communication within the classroom. David-Ross Gerling and Mary Ann Dellinger compare the various responses of Spanish language learners who are presented with YouTube videos in which protagonists [End Page 147] converse in varying degrees of Spanish language fluency. The study presents two groups of students: Classroom X and Classroom Y with two kinds of Spanish language videos: Classroom X only saw videos in which Spanish was spoken colloquially and Classroom Y only saw videos in which Spanish was spoken in “linguistic perfection” (204). Exams were then conducted daily following exposure to the videos. Controls included time of day, frequency of screenings during the week, kind and frequency of examinations given, and the length of the study. Results of the study were not conclusive, although in some cases there was a correlation between regular exposure to colloquial Spanish, and reduced anxiety and proficiency in the target language. The authors concluded that regular use of YouTube videos within class is an efficient method of making use of what they call the “silent period,” a time when students internalize the language (207). Further, the authors insist that students expecting to work in the Spanish-speaking world have much to gain from exposure to multiple dialects and situations of communication that can be found on You Tube or through comparable digital means. The study even tried to incorporate students’ various professional interests into classroom conversations and themes, such as discussing the publications of state and federal environmental agencies for students interested in conservation, or discussing...

Digital Humanities Within a Global Context: Creating Borderlands of Localized Expression

As scholars have begun the digitization of the world’s cultural materials, the understanding of what is to be digitized and how that digitization occurs remains narrowly imagined, with a distinct bias toward North American and European notions of culture, value and ownership. Humanists are well aware that cultural knowledge, aesthetic value and copyright/ownership are not monolithic, yet digital humanities work often expects the replication of narrow ideas of such. Drawing on the growing body of scholarship that situates the digital humanities in a broad global context, this paper points to areas of tension within the field and posits ways that digital humanities practitioners might resist such moves to homogenize the field. Working within the framework of border studies, the paper considers how working across national barriers might further digital humanities work. Finally, ideas of ownership and/or copyright are unique to country of origin and, as such, deserve careful attention. While open access is appealing in many digital humanities projects, it is not always appropriate, as work with indigenous cultural artifacts has revealed.

Developing collaborative best practices for digital humanities data collection: A case study

ABSTRACTThis case study explores the data management practices of medieval manuscript scholars working on the Digital Tools for Manuscript Study project at the University of Toronto. We chose this user group, despite their incredibly domain-specific praxis, since the data challenges they face while doing digital humanities work are representative of the wider community. Our goal is to rethink how librarians can best assist researchers within a digital humanities (DH)-centered environment. This article first explores how data are conceived in the DH context and what insights can be drawn for data management. Next, focus shifts to the key characteristics of data collection and postprocessing activities carried out by manuscript scholars during repository visits. Parallels are drawn between manuscript scholar practices and those of other humanities disciplines. Finally, the implications for information professionals are explored and best practices for assisting digital humanists defined. In particular, community engagement in the process is stressed throughout, as it is the authors’ belief that it is necessary for success. The best practices are in no way exhaustive, and they are intended to be broadly applicable to a range of disciplines within the digital humanities and to librarians. Future work will involve validating a new data management approach informed by this study by testing in the field.

“A greatly unexplored area”: Digital curation and innovation in digital humanities

New types of digital data, tools, and methods, for instance those that cross academic disciplines and domains, those that feature teams instead of single scholars, and those that involve individuals from outside the academy, enables new forms of scholarship and teaching in digital humanities. Such scholarship promotes reuse of digital data, provokes new research questions, and cultivates new audiences. Digital curation, the process of managing a trusted body of information for current and future use, helps maximize the value of research in digital humanities. Predicated on semistructured interviews, this naturalistic case study explores the creation, use, storage, and planned reuse of data by 45 interviewees involved with 19 Office of Digital Humanities Start‐Up Grant (SUG) projects. Interviewees grappled with challenges surrounding data, collaboration and communication, planning and project management, awareness and outreach, resources, and technology. Overall this study explores the existing digital curation practices and needs of scholars engaged in innovative digital humanities work and to discern how closely these practices and needs align with the digital curation literature.

The conceptual ecology of digital humanities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to dissect key issues and debates in digital humanities, an emerging field of theory and practice. Digital humanities stands greatly to impact the Information and Library Science (ILS) professions (and vice versa) as well as the traditional humanities disciplines.Design/methodology/approachThis paper explores the contours of digital humanities as a field, touching upon fundamental issues related to the field’s coalescence and thus to its structure and epistemology. It looks at the ways in which digital humanities brings new approaches and sheds new light on manifold humanities foci.FindingsDigital humanities work represents a vital new current of interdisciplinary, collaborative intellectual activity both in- and outside the academy; it merits particular attention from ILS.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper helps potential stakeholders understand the intellectual and practical framework of the digital humanities and “its relationship” to their own intellectual and professional work.Originality/valueThis paper critically synthesizes previous scholarly work in digital humanities. It has particular value for those in ILS, a community that has proven especially receptive to the field, as well as to scholars working in many humanities disciplines. Digital humanities has already made an important impact on both LIS and the humanities; its impact is sure to grow.

An Introduction to Getting Started in the Digital Humanities for Library Professionals

ABSTRACTLibrary professionals already possess many of the skills and expertise necessary for successful collaboration in digital humanities work. This article focuses on how activities that library professionals already engage in, such as digital asset management or metadata creation, can be leveraged in digital humanities work and skill-sets further developed through suggested online tutorials and resources. In addition, a list of suggested readings and resources is provided.

Digital humanities and the study and teaching of North American religions

AbstractThe digital humanities are a collection of methodologies with a long history in the disciplines of literature, linguistics, media studies, and pedagogy. These methodologies and the scholars who employ them have recently gained widespread attention among academics and observers of higher education. While the digital humanities have deep roots in the field of religious studies, most scholars of religion have been relatively slow to embrace digital methods for research and pedagogy. This essay provides an introduction to the cluster of research and teaching methods generally grouped under the term “digital humanities.” Digital humanists create digital archives, research collections, and exhibits; map and visualize information using online tools; and develop and apply computational methods of textual and visual analysis. This essay offers examples of scholarship and pedagogy on North American religions that use each of these methodologies, and concludes with a brief discussion of resources for learning about and becoming involved with digital humanities work.

Time, Impact, and the Need for Digital History and Philosophy of Science.

Author Posting. © History of Science Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of History of Science Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Isis 107 (2016): 344-345, doi:10.1086/687213.

Digital Humanities as Appendix

Digital Humanities as Appendix Robert K. Nelson (bio) “The Geographic Imagination of Civil War–Era American Fiction.”By Matthew Wilkens. American Literary History 25 ( Winter2013): 803– 40. “Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region: A View of the World from Houston.”By Cameron Blevins. Journal of American History 101 (06 2014): 122– 47. Sometimes the digital humanities can seem like an inversion rather than a branch of the humanities. Self-described digital humanists often emphasize, even celebrate, how their practice differs from that of their disciplinary colleagues. Whereas most humanities scholars do their research more or less in isolation, digital humanists typically collaborate in teams that include technologists, librarians, and students. While the quintessential product of most humanities research is an interpretation presented in a monograph or an essay, digital humanists more often experiment with form, developing broad archives, interactive maps, and computer-generated models. Books and essays usually go through peer review before appearing with the imprimatur of a university press or scholarly journal; digital humanities projects are evaluated at a later point, undergoing, to borrow a couple of phrases from Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “crowdsourcing review” to receive (or not) “community imprimatur.” 1Finally, digital humanities projects often are not organized around substantiating an argument but instead prompt their audiences to independently investigate a subject through a more participatory, open-ended, and nonlinear process. While experimentation with alternative ways to practice and present the humanities can be exhilarating, there are of course trade-offs. Many humanities scholars continue to look askance at digital humanities work. Because such work often does not foreground specific arguments, many digital humanities projects can seem peripheral to the debates and questions that animate their own research. Take, as evidence, the differences between book and digital history reviews in the Journal of American History. The JAHhas shown a greater interest in encouraging digital scholarship than many journals, as the [End Page 131]presence of the digital history reviews section attests. But these reviews can make digital humanities scholarship seem preparatory to or distinct from the kinds of historical research assessed in book reviews. Whereas reviews of books almost always critically assess the contributions of an argument, that is very seldom the case in the digital history reviews. Much more often those review online archives, evaluating their utility in providing scholars with easy access to important materials or providing instructors a teaching resource for their students. Judging by these reviews, many humanists might understandably think that digital humanists produce valuable public humanities projects and useful tools for research but not necessarily, taking arguments and interpretation as the measure, scholarship. If the two articles under consideration here are any indication, that opinion is likely to change. Matthew Wilkens’s “Geographic Imagination of Civil War–Era American Fiction,” published in American Literary Historyin 2013, and Cameron Blevins’s “Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region: A View of the World from Houston,” published in the JAHin 2014, signal that digital humanists and digital humanities methods are beginning to yield significant arguments. They are two examples of how digital humanities methods and digital humanities research are increasingly paying interpretative dividends, generating insights that will be of interest and value to humanities scholars who have little if any specific investment in DH qua DH. These two articles share a remarkable amount in common. Wilkens and Blevins both sketch and analyze the cultural construction of space in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. Wilkens seeks to survey the “geographic imagination” (804) of Civil War–era American fiction, Blevins the “imagined geography” (124) constructed by one Texas newspaper, the Houston Daily Post, around the turn of the twentieth century. The transposition of noun and modifier does suggest one important difference in their approaches and their preoccupations. Blevins is primarily interested in readers, not actual but imagined ones. He argues that the number of times people encountered particular place-names in the paper’s pages helped determine the ways they negotiated and navigated geographic space. In his account, the imagined geography of the Houston Daily Postwas first and foremost a commercial geography that both reflected and helped actively shape economic activity in the region...

La Chronique Anonyme Universelle: Reading and Writing History in Fifteenth-Century France by Lisa Fagin Davis

Reviewed by: La Chronique Anonyme Universelle: Reading and Writing History in Fifteenth-Century France by Lisa Fagin Davis Elizaveta Strakhov KEY WORDS manuscript studies, chronicles, rolls, reading, writing, France, historiography, Valois, Bourbon, provenance Davis, Lisa Fagin. La Chronique Anonyme Universelle: Reading and Writing History in Fifteenth-Century France. Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History 61. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. Vi + 439 pp., 97 color illustrations. DVD. €175. ISBN: 978-1-905375-55-4. Lisa Fagin Davis’s edition of the fascinating and little-known Chronique anonyme universelle is nothing short of a tour de force. Taking up the daunting challenge of creating a critical edition and translation of a text that combines multiple, overlapping chronicles and genealogies, that is recorded as a parchment roll, and that is found in twenty-eight different manuscripts, Davis delivers an exhaustively researched and meticulously designed final result. This editorial achievement is profound: the Chronique, while not unique within the genre of universal chronicles, is remarkable for the number of copies in which it survives, suggesting its importance to the genre. Davis’s edition thus joins other recent works bringing much-needed renewed attention to medieval French historiography, an area long championed by Gabrielle M. Spiegel, such as Zrinka Stahuljak’s and Noah Guynn’s co-edited Violence and the Writing of History in the Medieval Francophone World (Cambridge: Brewer, 2013) and Jeanette Beer’s In Their Own Words: Practices of Quotation in Early Medieval History-Writing (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). Davis’s inclusion of a digital facsimile on DVD with [End Page 364] her edition further highlights the exciting possibilities afforded by digital humanities work in studying the parchment roll, a medieval medium particularly well suited for the modern computer or tablet screen. The Chronique was composed circa 1410 in France, though later copyists continue its French chronicle portion through the late fifteenth century in several manuscripts. Consisting entirely of recombined excerpts from other works, the text is divided into several main, often overlapping sections that relate events from the Bible, Greece, Egypt, Troy, Rome, the papacy, the Crusades, the Holy Roman Empire, France, and England. Each section draws on a bevy of earlier textual sources, such as Orosius, Josephus, Isidore, Augustine, the French prose Brut, and Outremer chronicles, among many others. The text is laid out in vertical columns that shift, multiply, and merge as the roll progresses, beginning in Genesis with a two- to three-column layout and eventually settling into four columns that, at one point, even split into five. Copied in between and around the columns are multiple genealogical trees—of biblical figures, popes, French royalty, Holy Roman emperors, English royalty, etc. As Davis further points out, certain manuscripts demonstrate evidence of the genealogies having been laid down before the text, while others show genealogies snaking around pre-existing text. It is this kind of careful attention to codicological detail in an already sizeable and visually challenging corpus that makes Davis’s edition stand out. Especially impressive in this regard is Davis’s decision to edit the text in a layout that reproduces the manuscripts’ multicolumn format and to mirror that same format in her (excellent) facing-page English translation. As a result, the complex mise-en-page of this remarkable text is fully preserved, allowing the reader to follow the intertwining historical narratives with ease while comparing the original French text to the English. Davis keeps all the rubrics and identifies the position of the manuscripts’ miniatures with boxes, neatly reproducing the visual organization of her base manuscript. Davis is thus able to facilitate the modern reader’s textual experience without adding any editorial elements not present in the original manuscripts. Furthermore, Davis’s textual apparatus to the translation renders into English any lengthy variants appended to the edition on the left-hand side and offers clarifying historical background on any major figure mentioned in the Chronique. The end result is a strikingly legible edition and [End Page 365] translation that manages to reproduce the manuscripts’ complexity without simplifying it, despite the necessary visual breakdown of the roll into the codex. But lest the reader despair that the edition in codex format has...