For 6 weeks of the summer, I worked with professor Anastasia Pantazopoulou, Dr. Neel, the chair of the source database committee of AIMS (Antiquity in Media Studies), and another student, Eila, on creating a database for the AIMS website. AIMS is an organization with a goal to be a resource for people interested in the ancient world’s portrayal in modern media. AIMS shares news, events, publications, and a database on its website
(https://antiquityinmediastudies.wordpress.com/).
The objective of our project was to increase the amount of classical reception scholarship in the database. To do this, we read classical reception sources and created tags for them. The tags are a way to organize the database and help people find the research works they are looking for. The tags identify characteristics like geographical areas, time periods, historical figures, characters, media, tropes, and other themes.
The first two weeks were training; the first focusing on using Python to assist in generating tags and the second focusing on reception and how to critically read the secondary sources . The following four weeks focused on classical reception in the media: film, theater, TV, and video games. For each of the media, we would have a presentation about the history and important works of classics in that specific field and then have around 12 readings in total to read and create tags for.
Our role in the project was to analyze readings about classical reception in film, theater, TV, and
video games to appropriately tag the work. The readings would be about a specific adaptation of
an ancient work, multiple adaptations of plays and their importance in a certain country and time period, portrayals of historical events and figures, or incorporation of myths and heroes in media. While reading, we would come up with relevant tags and after reading we would use a Python code to generate a table of the words used in the secondary source and the amount of times they had been used. The Python generated list was a tool to help come up with tags and it was helpful for one-word tags such as places, historical figures, and characters. We met three times a week to discuss the readings and decide what tags to enter into the database. To add the sources to the database we used a Google form. The form included questions about the source, what ancient topics were discussed, relevant tags, and bibliographical information about the source.
Things I gained from this research project are experience with classical reception scholarship, knowledge acquired from the readings and about classics in popular media, and working with creating data for a research database. The project was successful, as we completed the goal of increasing the database; it increased by almost 50% based on the data we entered!