In summer 2024 I spent 6 weeks working remotely with the Antiquity In Media Studies (AIMS) Source Database Committee to catalog modern academic sources in the field of classical reception. This subsection of reception theory examines how modern authors reference and adapt ancient sources into new works, and what we can extrapolate about both the modern and ancient world. For example: An article may use reception theory to discuss the depiction of women in the linked works Troy (2004) and Homer’s Iliad, comparing the two works themselves as well as the audience reaction to them. Such an article may conclude that compared to the fairly progressive view of women in the Iliad, Troy falls short, especially considering the political conditions surrounding its production.
As an intern with AIMS, I read articles using classical reception in various forms of media (film, television, theater, and video games) and input them into a computational lemmatizer. The lemmatizer counted the amount of times each word appeared in the text and filtered out certain non-content/bridge words like “the” or “a”. Using the output of most common words from the lemmatizer and my own judgment I created lists of tags for each article relating to the content or themes of the original source, the modern source, or the article itself. Tagging each article thoroughly and accurately was the most important part of our work on the project. Their inclusion in the database makes articles searchable by keyword, which is useful for anyone who doesn’t know exactly which work they want to read. Our original goal was 10 tags for each piece, but we soon found that this was not nearly enough. Towards the end of the internship many entries ended up with twenty to thirty tags each.
Before starting my work with AIMS, I had little experience in many of the topics that would become key to the project. I had never worked with Python and was provided a crash course that would allow me to use it consistently throughout my weeks of work. I had also never heard of reception theory! Of course I had made connections between modern and ancient texts, but I didn’t know how in-depth the field could get. I encountered new ways of thinking in some great articles during the program, and I was also shown connections to the ancient world in properties I hadn’t considered before (I was happy to talk about some of my favorite shows like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Star Trek). Each week or so we switched the form of media we discussed beginning with theater, then film, TV, and finally games. This approach gave us an overview of the many types of articles that were included in the database. Each form of media required a different technique, and I am pleased to have gotten such a good knowledge base for my future work. Overall I had a great experience working with AIMS and am extremely grateful to have a new perspective in my field and media analysis in general.