Seminar: Ancient Myth in the Digital Age

written by Greta Hawes

I recently enjoyed a quick visit to the University of Newcastle, where I presented an overview of the “what?” “why?” and “what can we do with?” of MANTO. The talk gives a good overview of MANTO’s conception of Greek myth.

My talk begins by discussing the basic incompatibility of stories with databases, and then describes the advantages that can be found in organising Greek myths using the networks that are inherent to digital space. I argue (using some excellent graphics by Anika Campbell) that digital data can get at some emic qualities of ancient myth that our analogue resources have not been able to properly capture. The second part of the talk describes some of the things that we have done — and are currently doing — with MANTO’s data, including modelling matriliny, revealing genealogies, and mapping the chronological history of the Greek mythic period. This last piece of work is really exciting, and something that we’ll be sharing more of soon.

This work discusses research done in collaboration with Cian Colgan, Chiara Palladino, Rosemary Selth, Scott Smith, and Xinyi Xu.

With thanks to Ryan Strickler for the invitation to the University of Newcastle, and Sacha Davis and Kendall Park for their exceptional welcome.