The
Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription
Project, supported by the National Endowment
for the Humanities, is a collaborative research project
that will result in a new transcription of the approximately
850 original court documents involved in the famous
witch trials of 1692. The project will also produce
a searchable archive of the transcribed documents,
including images of all the original court documents,
as well as scanned images of the published accounts
of the trials by contemporary authors, such as Cotton
Mather, Increase Mather, Robert Calef, Samuel Willard,
Deodat Lawson, John Hale. All primary source materials
will be linked to digital maps of Salem and Salem
Village and Massachusetts Bay Colony, created with
funding from the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative.
The Archive will also create a searchable database
of demographic and historical information about the
participants and events related to the trials. Finally,
the Archive will produce a large inventory of annotated
images and popular literary texts that portray the
witchcraft episode, covering a century and a half,
by such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, and John Greenleaf Whittier. The Archive,
now partially complete, is intended for use at the
high school and college level, as well as for advanced
scholars and the general public. The project is supported
by several units of the University of Virginia: the
Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities,
the Electronic Text Center, GeoState Center, and Special
Collections of Alderman Library.
Project Director is Benjamin
C. Ray
Project Co-Director is Bernard
Rosental, University of Binghamton
Website address: http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/
The
Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library is
creating an international information community based
on the geographical, cultural and linguistic regions
associated with Tibetan and Himalayan culture, and
especially Buddhist culture. An information community
consists of the people (authors, publishers, and users),
the collections (texts, images, videos, audio, and
maps), and the tools provided for interacting with
those collections. The Library is providing the technological,
administrative and organizational infrastructure of
these collections, but relies on individual scholars
and collaborative projects to fill in the content
and intellectual organization of the collections.
Multimedia digital publication is at the heart of
the library, which includes providing scholars and
scholarly groups with digital tools as a framework
enabling collaborative research that can then be published
within the Library. Current funding is from the Department
of Education, National Endowment for the Humanities,
USIA, the University of Virginia, and miscellaneous
private donors.
Project Director: David
Germano
Website address: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/infocom/tibet/
The
Project on Lived Theology is a Lilly Endowment
initiative that seeks to understand the way theological
convictions shape the patterns and practices of particular
communities. The Project also endeavors to demonstrate
the importance of theological ideas in the public
conversation about religion and social responsibility.
By public conversation, we have in mind the generous
sense of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's conviction that authentic
faith be worked out in the context of worldly complexity--of
"civil courage", he said--not in retreat from it.
"God must be recognized at the center of life, not
when we are at the end of our resources," the theologian
wrote from prison.
The Project on Lived Theology is based on the rationale
that the living energy of faith-shaped communities
is a promising and untapped source for theological
inquiry. In this manner, the Project on Lived Theology's
goal is to nurture a theological culture that is both
confessional and public in its articulations and convictions,
and thus to encourage theologians and scholars with
theological interests to engage particular communities
with the same seriousness they think about and engage
texts.
Project Director: Charles
Marsh
Project Assistant: Katie
Whitworth
Website address: http://livedtheology.org/
The
Center on Religion and Democracy is a non-partisan
research institute set up to explore the complex relationship
between religion and democratic society. Director
James Davison Hunter explains, "As Thomas Jefferson
observed, democracy must be renewed in every generation
and within the circumstances in which each new generation
finds itself. It is essential for our generation to
come to terms with the changing realities that both
sustain democratic life and threaten to destabilize
it." Historically, religion in America has played
a constructive role in democratic life, by providing
a common vision of society, at the same time that
it has fostered deep social divisions. The Center
seeks to discover in what ways religion currently
works to strengthen and weaken democratic principles.
To conduct the research of the Center, post-doctoral
and doctoral fellowships will be awarded to scholars
from a variety of disciplines, including history,
religion, sociology, and political science. To share
their work, the Center will hold a fall lecture, semi-annual
conferences, sponsor courses at the University, and
publish books and articles. In addition, a web site
and film project are being developed. The Center is
sponsored by grants from Pew Charitable Trusts and
the Celerity Foundation. The web address will be:
www.religionanddemocracy.org
Program Director: James
Hunter
Program Co-director: Pam
Cochran
Website address: http://religionanddemocracy.lib.virginia.edu/
