July 13, 2004 — The Vice President and Provost has appointed Bernard Frischer as the new director of U.Va.’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, beginning in the fall term 2004. He will also join the faculty as professor of classics and art history.

By Andrew Shurtleff

Among Frischer's projects have been virtual reality recreations of the Roman Colosseum and Roman Forum.

“It is an honor and challenge to be chosen to succeed John Unsworth, the first director of IATH,” says Frischer. “Under John’s leadership, IATH established itself as the premier research center in the United States for digital humanities. It is my hope to build on the achievements of the past by helping to make digital humanities a sustainable and integral approach to humanistic research both at Virginia and at other major universities around the world.

“It is my hope to build on the achievements of the past.”

Professor Frischer is a leading scholar in the application of digital technologies to humanities research and education. He is the founder and director of the Cultural Virtual Reality Lab at UCLA, which uses three-dimensional computer modeling to reconstruct cultural heritage sites. Frischer has overseen many significant projects, including virtual recreations of the Roman Colosseum and the Roman Forum. The work of Frischer and the Lab has received international acclaim and has been featured on the Discovery Channel and in Newsweek and the New York Times.

“I am drawn to virtual reality technology because it strikes me as a highly effective way to help students and scholars visualize and understand complex lost worlds such as ancient Rome,” says Frischer. “In the twenty-first century, real-time 3D-computer models of cultural heritage sites will become as common in history, art history, archeology and classics classrooms as two-dimensional 35mm slides were in the twentieth.”

Frischer’s research career reflects his interest in interdisciplinary approaches, and has included studies in the literature, philosophy, art history and archeology of Greece and Rome. He is the author of four books, including Shifting Paradigms: New Approaches to Horace’s Ars Poetica, and The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment. Since 1997, Frischer has directed the excavations of Horace’s Villa, a project sponsored by the American Academy in Rome and the Archeological Superintendency for Lazio of the Italian Ministry of Culture, which will be the subject of his next book.

Professor Frischer has been a faculty member in classics at UCLA since 1976, and served as chair of that department from 1984 to 1988. He received his BA in classics from Wesleyan University in 1971, and his Ph.D. in classical philology from the University of Heidelberg in 1975. His numerous awards and honors include appointments as the Loeb Classical Research Fellow, the Paul Mellon Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery, and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Frischer’s spouse, Jane Crawford, has also been appointed as a professor to the University’s classics department. She comes from Loyola Marymount University, where she currently serves as chair of the Department of Classics and Archaeology.