Maps and Networks in Medieval Studies

This lecture will discuss how pre-digital medieval studies created a research infrastructure resembling what is (or could be transformed into) today's structured data. This knowledge architecture was crucial for getting research done in the pre-digital age.  The culture of the diagram has always been an important aspect of organizing a cultural heritage that is at once vast, interconnected and fragmentary.  The lecture will discuss some of the ways that digital medieval studies is grappling with its own forms of "big" data and is reinventing older knowledge architectures, thereby reimagining the geo-temporal scope of the medium aevum.  This will be set against a number of trail-blazing projects in the field of classics that engage with forms of visualization - in maps and networks - and suggest some desiderata for constructing models that accommodate the specificities of medieval cultural history.