PhD position in Renaissance classical bilingualism (ERASMOS ERC)

You will work as PhD student in an interdisciplinary team, contributing to the ERC Starting Grant project ERASMOS. The project will inventory Renaissance Latin-Greek authors and texts in a relational database (partly by using automated transcription), will develop new digital tools to study and analyze this phenomenon, and will explore one of the tools' potential for book history (more information on request and through the link below). You will be affiliated to the Latin Literature department, but will entertain contacts with other departments, faculties, and projects, especially through LECTIO and with the Greek Studies department.
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Project

ERASMOS hypothesizes that, in contrast to the tenet, the great age of Latin-Greek bilingualism, especially in its written form, is not to be situated in antiquity. Instead, classical bilingualism flourished in the Renaissance, a pivotal period in canonizing classics. After 1397, when M. Chrysoloras started teaching Greek in Florence, classical bilingualism developed into an authorial ideal championed by writers like Erasmus (d.1536). This ideal pervaded countless genres, far beyond classical standards. It turned into a common practice shaping Europe’s cultural identities across the Republic of Letters, where Latin-Greek code-switching occurred on a daily basis.

ERASMOS opens a new research avenue on Renaissance classical bilingualism in its own right, which offers broader opportunities. The project has 3 main aims. (1) It inventories classical bilingual sources from the long 15th century (1397–1536) in a database, in order to create a new detailed heatmap of European humanism. (2) It develops digital tools for the analysis of literary multilingualism, leading to a new form of digital humanities-assisted close-reading. Most notably, the novel “tongueprint” tool will allow us to automatically calculate the linguistic make-up of texts. This tongueprint aims to further integrate multilingualism into Neo-Latin studies by cross-fertilizing the field with historical sociolinguistics. (3) ERASMOS analyzes through DH-assisted close-reading the forms and functions of classical bilingualism, in comparison to its ancient pendant, thus testing the core project hypothesis.

ERASMOS, in sum, brings cultural-historical and digital-conceptual innovation. The tools developed will benefit humanities studies more broadly and will help us save a key part of European cultural history from oblivion. The project promises major advances in the study of Europe’s classical bilingualism, which connected the continent’s brightest minds in an age that fell prey to divisive ideological forces.

Profile

• holds an MA in Classics (Latin and Greek language and literature);
• has documented experience with Renaissance and Neo-Latin studies, the history of linguistics, and/or historical sociolinguistics;
• has an interest in expanding their expertise to include digital and computational approaches;
• has an excellent oral and written command of English, the main working language of the project;
• is willing and able to work both independently and as part of a broader research team;
• is expected to work on the database of the project for about 20%; to spend a minimum of 60% of their time on their PhD research; and to execute administrative, educational and other tasks (including science communication) for a maximum of 20%.
• is expected to work in Leuven at least 3 days per week on average.

Offer

• receive a generous scholarship (barema 43);
• enjoy academic guidance by the PI;
• be integrated into an attractive and diverse research environment, with people from various backgrounds, in different career stages and with different kinds of expertise;
• have funding available for costs related to the research, e.g. to travel to conferences;
• be able to further build their expertise by participating in specialized masterclasses organized in the frame of the supervisor's various projects.

Interested?

For more information please contact Prof. dr. Raf Van Rooy, tel.: +32 16 19 31 61, mail: raf.vanrooy@kuleuven.be.

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