Course Syllabus
Research links
General:
Google Scholar enables you to search for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all areas of research. Can be useful in finding articles and reviews, getting a rough sense of the impact of individual books and articles, as well as in building up a bibliography.
Good old JSTOR. An ever-expanding archive of journals and now books in several languages. Includes some of the many journals that publish articles on ancient, medieval, and early modern history.
Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO)
Oxford Bibliographies Online is a rich and growing series of discipline-focused, online guides to the essential literature in subjects in the humanities and social sciences. Entries are categorized by subject (e.g. Anthropology, Art History, Atlantic History, Biblical Studies, Classics, Education, Geography, International Relations, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Military History, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Renaissance and Reformation, Sociology, etc.). But it is best to search the whole OBO at once (since you may find relevant entries outside of expected sections). OBO entries are incredibly useful for bibliography formation, and narrative summaries, in the best entries, will quickly make you an expert in the historiography of a topic.
A bit clunky but very powerful, this aggregator is a major research tool for archaeology. It offers access to the subject catalogs of publications on the history of art and classical archaeology. It includes subject catalogs of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome (1956-2004), the Bibliography of Iberian Archaeology from the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid (1991-2002), and the Archaeology of Roman Provinces from RGK Frankfurt (1992-2004). Dyabola also includes art historical databases of value: the “Database of Attic Grave Reliefs,” the “Census of Antique Art and Architecture Known to the Renaissance,” and the “Corpus of Antique Monuments Known to Winckelmann.”
The Harvard Tozzer Library website offers useful research information for anthropology and archaeology, and the library itself is one of the finest collections of archaeological reports.
The Cambridge Histories series uses a multiple-author format to cover many single topics under the umbrella of a theme, region, or time period. In the early stages of research Cambridge History articles are an efficient way of developing bibliography on a topic, and the whole set of histories is searchable online with institutional access. There are many series which touch upon premodern history (Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge Medieval History, New Cambridge Medieval History, etc.), making this a powerful research aid for ancient, medieval, and early modern specialists. Some relevant volumes include (to give only a small sample):
- Economic History of the Greco-Roman World
- Cambridge Ancient Histories (e.g. vol. 13)
- New Cambridge Medieval Histories (e.g. vol 2)
- Cambridge Histories of Christianity (e.g. vol. 4)
- New Cambridge Histories of the Bible (e.g. vol. 2)
- Urban History of Britain (vol. 1)
- History of Capitalism (vol. 1)
- History of the Book in Britain (vol. 1, vol. 2, etc.)
- Medieval Philosophy
- Fifteenth-Century Music
History (Ancient):
How did ancient men and women brush their teeth? Measure things? Make roofs? New Pauly is a great place for questions about the nitty gritty of the distant past. It's focus is the "classical" cultures of Greece and Rome, but entries also contain some information on peoples of the ancient Near East, such as the Egyptians and Achaemenid Persians. (The "old" Pauly is the Pauly-Wissowa Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, available in print and in German, and many pre-copyright volumes are now available on Google Books.)
Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition
The Oxford Classical Dictionary is a terrific encyclopedia for all things Ancient Greek and Roman, with broad and reliable coverage. It is very useful for quick orientation and bibliography-formation.
Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization (DARMC)
The Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization (DARMC), designed at Harvard by Prof. McCormick, is a tool that allows for a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approach to mapping and spatial analysis of the Roman and medieval worlds. Includes several downloadable excel spreadsheets and shapefiles.
The Pleiades project is an open gazetteer/graph of ancient places. It allows users to add and share geographical and historical information about Greco-Roman Antiquity digitally. Currently there are tens of thousands of names, places, and locations to explore.
Orbis is a Stanford-based Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World, a GIS project mainly aimed at estimating travel times and expenses in the Roman Empire. This very impressive tool allows you to re-create journeys by land and sea and estimate times and costs depending on season, route, and travel methods.
History (Medieval):
Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium
The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (in three volumes) is the standard reference on all things Byzantine, and a model of reference works of this kind. It is of course excellent for the Byzantine world, but its coverage for Late Antiquity and the West often rivals reference books specifically designed for those subjects. One of the great modern reference books.
BrillOnline Reference Works makes available several successive editions of the very important Encyclopedia of Islam, including the First Edition of the Encyclopedia, the landmark Second Edition (with articles in English and French), the new Third Edition, and the Historical Atlas of Islam. The standard reference work for Islamic history.
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (latest version: 3rd edn, revised) offers authoritative information about all aspects of this vast and often complex subject from the origins of the church to the present day, with entries covering theology, churches and denominations, the bible, the church fathers, the liturgy, as well as individual popes, archbishops, saints, mystics, heretics, kings, and emperors. It provides trustworthy bibliographical information for each topic.
Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages
The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages is one of the most recent large-scale encyclopedias of the Middle Ages (in 2010). This dictionary is probably strongest for real-world topics (e.g. salt, charcoal, archaeology, etc.), with some very useful entries in high and later medieval history. Articles vary a great deal in detail and reliability, given the huge scope of the dictionary (three large physical volumes).
Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology
A handy recent encyclopedia of military history (500-1500 CE). This reference book is both very useful for the realia of medieval military history and quite helpful in providing bibliographical orientation.
Course Summary:
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