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Classics Students Compete in Archaeological Ethics Bowl

Posted on: April 27th, 2016 by erabadie

Three debate ethical dilemmas faced by archaeologists

APRIL 27, 2016 | BY EMILY SCHNEIDER

The UM Archaeology Ethics Bowl team is made up of juniors Alicia Dixon (left), Zachary Creel and Libby Tyson.

Earlier this month, three University of Mississippi students spent the day putting themselves in the shoes of professional archaeologists, debating issues of ownership, trespassing, reporting, stewardship, commercialization and sexual harassment in Orlando, Florida.

The students, all juniors in the university’s Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, are the first UM team to compete in the Society for American Archaeology annual Archaeological Ethics Bowl. The event pits teams from universities across the country to discuss and debate various scenarios representing ethical quandaries professional archaeologists may face in their work.

“These dilemmas included real problems that archaeologists face when conducting fieldwork, as well as issues relating to conservation and preservation of cultural heritage,” said Hilary Becker, assistant professor of classics and adviser for the team.

The team – Alicia Dixon, Zachary Creel and Libby Tyson – decided to enter the competition after taking Becker’s honors class in classics, “Archaeological Ethics: Who Owns the Past,” where they argued cases from previous Archaeological Ethics Bowls.

“The most exciting part of competing was hearing different sides to the cases and thinking about how we might think outside the box for next year,” said Dixon, a classics and philosophy double major from Baldwyn. “We were also very excited to meet the other teams, who we know put in time and effort learning the cases, just like we did.”

Dixon, Creel and Tyson worked since last summer to prepare for the competition, meeting at least weekly since June. The team conducted their own research on the legal and ethical implications of various archaeologist cases, in addition to debating amongst themselves.

“There’s something awesome about working really hard for an extended period of time and then seeing that work pay off when a judge smiles because of a point your team just made,” said Tyson, of Hazlehurst, who is majoring in classics and English.

Four teams competed in this year’s competition: UM, the University of Georgia, the University of Puerto Rico and California State University at Los Angeles. The competition was conducted in three elimination rounds. First, UM faced the University of Georgia, and the second round matched UCLA with the University of Puerto Rico. In the finals, Georgia defeated the University of Puerto Rico.

Despite the UM team being all undergraduates, they competed against five graduate anthropology students from the University of Georgia.

Although they did not win the championship, which carries an American Institute of Archaeology membership for each member of the winning team and a school trophy, the experience has them already planning for next year’s event.

“We competed well and learned a lot so that we will certainly be even more competitive next year,” said Creel, a classics and art history major from New Orleans.

Study USA Philosophy Course Allows Student Immersion

Posted on: November 30th, 2015 by erabadie

UM students leave the classroom to explore issues during two-week Wintersession terms

OCTOBER 19, 2015 | By PAM STARLING

UM students (from left) Robert Lucas, Rachel Marsh, Jenna Campbell and Foy Stevenson visit the Federal Bureau of Investigations headquarters in Washington, D.C., in January. They met with numerous officials concerning environmental ethics issues as part of the UM Study USA program.

UM students (from left) Robert Lucas, Rachel Marsh, Jenna Campbell and Foy Stevenson visit the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. They met with numerous officials concerning environmental ethics issues as part of Philosophy Professor Neil Manson’s Environmental Ethics Course.

Most University of Mississippi faculty members will say that “seeing a light bulb go on” when a student truly connects with the subject matter is one of the most rewarding parts of their profession. It is that passion for sharing knowledge and creative ideas that is driving many UM faculty members to create learning experiences that go outside the four walls of a classroom.

In its seventh year, the university Study USA program is assisting faculty members as they work to put students in direct contact with research and experts who hold firsthand experience in a variety of subjects.

“The knowledge and practical applications that my students learn in two weeks is more than I could ever teach them in a classroom for a whole semester,” said Neil Manson, UM assistant professor of philosophy, about his Study USA Environmental Ethics course. “Through this program, my students have the opportunity to see how these environmental policy issues are playing out each and every day in real-life situations. The opportunity to meet these key players in D.C. is just an invaluable learning experience.”

During the upcoming Wintersession break in January 2016, students in various disciplines can take advantage of opportunities to immerse themselves in academic courses during one or two-week excursions. Hospitality management in Las Vegas, a civil rights road trip around the Southeast and journalism in New Orleans are just a few of the classes scheduled for Wintersession 2016.

Manson taught Philosophy 345: Environmental Ethics, which deals with the human relationship with the environment, during the 2012 and 2015 Wintersession terms.

Students spent the first week on the Oxford campus. During this time, Thomas Moorman, Southern region director for Ducks Unlimited, spoke to the class about the mission of the organization that serves as the United States’ largest wetlands conservation group. Students also toured the UM wastewater treatment facility and heard about the environmental work that plant supervisor David Adkisson is engaged in.

The next week, the class traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with legislators, activist groups and other officials involved in U.S. environmental issues, including U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, who chairs the Senate agricultural committee.

“Senior staff members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and well as members of Senator Cochran’s staff gave us insight on how the U.S. farm bill is crafted each year and discussed the Keystone and XL pipelines,” Manson recalled. “These are important environmental decisions that our government is debating right now, and they will have a major impact on the next generation of Americans.”

Students also visited BIO, the biotechnology industry organization, to learn more about the controversies surrounding genetically modified foods and how they might affect the food supply in the future. They also visited with officials from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to discuss both sides of the animal rights and food supply issues.

For the fourth time in as many years, Manson will lead a group of students to Washington during UM’s Wintersession 2016 term, this time for his class in medical ethics.

“If I had not taken this course, I would never have become as interested in medical ethical issues that are on the forefront of health care legislation right now,” said Hannah Hudson, a May 2015 UM graduate.

Hudson participated in the Study USA Biomedical Ethics course during Wintersession 2014 and is now pursuing a master’s degree in bioethics at Emory University.

“The Study USA course I participated in has opened so many doors for my future,” said Jenna Campbell, a junior political science major from Palatine, Illinois. “I’ve learned how crucial learning outside the classroom can be.”

UM Outreach Director of College Programs Laura Antonow agrees.

“Dr. Manson’s courses have been such eye-openers for students,” Antonow said. “Ethics exist in real life. It’s not just something that was discussed in ancient Greece. These discussions and policy decisions based on these issues are happening now in Washington, and this Study USA course helps students to see how this affects all of us.”

VIDEO: Students’ Vercelli Book Restoration

Posted on: October 18th, 2013 by erabadie

Eleanor Anthony

When Eleanor Anthony visited Vercelli, Italy, last spring, she was smitten with damaged 10th century manuscripts that she and others from the University of Mississippi were there to help recover. Little did she know that six months later, she would be presenting a plan to make those documents legible at an international conference in London.

Anthony, a junior mathematics and philosophy major from Jackson, was the only undergraduate student presenter at the DigiPal Symposium in mid-September at King’s College London. The conference, hosted by the King’s College Department of Digital Humanities, attracted notable paleographers and scholars from around the globe.

“After Stewart Brookes and Peter Stokes, the conference organizers, notified me that I was accepted to speak at the symposium, I was thrilled,” said Anthony, who spoke for 20 minutes about a correlation and probabilistic-based approach to transcription methods of damaged manuscripts. “I knew it would be a fantastic opportunity to meet scholars working in the field of digital humanities and see their research.”

As part of the Lazarus Project, a UM program specializing in the multispectral imaging of cultural heritage pieces, Anthony visited the Museo del Tesoro del Duomo in Italy. It was there she first laid eyes on the Vercelli Book and discovered what has become one of her life’s passions.

“I have always found data and narrative to be fascinating,” Anthony said. “As humans, we participate in a conversation that extends through time and encompasses all human endeavor. It’s amazing to interact with manuscripts that record the contributions of previous generations.”

While studying the Vercelli Book and conducting spectral imaging on the book’s text, the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College student learned the importance of finding ways to successfully transcribe old data and manuscripts. Upon her return home, Anthony submitted a written summary of her own proposal for how transcription methods can be improved to the DigiPal Symposium. Her abstract was accepted.

“This 10th century Anglo-Saxon manuscript suffered physical damage due to the application of a chemical reagent during early transcription efforts, and as a result, large swathes of the text are completely illegible,” Anthony said. “After processing the spectral images, we are left with data that can be used in correlation-based approaches for text identification, and it is these methods, combined with contextual analysis, that should lead to a better understanding of the text.”

Eleanor Anthony and other Lazarus Project participants discuss the Vercelli Book
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Her presentation touched on the history of the Vercelli Book and the Archimedes Palimpsest, as well as the basic mathematics behind the system she hopes to extend and implement while addressing the current problems within the data being researched now by the Lazarus Project. Anthony’s work is being hailed as “groundbreaking” by her mentor and sponsors.

“It is incredibly rare for an undergraduate paper to be selected for an international conference. It speaks to the uniqueness and quality of Eleanor’s research,” said Gregory Heyworth, UM associate professor of English and director of the Lazarus Project. “The character-recognition techniques that she is developing for damaged manuscripts are cutting-edge work, something that is appropriate for Ph.D. candidates or professors.

“Add to that the fact that the manuscript she is working to recover, the Vercelli Book from the 10th century, is the oldest example of Anglo-Saxon literature in existence, and scholars are bound to take notice.”

Douglass Sullivan-González, dean of the Barksdale Honors College, agrees.

“Eleanor’s success represents what can happen when a high-performing student takes advantages of the doors of opportunity here at Ole Miss,” he said. “Eleanor’s intellectual curiosity, her philosophical drive combined with unparalleled support from Professor Heyworth, the SMB Honors College, Liberal Arts and the Provost Office produced an extraordinary moment for an undergraduate: presenting and defending a research topic at a graduate-level conference in the U.K. We are very proud of Eleanor’s stellar accomplishment.”

Vercelli Book

Anthony’s London presentation impressed those in attendance, but she was equally impressed by those she heard there.

“A particular highlight of the trip was speaking with Donald Scragg, a well-known authority on the Vercelli Book,” she said. “He has devoted most of his academic career to studying this manuscript, and I was excited to discuss my research with him. I found him to be enthusiastic about the project, especially in the sense that I will be recovering missing information that is not capable of being visually analyzed.”

She was also delighted to meet Brookes and Stokes and hear about their work on DigiPal, a digital resource and database of paleography and manuscripts.

“They seem to be doing really exciting work at the Digital Humanities Department at King’s College London,” Anthony said.

Listening to and interacting with both traditional paleographers and computer scientists discussing their research methods and text analysis proved very useful in Anthony’s own research.

“I learned much from the speakers on a wide variety of topics,” she said. “I was also happy to receive positive responses from the audience after giving my talk, with several useful recommendations for improvements I might consider. It is my intention to apply to present at conferences in the future as my research progresses.”

Anthony’s presentation will serve as the primary research leading to the design and implementation for her capstone project and honors college thesis entitled, “Archimedes’ Palimpsest to the Vercelli Book: Dual Correlation and Probabilistic Network Approaches to Paleography in Damaged Manuscripts.” Her ultimate goal is to create a computer program that will offer a transcription method for damaged text in manuscripts using word-level correlation approaches and sentence-level contextual analysis.

“On the whole, I think the experience will prove to be invaluable to be as I move forward with the project and in my study of digital humanities,” she said. “I am so appreciative of the opportunity to attend and present.”

The Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, the College of Liberal Arts, the English department and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs sponsored Anthony’s travel to London.

Mathematics Student’s London Conference Presentation

Posted on: September 21st, 2013 by erabadie

Eleanor Anthony

by Caty Cambron, courtesy of the Daily Mississippian
September 20, 2013

In March, junior mathematics and philosophy major Eleanor Anthony traveled to Vercelli, Italy, and discovered what has become one of her life’s passions.

As part of the Lazarus Project, a group of people specializing in the multispectral imaging of cultural heritage pieces sponsored by the University of Mississippi, Anthony visited the Museo del Tesoro del Duomo.

It was here that Anthony first laid eyes on the Vercelli Book.

While studying the Vercelli Book and conducting spectral imaging on the book’s text, Anthony learned the importance of finding ways to successfully transcribe old data and manuscripts.

“For me, data and narrative has always been fascinating,” Anthony said. “As humans, we think in terms of narrative, and so much of what we do, as humans, is contributing a piece to a larger conversation.”

According to Anthony, going to Italy allowed her to see “a physical instantiation of that conversation that has existed since the 10th century.”

In July, Anthony submitted an abstract, a written summary of her own proposal for how transcription methods can be improved, to the DigiPal Symposium, hosted by the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London.

Her abstract was accepted, and she spent more than a month preparing before traveling to London to give her presentation.

“It serves as a testament that we’ve still got part of the conversation playing into what we’re talking about today,” Anthony said.

On Sept. 16 Anthony spoke for 20 minutes about a correlation and probabilistic-based approach to transcription methods of damaged manuscripts. Her presentation touched on the history of the Vercelli Book and the Archimedes Palimpsest, as well as the basic mathematics behind the system she hopes to extend and implement while addressing the current problems within the data being researched now by the Lazarus Project.

Anthony was the only undergraduate student speaker at the DigiPal Symposium while being among notable paleographers and scholars.

The Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, the College of Liberal Arts, the English department and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs sponsored Anthony to travel to London to present her abstract.

According to Anthony, her recent presentation serves as the primary research that will lead to the design and implementation for her capstone project and honors college thesis to be called “Archimedes’ Palimpsest to the Vercelli Book: Dual Correlation and Probabilistic Network Approaches to Paleography in Damaged Manuscripts.”

“If anything, I was given great advice about the improvements of my initial start that will be part of my final thesis,” Anthony said. “I’m really thankful for all the support I received.”

Anthony’s ultimate goal is to create a computer program that improves transcription methods through looking at the correlation of the word level and by looking at the cause and relationship of words at the sentence level.

Students Spent Spring Break Digitally Mapping Vercelli Manuscript

Posted on: April 3rd, 2013 by erabadie

Group visited Italy as part of UM’s Lazarus Project

The Lazarus Project team in Vercelli, Italy. Photo by Mary Stanton

Four University of Mississippi students recently traded sunshine and relaxation for ancient manuscripts and the chance of a lifetime.

The three sophomores and one freshman, all students in the university’s Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, spent spring break in Vercelli, Italy, digitally mapping a 10th century text called the Vercelli manuscript as part of the Ole Miss Lazarus Project. The medieval text is one of four major works of Old English writings and includes sermons and poems such as “Dream of the Rood.” The text was damaged by a 19th century attempt to use chemicals to make the faded text more legible, and the imaging the students performed will help restore some of that lost writing.

The team of young researchers and scholars are using multispectral images and ultraviolet light to study ancient manuscripts such as the Vercelli manuscript (10th century) and the Globe Map of Vercelli (late 12th century). Led by Gregory Heyworth, UM associate professor of English, the team photographs the manuscripts with a 50-megapixel camera, specially designed multispectral lights and filters, and specialized imaging software to recover portions of the text invisible to the naked eye.

“Working with these documents, it’s unreal,” said Leigh Anne Zook, a sophomore international studies and intelligence and security studies major from Huntsville, Ala. “These are priceless artifacts, and thinking of how few people have seen these, and the ones who have are experts in their fields, and me as a sophomore being able to work with these manuscripts – it’s not even a trade-off, it’s an absolutely wonderful experience.”

Other sophomores were Eleanor Anthony, a mathematics and philosophy major from Jackson, and Elizabeth Wicks, a French and pharmacy major from Ocean Springs. Freshman Meredith Oliver, a pharmacy major from Collierville, Tenn., also participated.

While in Italy, the students also were able to assist in imaging a 12th century map of the world, or mappamundi, one of only 12 in existence.

Previously, the Lazarus Project took students to Washington, D.C., where they examined a possible William Shakespeare signature, and to Dresden, Germany, where their efforts revealed writing in another unique medieval manuscript, “Les Eschéz d’Amour” (The Chess of Love), a long 14th century Middle French poem thought until recently to have been too badly damaged during World War II to be recovered.

Since its inception, the Lazarus Project has used its portable multispectral lab to analyze several documents, including the Skipwith Revolutionary War Letters, which were donated to Ole Miss by Kate Skipwith and Mary Skipwith Buie, great-granddaughters of Gen. Nathanael Greene; and the Wynn Faulkner Poetry Collection, 48 pages of early poetry written by William Faulkner between 1917 and 1925 that were donated by Leila Clark Wynn and Douglas C. Wynn.

For more information, visit the Lazarus Project.

Study in South Africa is ‘Life Changing’ for Liberal Arts Senior from Oxford

Posted on: November 28th, 2011 by erabadie No Comments

Alexandria Denton of Oxford, a senior at the University of Mississippi, is studying this semester in South Africa. She has had a lot of surprises since her arrival there in July but perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that she is in love with the country and its people.

“It’s hard to describe such a life-changing experience,” Denton said. “Africa has taught me more about myself than I could have ever imagined. It’s strange how being so far from home has shed so much light on my life. When I leave Africa in a few weeks, I know a piece of my heart will always be here.”

A member of UM’s Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, Denton is majoring in liberal studies in the College of Liberal Arts, with minors in English, psychology and religious studies. She is enrolled this semester at Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape of South Africa. Her courses, which count toward her UM degree, include history of South Africa, public theology and Learning for Sustainable Community Engagement. She lives in on-campus housing with South African and other international students.

Travel on weekends and fall break has broadened her world and brought new adventures, including whale watching in Hermanus and the Cape of Good Hope, and going on a
10-day camping safari throughout Botswana and Zimbabwe. (more…)

Fellowship Gives Humanities Students Taste of Doctors’ Real-World Ethical Dilemmas

Posted on: June 23rd, 2010 by erabadie No Comments

Two University of Mississippi humanities students are making the rounds at the University of Mississippi Medical Center this summer, observing both patients and physicians while getting an up-close look at emerging ethical issues in modern medicine.

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College of Liberal Arts Launches Environmental Studies Minor

Posted on: March 16th, 2009 by erabadie No Comments

With more people at UM becoming environmentally aware, it was just a matter of time before that awareness showed up in the curriculum. That day arrived in the fall of 2008, with the introduction of a new academic minor in environmental studies.

(more…)