Experiencing the Immersive Global Middle Ages: A Workshop and Digital Lab

AHA Session 8
Thursday, January 4, 2024: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Yosemite B (Hilton Union Square, Ballroom)
Chair:
Roger Louis Martinez-Dávila, University of Colorado Colorado Springs
Panel:
Blair Apgar, independent researcher
Edward Holt, Grambling State University
Courtney Luckhardt, University of Southern Mississippi
Maureen McGuire, University of California, Santa Cruz
Elizabeth J. West, Georgia State University

Session Abstract

The National Endowment for the Humanities’ Immersive Global Middle Ages Institute presents a workshop and digital lab that will showcase virtual reality worlds and digital storytelling using Trimble’s SketchUp Pro. The workshop will briefly instruct scholars and students on a pragmatic process of creating geographically accurate, 3D medieval cityscapes that use digital layering of qualitative and quantitative data gathered from primary sources, maps and plans, and secondary studies. The workshop will present a research process, design approaches, virtual object creation, city-scale model prototyping, and public delivery of immersive experiences. Participants will visit with six scholars who will be demonstrating their immersive worlds. These worlds, experienced using personal computers and Oculus headsets, portray: the Santo Stefano religious complex in Bologna, women’s lives at the Church of St. Polyeuctus in Instanbul, the 15th century Temne community in West Africa at the moment of forced migration, medieval migrations in southern France (medieval Septimania) and northern Spain (medieval Catalonia), the 13th century Fernandine Churches (Iglesias fernandinas) as they memorialized the Christian recovery of Cordoba and Islamic al-Andalus, and daily interreligious (Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim) relations in the Jewish quarter of 15th century Plasencia, Spain.
See more of: AHA Sessions