Digital Humanities in the Context of Slavic Studies: Showcasing Innovative Analysis of Primary Texts, Archival Data and Physical Objects

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores the transformative role of digital methodologies in historical and archaeological research, focusing on computational techniques for analyzing textual, archival, and material culture data. By leveraging network analysis, database-driven visualization, and 3D modeling, the panelists demonstrate how digital tools refine our understanding of historical narratives, intellectual networks, and cultural transformations. The first paper examines early Western European texts on Ivan the Terrible’s Oprichnina through the database tool Nodegoat, revealing intertextual entanglements and the reconfiguration of historical motifs. The second paper presents a unified open-source workflow integrating OCR / HTR technology (Tesseract), metadata categorization (Zotero, Arkindex), and graph visualization techniques (Nodegoat, Gephi) to analyze archival documents on G. V. Vernadsky and the Cold War-era reception of Eurasianism in the research of Old Russian history. The third paper applies 3D modeling and statistical analysis to the study of Prague-type pottery, using the MeshSection Toolset and Blender-based visualization to uncover patterns of early Slavic production and distribution of material objects. Together, these papers highlight the increasing sophistication of digital humanities methodologies and their potential to advance and enrich the historiographic, archival, and archaeological scholarship.

Sub Unit

• Digital Humanities

Chair

• Jennifer B. Spock, Eastern Kentucky U

Papers

• Oprichnina Hyperlinks: The Visualization of Relationships within the Earliest West European Oprichnina Texts: Schlichting, Staden, Guagnini, and Beyond - Cornelia Soldat, U of Cologne (Germany)

• Creating a Unified Technical Workflow for Archival Data Analysis: Lessons Learned from the Case Study on G. V. Vernadsky - Michal Racyn, Masaryk U (Czech Republic)

• Virtual Slices of the Past: Digital Analysis of Early Medieval Slavic Pottery - Martin Kostal, Masaryk U (Czech Republic)

Discussants

• Seth Bernstein, U of Florida

• Donald Ostrowski, Harvard U