Crystal Hall

Books

• 

  Galileo' Library: Data, Methods, and the Humanities.

• Galileo’s The Assayer: A Digital Humanities Translation. Introduction and Italian translation by Crystal Hall. Latin translations by Daniel Smith and Tim Dooley. In preparation.

• Galileo’s Reading. Cambridge University Press, December 2013. vi+250pp. Reviewed by Erminia Ardissino. Renaissance Quarterly 68.1 (2015): 268-70.

Edited Volume

• With Birgit Tautz. German and European Cultural Histories 1760-1830: Between Network and Narrative. 11 chapters, plus co-authored critical introduction (9,700 words) and epilogue (2,600 words). Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment. Liverpool University Press. 2024.

Digital Humanities Projects

• Manifold site and graphical index for German and European Cultural Histories 1760-1830: Between Network and Narrative. Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment. Liverpool University Press. 2024. https://liverpooluniversitypress.manifoldapp.org/projects/german-and-european-cultural-histories

• With John Alamanza '23, Yordana Gerdzhikova '23, Lorenzo Hess '23, Bram Hollis '23, and Jack Olcott '23. Digital Humanists' Orlando furioso. https://sites.google.com/bowdoin.edu/digital-furioso

  • Reviewed by Caterina Agostini in Reviews in Digital Humanities. https://reviewsindh.pubpub.org/pub/digital-humanists-orlando-furioso/release/1

• With Matt Donnelly, '22. Galileo's Virtual Library. Alpha prototype completed October 2022.

• With Richard Ohia, '24. Visualizing Galileo's The Assayer. https://richard-ohia.github.io/Galileo-Visualized/index.html Accompanies the translation and critical edition.

• Galileo's Library: TEI Editions. 30 titles. http://www.tapasproject.org/tapas-commons/galileos-library-tei-editions

• Annotated Syntax for Seventeenth Century Italian. 2.5 million words.

• Lisa Botshon (University of Maine, Augusta), PI. "Maine's Mid-Century Moment." DH consultant on data creation, network analysis, and spatial representation.

• With Hannah Marcus (Harvard). GaLiLeO Lab: Galileo's Library and Letters Online. I created 15 analytical tools written in R, developed a full text corpus of correspondence, and integrated both with Marcus' metadata. Prototype demonstrated 2018.

• Early Modern Italian Corpus. 437 documents, 19.2 million words. Sourced from Biblioteca Italiana and Early English Books Online. 2017.

• "Data Set for North American Colleges and Universities with Italian and Digital Humanities Programs." September 13, 2016. https://digitalcollections.bowdoin.edu/view/1080 

• Galileo's Library 1.0. 2015. http://research.bowdoin.edu/galileos-library

Translations

• Selected Letters of Vernon Lee, 6 vols. Eds. Mandy Gagel and Sophie Geoffroy. Italian transcriptions and translations by Crystal Hall. Routledge. Vol. 1, 1856-1885. 2016. Vol. 2, 1886-1890. 2020. Vol. 3, 1890-1896. 2023. Vol. 4 in development.

Book Chapters

• "An Eighteenth-Century American Library in its European, Material Context," in German and European Cultural Histories 1760-1830: Between Network and Narrative, eds. Birgit Tautz and Crystal Hall. Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment. Liverpool University Press. 6800 words.

• “Computational Parallax as Humanistic Digital Inquiry” in Debates in Digital Humanities: Computational Humanities, eds. Jessica Marie Johnson, David Mimno, and Lauren Tilton. University of Minnesota Press. 2024. 4500 words.

• "Astronomy and Print Networks in Galileo's Library" in The Changing Shape of Digital Early Modern Studies, eds. Randa el-Khatib and Caroline Winters. Toronto and New York: Iter Press (distributed by University of Chicago Press). 2024. 8400 words.

• “Crafting Early Modern Readers: Galileo and His Interlocutors.” Invited chapter for The Palgrave Handbook of Early Modern Literature, Science, and Culture, eds. Howard Marchitello and Evelyn Tribble. New York: Palgrave, 2017. Pp. 139-158.

Peer-Reviwed Articles

• With Jenna Albanese '24, Caity Berry '23, and Bram Hollis '24. "Style, Computation, and Galileo's Book of Nature." In preparation.

• "The Text Analysis Prototype for GaLiLeO: Galileo's Library and Letters Online." Under review.

• "Attribution, Imposture, and Interpretation: Galileo and the Digitized Il dispregio della corte (1601)." Renaissance Quarterly. 77.3 (2024). In press. 15,000 words.

• "Literature in Galileo's Library." Galilaeana. 21.1 (2024): 7-34. doi: 10.57617/gal-39 11,600 words.

• With Lauren Tilton and Griffin Ng '22. "What Counts? Digital Humanities Pedagogy Seminars as Teaching." Digital Humanities Quarterly. 17.4 (2023) 8,300 words. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/17/4/000721/000721.html

• With Hannah Marcus. "Shattering crystal with crystal: Galileo’s rhetoric, lenses, and the epistemology of metaphor." History of Science. Online first October 2021. 61.2 (2023): 179-213. 16,500 words. https://doi.org/10.1177/00732753211041858

• With Eric Chown and Fernando Nascimento. "A Critical, Analytical Framework for the Digital Machine” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 46.2 (2021): 458-76. 8,500 words. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2020.1865659

• "Small Teaching, Digital Humanities, and the Italian Renaissance." Italian Language and Culture Conference: Challenges in the 21st Century Italian Classroom. 1 (2020): 89-103. 5,000 words. http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1060512 

• With Erik Peterson. "'What is Dead May Not Die': What if the Mechanism/Vitalism debate never truly ended?" Journal of the History of Biology. 2020. 15,100 words. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-020-09618-1

• "Digital Humanities and Italian Studies: Intersections and Oppositions." Italian Culture 37.2 (2020): 97-115. 9,000 words. https://doi.org/10.1080/01614622.2019.1717754

• "Galileo's Library at the Intersection of Digital Humanities and Italian Studies." Italian Culture 37.2 (2020): 159-166. 2,900 words. https://doi.org/10.1080/01614622.2019.1717788

• "Galileo's Ariosto: The Value of a Mixed Methods Approach to Literary Analysis," Humanist Studies and the Digital Age. 5.1 (2017): 96-107. 5,150 words. http://dx.doi.org/10.7264/N3C24TVQ

• With Margaret Boyle. "Teaching Don Quixote in the Digital Age: Page and Screen, Visual and Tactile." Hispania.  99.4 (2016): 600-614.

• “Galileo’s Library Reconsidered,” Galilaeana, XII (2015): 25-78.

• 

  With Pamela Fletcher. "Digital Humanities and the Common Good." Maine Policy Review Special Issue: The Humanities. 24.1 (2015): 124-131.

• With Stefano Vincieri. “‘Isolated from any village’: Vernon Lee’s Florence and Villa il Palmerino.” Cosmopolitan Florence: The Legacy of Nineteenth-Century Travelers, eds. Sirpa Salenius and Elise Ciregna, special issue of Open Inquiry Archive 3.1 (2014). Web. 7,000 words.

• “The Poetic Value of Galileo: Giulio Strozzi’s Venetia edificata (1624) and the Myth of Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 66.4 (2013): 1296-1331.

• “Orlando furioso: The Board Game” SMART: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 20 (2013): 51-66.

• “Vasari and Renaissance Book Culture.” SMA Register VIII.3 part 1. July 1, 2010-June 30, 2011. (2012): 58-87.

• “Galileo’s Rhetoric of Fables.” Quaderni d’Italianistica XXXI.2 (2010): 91-112.

• Mogues, T., M. Etzerodt, C. Hall, G. Engelich, J.H. Graversen, K.L. Hartshorn. “Tetranectin Binds to the Kringle 1-4 Form of Angiostatin and Modifies Its Functional Activity.” Journal of Biomedical Biotechnology. 2 (2004): 73-78.

Reviews

• "Ferrando, Serena. The Navigli Project. ArcGIS.com, 2022." Forum Italicum. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1177/00145858231161639

• “Ferraro, Ginestra. Dante Visualized.” Reviews in Digital Humanities 2.12 (2021). https://doi.org/10.21428/3e88f64f.7b47d8a1

• "Magni, Isabella, Lia Markey, and Maddalena Signorini. Italian Paleography." Early Modern Digital Reviews. 3.3 (2020). Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 43.3 (2020): 263-266. https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v43i3.35315

• "Ray, Meredith K. Daughters of Alchemy. Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2015.)" Forum Italicum. 51.3 (2017): 827-829.

• "Nick Wilding. Galileo's Idol: Giovanbattista Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.)" American Historical Review. 121.1 (2016): 324-325.

• “Maurice A. Finocchiaro, The Routledge Guidebook to Galileo’s Dialogue (London: Routledge, 2014).” Isis 106.1 (2015): 182-3. Invited review.

• “Tommaso Campanella, Selected Philosophical Poems of Tommaso Campanella. A Bilingual Edition, ed., trans. and annotations by Sherry Roush (University of Chicago Press, 2011).” Annali d’italianistica 31 (2013): 652-654.

• “Mark Peterson, Galileo’s Muse (Harvard, 2011).” Sixteenth Century Journal XLIII.4 (2012): 1201-1203.

• "Galileo's Virtual Library." Renaissance Society of America 2024 Conference. Chicago, IL. March 21-23, 2024.

• "Unediting Galileo." Experiments in Friendship:  Galileo's Correspondence. Stanford University. February 2024. Invited lecture.

• “Overcoming the Language Barrier in Multilingualism.” Modern Language Association 2022 Conference. January 9, 2022. Online.

• "Italian-English Inflections and Prospections I and II" Roundtable participant. American Literary Translators Association. ALTA44 Conference. October 16-17, 2022. Online.

• "Uncertainty in Galileo's Library." Modern Language Association Virtual 2021 Conference. January 8, 2021.

• "Galileo's Renaissance: Archives, Databases, and Methods in the Twenty-First Century." Renaissance Society of America, April 2-4, 2020.

• "Small Teaching, Digital Humanities, and the Italian Renaissance." Georgetown Italian Languages & Literatures Conference: Challenges in the 21st Century Italian Classroom. October 26, 2019.

• With Jack Gieseking. "In Her/His/Their Words: Topic Modelling Trans Tumblr" HASTAC 2019. University of British Columbia, Vancouver. May 16-18, 2019.

• "Galileo and A Humanistic Imperative for Computation." Faculty Seminar. Bowdoin College. December 6, 2018.

• "The Language Learner in the Computer." Keynote address for Northeast Association of Language Learning Technology. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. March 2-4, 2018.

• "Astronomy and Early Modern Print Networks in Galileo's Library." Modern Language Association Conference, New York, NY. January 4-7, 2018.

• "Lesson's from Galileo's Library." Invited Lecture for the Wellesley College Blended Learning Initiative and Digital Humanities Series, Wellesley, MA. November 7, 2017.

• "Computing Galileo's Library: The Humanities' Role in Shaping Computation." Invited lecture for the University of Bucharest Digital Humanities Colloquium. Bucharest, Romania. November 2, 2017.

• “Galileo’s Database.” American Association of Italian Studies Annual Conference, April 20-22, 2017. Columbus, Ohio.

• “Lunch and Learn: Digital Humanities in the Bowdoin Archives.” March 30, 2017.
  “Roundtable on Digital Humanities and Italian Studies.” Session presider. MLA. Philadelphia,
  PA. January 6, 2016.
• “Digital Humanities and Italian Studies: Intersections and Oppositions.” Invited contribution
  to the State of the Discipline Conference. Wellesley College. October 1, 2016.
• "Galileo's Library as Early Modern Database." Invited lecture at Stanford University. April
  22, 2016.
• "R. Luke Dubois and Digital Humanities." Invited gallery talk at Bowdoin Museum of Art.
  April 19, 2016.
• "Computing Galileo." Accepted for Renaissance Society of America Conference. New
  Technologies and Renaissance Studies Group. Boston, MA. March 31-April 2, 2016.
• "Computational Italian Cinema?" Italian Cinema in the Present Tense: A Seminar in Honor of
  Millicent Marcus. Franklin and Marshall College. Lancaster, PA. Nov. 13-14, 2015.
• "A Digital Humanist in Special Collections." Invited presentation for Oberlin17 Special Collections Unconference. Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME. June 3, 2015.
• "Galileo's Library and Network Analysis." Digitorium Digital Humanities and Early Modern Studies Colloquium. University of Alabama. Tuscaloosa, AL. April 9-11, 2015.
• "Distant Reading Italian Literature and Film at a Liberal Arts College." American Association of Italian Studies annual conference. Boulder, CO. March 26-28, 2015.
• "Early Modern Italian Astronomy in Print." Science before Science. Medieval and Early Modern Studies Symposium. Bowdoin College. February 25-26, 2015.
• "Galileo's Library and the Computational Lens," invited paper for Celebrating the 450th Anniversary of the Birth of Galileo Galilei, Stony Brook University Center for Italian Studies and Simons Center for Geometry and Physics. October 17, 2014.
• “Margherita Costa’s Flora feconda from ‘poema’ to ‘drama musicale’,” invited paper at Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference. New York, NY. March 27-29, 2014.
•  “Galileo, Dante, and the Authority of the Italian Language,” invited talk at Princeton University’s Humanities Seminar, March 11, 2014.
• “How to Read Like Galileo,” invited talk at Franklin & Marshall College. Lancaster, PA. February 13, 2014.
• “What Can Galileo Teach Us About Digital Humanities?” Computational and Liberal Arts Paper Series, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME. November 2013.
• “Faith in Galileo’s Library,” Galileo: Faith, Science and the Arts International Conference, St. Michael’s College at University of Toronto. October 3-4, 2013.
• “Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in Galileo’s Library,” Mid-America Medievalist Association Annual Conference. Kansas City, MO. April 21, 2013.
• “Margherita Costa in Galileo’s Library,” American Association of Italian Studies 2013 Conference in Eugene, OR. April 11-14, 2013.
• “Galileo’s Monks,” invited paper for “The Monk, the Priest, the Nun” conference at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. March 22-23, 2013.
• “Vasari and the Art of Books,” invited gallery talk at the Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS. November 6, 2012.
• “Vasari and the Art of Books,” session at the European Renaissance Free Teacher Workshop, Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS. October 20, 2012.
• “Decameron VI in the Digital Humanities Classroom,” KU Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities THAT Camp Workshop, Lawrence, KS. September 20, 2012.
• “Digital Humanities in the Classroom,” KU Teaching Summit 2012, Lawrence, KS, August 16, 2012.
• “Painting with Printed Words: Vasari and Late-Renaissance Florentine Book Culture,” Sixteenth Century Society Conference, Dallas-Fort Worth, TX, October 27-30, 2011.
• “Roundtable: Teaching the ‘Introduction to Italian Literature’ Course,” panel organizer. For AAIS (American Association of Italian Studies) 2011 Conference in Pittsburgh, PA, April 7-9, 2011.
•  “Galileo’s Poetic Insults to Philosophers” American Association of Italian Studies 2011 Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April 7-9, 2011.
• “Galileo Galilei, Venetian Hero in the Time of Attila the Hun?” American Association of Italian Studies 2010 Conference, Ann Arbor, Michigan, April 22-25, 2010.
• “Galileo’s Short Stories,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada, April 7-10, 2010.
• “Galileo’s Voices of Fiction as Vehicles of Truth,” invited speaker for Humanities and Western Civilization seminar, University of Kansas, December 7, 2009.
• “Footnotes to Satire as Footsteps of Enlightenment Science: Francesco Stelluti’s Persio sciolto (1623),” Mediterranean Studies Conference, Cagliari, Sardegna, May 27-30, 2009.
• “Galileo’s Lesson to Don Quijote,” Early Modern Seminar, Hall Center, University of Kansas, April 6, 2009.
•  “Aristotle Meets Aesop and Boccaccio in the Margins of Galileo’s Library,”  Newcastle University’s Early Modern Reading Conference, “The Early Modern Reader,” Newcastle, England, April 12, 2008.
• “The Myth of Galileo,” talk presented to the Penn-in-Florence program, Palazzo Cerchi, Florence, Italy, July 3, 2007.
• Working Papers Electronic Roundtable “Rated R(epresentation): Violence in Romance Literatures and Cultures,” University of Pennsylvania, Graduate Romanic Association, May 2007, 
• “In cerca di interlocutrice: Science and Poetry in the Case of Laura Bassi,” paper presented at the University of Chicago, Graduate Division of Italian Conference  “Scientifica-mente,” Chicago, Illinois, Feb. 26, 2006.
• “Once Upon a Time in the Scientific Revolution: The Fiction of Galileo in Il saggiatore,” paper presented at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate Romanic Association Annual Colloquium, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 20, 2004.

DCS 1020 "How to Read 1,000,000 Books"
Confronts the challenges of having too many things to read and limited attention spans to persuade someone that a written interpretation is valid. Explores different methods of reading (i.e. close, surface, text mining, thematic) at different scales, from 1 book to millions of data points from Bowdoin's library collections. Activities evaluate both the process and rationale for different reading and writing methods. Assumes no knowledge of programming.

DCS 1100 "Introduction to Digital and Computational Studies"
Examines the impact of digital artifacts, networked interaction, and computational analysis on the ways in which we establish new knowledge, engage in creative and social practices, and understand the self. Studies how the combination of large-scale digital data and computational modeling methods shape our agency as decision-makers. Emphasis on how the Liberal Arts shape and are shaped by these processes. Coursework includes quantitative analysis, machine learning, text and network analysis, critical readings in the field, and short, exploratory projects. Assumes no knowledge of programming or any software that will be used.

DCS 1200 "Data Driven Societies"
What sorts of questions can and should be answered using digital and computational methods? How can such methods in conjunction with data can reveal new insights and questions about the world? How do we construct models to help us better understand social phenomena? Covers topics such as data gathering, validation, analysis, and presentation, as well as statistics and programming. Provides substantive experience in digital and computational methods, and a critical lens for understanding and evaluating what computers can (and cannot) bring to the study of our world.

DCS/ITAL/URBS 2100 "Digital Florence"
Asks what a digital representation of a city could and should be, particularly in a moment when travel is limited, using Florence, Italy as a case study. Examines digital image, text, and spatial data about the city, juxtaposing it against non-digital primary sources, secondary critical readings, reflections on experiences of urban and other spaces, and data that we will create in class. Emphasizes shifting definitions across time, language, and digital artifacts of what and who is Florentine in these representations. Coursework happens in three phases: going “under the hood” of the popular digital artifacts that provide an experience of Florence in order to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of representation; expanding our definition of Digital Florence to find local perspectives on what the essential features of the city could be; and proposing a digital intervention that better reflects the values we have identified throughout the semester. Assumes no programming knowledge. Taught in English.

DCS/ENVS 2331 "The Nature of Data: Introduction to Environmental Analysis"
Examines emerging digital techniques in environmental management and analysis within government, academic, and media sectors. Provides an overview of social science methods including analysis of qualitative data, text analysis, spatial analysis, survey design and analysis, and social network analysis. Topics include collaborative resource management, leveraging the power of social networks, spatial analysis, social-ecological system management, the role of volunteered information and citizen science, and expanding capacities for adaptation and resilience. Labs as part of class time provide students exposure to standard software programs used in social science research, including NVivo, ArcGIS, and Gephi and introduce the basics of R as a programming language for text analysis, and spatial analysis.

DCS 2401 "Gateway to the Digital Humanities"
How do the liberal arts compute? 
Explore the possibilities of using exciting new tools for text analysis, network analysis, spatial analysis and image analysis. Work with data that faculty across campus are using in their own research and teaching projects.  See how digital mapping can change the way we understand the history of racial identities in the U.S. Use computational text analysis to contextualize and evaluate the ways female authors express themselves within a masculine canon of literature. Apply network studies to the plots of English and foreign novels. Combine all of these approaches to gain a deeper understanding of the questions and methods being used in the humanities today. What sorts of new questions can be asked and answered using computational tools? 

These topics will be explored in class through a series of projects. Weekly labs will provide hands-on experience with the concepts and tools presented in class, and will give students the opportunity to work on their own projects. Assumes no prior knowledge of computers, programming, or statistics. Fulfills MCSR distribution requirement.

DCS 2610 "The Rhetoric of Big Data: Copernicus to Climate Change"
How did early modern intellectuals amass enough data to feel confident that the earth rotated around the sun? How did they write about their data (texts, diagrams, measurements, and calculations) in order to eventually convince a larger audience that the Copernican hypothesis of heliocentrism was valid even though the sun appears to move in the sky? Examines the literary, artistic, religious, political, economic, and scientific context of these questions by introducing and using large-scale digital textual analysis, network visualization, mapping, and computation. Defines a set of parameters for analyzing other famous cases of big data reshaping worldviews.

DCS 3998 and 3999: Capstone Design and Implementation

Guided independent implementation of the DCS senior coordinate major project. Concentrates on contextualization of methods and results, articulation of critical analysis, evaluation of possible project expansion or next steps, and presentation of the final outcome(s). Assigned readings will focus on interdisciplinary research models; weekly activities will engage with the scholarly communities represented by the project; and project components will have an opportunity for peer review throughout the semester.

ITAL 1101 "Elementary Italian I"
Study of the basic forms, structures, and vocabulary. Emphasis on listening comprehension and spoken Italian.

ITAL 2305 "Elementary Italian I"
Strengthens fluency in reading, writing, and speaking through an introduction to contemporary Italian society and culture. An advanced grammar review is paired with a variety of journalistic and literary texts, visual media, and a novel. Conducted in Italian.

ITAL 3011 "Digital Renaissance"

Examines the digitization of Renaissance Italy (spanning the years 1350-1650). Studies how the medium of a work impacts its interpretation and how digital humanities tools can reveal how new knowledge and creative practices developed in this rich period of innovation and experimentation. Emphasis on the unlikely genre partners in the dissemination of ideas in the period: comedy, correspondence, epic poetry, and natural science treatises. Materials include primary source texts in Italian and digital projects. Assumes no knowledge of programming or any software that will be used. Taught in Italian.

• With Eric Chown and Fernando Nascimento. "Voyant for Text Analysis" workshop for faculty, April 5, 2019. Bowdoin College.
• With Eric Chown and Fernando Nascimento. "Computational Text Analysis" short course for faculty, Jan. 14-16, 2019. Bowdoin College.
• With Lauren Tilton. "Digital Humanities Pedagogy Seminar" for faculty, Aug. 20-21, 2018. University of Richmond.
• With Eric Chown and Pamela Fletcher, "Digital Humanities@Bowdoin: A Short Course for Faculty," January 2013. Bowdoin College.

Data & Society

HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory

AIUCD: Associazione per l'Informatica Umanistica e la Cultura Digitale

Galileo Museum, Florence, Italy

Intratext Digital Library

Internet Culturale, Digital Collections of Italian Libraries