Ļć½¶Ö±²„prof to discuss āInformation Overload in the Roman Worldā
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.āA Ļć½¶Ö±²„ visiting assistant professor will speak next Tuesday [Sept. 26] about how Roman citizens juggled information overload in their era.
Scott DiGiulioās university presentation will explore the Roman practice of literary compilation and the techniques they developed to help navigate the quantity of available literature in their society. Titled āLiterary Compilation and the Challenges of Information OverloadĀ in the Roman World,ā the 4 p.m. event in the Coskrey Auditorium of Memorial Hall at Ļć½¶Ö±²„is free and open to all.
DiGiulio is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures.
āAt the height of the Roman Empire, readers had access to a vast amount of literature ā¦realistically too much for any one person to read,ā DiGiulio said. āAt the same time, being able to display oneās intimate knowledge with this deep literary tradition was [closely connected] to social status.ā
āReally, they suffered fromĀ a kind of information overload,ā DiGiulio said, āwhich is somewhat akin to our current abundance of writing thanks to media like the Internet.ā
The act of reading āmay seem simple, but there are so many ways to approach a text,ā said Julia Osman, incoming director for the Institute for the Humanities.
āThe Romans did not have the Internet. However, learned members of society had to digest and arrange a tremendous amount of information,ā Osman said.Ģż
One of the chief strategies for dealing with information overload in the ancient world was creating compilations of material. Ā These works āpreserve a lot of material for us that we wouldnāt otherwise have, but what is most interesting to me is thinking about why certain authors were excerpted and others werenāt,ā DiGiulio said.
āScottās work on Roman literary culture provides provocative new insights on literacy, education and different Roman intellectual elites,ā said Peter Corrigan, department head for CMLL.Ģż āThe late second century proved pivotal in many important social, cultural and political respects, and Scott is producing the kind of scholarship that will change our views on that era altogether.ā
Now in his second year at MSU, DiGiulio received a bachelorās degree from Harvard University in 2009 and a Ph.D. at Brown University in 2015, both in classics.
DiGiulio was a fellow for the Institute for the Humanities at Ļć½¶Ö±²„last year and is currently composing a book on the literary compilation āAttic Nightsā by Aulus Gellius. He has presented lectures on Gelliusā works and ideas at conferences across the U.S., as well as published articles on GelliusĀ and the intellectual culture of the Roman Empire.
Since 2014 DiGiulio has served as the project manager for the U.S. Epigraphy Project and was a member of the research team for the international project āVisible Words: Research and Training in Digital Contextual Epigraphyā until the projectās conclusion in 2016.
His lecture is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the Institute for the Humanities and the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures.
MSUās College of Arts and Sciences includes more than 5,000 students, 300 full-time faculty members, nine doctoral programs and 25 academic majors offered in 14 departments.ĢżComplete details about the College of Arts and Sciences may be found atĀ .
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