18.070 New Director of IATH

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 70.
      Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                  www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                       www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                    Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

        Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 11:31:27 -0300
        From: John Unsworth <unsworth_at_uiuc.edu>
        Subject: New Director at IATH

NEW DIRECTOR SELECTED FOR IATH

The [University of Virginia] Vice President and Provost has appointed
Bernard Frischer as the new Director of UVA's Institute for Advanced
Technology in the Humanities, beginning in the Fall term 2004. He will
also
join the faculty as Professor of Classics and Art History.

"It is an honor and challenge to be chosen to succeed John Unsworth, the
first Director of IATH," says Frischer. "Under John's leadership, IATH
established itself as the premier research center in the United States
for
digital humanities. It is my hope to build on the achievements of the
past
by helping to make digital humanities a sustainable and integral
approach
to humanistic research both at Virginia and at other major universities
around the world."

Professor Frischer is a leading scholar in the application of digital
technologies to humanities research and education. He is the founder and
director of the Cultural Virtual Reality Lab at UCLA, which uses
three-dimensional computer modeling to reconstruct cultural heritage
sites.
Frischer has overseen many significant projects, including virtual
recreations of the Roman Colosseum and the Roman Forum. The works of
Frischer and the Lab have received international acclaim and have been
featured on the Discovery Channel and in Newsweek and the New York
Times.

"I am drawn to virtual reality technology because it strikes me as a
highly
effective way to help students and scholars visualize and understand
complex lost worlds such as ancient Rome," says Frischer. "In the
twenty-first century, real-time 3D-computer models of cultural heritage
sites will become as common in history, art history, archaeology, and
classics classrooms as two-dimensional 35 mm slides were in the
twentieth."

Frischer's research career reflects his interest in interdisciplinary
approaches, and has included studies in the literature, philosophy, art
history and archeology of Greece and Rome. He is the author of four
books,
including Shifting Paradigms: New Approaches to Horace's Ars Poetica,
and
The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment. Since
1997,
Frischer has directed the excavations of Horace's Villa, a project
sponsored by the American Academy in Rome and the Archeological
Superintendency for Lazio of the Italian Ministry of Culture, which
will be
the subject of his next book.

Professor Frischer has been a faculty member in Classics at UCLA since
1976, and served as Chair of that department from 1984 to 1988. He
received
his BA in Classics from Wesleyan University in 1971, and his Ph.D. in
Classical Philology from the University of Heidelberg in 1975. His
numerous
awards and honors include appointments as the Loeb Classical Research
Fellow, the Paul Mellon Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study
in
the Visual Arts of the National Gallery, and a Fellow of the American
Academy in Rome.

Frischer's spouse, Jane Crawford, has also been appointed as a
Professor to
the UVA Classics Department. She comes from Loyola Marymount University,
where she currently serves as Chair of the Department of Classics and
Archaeology.
Received on Sat Jun 19 2004 - 11:06:47 EDT