Archiving Andromache

Academic

Dr Miranda Stanyon
School of Culture and Communication

Intern

Dr Leila Alhagh
Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation

Project description

This internship developed the digital humanities strand of a larger ARC DECRA project ‘War-Widow, Mother, Slave, Refugee,’ which studies the reception of the Trojan woman Andromache in Romantic-era Europe. The project will include an open access database of appearances of Andromache, with a view to supporting future research and disseminating the project’s findings. How and why is Andromache deployed in Romantic-era culture? What makes her so appealing, and what might explain her later obscurity? The internship involved trialling and conceptualising the database’s methods, platforms and scope. It resulted in an Omeka site able to display and curate objects including from datasets harvested from online collections and archives across the world. The process of constructing the database, and facing practical questions of scope, selection, and sources, has helped to refine the project’s conceptualisation of Andromache, and of reception more broadly, as a subject necessarily comparative, intermedial and networked.