Personalia
Susanna de Beer, born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, in 1977. Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. Assistant Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Leiden University.
Fellow (1 September 2014 – 30 June 2015)
Mapping Humanist Visions of Rome. Sharing and Visualizing Poetic Appropriations of the Roman Physical and Literary Heritage
Research Question
My main goal is to design an internet database of humanist Latin literature about the city and symbol of Rome, that integrates information about these texts, with information retrieved from these texts, in such a way that this information can be shared, visualized and integrated with other digital applications about Rome.
Project Description
My research project focuses on humanist Latin literature about the city and symbol of Rome. It identifies poetic references to Roman topography, history and literature, and analyzes them as appropriations of the Roman heritage. Moreover it interprets the variety of images of Rome created by the humanists, by considering their different attitudes to both ancient and Renaissance Rome.
Apart from finishing a monograph on this topic, at NIAS I will design a pilot internet database to figuratively and literally map my data. The first purpose is to create a research collaboratory that stores and renders searchable valuable literary sources. A second purpose is to integrate these data with existing digital projects related to (Renaissance) Rome, and make them available both for interdisciplinary research and popular dissemination.
Selected Publications
1) The Poetics of Patronage. Poetry as Self-Advancement in Giannantonio Campano (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013)
2) ‘The World Upside Down. The Geographical Revolution in Humanist Commentaries on Pliny’s Natural History and Mela’s De situ orbis (1450-1700)’, in Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400-1700), ed. by K.A.E. Enenkel and H. Nellen. Humanistica Lovaniensia Supplementa (Leuven: Leuven UP, 2013), 139-97
3) With K.A.E. Enenkel and D. Rijser (Eds.), The Neo-Latin Epigram. A Learned and Witty Genre (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009)