Harnessing digital tools to unlock the complexities of the "General e Grande Estoria"

Abstract

The General e grand estoria (GGE), a universal history commissioned by King Alfonso X in the 13th century, is a uniquely vast and rich resource, bringing together Christian, Muslim, and Jewish sources, as well as apocryphal and Classical ones, translated into the newly-evolving Castilian language. We maintain that only a wide-ranging, international and interdisciplinary team can unlock the complexities of this enormous, multicultural text, and that digital tools are essential for managing this collaborative work. “The Confluence of Religious Cultures in Medieval History” is a collaborative project to digitize, edit, annotate, and translate the text. We set out how the project offers a new partnership model, suite of digital tools, and experiential learning opportunities for emerging digital humanists and scholars of Spanish, English, French, Arabic, and Hebrew, and explore the possibilities opened by the digital to advance a coordinated global program of training and knowledge mobilization.