Project H
Bringing It All Together: Online Compendium and Handbook “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms”
Prof. Dr. Ronald G. Asch
Prof. Dr. Achim Aurnhammer
Prof. Dr. Anna Schreurs-Morét
Georg Feitscher
Jens Schneider
Laura Soldo
This project unites all the research results from the various projects and funding periods of the SFB 948. All SFB researchers will collaborate to develop an online compendium of detailed but comparatively short encyclopedic entries on various subjects. After this is completed, the project will turn to the production of a handbook titled »Helden – Heroisierungen – Heroismen« ("Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms"), which will contain summaries of research results in the form of detailed essays. Together, this online compendium and complementary handbook will provide information and analyses of the social significance, semantics and mediality of the heroic, from antiquity to the 21st century. These resources will also offer multi-disciplinary perspectives, define the meaning of heroic figures in society and demonstrate in what ways a heroic habitus affects the identity of a specific group, community or society as a whole. This project will focus specifically on enhancing the visibility of the research activities of the SFB 948 as well as on guaranteeing access to these materials for future use.
The encyclopedic entries in the online compendium will cover heroic themes relating to the team's ongoing collaborative research. These will include entries about the themes of heroization (the heroic act, becoming charismatic, deheroization), models of heroism and their specific characteristics (war hero, everyday hero, national hero, military hero) and heroization (imitatio heroica, community admiration, imitation). Although the essays in the handbook will be based on the compendium, they will provide additional insights, such as source or research-based case studies and specific research objectives, while also offering a discursive frame of reference for describing specific aspects that are important for understanding each historical period being studied.
The production and publication of this project are an example of the digital humanities. Authors predominantly from the SFB who represent various fields of study will collaborate to produce the compendium entries and handbook essays, reflecting a variety of discursive perspectives. Collaborative tools will also be at hand to facilitate team-oriented discussion, comments and revisions. The format of this project means that the compendium entries will be published on the online platform www.compendium-heroicum.de, where they can be continually edited, thus making research in the SFB open and transparent as a work in progress. The discursive summaries in essay form, on the other hand, will published both electronically as well as in print in order to allow for more comfortable reading of the longer texts.