Hour 25 is a vibrant intellectual community that studies and creates open source content associated with and inspired by Gregory Nagy’s work on ancient Greek heroes. Drawing on the massive open online content (MOOC) known as HeroesX and in a collaborative partnership with the Center for Hellenic Studies, Hour 25 offers readers and scholars access to an evolving, informed conversation about ancient Greek literature that is based upon close reading and thoughtful dialogue.
The Team uses a collaborative model and online tools to enable community-led study of ancient texts, and strives to document its progress and procedures openly. Through this experimentation, the Hour 25 Team hopes to develop new readings of ancient texts and new learning models that can be applied beyond this community to help redefine MOOCs and enhance online education.
Please follow this link for more information about the HeroesX project.
Introducing Comm_Dev: The Community Development Team
The Community Development Team includes approximately twenty active Hour 25 participants, CHS staff members, and members of the HeroesX Board of Readers. It is coordinated by the CHS Manager for Curricular and Community Development Claudia Filos and community leaders.
The Team collectively explores ways to enhance the experience for the whole of the Hour 25 community. The group is part of the greater circle that involves the entire Hour 25 community, and encourages a flow of ideas and communication.
Comm_Dev’s aim is to:
- nurture a civil, positive, and supportive environment, with emphases on both studying ancient texts and developing digital skills to create a welcoming community
- provide all participants with diverse opportunities for engagement whether fun, social, or academic
- work collaboratively on projects that can be shared with the Hour 25 community, such as engaging in word studies, collaborating on annotations, and producing tutorials on using research tools
- reach out to established and new scholars to discuss their work and ideas
- engage in different approaches to the texts, such as close readings and focus passages, fast reading of new texts, secondary sources, and Book Club gatherings
- encourage interaction between members of the community, through the Forums, chatrooms, video conferencing, and live events such as community readings, in a way that is supportive, friendly, and fun
Hour 25 projects
Special projects that are underway continue to develop the vision outlined by Professor Nagy. They include:
Content:
- development of a library of resources that is accessible for anyone to read or watch who has an interest in ancient Greek heroes, culture and texts
- Digital Philology Task Force (DPTF) that explores and develops opportunities to advance and make more universally available DP and Digital Humanities (“DH”): see the Learning Resources page
- “Heroization” Task Force (convert works to HeroesX format with keywords and other features that distinguish HeroesX translations), which started with Antigone
- growing content-rich series of blog posts, which the public can access without restrictions to learn about Ancient Greek literature, language, and many other topics related to the Ancient Greek Hero
- special word-study group projects that go beyond the translated word, such as the “wine-dark” (oinops) study
Conversation:
- Google+ Hangouts with Hour 25 participants that engage in dialogue on focus passages and texts, with Professors Nagy and Muellner and other resident scholars and staff associated with the Center for Hellenic Studies. Guests have included Glynnis Fawkes, Olga Levaniouk, Douglas Frame, Joel Christensen, Kevin McGrath, and Richard Martin (see the Scholars page for a full list)
- Hour 25 Book Club, which meets monthly by Google+ Hangout and in the Hour 25 Project Chatroom to discuss texts and secondary sources
- Reading group, which holds regular live Google+ events to discuss tragedies, some with visiting guest scholars
Community:
- Heroes Facebook page, Google+ Community, and Twitter
- Friday Café, which provides a weekly social discussion thread.
Would you like to become more involved?
The Team is continually seeking to involve new participants interested in advancing meaningful, civil discourse on topics relevant to the Ancient Greek Hero.
If you are interested in joining one of the projects or initiatives, contact any of the Comm_Dev team, or post in the Forums.