Ross Scaife

Allen Ross Scaife (born March 31 1960, Fredericksburg, Virginia - died March 15 2008, Lexington, Kentucky) was a Professor of Classics at the University of Kentucky.

Life

Ross Scaife was born to William and Sylvia Scaife in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1960, one of four children. He was married to Cathy Edwards Scaife and they had three sons, Lincoln (b. 1991 ), Adrian (b. 1994 ), and Russell (b. 1998 ).

Education and scholarship

He graduated in 1978 from the Tilton School in New Hampshire and he read Classics and Philosophy at the College of William and Mary. In 1985 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for a year of study at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece and in 1988 he participated in the summer program at the American Academy in Rome. He earned his PhD in 1990 from the University of Texas at Austin for his thesis on "The Kypria and its early reception". [See [http://www.stoa.org/?p=786 obituary by Dot Porter] (cited with permission).]

He worked from 1991 to the time of his death at the [http://www.as.uky.edu/academics/departments_programs/MCLLC/Pages/default.aspx Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literature, and Cultures] of the University of Kentucky. His primary research and teaching interests were ancient art and material culture, women and gender in Antiquity, as well as Aristophanes and the Greek historians.

Scaife was best known for his pioneering work in the use of computer technology in humanities scholarship. He was the founding editor of [http://www.stoa.org/ the Stoa Consortium for Electronic Publication in the Humanities] in 1997, which serves as an umbrella project for many projects in the Classics, such as the [http://www.stoa.org/sol/ Suda on Line] , [http://www.stoa.org/epidoc/gl/5/ EpiDoc] , [http://www.stoa.org/diotima/ Diotima] and the [http://www.stoa.org/colloquia/ Neo-Latin Colloquia] . Ross Scaife was a co-creator of the latter two.

A digital humanist, he was instrumental in setting up and driving the Digital Classicist, a partner project hosted at King's College London. [ [http://www.digitalclassicist.org Digital Classicist: index] ]

Scaife was dedicated to the principle of open access and he believed in the potential of technology to bring the highest levels of scholarship to the widest possible audience. He also believed in the power of collaborative work, and he was instrumental in building the framework behind projects, such as the [http://www.stoa.org/sol/ Suda on Line] , of which he was a founding editor.

Since 2005, he was the director of the [http://www.rch.uky.edu/ Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities] at the University of Kentucky. His recent work included forging the collaboration that resulted in the high resolution digital imaging of the Venetus A, a 10th century manuscript of the Iliad located at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, and also the [http://www.stoa.org/educe/ EDUCE project] for non-invasive, volumetric scanning technologies for virtually unwrapping and visualizing ancient papyrus scrolls.

elected publications

*Scaife, A.R., "Herodotus on the evolution of Lydia", UTexas M.A. Report 1983.
*Scaife, A.R., "The argument of III.84", "AAPhA" (1988), p. 25
*Scaife, A.R., "Accounts for taxes on beer and natron. P. Austin inv. 34", "ZPE" LXXI (1988), pp. 105-109
*Scaife, R., "Alexander i in the Histories of Herodot", "Hermes" CXVII (1989), pp. 129-137
*Scaife, A.R., "The Kypria and its Early Reception", UTexas Ph.D. Thesis 1990.
*Scaife, R., "From kottabos to war in Aristophanes' Acharnians", "GRBS" 33 (1992), pp. 25-35
*Scaife, A.R., "Ritual and persuasion in the house of Ischomachus", "CJ" 90.3 (1994-1995), pp. 225-232
*Scaife, R., "The Kypria and its early reception", "ClAnt" 14.1 (1995), pp. 164-191
*Scaife, R. & Bonefas S., "Diotima: materials for the study of women and gender in the ancient world" (1995-). Available http://www.stoa.org/diotima/
*Scaife, A.R., "Protagorean frames of reference in Thucydides", "AHB" 10.1 (1996) 31-37
*Scaife, R., Finkel, R., Hutton, W., Whitehead, D. "et al.", "Suda Online: Byzantine Lexicography" (1998-). Available http://www.stoa.org/sol/
*Scaife, R. & Porter, D., "Tools for Collaborative Editing" (2006). Available http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/OSCE_Scaife_Paper
*Scaife, R. "et al.", "Directions for the Future" (2007). Audio file available http://www.rch.uky.edu/CenterOfGravity/11_Scaife_future.mp3

Notes and references

ee also

*Digital Humanities
*Classics
*Digital Classicist
*University of Kentucky

External links

* [http://www.stoa.org/?p=786 An obituary by Dot Porter]
* [http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2008/032008/03182008/364256 Obituary in Fredericksburg Free Lance Star]
* [http://www.legacy.com/kentucky/Obituaries.asp?Page=Lifestory&PersonId=106152889 Obituary in Lexington Herald]
* [http://media.www.kykernel.com/media/storage/paper305/news/2008/03/20/CampusNews/Classics.Professor.Left.Impact.On.Friends.And.Academia.Dead.At.47-3276355.shtml Obituary in Kentucky Kernel]
* [http://www.uky.edu/~scaife/ Homepage at the University of Kentucky website]
* [http://www.rch.uky.edu/ Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities]
* [http://www.digitalclassicist.org/ Digital Classicist]
* [http://www.rch.uky.edu/CenterOfGravity/ Changing the Center of Gravity] (conference)