Education:
Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2009
Contact:
Office: Cate 2, Room 336
Email: bill.endres@ou.edu
As a digital humanist, my principal research explores early medieval manuscripts. I study their mysteries and what can be learned by representing their materiality through digital technologies. Thus, my recently published book Digitizing Medieval Manuscripts: The St Chad Gospels, Materiality, Recoveries, and Representation in 2D & 3D.
To gain a quick sense of my book, brief responses to questions and extensions of key concepts are available in “Collecting Light: Q&A wit Bill Endres.”
My primary focus is the 8th-century St Chad Gospels, residing at Lichfield Cathedral, Lichfield, England. More generally, I work on manuscripts known as Insular, made in the British Isles from about 600-850 CE. I employ a number of advanced imaging techniques, including multispectral imaging (capturing light frequencies from ultraviolet to infrared) of the St Chad Gospels. I have returned to Lichfield multiple times, digitizing historical images to assess aging and capturing the manuscript’s play of light and dry-point writing (etched with a stylus but no ink and meant to go unnoticed) using reflectance transformation imaging (RTI). I have also captured 3D data for the manuscript’s pages and have renderings online and in a virtual reality system.
All of this research can be accessed and explored on my website: Manuscripts of Lichfield Cathedral. It includes Creative Common downloads for the St Chad Gospels and Lichfield Cathedral’s Wycliffe Bible.
Finally, I continue to pursue interests in poetry and rhetoric, both part of my academic background.
Digital methods inform much of my teaching. I teach a range of courses, focusing on digital composing, medieval manuscripts, poetry, and rhetoric (classical and visual).
Digitizing Medieval Manuscripts: The St Chad Gospels, Materiality, Recoveries, and Representation in 2D & 3D. Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2019.
"Oh Lord, make haste to help me: Prayer and Imagery Atop Canon Table II in the Book of Kells” in An Insular Odyssey: Manuscript Culture in Early Christian Ireland and Beyond, edited by Rachel Moss, Felicity O'Mahony, and Jane Maxwell. Dublin: Four Court Press, 2017, p. 213-230.
"A Literacy of Building: Making in the Digital Humanities" in Making Humanities Matters, Debates in the Digital Humanities Series, ed. Jentery Sayer (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2018, p. 44-54).
"The St. Chad Gospels: Ligatures and the Division of Hands," Manuscripta 59.2 ( 2015): 158-86.
"Imaging Sacred Artifacts: Ethics and the Digitizing of Lichfield Cathedral's St Chad Gospels," Journal of Religion, Media & Digital Culture 3:3 (December, 2014) 39-73.
"More than Meets the Eye: Going 3D with an Early Medieval Manuscript," Proceedings of the Digital Humanities Congress 2012, ed. Clare Mills, Michael Pidd and Esther Ward, University of Sheffield, March 2014.
"Sublime Complexities and Extensive Possibilities: Strategies for Building an Academic Birtual Reality System," DH 2019, Utrecht, Netherlands, July 9-12, 2019.
"Beyond Gaming: Virtual Reality for the Public Humanities," Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Institutes and Centers, Dublin, Ireland, June 19-23, 2019.
"Teaching Manuscripts in a New Light: A Traveling Virtual Reality Workstation," International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 9-12, 2019.
"Escaping the Limits of the Screen: Experiencing & Studying Manuscripts in Virtual Reality," Medieval Academy Annual Meeting, University of Pennsylvania, March 7-9, 2019.
“The Shock & Awe of Illuminated Manuscripts: History, Meaning, Aesthetics, & Digital Excesses,” Friends’ Lecture Series, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK, 28 Nov. 2018.
“A New Invite from the Digital: Materiality, Manuscripts & Designing VR,” Invited speaker, University of Glasgow, 25 Oct. 2018.
Long Live the Photostat Copy: Don’t Underestimate Past Photographic Efforts,” Invited speaker, University of Glasgow, 24 Oct. 2018.
$5000 Forum Grant Award, OU Humanities Forum, University of Oklahoma. Funding for building a traveling Virtual Reality Workstation for Experiencing and Studying Medieval Manuscripts (2018).
Junior Faculty Fellowship, University of Oklahoma. Summer support for book project: Digitizing Medieval Manuscripts: The St Chad Gospels, Materiality, Methods, and Representation in 2D and 3D and funding for travel to England to present at the International Medieval Congress (Leeds) and acquire further historical photographs of the St Chad Gospels (2017).
Grant for Advanced Imaging Technology (Reflectance Transformation Imaging), sponsored by the West Semitic Research Project, University of Southern California. Captured Lichfield Angel, medieval fresco, and selected pages of the St Chad Gospels (Lichfield Cathedral, Lichfield, England), early Christian stone carvings (Ireland), and medieval manuscripts and fragments (National Library of Wales), 2014.
