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 The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state ...

Life

Ross Scaife was born to William and Sylvia Scaife in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1960, one of four children. He was married to Cathy Jane ''Edwards'' Scaife (1959-2018) and they had three sons, Lincoln (b. 1991), Adrian (b. 1994), and Russell (b. 1998). He died at home after a year-long fight against cancer.

Education and scholarship

He graduated in 1978 from the

Tilton School Tilton School is an independent, coeducational, college-preparatory school in Tilton, New Hampshire, serving students from 9th to 12th grade and postgraduate students. Founded in 1845, Tilton's student body in the 2021-22 academic year consisted ...

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...

and he read Classics and Philosophy at the

College of William and Mary The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III ...

. In 1985 he was awarded a

Fulbright Fellowship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

for a year of study at the

American School of Classical Studies at Athens , native_name_lang = Greek , image = American School of Classical Studies at Athens.jpg , image_size = , image_alt = , caption = The ASCSA main building as seen from Mount Lykavittos , latin_name = , other_name = , former_name = , m ...

, 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 The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

for his thesis on ''The Kypria and its early reception''.Se
obituary by Dot Porter
(cited with permission). He worked from 1991 to the time of his death at th
Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literature, and Cultures
of the

. His primary research and teaching interests were

ancient art Ancient art refers to the many types of art produced by the advanced cultures of ancient societies with some form of writing, such as those of ancient China, India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The art of pre-liter ...

and material culture, women and gender in Antiquity, as well as

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his for ...

and the

Greek historians Hellenic historiography (or Greek historiography) involves efforts made by Greeks to track and record historical events. By the 5th century BC, it became an integral part of ancient Greek literature and held a prestigious place in later Roman histo ...

. Scaife was best known for his pioneering work in the use of computer technology in humanities scholarship. He was the founding editor of th
Stoa Consortium for Electronic Publication in the Humanities
in 1997, which serves as an umbrella project for many projects in the Classics, such as

EpiDoc EpiDoc is an international community that produces guidelines and tools for encoding in TEI XML scholarly and educational editions of ancient documents, especially inscriptions and papyri. The EpiDoc Guidelines were originally proposed as a rec ...

, th
Suda on Line
Diotíma and th
Neo-Latin Colloquia
Ross Scaife was a co-creator of the latter three. A digital humanist, he was instrumental in setting up and driving the

Digital Classicist The Digital Classicist is a community of those interested in the application of digital humanities to the field of classics and to ancient world studies more generally. The project claims the twin aims of bringing together scholars and students w ...

, a partner project hosted at King's College London. 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 th
Suda on Line
of which he was a founding editor. Since 2005, he was the director of th
Collaboratory for Research in Computing for Humanities
at the

. His recent work included forging the collaboration that resulted in the high resolution

digital imaging Digital imaging or digital image acquisition is the creation of a digital representation of the visual characteristics of an object, such as a physical scene or the interior structure of an object. The term is often assumed to imply or include t ...

of the

Venetus A Venetus A is the more common name for the tenth century AD manuscript codex catalogued in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice as ''Codex Marcianus Graecus'' 454, now 822. Its name is Latin for "Venetian A." Venetus A is the most famous manuscript ...

, a 10th-century manuscript of the

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Odys ...

located at the

Biblioteca Marciana The Marciana Library or Library of Saint Mark ( it, italic=no, Biblioteca Marciana, but in historical documents commonly referred to as ) is a public library in Venice, Italy. It is one of the earliest surviving public libraries and repositori ...

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

, and also the NSF-funde
EDUCE project
for non-invasive, volumetric scanning technologies for virtually unwrapping and visualizing ancient

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...

scrolls. His work continues to be influential among scholars working in the field of open access and collaborative editing in Classics, with major projects citing his example and involvement in their inception and design.Successful bid for NEH funding fo
Pleiades Project
cites SOL and Scaife's input in editorial design of project (se
narrative.pdf

Selected 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), pp. 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

External links

*
An obituary by Dot PorterObituary in Lexington HeraldObituary in Kentucky Kernel
*
Collaboratory for Research in Computing for HumanitiesDigital ClassicistChanging the Center of Gravity
(audio of conference in Scaife's honor)
''Digital Medievalist'' 4 (2008)
(in honour of Ross Scaife)

(in honor of Ross Scaife) {{DEFAULTSORT:Scaife, Ross 1960 births 2008 deaths American classical scholars People from Fredericksburg, Virginia University of Kentucky faculty Deaths from cancer in Kentucky Tilton School alumni

Life

Education and scholarship

Selected publications

See also

Notes and references

External links