{"id":2,"date":"2025-03-21T16:18:41","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T16:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.jcmeister.de\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2025-11-18T18:01:31","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T18:01:31","slug":"vita-activa","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/?page_id=2","title":{"rendered":"vita activa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My vita activa <\/em> as an academic began in the early 1980s. I had started out as a scholar of modern German literature when research for my doctoral thesis sparked a particular interest in narrative theory. With this my focus shifted from interpreting specific literary texts in terms of their meaning to a more form and theory oriented approach: how are those representations which we commonly identify as a narrative <\/em>constructed, and what is it that makes something work as <\/em>a narrative across media and languages? This question is at the core of a discipline called Narratology<\/em>, the “science of narrative”<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after I began to explore how one might look at narratives through the ‘lense’ of a computer – a novel approach called Humanities Computing<\/em>. This methodology experienced a boost when PCs became readily available in the mid 1980s. The use of computational models and machines to analyse symbolic artefacts – texts, languages, images, music, indeed anything of interest to a humanities scholar – is nowadays termed DH<\/em>, short for Digital Humanities<\/em>. The intersection of DH and Narratology (also termed Computational Narratology<\/a><\/em>) fascinated me, and this interdisciplinary field became my intellectual home until retirement in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Detailed information on my research projects and teams, a full CV and a list of publications are available on the archived version of my academic website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Welcome address at the DH 2012<\/em> International Conference<\/a> \/ Universit\u00e4t Hamburg 17 July 2012<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do I miss my vita activa<\/em>? No — but I do look back on this phase of life with gratitude. It was fulfilling and stimulating, and not just on a cognitive level: for what I particularly enjoyed were the enriching encounters with students and colleagues. Across cultures and disciplines we shared a deep curiosity in how one might bridge the gap between the universal domain of the abstract – forms, numbers, algorithms – and the indivualistic domain of meaning, that is, the realm of our very own human perception, cognition, belief and emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Romantic at heart, I believe that the two experiences go hand in hand, and that one is there to question and enrich the other — just as my vita activa is now <\/em>being questioned and enriched by contemplation and reflection, the true passions of vita contemplativa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PS: But don’t worry; still nothing wrong with enjoying life as it comes — gaya scienza!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My vita activa as an academic began in the early 1980s. I had started out as a scholar of modern German literature when research for my doctoral thesis sparked a particular interest in narrative theory. With this my focus shifted from interpreting specific literary texts in terms of their meaning to a more form and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":361,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}