The past is never dead. It's not even past
Mark Ravina is a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Chair in Japanese Studies and the Director of UT’s Institute for Historical Studies.
At this point, everyone seems to have heard of ChatGPT 3, the breakthrough artificial intelligence engine released in November 2022. A product of the OpenAI consortium, this online tool can generate longform prose from simple prompts with the results often indistinguishable from human efforts. A New York Times column reported that ChatGPT “creates new content, […]
Institute for Historical Studies, Thursday February 4, 2021 The rise of “born digital” maps requires a rethinking of how historians draw borders. Digital maps are algorithmic: the smooth lines of borders result from mathematical rules. While border lines on maps were once freehand patterns in graphite or ink, borders created by software assume exact spatial […]
In Spring 2020, Professor Mark Ravina introduced a new variant on the highly successful, HIS 320W • Thinking Like A Historian. He describes the course as follows: Historians use a range of analytical skills and our discipline, like the rest of the world, is entering the age of big data. In this class we will […]
JapanLab aims to reimagine Japanese Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and in so doing to establish a template that can be replicated at other institutions across the country. It will prepare undergraduates and graduate students for an altered employment landscape by integrating digital dexterities across different aspects of the Japanese Studies curriculum […]
By Mark Ravina On September 23, 1873, Japan’s young emperor Meiji received tragic news. His consort, Hamuro Mitsuko, had died, five days after delivering a stillborn boy. Sadly, such deaths were not uncommon. The imperial house suffered from high rates of maternal and infant mortality, probably due to some combination of inbreeding and poor diet. […]