engramma's research work focuses on the classical tradition in western culture: persistence, renewal and new interpretations of forms, themes and subjects from antiquity into medieval, reinassance and modern times.

engramma is the on-line journal of the Classical Tradition Seminary group: a research workshop formed by scholars and young researchers, established in march 2000 and now working at the History of Architecture Department of IUAV University in Venice, under the direction of Monica Centanni.

engramma is published monthly: since September 2000 to January 2006 have been published 45 issues. The journal offers English and Latin summary-editions of its contents.

Papers and contributions published in engramma are grouped into eight columns: Essays (unpublished works); Galleries (iconographical repertories); Peithò&Mnemosyne (classical images and themes in contemporary advertisement); Hesperides (iconographical plates and 'picture-essays'); Aranea (on-line sources and resources); News (reviews and reports).

The most consistent and permanent research works of the Classical Tradition Seminary are also grouped aside, into thematic sections: Warburg and his Atlas, The Calumny of Apelles, Internet and Humanism.

One of the methododological references of engramma is the method of Aby Warburg (1866-1929) and his cultural studies.

Just a scholarly suggestion from Warburg's vocabulary gives the name to engramma. According to a definition given in 1908 by Richard Semon in his work Mneme, each experience acts onto brain matter, leaving in it an imprint: the "engram". This definition, applied by Semon to individual nervous system, is extended by Warburg to social memory: the engram becomes a symbol, an image charged with energetic and emotional power that remains imprinted in cultural memory as a persistent trace.

According to Warburg, forms, themes and symbols inherited from antiquity by later times have to be regarded under this perspective: as powerful signs charged with significance, able to imprint the tabula of cultural memory and to design a map of constant features in western culture. This map - made of myths, images, words, symbols - outlines a field of study that opens on cultural resonances between Renaissance, Antiquity and Contemporary. The demonic breath of pagan gods, the strenght of their myths and images, cannot be dissolved, even in the dark ages of oblivion: indeed, they persist in disguise and are constantly impelled to representation, as discontinuous, undergroud lines, that draw the rhapsodic reemergence of figures from Antiquity, and plot the colourful texture of western memory.

Zum Bild das Wort: this motto, coined by Aby Warburg for his scholarly undertaking, recalls the necessity to give "word to image". In engramma too, images are not a mere explanatory set, but a primary study subject and a vehicle of research*. linka asterisco a asterisco sotto Warburgian research aims to restore an "alchemical marriage" between word and image, and thus finds in web publishing - in hypertexts and information technology - its most suitable way of expression. The journal of engramma is published exclusively on-line: for cultural and humanities studies as well as for scientific studies, web edition is nowadays the touchstone for new methods of research and the ideal vehicle for scholaly communication.*

In the last years engramma promoted also a series of cultural events, particolarly in Venice, some of which, like the annual meeting "Luminar. Internet and Humanism", are by now regular appointments for specialist scholars.

*waiting for definite provisions related to images copyright in no-profit web publishing, engramma is at disposal of entitled subjects for any unspecified iconographical reference (on the debate on 'image rights' see Droits des Images, in "Images Re-vues").

last update march 2006