Textual Corpora and the Digital Islamic Humanities: A Workshop
October 17-18, 2014 | Brown University
Call for Applications

The Middle East Studies Initiative at Brown University is pleased to announce a two-day workshop on October 17-18, 2014, which will be devoted to digital textual corpora. Online libraries and digital repositories such as al-Maktaba al-Shamela and al-Warraq – which contain thousands of texts and hundreds of millions of words – are transforming the study of Islamic literatures and history. This workshop will comprise a series of introductory sessions on various digital tools and methodologies (e.g. geo-referencing, text encoding and processing, graph visualization, and other topics) aimed to provide scholars of the Islamic world with an orientation to the valuable research possibilities afforded by these tools.

No prior experience is necessary to apply. The sessions will be highly interactive and introductory in nature. There will be a poster session for more advanced participants to showcase their work designing, developing, and utilizing textual corpora.

This event builds on the success of last year’s landmark conference on “The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies,” which was held at Brown in October 2013. The workshop is generously supported by the Brown Humanities Research & Teaching Initiative.

Applications:
We welcome applications from faculty members, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students in diverse disciplines. Interested candidates are kindly requested to submit:

(1) a brief statement of their interest in the workshop and any relevant experience in the digital humanities;

(2) an up-to-date CV.

Applicants who would like to present their work in the poster session should also submit a brief abstract that describes the project that will be presented.

Applications should be submitted via email to digitalhumanitiesconference@gmail.com. The deadline for applications is May 15, 2014, and successful applicants will be notified by early June.

All participants must pay for their own travel expenses, but limited funding may be available to cover hotel accommodations, with priority given to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. Brown University is located in Providence, Rhode Island, one hour south of Boston and easily accessible by train and plane.

For any questions, please contact Dr. Elias Muhanna at the email address above. Additional information will soon be available on the project website (islamichumanities.org).

For a PDF copy of this call for applications, please click here (and circulate widely!)