The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies


Book Description

Over the past few decades, humanistic inquiry has been problematized and invigorated by the emergence of what is referred to as the digital humanities. Across multiple disciplines, from history to literature, religious studies to philosophy, archaeology to music, scholars are tapping the extraordinary power of digital technologies to preserve, curate, analyze, visualize, and reconstruct their research objects. The study of the Middle East and the broader Islamic world has been no less impacted by this new paradigm. Scholars are making daily use of digital tools and repositories including private and state-sponsored archives of textual sources, digitized manuscript collections, densitometrical imaging, visualization and modeling software, and various forms of data mining and analysis. This collection of essays explores the state of the art in digital scholarship pertaining to Islamic & Middle Eastern studies, addressing areas such as digitization, visualization, text mining, databases, mapping, and e-publication. It is of relevance to any researcher interested in the opportunities and challenges engendered by this changing scholarly ecosystem.







The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies


Book Description

Over the past few decades, humanistic inquiry has been problematized and invigorated by the emergence of what is referred to as the digital humanities. Across multiple disciplines, from history to literature, religious studies to philosophy, archaeology to music, scholars are tapping the extraordinary power of digital technologies to preserve, curate, analyze, visualize, and reconstruct their research objects. The study of the Middle East and the broader Islamic world has been no less impacted by this new paradigm. Scholars are making daily use of digital tools and repositories including private and state-sponsored archives of textual sources, digitized manuscript collections, densitometrical imaging, visualization and modeling software, and various forms of data mining and analysis. This collection of essays explores the state of the art in digital scholarship pertaining to Islamic & Middle Eastern studies, addressing areas such as digitization, visualization, text mining, databases, mapping, and e-publication. It is of relevance to any researcher interested in the opportunities and challenges engendered by this changing scholarly ecosystem.







Digital Middle Eastern Studies


Book Description

This professional report explores the adoption of digital humanities practices in the field of Middle Eastern Studies, focusing on what Middle Eastern Studies contributes to overall digital humanities discussions. An increase in conferences, panels, and workshops since 2013 shows that scholars in Middle Eastern Studies and related fields, such as Islamic Studies, display an interest in the digital humanities and the power of academic digital tools and methods to contribute to their work. Middle Eastern Studies as a discipline faces unique challenges in the adoption of digital humanities practices, arising from its interdisciplinary, geographically-focused nature, problems working with non-Roman scripts in the digital environment, and ethical issues based on the history of colonialism in the region. Due to U.S. foreign policy interests and the unintended applications of digital Middle Eastern Studies research, scholars working with these methods should carefully consider the impact their work may have on individuals currently living in the Middle East.




Digital Humanities and Research Methods in Religious Studies


Book Description

"This volume provides practical, but provocative, case studies of exemplary projects that apply digital technology or methods to the study of religion. An introduction and 16 essays are organized by the kinds of sources digital humanities scholars use - texts, images, and places - with a final section on the professional and pedagogical issues digital scholarship raises for the study of religion."--




Digital Humanities and Libraries and Archives in Religious Studies


Book Description

How are digital humanists drawing on libraries and archives to advance research and learning in the field of religious studies and theology? How can librarians and archivists make their collections accessible to digital humanists? The goal of this volume is to provide an overview of how religious and theological libraries and archives are supporting the nascent field of digital humanities in religious studies. The volume showcases the perspectives of faculty, librarians, archivists, and allied cultural heritage professionals who are drawing on primary and secondary sources in innovative ways to create digital humanities projects in theology and religious studies. Topics include curating collections as data, conducting stylometric analyses of religious texts, and teaching digital humanities at theological libraries. The shift to digital humanities promises closer collaborations between scholars, archivists, and librarians. The chapters in this volume constitute essential reading for those interested in the future of theological librarianship and of digital scholarship in the fields of religious studies and theology.




Digital Humanities and Buddhism


Book Description

IDH Religion provides a series of short introductions to specific areas of study at the intersections of digital humanities and religion, offering an overview of current methodologies, techniques, tools, and projects as well as defining challenges and opportunities for further research. This volume explores DH and Buddhism in four sections: Theory and Method; Digital Conservation, Preservation and Archiving; Digital Analysis; Digital Resources. It covers themes such as language processing, digital libraries, online lexicography, and ethnographic methods. Erratum: Unfortunately there is a mistake in the print version in the last paragraph of page 14. READ is an open-source software system developed by a team consisting of Stefan Baums at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Andrew Glass in Seattle, Ian McCrabb at the University of Sydney and Stephen White in Venice (https://github.com/readsoftware/read).




Digital Humanities and Christianity


Book Description

This volume provides the first comprehensive introduction to the intersections between Christianity and the digital humanities. DH is a well-established, fast-growing, multidisciplinary field producing computational applications and analytical models to enable new kinds of research. Scholars of Christianity were among the first pioneers to explore these possibilities, using digital approaches to transform the study of Christian texts, history and ideas, and innovative work is taking place today all over the world. This volume aims to celebrate and continue that legacy by bringing together 15 of the most exciting contemporary projects, grouped into four categories. “Canon, corpus and manuscript” examines physical texts and collections. “Words and meanings” explores digital approaches to language and linguistics. “Digital history” uses digital techniques to explore the Christian past, and “Theology and pedagogy” engages with digital approaches to teaching, formation and Christian ideas. This volume introduces key debates, shares exciting initiatives, and aims to encourage new innovations in analysis and communication. Christianity and the Digital Humanities is ideally suited as a starting point for students and researchers interested in this vast and complex field.




Multilingual Literature as World Literature


Book Description

Multilingual Literature as World Literature examines and adjusts current theories and practices of world literature, particularly the conceptions of world, global and local, reflecting on the ways that multilingualism opens up the borders of language, nation and genre, and makes visible different modes of circulation across languages, nations, media and cultures. The contributors to Multilingual Literature as World Literature examine four major areas of critical research. First, by looking at how engaging with multilingualism as a mode of reading makes visible the multiple pathways of circulation, including as aesthetics or poetics emerging in the literary world when languages come into contact with each other. Second, by exploring how politics and ethics contribute to shaping multilingual texts at a particular time and place, with a focus on the local as a site for the interrogation of global concerns and a call for diversity. Third, by engaging with translation and untranslatability in order to consider the ways in which ideas and concepts elude capture in one language but must be read comparatively across multiple languages. And finally, by proposing a new vision for linguistic creativity beyond the binary structure of monolingualism versus multilingualism.