This digital humanities workshop brings together historians, librarians, literary scholars, and IT experts from the Middle East, Europe, and the US in order to discuss the 2.0 update and redesign of Jara’id – Chronology of Nineteenth-Century Arabic Periodicals. Jara’id is a digital platform and website which attracted experts from all over the world in the last five years and now it is time to extend and elevate the project to a next level. The program includes a talk in (Arabic) Digital Humanities and a master class seminar with invited experts on the historian’s use of early Arabic journals aimed at interested Duke/UNC/NCSU graduate students. Finally we finish with a book talk by Prof. Hala Auji (AUB) on book history with a focus on her recently published Printing Arab Modernity, 2016.

 

In the workshop three crucial topics shall be discussed: the design of a new digital framework of Jara’id associated with Duke University (Jara’id at present is hosted by the Zentrum Moderner Orient, https://www.zmo.de/jaraid/) and all technical issues involved, the making of an Arabic version in cooperation with the American University in Beirut; and a longer term project of extending the data until 1914. The updates and design of a new framework to be discussed are how to develop innovative search and visualization features, Arabic/English synchronicity, educational components, and accessibility. Further topics include possible partnerships with similar projects such as OACIS serials (Yale-AUB), the possibility of linking/including digitized PDF-collections (HathiTrust, individual libraries, private collections, NCSU Arab-American periodicals), OCR for early Arabic prints, and the legal identity of Jara’id.  The goal is to reach a clear and concrete idea about the proposed new features of the digital platform, the cost of the design, and the nature of Duke-AUB cooperation (to be discussed in a closed session between the organizers) in order to design a clear and effective grant proposal for major funders. The data extension forms an integral but analytically separate sub-program of the project. All results will be freely available and open to the scholarly and general public.

 

Workshop participants: Hala Auji (AUB), Guy Burak (NYU), Omar Cheta (Bard), miriam cooke (Duke), Dale Correa (UTA), Julia Demowbray (Gale), Till Grallert (Orient Institute Beirut – through video link), Bruce Hall (Duke), Mohamed Hamed (UNC), Mona Hassan (Duke), Frances Hasso (Duke), David Hirsch (UCLA), Akram Khater (NCSU), Charles Kurzman (UNC), Bruce Lawrence (Duke), Eric van Lit (Yale), Jeff Kosokoff (Duke), Paolo Mangiafico (Duke), Lokman Meho (AUB), Elizabeth Milewicz (Duke), Adam Mestyan (Duke), Elias Muhanna (Brown), Graham Pitts (NCSU) Maxim Romanov (University of Leipzig), Omid Safi (Duke), Elizabeth Saylor (NCSU), Kathryn Schwartz (Harvard), William Shaw (Duke), William Sexton (Duke), Joshua Sosin (Duke), Sean Swanick (Duke).