{"word_count": 486, "character_count": 3715}
The Digital Humanities in Islamic &#38; Middle East Studies, October 24-25 2013 |Brown University**Call for Papers***Over the past few decades, humanistic inquiry has been problematized andinvigorated by technological advances and the concomitant emergence of whatis referred to as the digital humanities. Across multiple disciplines, fromhistory to literature, religious studies to philosophy, archaeology tomusic, scholars are tapping the extraordinary power of digital technologiesto preserve, curate, analyze, visualize, and reconstruct their researchobjects.The humanistic study of the Middle East and the broader Islamic world hasbeen no less impacted by this new paradigm. Scholars are making daily use ofdigital tools and repositories including private and state-sponsoredarchives of textual sources, digitized manuscript collections,densitometrical imaging, visualization and modeling software, and variousforms of data mining and analysis. However, there have been few calls tobring researchers together to showcase their experiments in digitalhumanistic scholarship within their respective fields, or to discuss theopportunities and challenges engendered by this changing scholarlyecosystem.With this in mind, *Middle East Studies at Brown University* – with thesupport of the Brown Humanities Initiative – is pleased to announce apioneering conference on October 24-25 2013 that will explore the state ofthe art in digital scholarship pertaining to Islamic &#38; Middle East Studies.Some of the guiding questions we are interested in include:(1)  Where are the most important digitization projects of historicalsources in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other languages taking place aroundthe world?(2)  What kinds of digital technologies and methodologies have proven mostfruitful for scholars in different disciplines (e.g. data mining, patternrecognition, social network analysis, etc.)?(3)  How are existing technologies challenged by the manipulation of data innon-Western languages, and what are the most significant technologicaldesiderata for researchers?(4)  What specific examples of digital-based research (macroscopic ormicroscopic) in Islamic and Middle East Studies are promising, problematic,or otherwise provocative?(5)  As digital tools and media become more widespread, what ethical issuesrelating to privacy and human consent must be carefully considered,particularly in projects involving contemporary political and social issues?We are happy to welcome as our keynote speaker *Dr. DwightReynolds*(Professor of Religious Studies, UCSB), who is among many otherthings the architect of the Sirat Bani Hilal Digital Archive, “an openaccess resource for the preservation and dissemination of audio recordings,written texts, photographic images and other materials related to the Epicof the Bani Hilal Tribe,” a thousand-year-old epic poem. The conference willbe webcast and several papers may be selected for publication in an editedvolume.*Submissions*We welcome submissions from scholars and graduate students indiverse disciplines. Interested candidates are kindly requested to submit atitle and abstract of 300 words to the conference organizers atdigitalhumanitiesconference@gmail.com.Deadline: March 15, 2013. Successful applicants will be notified by mid-April.Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes and should be read in English.Depending on the number of participants, *there will be limited fundsavailable for travel and accommodation*. Brown University is located inProvidence, Rhode Island, about one hour south of Boston. For any questions,please contact Dr. Elias Muhanna at the email address above.Additional information will soon be available on the conference website.