[Announcement] Workshop on Indian palaeography

[Dominik Wujastyk]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 20:45:53 +0000 (BST)
From: Humanist Discussion Group <humanist at kcl.ac.uk>
To: Humanist Discussion Group <humanist at lists.Princeton.EDU>
Subject: 12.0409 conferences & calls

              Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 12, No. 409.
      Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
              <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
             <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

  [1]   From:    "David L. Gants" <dgants at english.uga.edu>           (59)
        Subject: Cataloguing South and West Asian Manuscripts
        Date: Mon, 08 Feb 1999 20:44:04 +0000

 >> From: Kim_Plofker at Brown.edu (Kim Plofker)

     The American Committee for South Asian Manuscripts (ACSAM)
of the American Oriental Society is pleased to announce two
workshops in non-Western palaeography and codicology, to be
held at Columbia University in New York City from 31 May
through 18 June 1999:

1. Manuscripts in Nagari and related North Indian scripts,
directed by David Pingree of Brown University.

2. Manuscripts in Arabic and Persian,
directed by Adam Gacek of McGill University.


   Goal of the Workshops: ACSAM's Cataloguing Project
   --------------------------------------------------

The workshops will train advanced graduate students to become
data-gatherers for ACSAM's project to catalogue all Indic and Islamic
manuscripts preserved in North American collections. The resulting
Union Descriptive Catalogue will be published in printed and
electronic form: a draft of the prototype of the electronic
version is available for viewing at http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/acsam/
now.  The Catalogue is a text-based electronic bibliographical tool
structured in SGML; it is currently presented via Inso's DynaWeb text
delivery system.  The sample entries in the prototype describe some of
the Indic manuscripts at Columbia University. Full physical descriptions
of the manuscripts and detailed identifications of the works they
contain are presented in separate sections, with active links connecting
entries in each section to the corresponding entries in the
other, as well as to additional biographical and geographical information
about the people and places mentioned in the catalogue.  Development of
the prototype is currently continuing, to enhance features such as
formatting, fonts, and searches.


   Information about the Workshops
   -------------------------------

   (The following information may also be found at
        http://www.brown.edu/Departments/History_Mathematics/workshops.html.)

It is expected that the process of gathering data about all relevant
North American manuscripts and completing the Union Descriptive
Catalogue therefrom will extend over twelve or more years. The
data-gatherers for the first summer will be paid their basic living
expenses and a stipend of $12.00 an hour.  This compensation is contingent
on our receiving funding; we will not know the extent to which we have
been funded until April 1999. We hope to be able to employ several Arabists,
Persianists, and Sanskritists for the summer of 1999. In case we receive no
funding, the summer 1999 workshops and data-gathering will have to be cancelled.

Although the amount of funding that will be available will not be known
before next April, applications are invited now. Candidates must have completed
at least two years of a PhD program that requires substantial expertise in
one or more of the three languages, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit, including
at least two years of study of the language whose palaeography he or she
wishes to learn.

Each candidate must submit undergraduate and graduate transcripts, three
letters of recommendation, at least two of which should be from language
instructors, and a statement (one or two pages) of his or her interest in
and familiarity with manuscript studies.

Applications should be sent before 1 April 1999 to:

        Professor David Pingree
        Brown University, Box 1900
        Providence, RI 02912 USA




-------
Kim Plofker

Technical Director, ACSAM

Kim_Plofker at Brown.edu