New Open Acccess publication - Early Modern India: Literatures and Images, Texts and Languages

Interested in Indian vernaculars, Persian, Sanskrit? In the relations between various yogic traditions? Then please have a look at the newly released Early Modern India: Literatures and Images, Texts and Languages, edited by Maya Burger and Nadia Cattoni. 

This book presents recent scholarly research on one of the most important literary and historical periods of the Early Modern era from a wide range of approaches and perspectives. It contains a selection of contributions presented at the 12th International Conference on Early Modern Literatures of North India which provide fresh and new material as well as innovative methods to approach it.
The organizing principle of the volume lies in its exploration of the links between a multiplicity of languages (Indian vernaculars, Persian, Sanskrit), of media (texts, paintings, images) and of traditions (Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Muslim). The role of the Persian language and the importance of the translations from Sanskrit into Persian are discussed in light of the translational turn. The relations between various yogic traditions, especially of Nath origin, from Kabir and other sampradayas, are reconsidered.

Burger, Maya and Nadia Cattoni (eds.). Early Modern India: Literatures and Images, Texts and Languages. Heidelberg; Berlin: CrossAsia-eBooks, 2019. - 358 p. with coloured illustrations. ISBN (PDF) 978-3-946742-46-3; ISBN (Hardcover) 978-3-946742-45-6. https://doi.org/10.11588/xabooks.387

New Open Archives initiative for South Asian studies seeks Program Coordinator

The newly established SAMP Open Archives initiative creates and maintains a collection of open access materials for the study of South Asia. This major collaborative initiative is aimed at addressing the current scarcity of digital resources pertinent to South Asian studies and at making collections more widely accessible both to North American scholars and to researchers elsewhere in the world.

The Open Archives initiative (OAi) will address needs in all academic disciplines, from the humanities through the sciences.  With an initial emphasis on colonial-era materials from South Asia, a carefully curated collection of resources will fill gaps in available online collections.  Several criteria will be used to select and prioritize resources for digitization, including:

• Value to research;
• Utility for a broad population of users;
• Uniqueness (not available through other credible, sustainable sources);
• At risk – due to condition, environmental or sociopolitical factors, or other threats;
• Complementarity to other resources.

The SAMP OAi currently has twenty-three members from North America and South Asia.  Institutions interested in becoming members can find additional information about the initiative and membership here.

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is seeking a creative and self-directed professional to coordinate the “South Asia Material Project’s Open Archives initiative.” In addition to developing, implementing and administering the program, the Program Coordinator will be responsible for outreach and participating in initiatives that leverage program results for the purpose of expanding the Open Archives initiative and sources of program funding.

Qualified candidates will have (among other requirements) proven experience in developing and implementing digital projects, program management and teambuilding skills, a successful track record in developing funding proposals, communication and web authoring experience, and demonstrated foreign language capability and knowledge of South Asia, South Asian languages, culture, history, and geography.

Full position posting may be found at: http://www.crl.edu/about/employment/program-coordinator

June 9, 2016

@SouthAsia71: Widening Access to Archives on Twitter

In the first of three posts over the course of two months, I will introduce my Twitter account @SouthAsia71 as a new and unique means of widening access to archives.

Over the course of my doctoral studies, I found that I had collected a vast amount of archival data that I was desperate to share. Having taken over 100,000 photographs of documents from archives in the UK and the US, I took to Twitter in an attempt to have them reach a wider audience. In 2015, @SouthAsia71, with the use of the archival pictures and other resources, tweeted Bangladesh's road to independence as if it were happening on that day, in real time. Since January, I've continued to tweet about the events of 1971, now concentrating on creating narrative arcs and providing analysis for the account's followers. I've also worked to ensure that content is free from copyright restrictions and is fully referenced.

Since its launch in December 2014, the account has gained almost 2,500 followers at an average growth rate of around 150-200 followers per month. In December 2015, during the 14 days of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, the account received over 1,600 retweets and 1,000 likes, and in just 4 days this March, the account accrued over 800 retweets and 400 likes. Via retweets, material often reaches more than 5,000 Twitter users and has reached as many as 13,000. Engagement rates (which include retweets, likes, follows, link clicks etc) for @SouthAsia71's tweets rarely dip below 3%, often reach 10% and can be as high as 20%; This is in comparison with an average engagement rate of 0.5% for all Twitter users. Through tweeting the documents themselves alongside infographics produced with information from primary material, @SouthAsia71 is engaging thousands of people with archival sources.

@SouthAsia71 has the potential to showcase any archive that has material relating to Bangladesh's independence. With an audience engaged online with the history of South Asia the account certainly has scope to expand beyond the study of 1971. In the coming weeks, I will be incorporating information from the oral histories project at Cambridge University's Centre for South Asian Studies into the Twitter feed. As well as producing tweets from the data, I will also use Storify to both provide a repository for the data I use and to provide an editorial narrative (I've produced an example of a Storify story here).

I have written a long-form article about the project for E:International Relations (available here). My next post will discuss the results of my usage of the material at Cambridge.

Open access journal, Himalaya, has new editors

Himalaya, the journal of the Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies, has new editors.  Sienna Craig is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, with a research interest in social study of medicine across the Himalayan region.  Mark Turin is Program Director of the Yale Himalaya Initiative and directs the Digital Himalaya Project at Cambridge and Yale universities.

The new editors write: 'We are honored to be taking over the editorship from Arjun Guneratne, who has worked tirelessly over the last five years to develop an already strong publication into an internationally recognized peer-reviewed journal. Through an innovative partnership with the Macalester College library over the duration of his editorship, Arjun has built an open-access, online repository of the entire back archive of HIMALAYA that is freely available to all, with a rolling two-year window for recent issues to be uploaded and viewable. This makes our journal a leader in the 'open access movement', the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly work, a policy to which we - as the incoming editors - are deeply committed'.

Volume 31 was published last week. Volume 32, a special issue on Ladakh, is expected to be published by December 2012. Volume 33 will be the first issue produced through the Dartmouth-Yale partnership, and a themed issue on gender in the Himalaya is being explored.  The new editors are also keen to include papers presented at the Second ANHS Himalayan Studies Conference convened by Dr. Mahendra Lawoti at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in September 2012.

The editors invite readers to get in touch with them with any questions or proposals for future themed issues, and to visit their website for further information about ANHS Publications, http://www.anhs-himalaya.org/publications/

New open access journal and blog

The University of Edinburgh is about to release a new online open-access publication called 'The South Asianist' - see:  http://journals.ed.ac.uk/southasianist/index

 
An interdisciplinary academic journal, it aims to encourage critical debate on social, environmental, cultural, linguistic, religious, political and economic aspects of South Asia, with provocative, peer-reviewed essays and reviews, complimented by video vignettes, including interviews and mini-documentaries.

It is also publishing a new blog, edited by Kristin Bouldin, http://thesouthasianistblog.co.uk/ to 'encourage people to openly express their impressions, discoveries, and thoughts in relation to research in South Asia'.

Public Knowledge Project

Free access to scholarly journals published in Bangladesh, Nepal and Vietnam is now possible via the Public Knowledge Project.
Bangladesh Journals Online
Nepal Journals Online
Vietnam Journals Online