Michael Widner is in the joint employ of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages and the Stanford University Libraries, where he works as an Academic Technology Specialist. He works with faculty and their research assistants as consultant or collaborator in DLCL-based digital humanities and instructional technology projects.
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This project examines the genre of the “statement of solidarity,” a prose form that has become increasingly widespread in recent months in the wake of anti-black police violence. Using basic text mining and natural language processing techniques to draw out overarching linguistic patterns, it considers the formal and rhetorical tropes of “solidarity” to better understand how the use of specific rhetorical structures and locutions correlate with public perception.
Astronomical Data Collection in the Medieval/Early Modern Islamicate world: The influence of the Zijs (Star Catalogs) on European Astronomy
Astronomical Data Collection in the Medieval/Early Modern Islamicate world: The influence of the Zijs (Star Catalogs) on European Astronomy
This project aims to research the praxis of practical astronomy in the Islamicate world. There are a plethora of manuscripts, Zijs (Astronomical Star Catalogs), that need to be studied, researched, edited, and translated. The goal of the research is to analyze the reasons for the astronomical data collected by Arab astronomers. To serve this purpose, an interactive tool—a Finding Aid—will be developed for the Oriental Astronomical Star Catalogs studied by 17th century Oxford English Astronomer John Greaves—one of the first Europeans to travel to the Orient on a scientific expedition. This tool will also be a teaching aid, an educational resource for students and researchers who want to study Arabic Astronomy in the Medieval and Early Modern era. It has only recently become apparent that the past historians of science focused mainly on advances in sciences in Europe, inadvertently overlooking the achievements and the influence of Astronomy from the Islamicate world.
Primary Investigators: