Yale Mellon Sawyer Seminar: April Newsletter
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to the April newsletter of The Order of Multitudes, Yale’s 2020-2022 Mellon Sawyer Seminar on the long history of big data.
Even though the spring term is coming to a close, we continue to offer an exciting program of events. A key highlight is a virtual talk on April 30 with Dr. Emily Selove, Senior Lecturer of Medieval Arabic Language and Literature, at the University of Exeter. She told us about her Leverhulme-funded research project, “A Sorcerer’s Handbook,” which will create an edition, translation, and literary study of Siraj al-Din al-Sakkaki’s (d. 1229) Arabic encyclopedia of practical magic. A recording of Dr. Selove’s conversation with Professor Travis Zadeh will be made available soon on our Youtube channel. Recordings from our previous lecture series are available there, too.
Meanwhile, we are continuing our “Conversation” series. This month’s theme – Collecting/Conquest – brings together four exciting interviews:
- Alex Hidalgo, a historian of colonial Latin America at Texas Christian University, discusses the social life of cartography and its significant role in preserving indigenous knowledge;
- Monique R. Scott, an anthropologist who directs the Museum Studies Program at Bryn Mawr College, tells us about museum representations of early humans and human evolution, Africa, and people of African descent;
- Abigail De Kosnik, associate professor in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, discusses the problems and opportunities of digital media in promoting internet democracy.
- Travis Zadeh, associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale, explores how technology simultaneously makes archives accessible for research while presenting new challenges in organization and comprehensiveness.
In the summer months, we will feature graduate and undergraduate student research by Colton Valentine (English), Matthew Dudley (History) and Henry Jacob (History and Spanish, Saybrook ‘21), whose projects we were delighted to fund as part of our Sawyer Seminar seed grant program. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, we are still looking for new graduate student fellows to join our project over the summer and/or for the upcoming academic year. Please send a brief statement of interest to Travis Zadeh at travis.zadeh@yale.edu. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis, and all fields and specializations are welcome. Please feel free to forward this announcement widely; we will be recirculating it as well.
As always, do not hesitate to contact us at admin@orderofm.com with ideas, responses, or pitches. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @OMultitudes.
Sincerely,
Yi Lu