UVA Library’s Aperio to begin publishing “Language Documentation and Description”

Guest post from Dave Ghamandi, Open Publishing Librarian and Managing Editor of Aperio:

The journal “Language Documentation and Description” (LDD) and UVA Library are pleased to announce that LDD has joined Aperio, the UVA Library-led open access press.

LDD publishes research articles on the theory and practice of language documentation, language description, sociocultural aspects of language use and linguistic research, language policy, language revitalization, and related topics. The journal has a focus on small, minority, and endangered languages. All articles are made freely available online once they have completed the production process.

LDD’s shift to publishing through Aperio coincides with new editorial leadership—Lise Dobrin and Mark Sicoli, both of UVA’s Department of Anthropology and Interdepartmental Linguistics Program, join as editors, with Dobrin serving as the new Managing Editor.

LDD was founded in 2003 as a print journal published at SOAS in London under the editorship of Peter Austin. In 2014 the journal moved online to the EL Publishing platform (www.elpublishing.org) established by Austin together with colleagues David Nathan and Julia Sallabank. Austin, Nathan, and Sallabank will continue as editors under the new arrangement with Aperio.

Aperio, a service of UVA Library, publishes discipline-leading, high-quality open access journals. By removing price and permission barriers, Aperio increases the dissemination, visibility, accessibility, and impact of research and scholarship across disciplines, while providing its journals with a stable and committed institutional home.

Dobrin says, “When LDD was founded, the language documentation research agenda was still exploratory and new. But it is now solidly at the center of linguistics, and the important work published in LDD has contributed to making it so. It will be a privilege to steward the journal in the coming years as language documentation continues to expand and develop. I am especially pleased that the journal will still be open-access, and that Aperio will provide support for linked multimedia, so that the results of documentary linguistic research can flow without impediment to all who might benefit.”

“UVA Library welcomes LDD to Aperio. We hope LDD will attract additional journals elevating endangered languages and cultures. Open access is an inclusive space and the UVA Library is committed to an inclusive scholarly ecosystem,” says Carmelita Pickett, AUL for Scholarly Resources & Content Strategy.

LDD is the fourth journal in Aperio’s portfolio and is available at www.lddjournal.org. The journal remains free for both readers and authors, and past volumes remain available. All articles will continue to be published using a Creative Commons license meaning authors retain their copyright and have the right to attribution.

Learn more about Aperio, the University of Virginia’s open access press.

Learn about early Arabic printed books and the theology of Islam!

Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library (1475-1900)

Book credited to “Geber” (Jabir ibn Hayyan), 9th century alchemist, “Faithfully Englished” by Richard Russell “a Lover of Chymistry.”

April is Arab American Heritage month, and the UVA Library resource “Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library” is an ideal place to learn about the long exchange of ideas and learning between Europe and the Arabic-speaking world. As early as the 9th century, Arab thinkers were changing the way humanity understood the world, making sophisticated advances in mathematics (the word algebra is derived from the Arabic word al-jabr, “reunion of broken parts”) and alchemy (from the Arabic al-kīmiyā), the basis of modern chemistry.

The three modules comprising this full-text digital library of early Arabic works — 1. Religion and Law, 2. Science, History, and Geography, 3. Periodicals, Literature, Grammar, Language, Catalogues and General Works — are here offered in one seamless collection, available in high-quality digital scans, including translations into many languages, which you can download as PDFs.

Topics include:

  • The Qu’ran — Theology, commentaries on religious texts, religious teaching and practice, and biographies of religious figures.
  • The Law — The spirit of Islamic law (fiqh), and the rulings (fatwas).
  • Natural history — Medicine, physiology, and other sciences.
  • Philosophy — Logic, politics, and ethics.
  • Mathematics — Geometry, mechanics, astrology, and chemistry.
  • History — The early caliphs and conquests, modern history, genealogy, and biographies.
  • Travel — Regional geography and topography.
  • Literature — Pre-Islamic works, Islamic poetry, prose, proverbs, and sayings.
  • Language and lexicography — Dictionaries, grammar, syntax, and rhetoric.

You can search the database by keyword in a variety of languages, including Arabic script. A virtual keyboard is available for entering terms in Arabic. Alternately, if you want to browse titles by subject, you can open “Advanced Search” and in the “Limit By” box click “LoC Subjects” to get a list of Library of Congress subject headings. Select one or more of the headings to get a complete listing of books covered in those areas.  You can limit results further by choosing a particular language.

For instance, choosing the term “Medicine” from the “LoC Subjects” list, and filtering for “English,” yields 11 hits, including the short pamphlet “The Nature of the drink Kauhi, or Coffee, and the Berry of which it is made, Described by an Arabian Phisitian,” published in Oxford by Henry Hall in 1659. Searching the term “Folktales” yields numerous English editions of “The Arabian Nights,” dating from 1712, but also “The Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare,” a rare printed translation of an episode in the epic poem “Sīrat Bani Hilāl.”

Qur’an Tools

Create a free account and visit the open resource Qur’an Tools, the world’s first digital tool for the critical academic study of the Qur’an and its early manuscripts. Features include the ability to examine linguistics and formulaic construction, track scribal changes from hundreds of original manuscripts, and check meanings and references from the original Arabic. Learn more in the instructional video below:

Congratulations to first recipients of Affordability and Equity grants!

From Judith Thomas, Director of Faculty Programs:

The Library would like to announce the first faculty cohort of the Affordability and Equity program. This program, sponsored by the Jefferson Trust and offered by the University of Virginia Library, provides support to faculty who want to adopt, adapt, or create open educational resources (OER).

OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open resources have the potential to provide equitable access to knowledge, drive down student costs, and create a more inclusive learning environment.

The following faculty received Affordability & Equity grants:

Anna Borovskaya-Ellis, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

“Our project seeks to fill a perennial need in language instruction while working within the Open Educational Resource sphere to contribute to Russian classrooms inside and outside of UVA. We aim to create linguistically appropriate and culturally relevant open educational resources for First-Year Russian courses (RUSS 1010 and 1020). Our authentic and engaging interactive videos, vocabulary presentations, and grammar reviews are being created with specific grammatical and cultural goals in mind and allow our students to work with level-appropriate, contemporary resources that reflect modern Russian lexicon and style. We plan to turn this collection of materials into a full-fledged, digital textbook replacement for our students to ease a significant financial burden that buying textbooks imposes on them.”

Stella Mattioli, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese

“Resources currently available for the study of Italian do not comprehensively reflect the reality of Italian culture and society. This project will fill this gap with open educational resources that show students how Italian society is changing and evolving. Authentic videos and other inclusive material will be included in the Italian language syllabi for first- and second-year courses (ITAL 1010, 1020, 2010, 2020), allowing the students to learn the language by exploring diverse topics pertaining to the reality of life in Italy.”

Emily Scida, Kate Neff and Matthew Street, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese

“This project has two goals; the first is to move online materials for our recently developed 6-week non-credit refresher course SPAN 160 (Elementary Spanish Online) from UVA Collab to Pressbooks, making them free and accessible to other language educators. The second is to develop additional modules and assignments, expanding the content for use in our SPAN 1060 (Accelerated Elementary Spanish) course offered in Fall, Spring, and Summer.”

Congratulations to the recipients, and thank you to all who applied!  Read more about services for faculty at UVA Library.

The Library is now accepting new proposals. Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis,

Celebrate Arab American Heritage Month with great reads from the Library!

April is Arab American Heritage Month and UVA Librarians are celebrating by putting together some resources to help you explore literature, film, and poetry created by Arab Americans! Amy Hunsaker, Librarian for Music and Performing Arts, prepared the following list. Please direct research queries involving Arab American experiences, histories, and lives to Phil McEldowney, Librarian for Middle East and South Asia Studies.

Want to explore Arab American literature but don’t know where to start? UVA Library holds a substantial collection of Arab American fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Here are some books to get you started.

Modern Arab American Fiction: A Reader’s Guide” by Steven Salaita

A guide for people with little experience in this genre and who want to learn more about the writing traditions of Arab American fiction. The book provides an introduction to and critical examination of many works by notable Arab American writers, while exploring the cultural background of the writers’ countries of heritage — Lebanon, North Africa, Palestine, Iraq, and more. Short stories and poetry are provided in full with commentary for notable full-length novels.

 

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

Lalami has published notable works, including “The Moor’s Account,” which won multiple awards and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. The Other Americans is her latest novel, a murder mystery which cleverly uses multiple first-person perspectives to explore the relationships of within the Moroccan American Guerraoui family that finds itself at odds with its rural Southern California neighbors.

 

 

The Beauty of Your Face” by Sahar Mustafah

Trigger warning: vivid description of a school shooting.

A radicalized shooter has attacked a Muslim girl’s school where the daughter of Palestinian immigrants serves as principal. As the horror unfolds in the present, the author takes the reader to the past, showing the principal as a young Muslim girl in America, struggling to stay true to her family and heritage while fitting into an often belligerent American culture. These flashbacks prepare the reader for the protagonist’s dramatic confrontation with the shooter as she struggles to understand why he would commit this horrible crime.

Out of Place: A Memoir” by Edward Said

A reading list of Arab American authors would be incomplete without a work by intellectual scholar and leading advocate for Palestinian rights, Edward Said, who is known for his groundbreaking works “Orientalism” and “Culture and Imperialism.” In his memoir, Said explores his “otherness” as a person living in exile in various countries throughout his life, and lays bare the plight of Palestinian refugees who were ousted from their homeland regardless of wealth or stature. While Said’s intellectual works are lofty academic discourses, his memoir looks inward as he reflects on his own remarkable life.

Looking for more?

If you are looking for a more comprehensive list of literature to explore, The National Endowment for the Humanities maintains Muslim Journeys, a virtual bookshelf that focuses on Muslim culture and literature as part of their Bridging Cultures Bookshelf.

Additionally, BackStory, a podcast series supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Virginia Humanities, provides an in-depth look at America’s relationship with Islam in a variety of segments produced in 2015.

And finally, check out the Ottoman History Podcast created by UVA History professor Chris Gratien, which sustains and supports academic discussion about Turkey and the Middle East.

Library welcomes a new cohort to the Women’s Maker Program

Guest post from Jenny Coffman, Science and Engineering Research Librarian, and Izzy McReynolds, Women’s Maker Program intern:

After a successful pilot of the Women’s Maker Program in spring 2020, we are happy to announce our continuation of the program with the naming of a brand new cohort! The cohort will be deep-diving into maker technologies, building a community among their first-year peers, learning from industry professionals, hosting a maker camp for local Girl Scouts, and practicing design thinking and growth mindsets while completing community-focused projects.

""We also hope you will join us for a conversation with Dr. Angela Orebaugh, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UVA. Dr. Orebaugh describes herself as, “an educator, technologist, and author with a broad spectrum of expertise in information technology and cybersecurity.” Sign up now to join us on Friday, April 1, at 2:00 p.m. in Clemons 407.

The primary aim of the Women’s Maker Program is to help increase female undergraduates’ confidence, improve their sense of belonging in the STEM field, and better prepare them for future careers in the STEM workforce. We are grateful to the Jefferson Trust and UVA Parents Fund for their support of this program.

""

 

Jade Pettaway grew up in Petersburg, Virginia, and is planning to study Biology on a pre-dental track. She hopes one day to work as a dentist.

 

 

 

""Elyana Zewdie from Herndon, Virginia, is a Biochemistry major and an Entrepreneurship minor on the Pre-Medical track. She hopes to one day use her career skills to help women and children in places stricken by poverty.

 

 

 

""Alessandra Paras is from Roanoke, Virginia. Alessandra is a first-year undergraduate at UVA who plans to major in Chemistry with a specialization in Biochemistry. In the future, Alessandra hopes to pursue medical school with the goal of entering the field of pediatrics.

 

 

 

""Kha Truong, who is from Portland, Oregon, is planning on majoring in Statistics, with a concentration in Biostatistics, and minoring in Urban and Environmental Planning. Currently, she is unsure of what’s to come but is sure about pursuing some sort of graduate school in the future.

 

 

""Dedra Dadzie, from Bordentown, New Jersey, is a Chemical Engineering major planning to continue her education in graduate school and pursue a career in pharmaceutical research.

 

 

 

""Jasmine Collier is from Cleveland, Ohio, and hopes to major in Computer Science with a Social Entrepreneurship minor. She hopes to contribute to the community through her career and loves to spend time with friends and family.

 

 

 

""Laura Abood, from Springfield, Virginia, plans on studying Computer Science and Data Science. She hopes to one day become a software developer.

 

 

 

 

""Savannah Fife, from Harrisonburg, Virginia, is a Mathematics and Commerce major. Outside of school, she loves to travel and spend time with friends and family. She is passionate about teaching math skills and contributing to her community. Savannah looks forward to getting to know her teammates and exploring all that UVA has to offer.

 

 

Learn more about the Women’s Maker Program.

Discover a forgotten chapter of women’s history in “Black Women’s Suffrage”

The movement to extend voting rights to African American men after the Civil War was immediately accompanied by a push to expand the goal to include women. However, it would take both Black and white women over half a century more of struggle to finally secure the right to vote with passage of the 19th Amendment. The Black Women’s Suffrage resource explores the twin burden faced by Black women in the suffragist movement who not only fought against gender bias that denied women the right to vote, but against racism which denied people of color even the most basic of human rights. It was a fight for civil rights, a fight against lynching, and often a fight against the racism directed at them from within the Suffrage Movement itself.

Black Women’s Suffrage draws together primary resources from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions, providing documentation on women such as Mary Church Terrell and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, whose critical role at the forefront of the campaign for women’s rights are too often forgotten.

You can search the database in a variety of ways; and the links will lead you to multiple primary documents of the era.

Timeline

Follow events from the founding of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 through 2013 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key component of the Voting Rights Act. See racial fault lines develop within the movement early on, as when Elizabeth Cady Stanton used racist language to object to the extension of the franchise to Black men and not to women. In 1865 she wrote, “In fact, it is better to be the slave of an educated white man, than of a degraded, ignorant Black one.”

Key Figures

Learn how Charlotte Vandine Forten and her three daughters helped found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, the first biracial organization of female abolitionists in the United States. Learn also how in the 1960s civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer overcame being fired from her job and having shots fired into the house where she was staying to register to vote in Mississippi. For her continued activism, Hamer was arrested and severely beaten, suffering injuries from which she never fully recovered.

Collections

Cover page for “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law In All Its Phases” (1892), the first pamphlet by Ida B. Wells dedicated to exposing lynching.

Study featured historical collections such as the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Papers, including the autobiography, diaries, articles, speeches, accounts, newspaper clippings, and photographs of the teacher, journalist, and anti-lynching activist. Wells-Barnett was born enslaved in 1862 and was educated at Shaw University (now Rust College) and Fisk University. As a student in 1884, she fiercely resisted being put off a train for refusing to comply with Jim Crow seating and won a small settlement. In 1892, when three of her acquaintances who worked in a successful Black-owned grocery were lynched, Wells-Barnett’s investigations found that not only were accusations against victims always false, lynching was essentially a tool used to preserve white supremacy and restrict upward mobility of African Americans. She believed that enfranchisement was key to ending lynching and winning civil rights and was a passionate proponent of Black women’s suffrage. In 2020, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize special citation “[f]or her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.”

Other primary source sets from the Digital Public Library of America cover topics such as:

  • The American Abolitionist Movement
  • Ida B. Wells and Anti-Lynching Activism
  • Women’s Suffrage: Campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment
  • Fannie Lou Hamer and the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi
  • The Black Power Movement
  • The Equal Rights Amendment

You can find this and other resources on women’s history in the Library’s A-Z Databases list!