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SHARIAsource TOOL::
Using Corpus Analysis to Study Media Discourse
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First there was Media Cloud -- an open source platform for studying media ecosystems developed by Ethan Zuckerman (an adviser to SHARIAsource) and his team at the MIT Media Lab. That tool allows researchers to track the way ideas spread through media, and shows that different corners of the media ecosystem report on stories differently. Building on Media Cloud is a tool that SHARIAsource Editor and MIT Media Lab research affiliate Ali Hashmi has been developing to analyze discourse on Islamic law (sharīʿa) in the media. On November 7, he and Research Editor Sharon Tai presented their preliminary findings with the first iteration of this tool in a talk on “Using Corpus Analysis to Study Media Discourse: Comparing Discussions of Islamic Marriage Reform in India and Pakistan.” The two applied machine learning to research media discourse on Islamic law and uncovered ways in which distinct nuances become conflated in varied media ecosystems. The tool analyzes large sets of text-based data by conducting what they call “critical sentiment analysis,” that is, by separating key terms into positive and negative ideas. As a case study, they applied their work to Pakistani and Indian newspapers to examine how conversations on Islamic law manifest in ongoing discussions of divorce and marriage reform. Osama Siddique, Henry J. Steiner Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Harvard Law School responded to the presentation with his commentary on the tool’s broader applications to research. When fully developed, this tool may well inform or analyze conversations about media and politics in discussions of Islamic law in the United States and around the world. Image credit: Paul Beran
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REVIEW: Judges on Cushions and Under Trees: Thoughts on “Qāḍī Justice” and Hyperpolemics
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Guest contributor Haider Hamoudi reviews Professor Intisar Rabb's, SHARIAsource founding editor-in-chief, new article in the Suffolk Law Review entitled
Against Kadijustiz: On the Negative Citation of Foreign Law. Rabb focuses on how American courts have utilized inaccurate portrayals of "qāḍī justice" as antitheses to American court procedures. Hamoudi notes that this point is all the more important when one considers that using inaccurate and reductive caricatures to advance polemical arguments is a technique used as well in the history of Islamic law, to the detriment of the arguments. Read more. Image credit: Chester Beatty Library, Dublin
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Other News
Scholars in the News
Events
SHARIAsource
Workshop :: Digital Islamic Law and History: Resources and Methods (16
Nov |
Cambridge, MA). T
his workshop will explore the methods for manipulating Islamic historical texts in Arabic through a collaborative platform called Open Arabic, and with tools for converting Arabic PDFs into OCR documents. Maxim Romanov, the architect of these systems, will lead participants through a hands-on exercise of marking and otherwise manipulating digitized Arabic texts to identify trends, build database, and produce data visualizations.
By invitation only, with RSVPs directly to
afournier@law.harvard.edu. Read more.
Colloquium :: From Text to Map: Arabic Biographical Collections and Geospatial Analysis (17 Nov | Cambridge, MA). Thousands of fully-digitized texts of premodern Arabic sources have become available over the past decade or two. Computational methods of text analysis now offer us a key to the riches of extensive biographical collections. Mapped across time and space, tens of thousands of biographies may give us a novel and multifaceted perspective on Islamic history. Maxim Romanov's presentation will focus on major steps—moving from text to map—and highlight some results of such computational endeavors. Read more.
SHARIAsource Resource Sharing Workshop :: Comparing and Sharing Digital Archival Projects and Resources (17 Nov | Cambridge, MA). Led by Maxim Romanov and Intisar Rabb, this discussion will showcase major tools and resources (online or digitized sources, CDs and hard drives, etc.) that can be used to research primary source documents in Arabic digitally. To participate, attendees need to submit at least one resource to share and showcase for (2-3 minutes): name of the source, where to locate it (URL or otherwise), its content and scope, examples of use, and pros and cons of use. Examples of these sources include, but are not limited to: the Islamic Texts Initiative, Turath Hard Drive, al-Maktaba al-Shamila, Warraq, Noor CDs, Qurʾānic Arabic Corpus, etc. RSVP or read more.
SHARIAsource MESA Reception (17 Nov | Cambridge, MA). Join a reception to chat informally about your work on Islamic law, developments of SHARIAsource, and otherwise. Light refreshments will be served. Contact Ashley Fournier with any questions at afournier@law.harvard.edu. RSVP.
Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting (17-20 Nov 2016 | Boston, MA). MESA’s annual meeting will host a range of panels on Islamic law, including "Policing and Punishment in the Making of the Modern Middle East," "Is Saudi Foreign Policy 'Islamic'?," "Islamic Religious Authority between the Arab World and Europe: Multi-tasked and Multi-tasking Imams" (Denmark contributor Niels Valdemar Vinding will be presenting), "International Law, Sovereignty and Subjecthood in the Late Ottoman Empire" (Ottoman editor Will Smiley will be a discussant), "Legal Contests & Disputes, Part I," "Law as Social History in the Late Ottoman Era," "Legal Contests & Disputes, Part 2." See full preliminary program.
"Qur’anists in al-Andalus?" (5 Apr 2017 4 pm | Princeton, NJ). Incoming ILSP: SHARIAsource and CMES senior fellow Maribel Fierro will be speaking as part of the Institute for Advanced Study's Near/Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Lecture Series 2016/2017. She explores the production of religious and political authority sharing her study of how prophets accepted by Islam are represented. See full details.
Opportunities
Workshop on Arabic Periodicals (12 Nov 2016 | Durham, NC). Professor Adam Mestyan of Duke University is organizing a small workshop on early Arabic periodicals. See full details.
Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities (Spring 2017 | Tilburg ). Tilburg University is establishing the annual Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities in order to commemorate the life and work of Willem Witteveen. The fellowship aims to enable a junior scholar (PhD or postdoc level) to further develop his or her research in the area of ‘Law and Humanities’ during a visit to Tilburg. Applications are due on 15 Nov. Read more.
2017 Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture & the Humanities at Stanford University (21 Mar-01 Apr 2017 | Palo Alto, CA)
. The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities is now accepting panel and paper proposals for their twentieth annual meeting. Proposals that include complete panels or focus on pedagogy, methodology, author-meets-readers sessions, or performance (theatrical, cinematic, musical, and poetic) are strongly encouraged. Abstracts of 250 words or less are due on
28 Oct
.
Read more
.
The Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History (4-17 Jun 2017 | Madison, WI).
The American Society for Legal History and the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin Law School are now accepting applications for their ninth biennial Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History. Applications are due on
1 Dec
.
Read more.
Junior Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Department of Law and Anthropology (Apr 2017 | Halle). The Max Planck Institute is establishing a junior research group to investigate the bureaucratization of Islam and its socio-legal dimensions in Southeast Asia. There are three PhD positions open; the positions would be for three years. Applications are due 15 Dec. Read more.
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Do you have an upcoming event or research opportunity on Islamic law? To include it in our mailings, send details to shariasource@law.harvard.edu.
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