First workshop

Brown University (Providence, RI) 

May 17-18, 2013

This workshop's aim is to test and populate Prosop, a project funded by the Office of Digital Humanities of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The workshop is hosted with the generous support of  at Brown. 

Friday, May 17 

8:30 Breakfast at , 111 Thayer St., Providence, RI

9:00 Welcome (Beshara Doumani and Elias Muhanna) and introductions 

9:30 Prosop: technical description 

10:15 Break 

10:30 Data description I: New Englanders 

• 26,789 Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters life insurance policies, 1879-1935 -- Joanne Riley (UMass Boston) 
• 1,500 signatories from 18th and 19th century Massachusetts anti-slavery petitions -- Nicole Topich (Harvard) 
• 6,000 colonial collegians, to 1774 -- Ondine LeBlanc (Massachusetts Historical Society)

12:30 Lunch

2:00 Data description II: Political and Administrative Networks 

• 100,000 Spanish political actors, 17th to 19th centuries -- Jean-Pierre Dedieu (Lyon) 
• Names from 700 Neo-Babylonian legal and administrative tablets, 747-626 BC -- John Nielson (Benedictine)
• 10,400 names from Lord Byron’s correspondence, early 19th century -- David Radcliffe (Virginia Tech) 

4:00 Break

4:15 Data description III: the Middle East 

• 10,000 names from Egyptian legal records, 1880-1914 -- Will Hanley (Florida State) 
• Encyclopedia Iranica and manuscript cataloging -- Dagmar Riedel (Columbia) 

5:30 Linking data I 


Saturday, May 18

9:00 Breakfast at Watson Institute 

9:30 Data description IV: American Networks 

• 950 Chinese-American draft cards, World Wars One and Two -- Heather Lee (Brown) 
• 5,705 names from Union County, South Carolina criminal indictments, 1852-1878 -- Elaine Parsons (Duquesne) 
• 2,201 members of California Jewish networks, c1850-1900 -- Karen Wilson (UCLA) 

11:30 Break 

11:45 Linking data II 

1:15 Conclusions and future plans (over lunch)


Those who wish to attend the workshop may register at .

A second workshop (with a different set of participants) will take place at Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL) in August 2013. The call for participants for that workshop is forthcoming.