An open letter from the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation (IPLC), consisting of the directors from thirteen libraries including the Brown University Library, was sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in support of the Nelson Memo, which aims to expand equitable access to federally-funded publications and data. The letter also communicates the directors’ concerns about potential journal expense increases for libraries and other stakeholders.
The Congressionally-established (OSTP) and its Senate-confirmed Director provide advice to the U.S. President and the Executive Office of the President and Executive branch on all matters related to science and technology. In August of 2022, current OSTP Director Dr. Alondra Nelson released an important memorandum to the directors of federal agencies funding scientific research and development, now referred to as the “Nelson Memo.”
More agencies to require free access
The memo outlines significant updates to policies that provide public access to federally-funded publications and data to be made by 2025. One of the major directives within the memo that impacts faculty is the expansion of the OSTP’s former public access directive to cover more federal agencies, including those with $100 million or more or $100 million or less in scientific research and development expenditures. These agencies will now be required to develop plans for grantees to make the published results of federally-funded research freely available to the public and manage and share the digital data resulting from that research.
Eliminating 12-month embargo
Another of the memo’s groundbreaking advances that will impact faculty is that final peer-reviewed manuscripts will be required to be made immediately available, ending the historical practice of permitting a 12-month embargo. The 12-month embargo, required by many publishers, delayed the public’s access to the final peer-reviewed manuscripts, allowing their journals one year of being the sole venue to disseminate the article to their subscribers.
Faculty impact
In general, libraries, including the Brown University Library, are very much in support of the public’s free, equitable, and immediate access to federally-funded research. We want to emphasize that the Nelson Memo does notrequire that faculty publish in an open access journal, and it does not require faculty to publish in a journal that requires authors to pay a fee or article processing charge (APC) for immediate access. It is expected that faculty compliance will be facilitated via deposit of final peer-reviewed manuscripts in agencies’ specific public access repositories, such as NIH’s PMC, NSF-PAR, or DOE PAGES, among others.
Concerns about cost
Over the years the increase in the annual costs to the University’s budget for paying for subscriptions to scholarly journals has severely outpaced inflation; today roughly half of the Library’s collection budget is dedicated to the acquisition of journal databases and other resources to support STEM. Thus, there are serious concerns shared by libraries about how publishers might respond and adapt their business models in advance of losing this 12-month embargo, potentially impacting the cost of already expensive subscriptions and limiting and bundling of titles within packages made available to institutions. Libraries also have significant concerns about some publishers’ APC-based publication models and worry that the industry might take advantage of these changes promoted by the Nelson Memo to promote its expansion.
The Brown University Library invites the Brown community to the opening of the Racial Justice Resource Center on Tuesday, February 28, 2023. The RJRC is located in the southeast corner of the second floor of the Rockefeller Library, near the graduate student study rooms.
Open House from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Stop by to tour the center and enjoy some locally crafted snacks.
Speaking Program from 2 – 2:30 p.m.
Welcome
Joseph S. Meisel, Joukowsky Family University Librarian
Remarks
President Christina H. Paxson
Interim Provost Lawrence E. Larson
Warren Harding, Diversity in Digital Publishing Postdoctoral Research Associate
Kenvi Phillips, Director of Library Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Racial Justice Resource Center
The Racial Justice Resource Center serves as a hub for the study of racism and racial justice in the United States and globally. Located on the second floor of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, the Center is a space for members of the Brown community to create new possibilities for advancing research, instruction, learning, and community around ideas of racial justice. Brown community members are invited to make use of the space and its resources for deeper understanding of the crisis of structural racism, bias, and violence against people of color.
The Center identifies scholarship, events, research, and conversations that are occurring across the Brown University community and throughout academia addressing racial justice. The resources available within the Center explore race-based oppression, discrimination, policy, and the activism and efforts to confront them across disciplines. We offer this space for the Brown community to deepen knowledge and engage in the work of cultivating an environment in which every person is treated with dignity and respect.
On December 13, EasyBorrow — Brown’s integrated service for requesting items held by other Ivies Plus partners — will move to a new service platform. This new platform, ReShare, will provide patrons with the same ability to request materials directly from our BorrowDirect partner libraries but offers greater integration with our ILLiad system.
What will change?
When submitting requests directly from BruKnow, the Library’s online catalog, you will be prompted to enter your regular University credentials and will then see your citation in a prepopulated ILLiad form. You need only to click “submit.” Your request will be sent to the Borrow Direct libraries for fulfillment, and will receive the same rapid and consistent delivery. This integration with ILLiad enables all requests to remain active should the Borrow Direct libraries be unable to fulfill the request.
Why are we changing?
Our Borrow Direct partner institutions are migrating to ReShare, which provides additional opportunities to customize the service according to a library’s changing needs. ReShare is owned and governed by a community of libraries and developers, promoting collaboration across libraries and institutions, and creating more opportunities for future functionality.
What do you need to do?
Continue placing your Borrow Direct requests as usual. On December 13, look for our new platform. At that time, all new requests will be placed through ReShare.
Please return Borrow Direct materials
Help us clear up “legacy” requests by returning any Borrow Direct materials you no longer need. While this is not strictly necessary (your due dates will not change), it would be most appreciated.
The Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) is a busy hub of collaboration, learning, and knowledge generation, attracting students and researchers from all parts of the University who seek partnership and guidance on digital projects and the field of digital scholarship. The staff in CDS know well that digital scholarship work is best done in collaboration with researchers, regardless of their field of study. While researchers possess a high level of expertise in their specific disciplines, they may not know how to create and maintain a field-pushing database project or how to analyze a large dataset necessary to their research. The knowledgeable and experienced staff in CDS will partner with faculty and other researchers to think through their project ideas from a variety of angles, such as how to visualize data, what digital platforms and methodologies could be used, whether there are ethical concerns related to data acquisition and presentation to consider, and more. The staff also works with anyone interested in learning more about digital scholarship — including absolute beginners — through workshops, courses, and other training and learning opportunities, like the regular DH Salon event series and the new Digital Humanities doctoral certification.
Collaborations in action in the Sidney E. Frank Digital Studio
The learning opportunities provided by CDS are directly informed by feedback from workshop, training, and event attendees. The doctoral advanced specialization certificate in Digital Humanities that CDS and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities began offering this fall is a result of calls for such a certificate heard through feedback. The certificate provides a formal framework for students to explore digital humanities and build knowledge and skills in the field. The requirements include taking electives that provide foundational skills useful in digital humanities, such as a programming course in Computer Science or a course on Geographic Information Systems in Anthropology. Another requirement can be fulfilled through CDS’s intensive summer digital humanities workshops. By incorporating both University courses and learning within CDS, the certificate program demonstrates how integral these skills are for work in any discipline studied at Brown. Students interested in the certificate can take Ashley Champagne and Steve Lubar’s Introduction to Digital Humanities course this spring 2023.
DH Salon
The DH Salon series is another way that CDS is building closer linkages with campus teaching and research programs while activating the Sidney E. Frank Digital Studio at the Rockefeller Library. The salons bring together students, faculty, and researchers from all parts of Brown on select Tuesday afternoons to informally discuss their research in digital humanities. The events draw a large audience of highly engaged, enthusiastic attendees and conversation participants eager to discuss the presenter’s and each other’s work. CDS events are well attended in general. One Introduction to Text Analysis workshop taught this semester by Ashley Champagne, Director of CDS, attracted over 50 attendees composed of graduate students and faculty members.
There is much interest in digital humanities work that explores questions of social justice and power and work that includes foundational partnerships with communities and affinity groups. Projects like this excite the CDS staff, which has demonstrated strength in this area. For the past five years, CDS has worked with Associate Professor of History Linford Fisher on Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas, a community-based database project created and maintained in close partnership with Tribal community members. Including Stolen Relations, CDS is currently actively supporting nine projects this fall, plus the publication projects within Brown University Digital Publications, housed within CDS, which is supporting 13 born-digital scholarly publications with faculty authors.
There is no shortage of interest in digital humanities and digital scholarship at Brown and within academia. Through CDS and Brown University Digital Publications, Brown is at the vanguard in this field, a fact not lost on the many eager participants who are part of our vibrant community of learners and practitioners. You can learn more about CDS through its recently launched newsletter or by attending a DH Salon, offered both in-person and via Zoom.
First-of-its-kind national training program expands the voices, perspectives, and visions represented in the practice and production of digital scholarship
Brown University Library, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has developed a training institute for scholars who wish to pursue interpretive projects that require digital expression and digital publication but may lack resources and capacity at their home institutions. Centered on inclusion and accessibility, Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing: Resources and Roadmaps – an NEH Institute on Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanitiesprovides multi-pronged, far-reaching support via an intensive summer program for scholars from less well-resourced institutions, and a digital hub that makes all course materials publicly available.
“I’m excited to see our program to advance born-digital scholarly publication expand beyond its initial focus on Brown faculty authors,” says University Librarian Joseph Meisel. “There are amazing scholars with outstanding ideas across the breadth of higher education, and the institute is showing how support of this kind can make a real difference in helping them realize these terrific projects for the benefit of students, scholarship, and the wider public.”
A highlight of the hybrid summer program, which took place July 11-29, was the arrival on Brown’s campus of the 2022 cohort, which consists of 15 outstanding scholars representing a wide range of humanities disciplines, geographic areas, and career stages. Nine of the participants currently teach at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Their rigorous and compelling born-digital publication projects bring to the fore the history and future of Black philanthropy in the U.S.; forgotten radio recordings of African writers in exile in London in the 1960s; and the diary of Lillian Jones Horace, the first published African American novelist in Texas and one of the first Black publishers in American history. Foundational research examines the relationship between the life insurance industry and the transatlantic slave trade; the use of emerging media technologies by multiethnic American poets to create new forms of racial representation and political critique; and Indigenous community activism in relation to Pacific Island climate justice, to name just a few. The full list of cohort projects is available here.
2022 cohort and support staff on the front steps of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library
“The institute served as the catalyst I needed to kickstart my research agenda,” says La Tanya L. Rogers, Associate Professor of Literature & Drama and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Honors Program at Fisk University. “The institute’s cohort model was instantly disarming and supportive. Alongside new friends and colleagues from across the country, I shaped my digital manuscript, chapter by chapter!” Dr. Rogers adds, “As adirect result of the encouragement that I received during the institute, I have an invitation to submit my manuscript proposal and sample chapters to one of the publishers who served on the institute faculty!”
The institute curriculum consolidates the successful path to university press publication formulated by Brown University Digital Publications. Taught by internationally recognized digital humanities scholars, librarians, and technologists, authors of born-digital publications, and leading university press directors, acquisitions editors, and production managers—all selected for their expertise and demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusion—participants gained an expanded skill set and rare networking opportunities. Cohort communication continues well beyond the three-week summer program; virtual check-ins planned for late fall and early winter extend individualized problem-solving and project management support.
The on-site component took place in the Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab.
According to Ashley Robertson Preston, Assistant Professor of History at Howard University, “the NEH institute at Brown University was transformative! I learned so many great concepts that I am now introducing to my students at Howard University and implementing within my work as a public historian.” Dr. Preston adds, “the program’s dedication to diversity and inclusion was very apparent, and it was refreshing to meet scholars from the various universities and from different backgrounds.”
In a further effort to help bridge a digital divide that, without intervention, puts digital publishing—as a future of scholarship—at risk of becoming the preserve of elite institutions, Brown has made publicly available the full curriculum. Anyone can access the course outline, recommended readings, and captioned recordings of all faculty presentations—over 18 hours of foundational knowledge informed by the most current thinking on critical issues—via the institute website. This dynamic hub for digital scholarly publishingprovides a continuous and active web presence forBorn-Digital Scholarly Publishing: Resources and Roadmaps.
“By demystifying and streamlining the digital publication endeavor,” explains Allison Levy, Director of Brown University Digital Publications and the institute’s Project Director, “Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing aims to expedite and broaden the dissemination of knowledge on both the local and global levels. First, the hope is that participants will impact change at their own institutions by sharing the institute curriculum with colleagues and inspiring others to pursue digital publication. Second, by facilitating the issuing of contracts and the road to publication, the hope is that new ideas and perspectives will reach readers in a timely manner, in turn, inspiring readers to impact change in their own communities.”
“The institute was an amazing experience and exactly what I needed to further my interest in digital humanities,” says TaKeia N. Anthony, Interim Dean of the Whitney Young Honors Collegium and Graduate Studies and the Academic Support Liaison for the Center of Excellence for the Study of Kentucky African-Americans (CESKAA) at Kentucky State University. “The warm welcome, enthusiasm, and assistance from the Brown University team has encouraged me to pursue digital publishing and introduce the option to my graduate students who seek to enter the academy.” Dr. Anthony, who is also Associate Professor of History, adds, “I am grateful for the summer institute for bringing such dynamic scholars together. I have met and stayed connected with scholars whom I may not have met had it not been for this experience. We are a digital publishing family!”
Members of the 2022 cohort enjoying Providence
Questions about the institute can be addressed to Allison Levy, Director of Brown University Digital Publications ([email protected]).
About the National Endowment for the Humanities
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at neh.gov.
A collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Brown University Digital Publications creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.
The National Endowment for the Humanities and Brown University together: Democracy demands wisdom.Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this press release and in the Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing: Resources and Roadmaps Institute do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Library recently upgraded our subscription to the full McGraw-Hill Medical Suite. In addition to AccessMedicine, we now provide access to 16 McGraw-Hill Medical and specialty collections, including AccessPediatrics, AccessPharmacy, AccessEmergencyMedicine, and JAMAEvidence. These collections include critical textbooks, test prep materials, procedures videos, calculators, and more. You can find all of these resources through our access to McGraw-Hill Medical, or read more about them on our McGraw-Hill handout.
New DEI collection and enhanced ebook access
In addition, the Library purchased access to new ebook collections. From Lippincott-Williams we have added the Ovid Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity (DEI) collection, along with the 2022 Core Collection from Doody Enterprises, expert reviewers of biomedical publications. These additions will provide access to top rated publications in biomedical fields ranging from allergy/clinical immunology to vascular surgery. The easiest way to access these titles is via [email protected].
Even more science titles
We were also able to add hundreds of recent medical, biomedical, and life sciences titles from Springer Publishing. All of these are now available through BruKnow, the Library’s online catalog. If you would like a detailed list of titles, please contact the HBLS team.
Open access publication expands series delving into comparative perspectives on the roots and effects of racism in the U.S.
For the second year running, the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown partnered with the Office of the Provost on the pioneering Race & … in America webinar series, a systematic investigation of the foundational and enduring effects of anti-Black racism in America. Over the course of the 2021-22 academic year, the series again served as a virtual platform for the Brown community to think through the myriad, complex ways that race defines American society and to share these insights with each other and the public at large. Exploring the arts more fully, five new panels featuring Brown faculty continued to generate critical engagements with society’s most fundamental and urgent questions. The informed and illuminating discussions deepened knowledge and awareness in the service of promoting a more just and inclusive community and world. The Race & … in America digital publication series, now complete with 13 volumes, amplifies the impact and extends the reach of this important and timely panel series.
Developed by Brown University Digital Publications in close coordination with Tricia Rose, Chancellor’s Professor of Africana Studies, Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives, and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, the Race & … in America digital publication series re-presents the compelling original panel discussions with expanded content and resources in an innovative, interactive format, designed to heighten understanding and broaden critical conversations.
“As the Brown community continues to tackle the contentious and important subject of anti-Black racism, the Race & in America series allows us to increase awareness of the factors fueling racial injustice through the expertise of Brown’s faculty,” said Provost Richard M. Locke. “We recognize that all members of our community need the courage, dedication and willingness to work on transformational change. We fully support the digital delivery of this critical content for greater access and broader community reach.”
As an open access publication, the digital series provides enduring, barrier-free access to knowledge, and has been developed with universal design principles for equitable use by all persons, including those with disabilities. In addition, the series features responsive design — readable on all digital devices, from smartphones to desktops — and robust highlighting, annotation, and sharing tools that encourage deep reader engagement and allow users to interact with one another.
“Brown’s long-standing leadership in the study of race in American society is matched by its pathbreaking history in the use of technology to convey innovative scholarship in new and newly powerful ways,” said University Librarian Joseph Meisel. “Like the initial volumes in the digital series, this new set of topics adds more penetrating insights by leading scholars that can continue to be studied and discussed, shaping how we think about some of the most challenging questions in our society and culture.”
Each of the thirteen volumes in the series includes:
A recording of one of the 90-minute panel discussions that took place throughout the 2021-2022 academic year
Student Voices podcast episodes in which Brown University students engage the panelists in follow-up discussion
Recommendations for entry-point materials on the subject
Multimedia resource collections of readings, online exhibitions, podcasts, and other materials referenced during the panel discussions
Suggestions for further exploration
Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.
Questions about the Race & … in America digital publication series can be addressed to Allison Levy, Director of Brown University Digital Publications ([email protected]).
Rockefeller Library group study rooms will be available for reservation by Brown students starting Monday, September 19.
Current Brown student ID holders can reserve the space online at https://libcal.brown.edu/reserve/groupstudy. Signs with QR codes leading to the online reservation system are posted on each of the bookable rooms as well.
Rooms can be reserved for two hour blocks, up to two days in advance. Limit one reservation per person per day. Rooms must be used by groups and not for individual study.
We ask that you respect the reservation end time to allow for use by the next group. Please leave the room in good order.
Reservable rooms:
131
133
134C
134D
134E
224
225
227
230
231
Photos of the rooms are also included in the reservation system
More information including a list of the reservable study rooms Questions? Email [email protected].
As of 2022, the United States’ vast carceral system imprisons two million people — more than any other nation and with a growth rate of 500% since 1970. Though government and institutional records on incarceration, law, and policy abound, there is a paucity of archival materials by incarcerated individuals, their families, and advocates. There are fewer than twenty archival collections in the U.S. that represent individuals who are incarcerated. Most of these are small (5 folders; a handful of diaries). Until now, none of these have been collected directly from a currently incarcerated individual.
The Mumia Abu-Jamal and Johanna Fernandez ‘93 collections will be open for research in fall 2023. We are committed to making these materials available to scholars within and beyond Brown, including creating avenues for scholars from Philadelphia and New York to be able to make use of the collections. Digitization of the materials and public events, including a symposium, are on the horizon.
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Referred to by the New York Times as the most recognized death row inmate in the world, Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He became widely known while on death row for continuously proclaiming his innocence and fighting his conviction and for his writings and commentary on the criminal justice system in the United States, including the 1995 memoir, Live from Death Row. After numerous appeals and public pressure from the “Free Mumia” movement, in 2011 his death penalty sentence was overturned by a federal court and reduced to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the prison’s general population early in 2012, and has continued to write about his experiences in and from prison while maintaining his innocence. In 2015, Abu-Jamal published Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal (City Lights, 2015), which was edited by Johanna Fernández.
Composed of approximately 60 boxes of papers that Abu-Jamal sent to Fernández since his imprisonment, and spanning from approximately 1981 – 2019, Abu-Jamal’s archive includes his personal experiences on death row; his ongoing 40+ year imprisonment in solitary confinement, maximum, and medium security Pennsylvania prisons; his reflections on civil rights, incarceration, and freedom; his activist life; and global reaction to his case articulated through activist work on his behalf through publications, film, and other media.
Johanna Fernández ‘93
Born and raised in the Bronx, NY as one of four siblings, Johanna Fernández ‘93 is the daughter of working-class immigrants from the Dominican Republic who fled the Trujillo dictatorship to come to the United States. The first in her family to graduate from college, Fernández received an AB in Literature and American Civilization from Brown in 1993 and later earned a PhD in History from Columbia University. While at Brown, Fernández was a member of Students for Admissions and Minority Aid and led the April 1992 student occupation of University Hall in hopes of pressuring Brown to move more rapidly towards the admission of students regardless of their ability to pay to attend.
Fernández teaches 20th century U.S. history and the history of social movements in the Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY). She is the author of the award-winning book, The Young Lords: A Radical History (UNC Press, February 2020), about the Puerto Rican counterpart to the Black Panther Party. In 2014, she sued the New York City Police Department, claiming that it had failed to produce public records of surveillance of the Young Lords in the 1960s and 1970s; police department employees found those surveillance documents, alongside NYPD dossiers and extensive surveillance of members of the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam, in a Queens warehouse two years later.
A close friend and advocate of Abu-Jamal, Fernández co-edited with Abu-Jamal a special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy, titled The Roots of Mass Incarceration in the US: Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor (Routledge, 2014). She is the editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal (City Lights, 2015) and is the writer and producer of the film, Justice on Trial: the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (BigNoise Films, 2010). Fernández is also an active Brown alumna and has served on the Pembroke Center Advisory Council since 2018.
Spanning from approximately 1965-2021, this collection documents Fernández’s personal history, professional work, and activism. Composed of approximately 45+ boxes of documents, oral histories and digital records, this collection is comprehensive in its documentation of Fernández as a Dominican American community activist; her role as chief advocate on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal; her research on the history of the Young Lords Party; her legal fight to gain access to NYPD surveillance files; her work in radio and other media; and much more.
You Belong Here
The phrase “You Belong Here” is set above the front desk and in front of the exterior of the John Hay Library. According to Associate University Librarian for Special Collections Amanda Strauss:
I came to Brown to transform the John Hay Library into a boldly inclusive institution that is fully engaged with collections that illuminate the most pressing issues of our time. I am honored that Mumia Abu-Jamal and Johanna Fernandez ‘93 decided to place their collections at the Hay, and we will continue to collect voices of mass incarceration in the United States so that the archival record no longer excludes the voices and stories of individuals and communities affected by the carceral state.”
The John Hay Library is home to Brown University’s remarkable collections of rare books, manuscripts, and University Archives. We are committed to being an active partner in advancing the University’s academic mission. We are here for you.
An interactive, open-access born-digital publication, this groundbreaking book’s interface encourages engagement with rich visual material and multimedia evidence
The MIT Press and Brown University Library’s Digital Publications Initiative announce the publication of A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures by Shahzad Bashir. An interactive, open-access born-digital work, this groundbreaking book decenters Islam from a geographical identification with the Middle East, an articulation through men’s authority alone, and the assumption that premodern expressions are more authentically Islamic than modern ones. Aimed at a wide international audience, the book consists of engaging stories and audiovisual materials that will enable readers at all levels to appreciate Islam as an aspect of global history for centuries. The book URL is islamic-pasts-futures.org.
In A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures, Bashir discusses Islam as phenomenon and as discourse—observed in the built environment, material objects, paintings, linguistic traces, narratives, and social situations. He draws on literary genres, including epics, devotional poetry and prayers, and modern novels; art and architecture in varied forms; material culture, from luxury objects to cheap trinkets; and such forms of media as photographs, graffiti, and films.
“Ideas pertaining to Islam and other matters of social significance are enmeshed in structures of power. Understandings of history, including our own, are changeable; they appear and dissolve in tandem with particular human circumstances,” explains Bashir, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities and Professor of History and Religious Studies at Brown University. “This book urges us to see pasts and futures as fields of unlimited possibility that come alive through a combination of close observation and ethical positioning.”
Through multimedia enhancements and an interactive navigation system, A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures allows for an exploration of and engagement with rich visual material and multimedia evidence not possible in a printed volume. The book encourages readers to enter Islam through a diverse set of doorways, each leading to different time periods across different parts of the world.
“The MIT Press has a long and rich history of publishing books that give unique form to unique arguments,” says Amy Brand, Director and Publisher of the MIT Press. “We are thrilled to partner with Brown University Library’s Digital Publications Initiative on this book, which creates exciting new opportunities to share knowledge.”
“With A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures, Professor Bashir not only advances new ways of conceptualizing time as a human construct, but also puts theory into action within a dynamic digital structure that breaks free of the linearity that has always seemed an inescapable given in history writing,” says Joseph Meisel, Joukowsky Family University Librarian at Brown University. “To realize this reimagining of historical analysis in four dimensions, Professor Bashir has also enlarged how we can think about the possibilities and practices of digital scholarly publication.”
The publication of ANew Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures brings together the MIT Press’s global publishing experience and the Brown University Library’s digital publication expertise. This cross-institutional collaboration extends to the recently announced On Seeing series, an experiment in multimodal publishing that will explore how we see, comprehend, and participate in visual culture. The series will center the lived experience and knowledge of diverse authors.
The publication of A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures is supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the MIT Press, and the Brown University Library’s Digital Publications Initiative.
Established in 1962, the MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design. MIT Press books and journals are known for their intellectual daring, scholarly standards, interdisciplinary focus, and distinctive design.
The Brown University Library is central to Brown’s academic mission to support teaching and learning at the highest level, and in a spirit of free and open inquiry. The Library is home to the Center for Digital Scholarship, a hub for the creation of new scholarly forms and other innovations in scholarly communication, including the Mellon- and NEH-supported Digital Publications Initiative. An area of distinction for the Library and Brown, the Digital Publications Initiative is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.
