David's blog posts

Oct. 23-24, 2014: Workshop on Religion in Late Antique Culture and Society (RELACS) at Vanderbilt University

We are pleased to invite you to the following workshop: Religion in Late Antique Culture and Society (RELACS) Vanderbilt University, October 23-24, 2014 Sponsored by the Warren Center for the Humanities Late Antique Seminar and the Department of History of Art, Vanderbilt University Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:00 p.m. Nashville Parthenon, Centennial Park, Nashville, TN…

Posted by on September 26, 2014 in events


9/16/14 National States Geographic Information Council Annual Meeting

In September, Anthony Davis, a Ph.D. student at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, and a Syriaca.org research assistant, introduced Syriaca.org to state Geographic Information Officers from around the country in his presentation, “Geographic Texts: Using Machine Reading to Markup Geographic References in Texts” at the National States Geographic Information Council 2014 Annual Conference in…

Posted by on September 19, 2014 in Conference, eXist-DB, public presentations, Syriac Gazetteer, TEI XML


Syriaca.org Editor Daniel Schwartz Receives SEC Faculty Travel Grant

Syriaca.org is pleased to announce that Dr. Daniel Schwartz of Texas A&M University has received a grant from SECU, the academic initiative of the Southeastern Conference. The SEC Faculty Travel Grant Program is intended to enhance collaboration that stimulates scholarly initiatives between SEC universities. Funding from the SEC was used by Prof. Schwartz to travel…

Posted by on June 30, 2014 in grants & awards


6/9-6/20/2014 Syriaca.org Developers Participate in the NEH Xquery Summer Institute

Syriaca.org is excited to be one of the projects featured as a sample project at http://xqueryinstitute.org/. Senior programmer Winona Salesky and general editor David Michelson are both serving as institute faculty. Syriaca.org is built using the XQue…

Posted by on June 18, 2014 in Digital Humanities, eXist-DB, grants & awards, TEI XML


Biblical Archeology Society Comments on Digital Gazetteers

Sarah Bond of the University of Iowa has written an interesting round up for the Biblical Archeological Society on digital gazetteer projects for the ancient world including The Syriac Gazetteer. Her article notes: “The utility of historical geography in uncovering early Christian communities can also be seen in a number of projects currently on the web….

Posted by on June 4, 2014 in Digital Humanities, press coverage, Syriac Gazetteer


5/23/2014 Syriaca.org Editors Present Panel at North American Patristics Society

Three of the Syraica.org editors will participate in a panel “Introducing Syriaca.org: New Online Tools for the Study of Syriac Christianity” as part of the 2014 annual meeting of the North American Patristics Society in Chicago, Illinois. A copy of the handout from the presentation is here: NAPS2014SyriacaorgHandout The full program is here: http://patristics.org/annual-meeting/program/ May…

Posted by on April 6, 2014 in Digital Humanities, public presentations


5/16/2014 David Michelson and Syriaca.org Graduate Assistants present “Finding Colophons in Syriaca.org: Exploring the TEI Encoding Model” at the 2014 Hugoye Symposium (Rutgers University)

On 5/16/2014 David Michelson and Syriaca.org Graduate Assistants Justin Arnwine and Anthony Davis will present a paper “Finding Colophons in Syriaca.org: Exploring the TEI Encoding Model” at the 2014 Hugoye Symposium (Rutgers University). The full program is at http://www.bethmardutho.org/index.php/hugoye/hugoye-conference.html A handout for the presentation can be found here: Handout for Hugoye Symposium III Colophons in…

Posted by on April 6, 2014 in Digital Humanities, public presentations


3/30-4/1/2104 Syriaca.org Editors Participate in a Workshop on Standards for Networking Ancient Prosopographies

Standards for Networking Ancient Prosopographies: Data and Relations in Greco-Roman Names (SNAP:DRGN) is a collaborative Digital Humanities project to address the problem of linking together large collections of material (datasets) containing information about persons, names and person-like entities managed in heterogeneous systems and formats. SNAP is funded by the U.K. Arts and Humanities Research Council…

Posted by on April 6, 2014 in Digital Humanities, public presentations


3/29/2014 Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent will participate in a roundtable “Syriac Studies: What’s still Missing and What’s To Come”

Prof. Saint-Laurent will discuss her digital humanities work with Syriaca.org among other aspects of Syriac studies as part of The Fifth Dorushe Graduate Student Conference on Syriac Studies to be held in 2014 at Duke University. Here are some demonstration links for that presentation: The Syriac Gazetteer: http://syriaca.org/geo/ Additional Documentation: http://syriaca.org/geo/browse.html http://syriaca.org/geo/about.html Sample Full Entry:…

Posted by on March 26, 2014 in public presentations