Welcome to Albert - The Digital Repository of the IAS

Albert is a digital repository for scholarly work created by faculty and emeriti. By offering a central location for depositing research or other scholarly work (including datasets, working papers, pre-publication scholarship, and published papers), the digital repository makes research available to a wider audience, helps ensure its long-term preservation, and can be used to fulfill grant-funded mandates.

 

Recent Additions

  • A Manual of Zaydī Muʿtazilī Dogmatic Texts from Early Sixth/Twelfth-Century Iran
    (Shii Studies Review (Brill), 2023)
    Sabine Schmidtke
    ;
    Hassan F. Ansari
    ;
    Khalkhali, Ehsan Mousavi
    ;
    Jomah Falaheih Zadeh, Ammar
    MS Riyadh, Maktabat Malik ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz 748 is a multitext volume copied by al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī Ibn Abī l-ʿAshīra in 552/1157 in Ṣaʿda. It consists of doctrinal texts by Zaydī and Muʿtazilī authors, invariably Iranian. The codex is the only known extant witness of all but one of the tracts it includes (the exception being Ismāʿīl b. ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl al-Farrazādhī’s K. Taʿlīq al-Tabṣira), and two of its tracts, K. al-Nasīm fī l-uṣūl by one Abī Jaʿfar and K. Muhaj al-ʿulūm by Muʿādh b. Abī l-Khayr al-Hamadhānī, are not even attested in the relevant biobibliographical sources. This study includes critical editions of four tracts included in the majmūʿa as well as an additional tract preserved in a related codex that was also copied by Ibn Abī l-ʿAshīra (MS Milan, Ambrosiana, ar. E 462). The edited tracts are Abū l-Faḍl al-ʿAbbās Ibn Sharwīn’s K. al-Wujūh allatī taʿẓumu ʿalayhā l-ṭāʿāt ʿinda llāh and his K. al-Yāqūta, ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Hamadhānī’s Ḥudūd al-alfāẓ, and a collection of doctrinal and juridical definitions of uncertain authorship.
      41
  • Strengthening scientific integrity
    (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2022)
    Alondra Nelson
    ;
    Lubchenco, Jane
      16  2
  • Biomedicalizing Genetic Health, Diseases and Identities
    (Routlege, 2009)
    Clarke, Adele E.
    ;
    Shim, Janet
    ;
    Shostak, Sara
    ;
    Alondra Nelson
    As the focus of the natural sciences shifted from cellular to molecular levels over the last half of the twentieth century, the question ‘What is life?’ has increasingly been raised. Rose (2007: 6–7) recently posited a parallel epistemic shift in biomedicine from the clinical gaze to the molecular gaze such that ‘we are inhabiting an emergent form of life’. Through biomedicine, molecularisation is transforming what Foucault called ‘the conditions of possibility’ for how life can and should be lived. The emergent biomedical molecular gaze offers possibilities of changing bios – ‘life itself’ – especially, but not only, through genetics and genomics. These new biomedical practices are increasingly transforming people’s bodies, identities and lives.
      8  11
  • Broadband Politics
    (Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, 2003)
    Alondra Nelson
      5
  • Social Text
    (Duke University Press, 2009)
    Alondra Nelson
    Alondra Nelson revisits “The New Right and Media,” an article from Social Text's inaugural issue that explored how “media politics” and forms of mediated, networked communication were used by conservative countermovements to advance their ideological agendas. The idea of “social textronics” is taken up from this article, revised and expanded in order to suggest how new technologies and mediated communication are—borrowing from Fredric Jameson—“a symbolic vehicle” for, and an object of, progressive critique.
      10  4
  • Communities on the Verge: Intersections and Disjunctures in the New Information Order
    (Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1997)
    Wexler, Debra
    ;
    Tu, Thuy Lin
    ;
    Alondra Nelson
    ;
    Headlam, Alicia
    This article examines the relationship of information technology to communities of color. In recent decades, American microelectronics firms have shifted production facilities to offshore sites while prototypic and short-term projects, research, and development have remained in places such as Silicon Valley. Assembly work that fuels the industry there, done mostly by immigrant women, closely resembles the “low tech” labor of their overseas counterparts. Despite these attachments by people of color at the level of labor and high-tech production, the same people are largely isolated from the technology on the levels of use, consumption, and content development. Some attempts have been made by marginalized communities, however, to “stake a claim in cyberspace.” Examining what anthropologist David Hess termed the social and cultural “reconstruction of technology,” we argue that attempts to claim information technologies happen on two levels: the “virtual” and the “real.” We explore questions of how community is conjured or imagined by people of color using icons and language and how images and language mark insiders and outsiders, we examine the inconsistencies in “global village” metaphors and whether communities of color betray similar inconsistencies, and we conclude that we are both critical of and optimistic about the communicative possibilities of information technology.
      2  2
  • Aliens Who Are Of Course Ourselves
    (College Art Association, 2001)
    Alondra Nelson
    The cultural theorist and novelist Albert Murray once remarked that the mandate of the black intellectual was to provide “technology” to the black community. By technology, Murray didn't mean mechanics, new media, or the Internet. Rather, he defined it as those novel analytic approaches he believed necessary to understanding black life “on a higher level of abstraction.” For Murray, this process was one of distillation and complication. He advocated theories of African American existence that, like a blueprint, would be sufficiently robust to reveal the larger patterns of society and do justice to its intricacies and complexities. By Murray's definition, the artist Laylah Ali is a technologist of the highest order. In spite of their striking clarity, her gouache images reflect the contradictions of the human condition. Ali's work explores the tragic lives of the Greenheads, her hypercephalic, thin-limbed, brown-skinned creations. Using a limited palette, she composes provocative visual fields noticeably lacking in scenery, save the humanoid figures that inhabit them. A master at sleight of hand, she uses bright comic-strip colors in a way that recalls the Sunday funnies; but these images have more in common with sardonic political cartoons, for the figures she depicts inflict all manner of insult and injury on one other. Although Ali provides no script for her images, their despair and anger is unmistakable. But there is no violent haste in her brush stroke; the images are controlled—eerily exact. As befits the work of a technician, these tortured lives are rendered with the sharpest precision.
      17  6
  • Genetic Ancestry Testing as an Ethnic Option
    (Sage Publications, 2014)
    Alondra Nelson
      4  1
  • Ten Simple Rules for Responsible Big Data Research
    (PLOS Computational Biology, 2017-03-30)
    Zook, Matthew
    ;
    Barocas, Solon
    ;
    boyd, danah
    ;
    Crawford, Kate
    ;
    Keller, Emily
    ;
    Peña Gangadharan, Seeta
    ;
    Goodman, Alyssa
    ;
    Hollander, Rachelle
    ;
    Koenig, Barbara A.
    ;
    Metcalf, Jacob
    ;
    Narayanan, Arvind
    ;
    Alondra Nelson
    ;
    Pasquale, Frank
      3  1
  • Computational social science: Obstacles and opportunitites
    (Science - American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2020)
    Lazer, David
    ;
    Pentland, Alex
    ;
    Watts, Duncan J.
    ;
    Aral, Sinan
    ;
    Athey, Susan
    ;
    Contractor, Noshir
    ;
    Freelon, Deen
    ;
    Gonzalez-Bailon, Sandra
    ;
    King, Gary
    ;
    Margetts, Helen
    ;
    Alondra Nelson
    ;
    Salganik, Matthew J.
    ;
    Strohmaier, Markus
    ;
    Vespignani, Alessandro
    ;
    Wagner, Claudia
    Data Sharing, research ethics, and the incentives must improve. The field of computational social science (CSS) has exploded in prominence over the past decade, with thousands of papers published using observational data, experimental designs, and large-scale simulations that were once unfeasible or unavailable to researchers. These studies have greatly improved our understanding of important phenomena, ranging from social inequality to the spread of infectious diseases. The institutions supporting CSS in the academy have also grown substantially, as evidenced by the proliferation of conferences, workshops, and summer schools across the globe, across disciplines, and across sources of data. But the field has also fallen short in important ways. Many institutional structures around the field—including research ethics, pedagogy, and data infrastructure—are still nascent. We suggest opportunities to address these issues, especially in improving the alignment between the organization of the 20th-century university and the intellectual requirements of the field.
      5  1

Most Viewed

  • IG_II(2)_00337
    (IVa)
    Krateros Project
      17421  1323
  • IG_II(2)_00211
    (IVa)
    Krateros Project
      9171  199
  • IG_II(2)_00292
    (IVa)
    Krateros Project
      5869  157
  • Albert Einstein, Yukawa, Wheeler, and Bhaba
    (The Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA, 1954)
      3541  4366
  • Institute for Advanced Study Board of Trustees: Certificate of Incorporation and By-Laws
    (Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA, 1977)
    Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, N.J.). Board of Trustees
      2874  45
  • المرجع في تاريخ علم الكلام
    (Namaa Center for Research and Studies, 2018)
    Schmidtke, Sabine
    المرجع في تاريخ علم الكلام» هو عمل ضخم أصدرته جامعة أكسفورد، تَوفَّرَ على كتابته سبعة وثلاثون باحثًا، مع مقدمة مسهَبة بقلم زابينه شميتكه، التي قامت بتحريره. وقد كان الطابَعُ المرجعيُّ لهذا الكتاب هو الباعثَ لـ«مركز نماء للدراسات والبحوث» على نقله إلى العربية عبر ترجمة أنجزها الأكاديمي المعروف أسامة شفيع السيد، وحصل لقاءها على جائزة حمد للترجمة. يستقصي هذا الكتاب آخرَ ما انتهى إليه البحث العلمي الحديث في تطور علم الكلام، مقترحًا اتجاهات بحثية جديدة، كما يتضمن تأريخًا للمذاهب الكلامية المختلفة من قدرية، وجهمية، ومعتزلة، وأشعرية، وماتُريدية، وشيعة، وإباضية، وكرَّامية، وغيرها. وفي الكتاب أيضًا طائفةٌ من الدراسات التي تعالج قضايا كلامية معينة، كنظرية الأحوال لأبي هاشم الجُبَّائي، وفكرة الاقتران في نظرية السببية. ولم يقتصر الكتاب على تاريخ علم الكلام دون حاضره، بل قام برصد الاتجاهات الحديثة الرئيسة، ذات النزعة التجديدية، التي عرفت في العموم بـ«الكلام الجديد
      2332  1233
  • Prince Baysunghur, Before & After: Timurid Manuscripts in Context
    (2021)
    The inaugural symposium of the Persian Manuscripts Association, celebrates the 600th anniversary of the first manuscript produced at the royal library-atelier of the Timurid Prince Baysunghur (1399-1433) in Herat. Prince Baysunghur, Before and After: Timurid Manuscripts in Context, is a two-day international symposium, held on 5-6 November 2021, and hosted by the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Baysunghur’s patronage of manuscript production is significant for exhibiting a high artistic refinement in the arts of the book, but the patron was also actively involved in the scholarly aspect of the works to be reproduced. He commanded editions and the preservation of texts in a variety of fields, notably history, ethics and literature. This symposium brings together scholars and international experts in a number of disciplines to explore the connoisseurship and patronage undertaken by the prince, the aesthetic of his atelier’s output, their antecedents in the Jalayirid period, and the production of literary editions in his library.
      2211  1438
  • International Conference: Islamic and Jewish Studies around the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Ignaz Goldziher and his Correspondents
    (2020)
    Schmidtke, Sabine
    ;
    Günther, Sebastian
    ;
    Dévényi, Kinga
    ;
    Becker, Hans-Jürgen
    When Ignaz Goldziher passed away on November 13, 1921, he left behind a corpus of scientific correspondence of over 13,000 letters from about 1,650 persons, in ten languages. His Nachlass, including the letters as well as his hand-written notes and works, was bequeathed to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The corpus, which is freely accessible in its entirety in digital form (https://konyvtar.mta.hu/index_en.php?name=v_3_2_1_goldziher and https://amirmideast.blogspot.com/2018/06/ignaz-goldziher-correspondence-archive.html?m=1) constitutes the single most important source informing about the history of Arabic, Jewish, and Islamic studies and cognate fields during Goldziher‘s time. Selected portions of the Goldziher correspondence are available in critical editions, while other portions have been consulted for studies on the history of the field, but the bulk of the material has as yet remained untapped. The conference aims to focus on the correspondence between Ignaz Goldziher and colleagues from different countries preserved in the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, addressing aspects of the history of the discipline as seen through the letters. Papers examining specific aspects of Goldziher’s contributions to Islamic and Jewish studies from a wider history of science point of view are also welcome.
      1896  3718
  • IG_II(2)_00236
    (IVa)
    Krateros Project
      1735  1014