My research focused on the question: What can be learned about 19th century Middle Eastern and European medical practices from the personal diaries of Joseph Mattias Svoboda, a European resident in Iraq from 18?? to 1908? Joseph Mattias Svoboda’s diaries document a very detailed account of daily life and information in the Basra and Baghdad regions of modern day Iraq. Joseph himself suffered from a chronic gastro-intestinal disease and frequently wrote about the medication prescribed to him by doctors and self-selected which he then self-administered. I used this information as a basis to piece together common medical practices and medications utilized in the 19th century. Using digital transcriptions of the diaries, my fellow interns and I used data-mining techniques to extract references to medicines, dosages, and usages. Then, using contemporary European newspapers, medical journals, advertisements, and historical records I traced these medicines and their ingredients back to their origin. I examined modern research on these medicines’ ingredients to look at the effect these medicines had on the body compared to the expected results of the time period. I found the medicinal practices of the time, especially in relation to patent medicines generally stem from Europe with many medications being produced and sold there. This allowed me to identify some of the ingredients and usages. However, some of the ingredients and medications were not native to Europe, indicating a larger trade system and medical practices from around the globe influencing medicine in Iraq. Future projects stemming from my research could look into the influence of Asian, Middle Eastern, and Native American herbalism and indigenous practices on 19th century medical practices and medicine trade. Regardless, I hope my work encourages others to explore beyond the Eurocentric narrative of developing medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century, residents of the Middle East struggled to position themselves between their traditional lives in their birthplaces and a future dominated by European influences.  Our study uses digital visualizations to locate similarities between two very different narratives. Alexander Svoboda was born in 1878 to a family of Central European origin, which had lived in Baghdad for two generations. In 1897, he and his parents made an overland trip from Baghdad to Cairo and thence by ship to Europe. During his travels Alexander kept an almost-daily journal, in which, despite his multi-cultural background, he expressed astonishment over European trappings of cities he visited on his way. On the other hand, the famed Egyptian writer Yahya Haqqi’s novel, The Saint’s Lamp, featured a Cairene man named Ismail. Ismail was brought up in a religious atmosphere. Following his father’s wishes, he set off on a journey to England in order to study medicine. While staying in England, he acquired a European way of thinking.  Although their backgrounds differed widely, both Alexander and Ismail experienced the same drastic conversion of perspective while staying in Europe. They came to regard European culture as superior to their own, which caused them to feel a sense of deprivation upon on their return to their homelands after years of life in Europe. We will use the digital tool ArcGis to create a story map that will focus on the places of Europe, North Africa and Middle East which the authors visited. For each location, we will include relevant excerpts and summaries from our primary narrative resources. We also are also organizing the historical events that Joseph mentioned in his diary and are comparing them to other traditional historical sources.

The Baki Project began with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. In the years following written language in Turkey shifted from Ottoman Arabic script to a Latin-based Turkish alphabet. This language transformation occurred rapidly, and consequently some texts were transcribed incorrectly or called for subjective editorial decisions. These discrepancies resulted in inaccurate and incongruent transcriptions, which have been detrimental to the preservation of Ottoman history and culture. Transcription is a primitive and tedious task, as most transcribers perform their work manually, using pen and paper or simple text editing programs. No digital tools exist exclusively for Turkish manuscript transcription, so researchers do a considerable amount of work by hand just to verify the integrity of these documents. Digital tools created to facilitate this process could dramatically reduce overhead needed to study Turkish literature. The Baki Project is introducing a solution that will mitigate the faith gap between manuscripts written in the original Arabic script and those in Latin-based Turkish. A Reverse Transcription Tool is currently in development that will allow transcribers to dynamically verify the integrity of these manuscripts by facilitating the comparison of the original Ottoman text with the modern Latin Turkish output. The Reversible Transcription Tool will create a collaborative method for expediting the transcription process and simplifying a researcher’s workflow by providing the necessary element of standardization missing from Ottoman Literature transcriptions. The tool aims to maintain the authenticity of primary source texts in order to preserve the integrity of Ottoman tradition and literature.

UW offers an excellent research environment. But is there a way to further improve undergraduate experience in research? What is a way to put greater emphasis on student growth while achieving the faculty’s research agenda? We, the interns of Newbook Digital Texts, have sought a new model of undergraduate research model that would answer this question. The core of this interdisciplinary research model is undergraduate leadership. It divides teams into different specialties. In each team, one or more undergrads work as team leads to plan the research project, assign tasks, and gain feedback—not leadership—from research professors and/or advisors. It also gives students opportunities for outreach activities, where they present their research project at regional and national symposiums and grant committees for funding. This model hypothesizes that undergraduates can learn interdisciplinary communication, the skill which would become increasingly important in any career. It also teaches students to autonomously choose a topic, plan, and lead a project with independence and creativity for any kind of post-undergraduate work. How do we know that this model of research works? We have sent out a survey to all of our former and current interns to ask their opinions and experiences with the model. Based on the survey, the remarkable result of this new model is as follows: by showcasing the skills that they learned from this research framework at Newbook, our past interns have obtained notable scholarships and awards such as Mary Gates and McNair, and after their graduation, have secured jobs at Dell, Amazon, digital start-ups, and several NGO’s. The key implication of this model is its applicability to any other fields of study. We believe that this model of undergraduate research carries many positive implications for undergraduate education and helps incorporation of technology into humanities studies.