Unicode and the Humanities
Pittsburgh, February 2-3, 2024
Description
Until the 1990s, world scripts existed in a digital Tower of Babel. With the exception of unaccented Latin characters, texts written on one computer (or sometimes even in one application) were often garbled when viewed on another. Examples of garbled scripts abound: Sinographs that were excluded from officially mandated national curricula; similar characters that were encoded differently in China, Korea, and Japan; Indic languages that had to be written with Latin characters; and users of more than one non-Latin script who had to own a different computer for each script. With the advent of the Unicode Standard, however, this Tower of Babel of garbled and inaccessible scripts came crashing down. Each new version added new scripts, and today 161 scripts can be written and read on virtually any digital device.
Since about 91 percent of the users of non-Latin scripts live in Asia (closer to 95 percent if we include users of Arabic characters in the Middle East), the study of Unicode is central to research about Asia. Yet the study of Unicode has remained a largely technical concern, left to the domain of computer scientists, linguists, and typeface designers. This conference builds on a nascent wave of interest among scholars in the Humanities to ask how disciplines from Anthropology to Classics, History, the History of Technology, Literary Studies, and beyond can contribute to thinking about Unicode. Examples include the role of Unicode in mediating global scripts, the benefits and unintended consequences of creating global standards for Asian languages, the relationship between the ability or inability to represent one’s script and various creative and literary practices, the consequences of having software companies as the most influential stakeholders in the Unicode Consortium, and the role of Unicode in gatekeeping everything from rare historical characters to emoji.
Even though the Unicode Standard may be the most important global technology of linguistic representation since the printing press, it remains a black box for most scholars in the Humanities. This conference will bring together two communities. On the one hand are technical experts, whether members of technology companies, language specialists, or typeface designers, who have been deeply involved in the practice of script encoding. On the other are scholars in the Humanities who work on writing technologies, non-Latin scripts, and digital media in Asia. Members of the Unicode Consortium have themselves requested greater participation from scholars in the Humanities and expressed interest in bringing these two communities together. A discussion of the affordances of Unicode, of its role in the longer history of technologies of writing, of its stakes, of its impact on world scripts, and of its possible futures is long overdue.
Organizers
Raja Adal, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Pittsburgh
Chris Lowy, Assistant Professor, Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University
Presenters
Jon Abel, Pennsylvania State University
Raja Adal, University of Pittsburgh
Deborah Anderson, University of California, Berkeley
Andrew Glass, The Unicode Consortium
Zev Handel, University of Washington, Seattle
Anushah Hossain, Stanford University
Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, Washington University in St. Louis
Christopher Lowy, Carnegie Mellon University
Ken Lunde, The Unicode Consortium
Thomas Milo, DecoType
Kiyonori Nagasaki, International Institute for Digital Humanities, Tokyo
Anshuman Pandey, University of California, Berkeley
Logan Simpson, Queen Mary University of London
Mark Turin, University of British Columbia
Yifán Wáng, International Institute for Digital Humanities, Tokyo
Isabelle Zaugg, Independent Scholar
Auditors
Manish Goregaokar, The Unicode Consortium
Alison Langmead, University of Pittsburgh
Karthik Ranganathan, Digital Humanities Foundation, the Netherlands
Christopher Warren, Carnegie Mellon University
Paper Topics
Jon Abel, “Bugs as Features of an Un-unified Code: The Pleasures and Horrors of Mojibake”
Raja Adal, “Script Reform and Writing Technologies: The Typewriter in teh World of Latin, Arabic, and Devanagari Characters”
Deborah Anderson, “Twenty Years of Bridging the Gap Between Unicode and the Humanities: Insights from the Script Encoding Initiative at UC Berkeley”
Andrew Glass, “Standardizing the Unstandardized: Ancient Scripts and Unicode”
Zev Handel, “Adventures in CJKV, Nôm, Zhuang, Khitan, and Jurchen: A case study on writing up academic research involving obscure Sinoform characters and the challenges of figuring what is and isn’t in Unicode”
Anushah Hossain, “ISCII Imperialism”
Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, “Unicode and the Birth of the Global Neoliberal Information Economy”
Christopher Lowy, “Literary Expression at the Ends of Unicode: The Strange Case of EnJoe Toh”
Ken Lunde, "Genuine Han Unification"
Thomas Milo, “Scholarship in Digitalistan: Some Considerations"
Kiyonori Nagasaki and Yifán Wáng, “Character Encoding for East Asian and Buddhist Studies: Experiences with the SAT Database Project”
Anshuman Pandey, "Characters for a Community: Script Invention Trends in South Asia in the Age of Unicode"
Logan Simpson, “What Makes a Script Successful? Insights into the Implementation of Visual Cultural Elements and the Reasons behind Script Invention”
Mark Turin, “Type Write / Type Right: The Uneven Promise of Unicode for Indigenous and Endangered Languages”
Isabelle Zaugg, "Digital Governance Institutions and Digital Language Diversity"
Program
All events are public, but there will be no presentations. All of the time will be used to discuss each other's works. As a consequence, it is essential for all attendees to read the pre-circulated papers for the panel that they are attending. To request access to papers, please email raja.adal@pitt.edu with your affiliation and the panel(s) that you are planning to attend.
Venue: Room 340, Posner Hall, Carnegie Mellon University (map)
Friday February 2nd
9:45-10:00 am Greetings and introductory remarks
10:00-12:30 am Encoding Unicode
Deborah Anderson, “Twenty Years of Bridging the Gap Between Unicode and the Humanities: Insights from the Script Encoding Initiative at UC Berkeley”
Anshuman Pandey, "Characters for a Community: Script Invention Trends in South Asia in the Age of Unicode"
Kiyonori Nagasaki and Yifán Wáng, “Character Encoding for East Asian and Buddhist Studies: Experiences with the SAT Database Project”
Isabelle Zaugg, "Digital Governance Institutions and Digital Language Diversity"
12:30-2:45 pm Lunch
2:45-4:45 pm Boundaries of Unicode
Ken Lunde, "Genuine Han Unification"
Thomas Milo, “Scholarship in Digitalistan: Some Considerations"
Mark Turin, “Type Write / Type Right: The Uneven Promise of Unicode for Indigenous and Endangered Languages”
4:45-5:00 pm Break
5:00-6:30 pm Outside Unicode
Zev Handel, “Adventures in CJKV, Nôm, Zhuang, Khitan, and Jurchen: A case study on writing up academic research involving obscure Sinoform characters and the challenges of figuring what is and isn’t in Unicode”
Christopher Lowy, “Literary Expression at the Ends of Unicode: The Strange Case of EnJoe Toh”
Saturday February 3rd
9:45-11:45 am Before Unicode
Jon Abel, “Bugs as Features of an Un-unified Code: The Pleasures and Horrors of Mojibake”
Raja Adal, “Script Reform and Writing Technologies: Latin, Arabic, and Devanagari Characters in the Age of the Typewriter”
Logan Simpson, “What Makes a Script Successful? Insights into the Implementation of Visual Cultural Elements and the Reasons behind Script Invention”
11:45-2:00 pm Lunch
2:00-4:00 pm Unicode as a Global Standard
Andrew Glass, “Standardizing the Unstandardized: Ancient Scripts and Unicode”
Anushah Hossain, “ISCII Imperialism”
Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, “Unicode and the Birth of the Global Neoliberal Information Economy”
4:00-4:15 pm Break
4:15-6:15 pm Concluding plenary discussion
Sponsors
We are grateful for the generous support of the Japan Iron and Steel Federation and Mitsubishi endowments at the University of Pittsburgh, to the Dietrich College Seed Grant Funding from the Carnegie Mellon University, and to the Asian Studies and World History centers at the University of Pittsburgh.
