The Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) provides an opportunity for Berkeley undergraduates to work with faculty members and research staff on cutting-edge research projects. A number of faculty in the division are leading digital humanities projects with undergraduate students. See some highlighted projects below:
Professor John Alba-Cutler (English) is working with students to create a database of literary texts published in Spanish-language newspapers from 1915-1920. During the early twentieth century, Spanish-language newspapers played a critical role in publishing literary works in Latinx communities all over the United States. Hundreds of these newspapers have been digitized, with literally thousands of poems, short stories, chronicles, and serialized novels in them. Students and scholars have only just begun combing through these newspapers to discover what this immense literary archive can tell us about the evolution of Latinx literature and the experiences of Latinxs during this time period.
Professor Adam Benkato (Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures) is working on a two part project with students to develop digital resources for Middle Iranian textual corpora with: the 'Open Archive of Middle Persian Documents' and 'Chorasmian Online'. The goal is to make primary source material and lexicographical material available to researchers online. The first part involves the digitizing and encoding of Middle Persian documents for the creation of an online database of documents covering the 3rd to 8th centuries CE. The second part involves the digitization of an unpublished dictionary of the Chorasmian language (11th-14th centuries CE) to make it available to researchers online.
Professor Rita Lucarelli (Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures) is working with students to create a 3D Book of the Dead. Ancient Egyptian coffins are inscribed with spells and images which stand in for spells. All function together as a machine to resurrect the deceased and to guide them safely through the next world. Given this function, it is perhaps surprising that the texts from coffins are usually published completely divorced from their position on the coffin. Any additional meaning conferred on the texts by their placement on the surrogate body or relative to each other and the vignettes is lost. In order to understand a coffin as a magical machine, it's necessary to view the spells in 3D so that this relationship can be taken into account.
There are a number of faculty leading digital humanities projects in the division. To learn more visit the URAP project database(link is external). Examples above are pulled from Spring 2025 project descriptions.