{"id":17132,"date":"2026-09-09T21:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T21:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/libnews\/?p=17132"},"modified":"2026-09-10T13:07:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T13:07:42","slug":"budp-tamara-t-chin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/libnews\/budp-tamara-t-chin\/","title":{"rendered":"New Multimodal Book Project by Tamara T. Chin Selected for Development with Brown University Digital Publications"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, together with the Brown University Digital Publications Editorial Board, are pleased to announce the selection of the next scholarly work to be developed by Brown University Digital Publications.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Tamara T. Chin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Stop Motion Philology<\/em>, by Associate Professor of Comparative Literature Tamara T. Chin<\/a>, is an experiment in audiovisually-enhanced close reading that animates, through sound and moving image, aspects of a text that cannot be grasped through silent reading. This hybrid essay-animation book uses phonetically precise sound recordings and commissioned medical imaging (MRI film) to expand our understanding of Silk Road loan phenomena \u2014 that is, the literary and linguistic borrowing or translation of words, sounds, rhythms, scripts, and other cultural forms across first millennium Afro-Eurasia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philology is understood today as \u201cmaking sense of texts.\u201d In the past it also provided the classificatory basis for dividing the world into static and isolated national traditions. This multimodal book focuses on overlooked aspects of key texts that resulted from movement across traditions. One cannot explain in writing the efforts by speakers of tonal Chinese and atonal Sanskrit, or writers of alphabetic and logographic texts to emulate, outdo, or reject each other. Stop Motion Philology<\/em> borrows animation\u2019s principle of motion as both a medium and a critical theme through which to better see, hear, and explain the intercultural and translingual liveliness of the distant past and its dialog with the present.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"MRI
The multimodal publication will include MRI recordings of a speaking mouth and throat so that readers can \u201csee\u201d and \u201chear\u201d the otherwise undetectable experiment to make Chinese sound into a Sanskrit-like alphabet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Brown University Digital Publications<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Brown University Digital Publications<\/a> \u2014 generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation in 2015 with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services \u2014 creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge by advancing scholarly arguments in ways not achievable in a conventional print format, whether through multimedia enhancements or interactive engagement with research materials. Brown partners with leading scholarly presses to bring peer reviewed, open access, multimodal content to global audiences. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown\u2019s novel approach to born-digital monograph publishing is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Landmark publications include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n