This award is to support a US-Africa meeting of the African Cultural Astronomy Network in conjunction with the European Society for Astronomy and Culture (SEAC) annual meeting in Alexandria, Egypt in October, 2009. The meeting is being organized by Dr. Jarita Holbrook, University of Arizona, in coordination with Dr. Juan Antonio Belmonte, President of SEAC. Support for the African Cultural Astronomy Network meeting will allow American scientists to collaborate with the world?s top experts in the analysis of historical documents from the period of 1000 ? 1400 C.E., which is part of the Medieval period as defined in European history. For the workshop, a group of experts on Islamic Astronomy in Africa will assemble to create a new collaborative project focused on identifying and analyzing Arabic documents written during the height of ancient Islamic culture and containing astronomy content.
Intellectual merit. There are several repositories of Arabic documents throughout Africa to be considered by the group. The goals of the workshop are to design the collaborative project for the scientific study of the astronomy content of Arabic documents located in Africa; to create a working draft of a proposal for funding the project; to review the secondary goals of the African Cultural Astronomy Network; to bring additional SEAC members into the Network; and to highlight the work of students. The workshop will bring together scientists and students from the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa to develop an international collaborative project. The African Cultural Astronomy Network was founded in 2006 in Ghana. Members of the Network conduct social, historic, or humanistic research on the astronomy of Africa and include astronomers, archaeologists, anthropologists, and a philosopher of science.
Broader impacts. The workshop includes junior faculty and students from the USA, which include women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. The workshop will allow members of the African Cultural Astronomy Network to engage with the larger cultural astronomy community.
