Handwritten Script Recognition using DCT, Gabor Filter and Wavelet Features at Line Level

In a country like India where more number of scripts are in use, automatic identification of printed and handwritten script facilitates many important applications including sorting of document images and searching online archives of document images. In this paper, a multiple feature based approach is presented to identify the script type of the collection of handwritten documents. Eight popular Indian scripts are considered here. Features are extracted using Gabor filters, Discrete Cosine Transform, and Wavelets of Daubechies family. Experiments are performed to test the recognition accuracy of the proposed system at line level for bilingual scripts and later extended to trilingual scripts. We have obtained 100% recognition accuracy for bi-scripts at line level. The classification is done using k-nearest neighbour classifier

Handwritten Devanagari Text Recognition using Single Classifier Approach with VSPCA Scheme

In this research paper we used individual classifier approach for Handwritten Devanagari text recognition. We experimented different categorical classifiers namely   Random Forest Classifier (RFC), Support Vector Machine (SVM), K Nearest Neighbor Classifier (KNN), Logistic Regression Classifier (LogRegr), Decision Tree Classifier (DTree). Seven different feature sets are used namely Eccentricity, Euler Number, Horizontal Histogram, Vertical Histogram, HOG Features, LBP Features, and Statistical Features. The experimentation is carried out on 9434 different characters whose features are extracted from 220 handwritten image documents from PHDIndic_11 dataset. We deduced and implemented a unique scheme namely VSPCA scheme. VSPCA is Vectorization, Scaling, and Principal Component Analysis carried out on all feature sets before being given for model training. We obtained varied accuracies using all these five classifiers on all these six feature sets in which 99.52% highest accuracy is observed

Spaces of Multilingualism

This innovative collection explores critical issues in understanding multilingualism as a defining dimension of identity creation and negotiation in contemporary social life. Reinforcing interdisciplinary conversations on these themes, each chapter is co-authored by two different researchers, often those who have not written together before. The combined effect is a volume showcasing unique and dynamic perspectives on such topics as rethinking of language policy, testing of language rights, language pedagogy, meaning-making, and activism in the linguistic landscape. The book explores multilingualism through the lenses of spaces and policies as embodied in Elizabeth Lanza’s body of work in the field, with a focus on the latest research on linguistic landscapes in diverse settings. Taken together, the book offers a window into better understanding issues around processes of change in and of languages and societies. This ground breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars in multilingualism, applied linguistics, and sociolinguistics

The development of the “Sudan Pionier Mission” into a mission among the Nile-Nubians (1900-1966)

This study deals with modern mission history in north eastern Africa. When the rigid Islamistic Mahdi regime in the Sudan was defeated by an Anglo-Egyptian army in 1898, H G Guinness and K Kumm came to Aswan and initiated the Sudan Pionier Mission (SPM) in 1900. The SPM had its spiritual roots in the Holiness Movement and became an interdenominational German-based faith mission. Although the SPM was started in Aswan to advance from there to the south to evangelize animistic people groups in the Eastern Sudan, the SPM actually consolidated its work in and around Aswan for internal and external reasons. Thus, the focus of the SPM shifted from an animistic to an Islamic audience with a special emphasis on the Nile-Nubians occupying the Nile valley between Aswan and Dongola. This study contributes generally to the historiography of the SPM between 1990 until 1966 and analyzes especially the development of the SPM into a mission among the Nile-Nubians during this period. The ethnic groups of the Nile-Nubians will be introduced and their historical, political, social, economic, linguistic and religious situation will be presented. This thesis further describes the topographical development of the SPM and its missiological approach. A special emphasis is given to the life story of the Kunuuzi Nubian convert Samu’iil Ali Hiseen (SAH-1863-1900) and his multifaceted contribution to the work of the SPM. SAH was the first Nubian evangelist in modern times and the major stakeholder of the Nubian vision. Neither the history of the SPM as “Nubian Mission” nor the life and work of SAH have been researched and presented before.Christian Spirituality, Church History and MissiologyD. Th. (Missiology

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’

In the Middle of It All: Prague, Brno, and the Avant-Garde Networks of Interwar Europe.

This dissertation seeks to broaden our understanding of what has come to be widely called the “historical avant-garde” (Bürger) of the interwar period to incorporate lesser known—but equally important—sites of literary and artistic production in Europe from outside the western canon. In the Middle of It All: Prague, Brno, and the Avant-Garde Networks of Interwar Europe shows how a group of leftist Czech artists, writers, architects, and actors, led by Karel Teige, engaged dialogically with peers at home and around Europe in the 1920s. The networks that Devětsil built, and how it built them, can be observed today in the remaining letters, travel accounts, and publications of its members. These are the media around which this dissertation is organized, in its consideration of both the private and public avant-garde. By presenting the published manifestos and theoretical texts of the avant-garde in situ—considering the design of the periodicals in which they appeared, any images that might appear besides text, and what authors were included together in an issue—this dissertation adds both to previous close readings of the texts under consideration (Zusi), as well as seminal work that has stated convincingly the need to introduce the study of ephemeral, printed matter and its design into a history of the avant-gardes of the early Twentieth Century (Drucker). The theoretical frame within which networks are located and analyzed draws from the Social Sciences (Luhmann) as well as Post Colonial Studies (Buck-Morss, Mohanty, Pratt), Periodical Studies (Ardis, Brooker and Thacker, Philpotts, Scholes and Wulfman) and epistolary theory (Altman, Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, MacArthur). Utilizing such an interdisciplinary model, this dissertation reveals that the outcomes of the interwar exchange described have had a wide reaching impact, not only on art production and intellectual output in then Czechoslovakia, but also with regard to that region’s influence around the European continent. Through a series of case studies that take the Czech avant-garde of the 1920s as its focus, this dissertation points out and challenges gaps in our popular, western-centric understanding of the European interwar avant-garde, and resists long held notions of center and periphery.PhDSlavic Languages and LiteraturesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133350/1/mlforbes_1.pd

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’

Pashas and nobles : Paweł Benoe and Ottoman-Polish encounters in the eighteenth century

Defence date: 16 April 2019Examining Board: Prof. Jorge Flores, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Giancarlo Casale, European University Institute; Prof. Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, University of Warsaw; Prof. E. Natalie Rothman, University of TorontoThis dissertation explores Ottoman-Polish encounters in the eighteenth century through an actor-based, microhistorical perspective. It discusses in topical chapters seven case studies: of border management, cross-border networking, border making, diplomatic travel, sociability, multilingualism, and gift-giving. The read-thread binding it together is Paweł Benoe aka Paul Benoît (ca. 1685-1745), an information master and diplomat. A half-French, half-Polish diplomat, Benoe mastered Turkish, married a Greek Phanariot woman, made a career in Poland-Lithuania as an expert in things Ottoman, and left behind an extensive, previously unexplored archive. Beginning with the provocative placing of southern Poland-Lithuania within the Ottoman Mediterranean, this dissertation provides evidence for the integration of Polish nobles into the Ottoman cultural world. Divided into two parts of four chapters each, part one examines the borderland and part two Istanbul. This dissertation rethinks the relations between center and periphery in Eastern Europe and Ottoman Europe to draw a complex image of interdependencies between the borderlands and elite centers in Warsaw and Istanbul. In a bottom-up initiative, Ottoman and Polish borderland actors created a joint court of justice to settle minor conflicts. This was possible thanks to Ottoman-Polish-Moldavian cross-border networks that flourished in the eighteenth century. Borders were far from fixed after the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) and necessitated a long process of mediation and territorial claiming to change zonal frontiers into linear borders. Ottoman and Polish travelers crossing the border produced travelogues that were copied, disseminated, stored, and used by future travelers. Their travels created an Ottoman-Polish sociability in Istanbul, facilitated by multilingual dragomans and diplomats. Finally, Ottoman pashas and Polish nobles influenced each other’s material cultures and tastes through the regular exchange of gifts. With topical chapters addressing these issues, this dissertation provides a completely new understanding of Christian-Muslim relation in eighteenth century Europe

Writing as Material Practice: Substance, Surface and Medium

Writing as Material Practice grapples with the issue of writing as a form of material culture in its ancient and more recent manifestations, and in the contexts of production and consumption. Fifteen case studies explore the artefactual nature of writing — the ways in which materials, techniques, colour, scale, orientation and visibility inform the creation of inscribed objects and spaces, as well as structure subsequent engagement, perception and meaning making. Covering a temporal span of some 5000 years, from c.3200 BCE to the present day, and ranging in spatial context from the Americas to the Near East, the chapters in this volume bring a variety of perspectives which contribute to both specific and broader questions of writing materialities. The authors also aim to place past graphical systems in their social contexts so they can be understood in relation to the people who created and attributed meaning to writing and associated symbolic modes through a diverse array of individual and wider social practices