Faculty of Humanities

Publications

• Book

  Pritula A.

  ʿAḇdīšōʿ of Gazarta: Patriarch, Poet and Scribe: East Syriac Poetry and Manuscript Culture of the Ottoman Period

  ʿAḇdīšōʿ of Gazarta: Patriarch, Poet and Scribe focuses on the literary legacy of the prominent East Syrian poet and churchman who lived in the 16th century. The role of ʿAḇdīšōʿ of Gazarta for East Syriac ecclesiastical poetry is significant. He was the second patriarch of the Chaldean Church and the founder of its literary tradition.
  
  This book also explores for the first time the manuscript autographs of ʿAḇdīšōʿ of Gazarta, previously unavailable to scholars. In addition, many of this author’s poetic texts are critically published and translated for the first time.

  
  
  

  Vol. 39. Leiden: Brill, 2025.

• Article

  Mikhailovsky A., Seredkina E. V.

  Political Philosophy of Technology and Responsible Innovation in a Multipolar World: The Russian and Chinese Cases of AI Ethics

  This article introduces a political-philosophical framework for understanding Responsible Innovation / Responsible Research and Innovation and ethical AI governance within a multipolar world. It argues that although R(R)I is often presented as a neutral and universal model for aligning science and technology with ethical and societal values, it remains deeply embedded in Western liberal-democratic assumptions of deliberation, participation, and transparency. When viewed through non-liberal cultural and political traditions, these principles acquire new meanings, revealing the limits of normative universalism. Through a comparative analysis of Chinese and Russian approaches, this article challenges the Western liberal-democratic foundations of R(R)I and AI ethics. The Chinese model, rooted in Confucian harmony (he) and virtue (de), frames responsibility as moral mediation, while the Russian approach associates responsible innovation with contributing to the common good and technological sovereignty. The study critiques the asymmetric perception of both models of AI governance— where China’s is seen as centralized yet harmonious, and Russia’s as merely state-controlled— and offers a revised view of Russian “sovereign AI” as a collaboration framework enabling dialogue among government, industry, and science: the Russian AI Ethics Code reveals more interdisciplinary collaboration than typically acknowledged. Finally, the paper explores the notion of a multipolar architecture of responsibility to create space for cultural diversity within a shared humanistic vision. This framework positions science and technology as tools for global cooperation rather than geopolitical competition.

  Философия. Журнал Высшей школы экономики. 2025. Vol. 9. No. 4. P. 13-46.

• Book chapter

  Minov S.

  A Family Drama in Jericho: The Syriac Story of Ḥananya and Shmuni

  In bk.: ‘Brouria Has Spoken Wisely’: Studies in Christian Late Antiquity and Syriac Literature in Honor of Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2025. P. 211-230.

• Working paper

  Orekhov B.

  You shall know a piece by the company it keeps. Chess plays as a data for word2vec models

  In this paper, I apply linguistic methods of analysis to non-linguistic data, chess plays, metaphorically equating one with the other and seeking analogies. Chess game notations are also a kind of text, and one can consider the records of moves or positions of pieces as words and statements in a certain language. In this article I show how word embeddings (word2vec) can work on chess game texts instead of natural language texts. I don't see how this representation of chess data can be used productively. It's unlikely that these vector models will help engines or people choose the best move. But in a purely academic sense, it's clear that such methods of information representation capture something important about the very nature of the game, which doesn't necessarily lead to a win.

  arxiv.org. Computer Science. Cornell University, 2024