A Princeton humanities project shares a vast digital ‘Miracles of Mary’ collection

Image displayed on the Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean and Egyptian Miracles of Mary (PEMM) website of the Nativity of Christ, from the British Library “Orient” Collection MS No. 481, folio 100v.
Wendy Laura Belcher, professor of comparative literature and African American studies, has led a major research project about a huge collection of Virgin Mary stories from the African continent, which have never been the subject of deep, wide-ranging scholarship outside of Ethiopia. Five years of work by a primarily Ethiopian team of researchers and translators, as well as Princeton undergraduate students, has culminated in the Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean and Egyptian Miracles of Mary (PEMM) website, a project in the digital humanities. In 2023, PEMM was awarded a Princeton Alliance for Collaborative Research and Innovation (PACRI) grant to collaborate with Howard University for two years.