DHi Events & Speakers
Moving through 4 Dimensions: Exploring Space and Time at the Ancient Egyptian Temple of Karnak
Elaine Sullivan, Ph.D.
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
University of California, Los Angeles
Lecture: Feb 27, 2012
4:10pm, KJ 127
Workshop: Feb 28, 2012
12:00pm, Sadove 112
3D modeling offers new possibilities for exploring both movement and change through time at historic places. With increasingly sophisticated modeling technologies, we can now virtually walk through ancient sites in "real time" and trace architectural and artistic changes over hundreds of years. Using a visualization of the famous Egyptian temple of Amun-Re at Karnak, this lecture will highlight how virtual reality tools are changing the way we investigate and present archaeological spaces.
Using Omeka to Curate Regional Indigenous Literatures
Siobhan Senier, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of EnglishFaculty Fellow, Sustainability Academy
University of New Hampshire
November 13, 2012
4:10pm, KJ 127
In this talk, I'll explain how digital archiving can amplify and challenge some earlier forms of literary canon-making, particularly the practice of compiling and disseminating literary anthologies. Historically presenting themselves as repositories of "the best that has been thought and said," anthologies can, in digital spaces, radically transform (capital-L) Literature by opening the field up to writers and readers usually excluded by formal academic and publishing institutions. I'll discuss my new project, Writing of Indigenous New England (indnewengland.omeka.net), which intends to build the capacities of tribal communities, local historical societies, and students for preserving and curating indigenous literary traditions. I'll also discuss the pros and cons of using Omeka, designed originally for public-history projects, in literary work.
Collaborating through Open-Access Scholarly Publications on WordPress: New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium Meeting
Daniel Chamberlain, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Digital Learning + Research, Occidental College
Jack Dougherty, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Director of Educational Studies Program,
Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project, Trinity College
Kristen Nawrotzki,Ph.D.
Lecturer, University of Education, Heidelberg, Germany
October 25, 2012
Sadove 112
As liberal arts institutions search for sustainable strategies for enhancing learning in the digital age, individual scholars are also looking for new modes of communication amid rapid changes in the publishing industry, academic libraries, and intellectual practice. Our panel bridges these conversations by featuring three rich examples of multi-authored, open-access publications: a journal on archival theory and practice (http://ArchiveJournal.net), a civil rights monograph (http://OnTheLine.trincoll.edu), and an open peer-reviewed edited volume, (http://WritingHistory.trincoll.edu). All share a common characteristic: the ideas emerged from individuals but came to life through inter-institutional collaborations. We will demonstrate working models and facilitate a broad discussion of innovations and implications for partnerships by liberal arts colleges, since these publications illustrate the type of scholarly production that would be difficult to support solely at one small institution.
A Future for the History of the Book / A History for the Future of the Book: A Discussion of the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Project
Ray Siemens, Ph.D.
Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing
& Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Humanities,
University of Victoria, English and Computer Science
September 25, 2012
4:00pm, KJ 127
A workshop discussion, based on "Toward Modeling the Social Edition: An Approach to Understanding the Electronic Scholarly Edition in the Context of New and Emerging Social Media" (accepted for publication in Literary and Linguistic Computing) and A Social Edition of the Devonshire MS. BL Add 17,492 (forthcoming from Iter and Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies: Toronto and Tempe; current social texts at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Devonshire_Manuscript)
Renewing Heritage after Urban Renewal: The Lakeland Digital Archive
Mary Corbin Sies, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of American Studies
University of Maryland, College Park
May 3, 2012
12:00pm, KJ 127
What are the challenges of creating an archive for a multi-generational African American community, two-thirds of whose residents were displaced by urban renewal in the 1970s and 1980s? What roles can and should a digital archive play in documenting, conserving, and making available historic resources to current and former community members? In 2009, the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland began a community engaged collaboration with the Lakeland Community Heritage Project (LCHP) to help recover, document, preserve, and interpret the history of Lakeland, a historic community adjacent to our campus. The most ambitious product of that partnership to date is the establishment of an archive. This talk will explore the challenges of developing the digital archive for LCHP. That process has asked us to think deeply about issues of archive and repertoire, variable survivability of historic resources, how to document African American community building, how to remediate trauma and loss, and digital accessibility issues for a complex community of all ages.
Peer Review, Open Scholarship, and the Digital Humanities
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.
Director of Scholarly Communication, Modern Language Association (MLA)
Professor of Media Studies, Pomona College
April 5, 2012
12:00pm, SCCT G042
Peer review is the sine qua non of the academy: we use it in nearly everything we do, and cannot imagine what scholarship would be without it. But for such a crucial component of the ways that we work, none of us are wholly satisfied with it, either. Moreover, conventional forms of peer review are often misaligned with the kinds of open scholarship being produced in the digital humanities. This talk takes a brief look at the history and the present criticism of peer review as a means of exploring its future, particularly as scholarly publishing moves increasingly online: what might peer review that took advantage of the reputation economies developed within networked communities look like, and how might it help scholarly communication flourish?
Digital Maps in Scholarship and Publishing
Diana Stuart Sinton, Ph.D.
Director of Spatial Curriculum and Research
University of Redlands
February 21, 2012
12:00pm, KJ 127
“Geographic information has long been central to disciplines ranging from anthropology to zoology, and many scholars are beginning to use digital tools such as geographic information systems (GIS) and other geospatial technologies to ask and answer a range of spatial questions. This talk will highlight issues of data preservation, peer review, data copyright, and community access, among others. I will share examples from numerous institutions of higher education and discuss maps that have been published online, in print, and at conferences.”
Beyond New Media: Digital Scholarship and the Liberal Arts
Kathryn Tomasek, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History
Co-Director, Wheaton College Digital History Project
Wheaton College
December 8, 2011
4:00pm, KJ 201
Digital innovations have been contributing to dramatic revisions in the practices of teaching, research, and publications in disciplines in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences for at least the past five years. And whilst the implications of such innovations may have once remained marginal—especially to humanities disciplines—they are becoming ever more pervasive. These changes go far beyond the effects of social media and new devices. In this presentation, the implications of these changes will be considered as an outline toward achieving and an environment supportive of digital scholarship. Questions to consider will be based on Jeannette Wing's 2006 article on computational thinking and an Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg's thoughts on the future of learning institutions in a digital age.
The Walt Whitman Archive and Beyond: Publication in the Digital Age
Susan Belasco, Ph.D.
Professor, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Department of English
November 15, 2011
12:00pm, Sadove 112
Using the digital Whitman Archive as a case study and a departure point, Professor Belasco will discuss how digital methodologies are prompting major shifts in professional practice in the humanities. Some of the questions she will explore are: How do new technologies change our traditional notions of scholarship? What does publication mean in a digital environment? How are digital environments prompting new genres of scholarly production? How do we evaluate digital publications?
Text Visualization and the Interpretive Process
Stan Ruecker, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Design, Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago
November 3, 2011
4:00pm, Sadove 112
Scholars in the arts and humanities, and in fact the everyday reader, spend time working toward understanding text, often by examining it through an interpretative lens. A postcolonial reading, for instance, will typically provide insights that are distinct from those of a feminist reading or a new historical reading. The goal of this activity is not so much to arrive at a definitive single truth, whatever that might be, but instead to recognize that multiple valid interpretations are possible, and that the object of study is enriched, to use Steve Ramsay’s phrase, by the process of interpretation and the resulting report of the outcome.
This activity can be extended through the existence of digital text, in particular in combination with either manually produced metadata or the results of algorithmic processes such text analysis and data mining. Building on these bases, interactive visualizations, especially of an iterative kind, can help the reader to formulate new ideas about the material. Ramsay (2003) refers to the use of interactive visualizations that show emergent patterns for interpretation as “algorithmic criticism.” For Manovich (2006), a related process, focusing on images and their metadata, is “cultural analytics,” while Moretti (2004) talks about “distant reading.”
In this presentation, Ruecker will discuss a variety of recent experimental prototypes being designed and developed by research teams in the digital humanities where the goal is to support interpretative reading. These include the mandala browser (for visual queries of XML), bubblelines (providing comparative search visualization), plotvis (showing alternative models of narrative), and the simulated environment for theatre (allowing blocking and annotation of plays).
How the Ant-Lion Eats: A Tale of the Hybrid Scholar
Doug Reside, Ph.D.
Digital Curator for the Performing Arts, New York Public Library
May 9, 2011
12:00pm, KJ 102
Alongside the griffins and unicorns in medieval bestiaries frequently appears a fascinating but somewhat less notorious hybrid: the ant-lion, a creature with a magisterial feline head and an industrious, formican body.
In this presentation, NYPL Digital Curator for the Performing Arts will discuss an analogous hybrid: the scholar-programmer, a beast with the head of a scholar (and likely an advanced degree in a theoretical discipline to prove it) joined with the industrial and practical skills of a computer programmer along with some of the career paths such hybrids might find satisfying.
Historical GIS & Digital Humanities
Anne Kelly Knowles, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Geography, Middlebury College
April 15, 2011
12:00pm, KJ 101
Scholars in many disciplines are bringing new dimensions to their research and teaching by looking at the Humanities from a geographical perspective. This talk highlights the use of geographic information systems (GIS), and spatial inquiry more generally, as methods and modes of thinking that are changing historical scholarship.
Aligning past & Present: New Tools for the Study of Historical Geography
Matthew A. Knutzen
Geospatial Librarian, The New York Public Library
March 11, 2011
12:00pm, Sadove 112
The NYPL has built a toolkit at maps.nypl.org that enables the study of the historical landscapes. Utilizing these tools, the general public and scholarly community alike, can create powerful juxtapositions of old and new maps that both highlight and answer spatial questions. Furthermore, users can transcribe static images of historical maps into mashable datasets, unlocking the potential for new modes of historical and geographical inquiry and data visualization. During this talk, Mr. Knutzen will demonstrate, highlight and present use cases for maps.nypl.org.
Humanities & Social Sciences Teaching and Research Using Maps and Spatial Data
Dr. Sean Connin
Program Officer for Science and Technology, NITLE
Alex Chaucer
GIS Instructional Technologist, Skidmore College
Mike Winiski
Instructional Development Consultant, Furman University
January 13, 14, & 15, 2011
Hamilton College
This workshop presents a rare opportunity for faculty and staff to explore the potential of spatial thinking to improve pedagogy. The past few years have seen an explosion in free, easy to use, web applications that approach the power and flexibility of traditional Geographic Information Systems. As a result, scholars from across the academic spectrum have employed these tools to enable them and their students to pursue research questions from a spatial analysis perspective. Guided by three experts with deep knowledge of tools and techniques for integrating web mapping across multiple disciplines, participants will engage in a sequence of collaborative learning activities that will:
- Build literacy and skills in spatial thinking and digital cartography
- Clarify faculty teaching and research interests that would benefit from a geospatial approach
- Foster intra- and inter-institutional teamwork, and
- Explore project development and support options.
Visualizations for Teaching and Learning
Mike Winiski
Associate Director, Center for Teaching and Learning
Furman University
December 15, 2010
4:10pm, Sadove 112
In the book How to Lie with Maps Mark Monmonier claims that “a good map tells a multitude of little white lies; it suppresses truth to help the user see what needs to be seen. Reality is three-dimensional, rich in detail, and far too factual to allow a complete yet uncluttered two-dimensional graphic scale model. Indeed a map that did not generalize would be useless.” Maps are just one type of representation in a rapidly growing field of information visualization, evident by the popularity of websites such as the following:
Any visualization contains gaps and tells an incomplete story. During our discussion, we’ll explore the potential that these gaps hold to create rich learning environments in which students and teachers participate together in the rough and tumble enterprise of deep learning. Join us for a discussion of strategies and examples of how visualizations can facilitate rich dialog and exploration in the classroom.
Digital Technology and Tibet: A New Paradigm for Knowledge
David Germano, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
University of Virginia
November 12, 2010
12:00pm, KJ 127
Digital Technology has revolutionized many sectors of our society in the brief three decade history of widespread use of personal computing and the internet, and yet higher education has been typically conservative and slow to assimilate the revolutionary implications of these new capacities. As a collective, and as individuals, we in higher education are quick to shift rhetoric but painfully slow to shift practices. Digital technologies offer us an opportunity to engage in a historical reassessment of our basic paradigm for knowledge in colleges and universities - its creation, its refinement, its transmission, its publication, and its socially engaged uses. The talk will present a decade-long experiment at exploring such transformative possibilities in relationship to a specific region of the world (Tibet and the Himalayas), and conclude with reflections on how such experiments might be mainstreamed into the academy.
F.I.L.M. Series: The Best of the Flaherty, 2009-2010
Date/Time: Sunday, September 26 • 2:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Kirner-Johnson Auditorium, Hamilton College
The Robert Flaherty Seminar, established 55 years ago by Francis Flaherty, the widow of Robert ("Nanook of the North", 1923), to honor his approach to filmmaking, has become a remarkable annual event that brings accomplished filmmakers together with teachers, students, programmers, distributors, librarians, scholars, and other makers, for a week-long immersion in (mostly) nonfiction cinema. The program, selected and presented by F.I.L.M. director and long-time Flaherty Seminarian Scott MacDonald includes some of the most memorable (short) films shown at the 2009 and 2010 Flaherty seminars.
Films/digital videos to be screened include Michael Glawogger's "HAIKU" (1987), Alex Rivera's "The Sixth Section" (2003), Pawel Wojtasic's "Dark Sun Squeeze" (2004), Laura Waddington's "Cargo" (2001), Mika Rottenberg's "Tropical Breeze" (2004), and Naomi Uman's "Kalendar" (2009).
Film Discussion led by Professor Scott MacDonald (Hamilton College's F.I.L.M. Series and author of the five volumes of the "Critical Cinema" series) and Professor John Knecht (Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of Art & Art History and Film & Media Studies).
F.I.L.M., Cinema and New Media Studies and Digital Humanities Initiative discussion with refreshments follows the screenings.
Co-sponsored by Hamilton's Cinema & New Media Studies and Digital Humanities Initiative
Peeping Tom
Date/Time: Friday, September 17 • 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Location: Little Hall in Golden Auditorium, Colgate University
Peeping Tom, dir. Michael Powell, 1960, 101 min.
Peeping Tom tells the story of Mark Lewis, whose passion for photography is gruesomely linked to the murders of several young women. Peeping Tom has much in common with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: both films were released in the summer of 1960, both are clever psychological portraits of creepy young men, and both play with the expectations of their audiences.
Film Discussion led by Professor Scott MacDonald (Hamilton College's F.I.L.M. Series and author of the five volumes of the "Critical Cinema" series) and Professor John Knecht (Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of Art & Art History and Film & Media Studies).
F.I.L.M., Cinema and New Media Studies and Digital Humanities Initiative discussion with refreshments follows the screenings.
Co-sponsored by Hamilton's Cinema & New Media Studies and Digital Humanities Initiative