Digital  Humani,es  for  Undergraduates  

AAC&U  2012  

Introduc,on  and  Links  Available  Here  

hAp://blogs.nitle.org/2012/01/26/digital-­‐humani,es-­‐for-­‐

undergraduates-­‐session-­‐at-­‐aacu12/  

The  Na,onal  Ins,tute  for  Technology  in  Liberal  Educa,on  (NITLE)  |  www.nitle.org  

NITLE  helps  liberal  arts  colleges  integrate  inquiry,  pedagogy,  and  technology.  

 Future  of  Liberal  Educa,on  •  Digital  Humani,es  •  Libraries  and  Scholarly  Communica,ons  •  New  Learning  Resources      

Humani,es  at  Risk  

“As  history  shows  us,  however,  the  arts  and  humani,es  always  risk  falling  from  favor,  seeming  to  some  as  ancillary  or  extrinsic,  a  frill  to  do  without,  to  cut  and  drop  when  ,mes  are  hard.”  

Arts  &  Humani-es:  Toward  a  Flourishing  State?  AAC&U,  Network  for  Academic  Renewal  Conference  

November  3-­‐5,  2011,  Providence,  Rhode  Island    

John  Seely  Brown,  NITLE  Fellow  2011  

•  Explosion  of  data    •  Exponen,al  advances  in  computa,on  storage  and  bandwidth  

•  Large-­‐scale,  deeply-­‐connected  problems    

Kathleen  Fitzpatrick  

“a  nexus  of  fields  within  which  scholars  use  compu,ng  technologies  to  inves,gate  the  kinds  of  ques,ons  that  are  tradi,onal  to  the  humani,es,  or,  as  is  more  true  of  my  own  work,  who  ask  tradi,onal  kinds  of  humani,es-­‐oriented  ques,ons  about  compu,ng  technologies.”  

“Repor,ng  from  the  Digital  Humani,es  2010    Conference”,  ProfHacker,  July  13,  2010  

 Assoc.  Professor  of  Media  Studies,  Pomona  College  

Director  of  Scholarly  Communica,on,  MLA    

Why  the  Digital  Humani,es?  

Provide  wide  access  to  cultural  informa,on  

Enable  us  to  manipulate  that  data:  manage,  mash  up,  mine,  map,  model  

Transform  scholarly  communica1on    

Enhance  teaching  and  learning  

Make  a  public  impact  

Slide  courtesy  of  Lisa  Spiro.  Find  out  more:  “Why  the  Digital  Humani,es?”  

DH  and  Liberal  Educa,on  

Alexander  &  Davis.  “Should  Liberal  Arts  Campuses  Do  Digital  Humani1es?  Process  and  Products  in  the  Small  College  World.”  In  Debates  in  the  Digital  Humani-es,  ed.  MaAhew  K.  Gold.  Minneapolis:  University  of  Minnesota  Press,  2012.  

Digital  Humanists    at  Small  Liberal  Arts  Colleges  

•  Angel  David  Nieves  &  Janet  Simons,  Hamilton  College  

•  Christopher  Blackwell,  Furman  University    •  Kathryn  Tomasek,  Wheaton  College    •  Laura  McGrane,  Haverford  College  •  Jen  Rajchel,  Bryn  Mawr  College  

NITLE  Digital  Humani,es  

•  Techne:  hAp://blogs.nitle.org  •  Digital  Scholarship  Seminars  

– February  3  at  2  pm  EST:  Building  Scholarly  Networks:  Digital  Humani,es  Commons  

•  DHCommons.org  •  Gedng  Started  in  DH  

– Lisa  Spiro,  Director,  NITLE  Labs  

 

Angel David Nieves

Associate Professor & Chair of Africana Studies Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), Co-Director/Co-PI

Janet Thomas Simons

Associate Director, Instructional Technology Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), Co-Director/Co-PI

Curricular Connections to Digital Humanities Research: ���

DHi’s CLASS Program���(Culture, Liberal Arts & Society Scholars)

Multimedia Course Support

1.  Extensive time investment by all involved 2.  Find or create examples or models of expected

outcomes. 3.  Collaborative Design - faculty with academic

support 4.  Structure media assignments as a sequence of

learning experiences building upon each other over the course of the semester so that content can be assimilated simultaneously with critical literacy's skill development.

5.  Multiple Checkpoints for Evaluation. 6.  Public presentations of students final projects and

process. http://academics.hamilton.edu/mediascholarship/index.cfm?PATH=Recommendations.html

http://dhinitiative.org/projects/scaffold/

Curricular Initiatives & New Models

Independent Projects  

•  Independent projects as versions of Course Support

•  Alexander Benkharthttp://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/from-ancient-to-animation-discovering-japanese-heroines

•  Cinema and New Media Studies Minor http://www.hamilton.edu/academics/departments?dept=Cinema

•  Research projects - Students and Faculty

•  Alexander Benkhart http://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/alex-benkhart-11-awarded-fulbright-to-japan

•  Erica Kowsz http://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/erica-kowsz-1-awarded-fulbright-to-canada

•  Gabriela Arias http://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/gabriela-arias-11-interns-at-museo-del-barrio

  Comparative Japanese Film Archive

     

http://www.dhinitiative.org/projects/japanesefilm/demo

Culture Language Arts and Society Scholars • Two week intensive training in digital approaches to humanities based research.

Angel David Nieves Associate Professor & Chair of Africana Studies Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), Co-Director/Co-PI anieves@hamilton.edu Janet Thomas Simons Associate Director, Instructional Technology Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), Co-Director/Co-PI simons@hamilton.edu http://www.dhinitiative.org email: dhinitiative.@hamilton.edu

"

Discovery & Insight""

""Christopher Blackwell "Furman University"

Engaging primary sources."

Compilation, Alignment, Analysis & Collaboration"

Freely  seen  &  re-­‐used"

Lists & More Lists"

&

christopher.blackwell@furman.edu · folio.furman.edu"

Kathryn Tomasek, Wheaton College Wheaton College Digital History Project

Eliza Baylies Wheaton Travel Journal & Pocket Diaries Spring 2005 Summers 2005-2008

Encoding Financial Records Day Book

Daily accounting of transactions that reflect the many business activities of Laban Morey Wheaton between 1828 and 1859

Payments Rents

Land, equipment

Taxes

Postage

Labor

Purchases Food

Fabrics and sewing supplies

Lumber and building supplies

Technologies of Argument: Undergraduate Literary

Scholarship

Laura McGrane, Associate Professor Haverford College

Jen Rajchel, Digital Initiatives Intern Bryn Mawr College

Tri-College Digital Humanities Initiative

AAC&U 2012

Guiding Question

How do we create and evaluate new-media undergraduate projects that produce archival arguments?

… OR

Where’s the final paper?

Constructing the digital archive

Integrating Digital Collections into the Curriculum

"   Fostering the undergraduate as scholar

•  Encouraging new forms of close reading, knowledge production and interpretation

"   Enabling original research that moves beyond a set syllabus and a specific classroom

Crucial components

"   Multi-directional navigation

"   Balance between user- and architect-driven modes of reading

"   Multi-media forms

"   Interdisciplinary synthesis

"   Student work as process versus product

"   Projects that open out into the public sphere

Digital Collections

"   ECCO (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online)

"   17th-18th Century Burney Coll. Newspapers

"   Early American Imprints

"   American Periodicals Series

" ARTstor

"   EEBO (Early English Books Online)

Examples from Student Archives

What follows are screen shots from one student’s digital archive. In the “real” thing, all links are live (and many are invisible here), and allow the reader to move through primary texts and arguments freely.

Gastronomic Revolutions (Greg Toy, 2010)

Prior to the ratification of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, many American colonists had been engaged in political discussions and disputes regarding the taxable status of essential food items. Indeed, due to the successive English parliamentary acts that imposed tariffs on molasses, sugar, and tea, the colonists had become conscious of the social implications and political connotations of food. Although the Declaration of Independence and the following Revolutionary War effectively ended England’s egregious political control over the American diet, remnants of English culture still permeated the culinary landscape of America; though the American colonies successfully achieved political independence, they still remained culturally attached to England. Consequently, situated within this revolutionary context, this archive endeavors to conceptualize the changing relationship between England and America by examining the changing culinary landscape as depicted in popular domestic guides and cookbooks; through the juxtaposition and purposeful ordering of British and American documents, this archive traces a second revolution. (Gregory Toy, Fall 2010)

1

2

3

4

1. Beef

2. Turkey 3. Salmon 4. American

Specialties

“Most of the American fruits are extremely odoriferous, and therefore are very disgusting at first to us Europeans: on the contrary, our fruits appear insipid to them, for want of odour.”

Samuel Pegge in The Forme Of Cury (1780)

Main Menu

Choosing Beef

Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Alexandria: Cottom & Stewart, 1805. (Originally published in 1747 in London. Later reprinted in America)

Simmons, Amelia. American Cookery. Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1796.

The English Way

The American Way

How would you characterize each excerpt?

Main Menu

American Specialties

Simmons, Amelia. American Cookery. Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1796.

Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Alexandria: Cottom & Stewart, 1805. (Originally published in 1747 in London. Later reprinted in America)

What makes these recipes uniquely American?

Main Menu

Evaluation

"   Close reading of rhetoric/terminology & creation of an argument

•  Analysis of archives as constructed around categories/metadata

•  Ability to integrate course materials into an original research project

Outcomes

"   Projects that move beyond the boundaries of the classroom and individual institutions

"   Projects that encourage the reader and user to roam freely, but within the constraints of an argument

"   Recognition that design choices have theoretical and cognitive impacts

The Undergraduate Thesis

Preparation for involvement in senior thesis work, and larger projects that function trans-institutionally.

Jen Rajchel (BMC ‘11)

Mooring Gaps: Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr Poetry is a Bryn Mawr College senior English thesis in the form of a website. This essay explores three of Marianne Moore’s Bryn Mawr poems. It combines close textual analysis of the poems with an interrogation of the possibilities of a website as a critical form. My interpretation of Marianne Moore’s work features three different analytic structures (one for each poem) to suggest that new media allow for multi-presentational critiques as well as multi-vocality.

Dramatizing poetic argument

Collaborating in new ways

Involving Undergraduates in Institutional Conversations

Tri-college Digital Humanities: http://www.brynmawr.edu/tdh/

Re:Humanities http://news.haverford.edu/blogs/rehumanities/

Gabrielle Arias on Soweto ‘76

2011 Re:Hum Alums "   Alexander Benkhart (Hamilton) Fulbright Scholar, Film

Digitization in Japan

"   Michael Suen (Middlebury) Outreach Coordinator, Learning Games Network

"   Evan Donahue (Brown) Senior Quality Assurance Engineer, Riverbed Technology

"   Evan McGonagill (Bryn Mawr) Systems Associate, Open Society Institute

"   Ethan Joseph (Haverford), Operations Assistant, National Symphony Orchestra

Challenges: How to Enhance …

"   Direct ties between undergraduate humanistic inquiry and private/public technologies

"   Opportunities for undergraduate institutions to partner with each other and R1 universities

"   Opportunities for undergraduates to produce original research and writing as active scholars and citizens beyond individual classrooms

Further Conversation

For questions, comments and collaborative possibilities:

Laura McGrane: lmcgrane@haverford.edu

Jen Rajchel: jrajchel@brynmawr.edu