#FridayDHSpotlight: The Research Studio Series Round Up by Trevor Anthony

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In today’s #FridayDHSpotlight, Trevor Anthony, a first year graduate student at the Claremont Graduate University, reviews the inaugural semester of the Research Studio Series.

Digital Tool Shed, The Claremont Colleges Library

Sipping coffee from my DH@CC cup, I take the opportunity to re-cap the Fall 2019 Research Studio Series, following my first semester at CGU. This series proved a valuable way for a newbie to acclimate to the Claremont scene. Kudos to Jeanine Finn, Leigh Lieberman and Aaron Hodges for organizing the series and the presenters who demonstrated the vibrant life of the Digital Humanities at The Claremont Colleges:

Mark Buchholz from The Claremont Colleges Library kicked things off with “A Primer on Digitization Programs,” featuring the case study of the archive of that noted (and perpetually frustrated) celebrity predator, Wile E. Coyote. The digitization of archives, a “bedrock” manifestation of DH, represents the democratization of information – a boon to scholars as well as society-at-large. As Mark described, there is a great deal of art as well as science involved in digitizing an archive.

The advent of digital tools in scholarly practices represents a rather literal side of DH. Leigh Lieberman presented a test-drive of the Zotero open-source reference management software. Zotero allows the writer to create references and bibliographies for any text editor and integrates directly with Microsoft Word as well as JSTOR. (My 2020 resolutions include getting up-to-speed on this cool tool!) And for those interested in an alternative to the “traditional” Mac or Windows OS, Joseph Osborne, AI researcher at Pomona College, provoked with “Reclaiming Personal Computing – or Your Life in Plain Text,” showcasing open-source GNU Emacs. Technically a text editor, I understood Emacs to be a much more expansive platform, offering the ability to manage one’s computing experience in a single, highly customizable environment. If you crave customization (and possess the heart-of-a-hacker), then Emacs is for you!

The Scalar publishing platform, offering an alternative to the traditional, linear academic “paper” format, is especially useful for integrating media into one’s work. T. Kim-Trang Tran from Scripps College shared some of her Scalar work, including an ongoing, collaborative class-based project. While Scalar integrates with YouTube quite well, she highlighted Creative Commons as an alternative for those who prefer to host our own media files. This fair use /public media archive is intended to support the reuse of media in scholarly and creative contexts.

If DH thought-leaders like Jerome McGann are to be taken at their word, our future as humanists may require that we build up some coding chops. And for those tempted by the siren song of DH to get their hands “dirty” with programming, Jeanine Finn led the Python working group. We began our travels in Python with the Anaconda programming environment, and she recommended Coursera’s University of Michigan 4-part “crash course” as a good way to get our feet wet.

The Reading Group session on September 27 delved into the complex question of labor – student and otherwise – in the DH sphere, for example, with “Student Labour and Training in Digital Humanities.” Asya Shklyar, the Director of High Performance Computing at Pomona College, shared her thoughts on staffing of projects. Given the multi-disciplinary, team-based character of DH projects, staffing considerations will demand more attention as DH projects become more pervasive.

In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, James Coltrain and Stephen Ramsay promote video games as vehicles for humanities scholarship. Recent Pomona graduate Gerard Bentley demonstrated this in sharing his project, “Tagging and Understanding Video Game Affordances,” suggesting that video game learning techniques and AI represent undiscovered country for DH.

As you can see, a variety of inspiring presentations! Thanks to all who shared their work and thoughts. I am looking forward to DH@CC in 2020. Onward!

Trevor Anthony is a first-year student at CGU, pursuing a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies with a Media Studies concentration. He has over 15 years of experience in media development and production; he is a graduate of Duke University and the Yale School of Drama.
Stay tuned for more information early next week about the Spring 2020 Research Studio Series, when we share our schedule for the whole semester. In the meantime, join us for our first session, next Thursday, January 30th from 2:00 P.M. – 3:30 P.M. in The Research Studio: Unmaking/Remaking Memory Work: Building a Community-centered Digital Archive. In the last decade, new community-centered digital archiving initiatives have grown immensely in recognition that traditionally ignored communities should have a role in how their histories get told. In this workshop, CGU M.F.A. student and founder of @latinx_diaspora_archives, William Camargo, and CGU Ph.D. student and co-founder of the Latinx digital archiving collective ImaginX en Movimiento (IXeM), Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz, will share their experiences building community-oriented digital archives. With the tools and strategies outlined in this workshop, we hope attendees will leave with new ideas for implementing community-engaged and justice-based recuperation methods in their own research and teaching.

We’re Launching a New Series! — #FridayDHSpotlight

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We’re launching at new series! We members of the DH@CC team spend a lot of our time preparing for classes, collaborating on exciting digital research programs, and planning events for the Claremont community. In our new #FridayDHSpotlight series, we hope to share reflections on a wide range of topics: projects, classes, and events that we’re proud to have sponsored; methodological questions that we’re grappling with in our meetings; new tools that we’re experimenting with during our office hours.

To kick off the series, we share a piece by Abigail Beck, an M.A. student in the Department History at The Claremont Graduate University, who participated in the screening of and public seminar about the haunting and timely documentary by Tim Slade, The Destruction of Memory.

A Reflection on The Destruction of Memory

by Abigail Beck

The film screening and discussion earlier this semester of Tim Slade’s The Destruction of Memory (2006) with students from Dr. Patricia Blessing’s Pomona ID1 class, Archaeology: Fact and Fiction, covered timely topics such as cultural eradication and genocide spanning from WWI and WWII to contemporary conflicts raging in the Middle East and North Africa. As a discussant of the student panel, I engaged with students about how technology has preserved historical artifacts and landmarks or sped up the dismantling of such sites; of how targeting heritage sites and urban centers can be used to demoralize victim groups; and lastly about the structural elements and critique of Tim Slade’s film.

Part of The Claremont Colleges Library Discourse Series, the discussion was dedicated to the late Stu McConnell, professor emeritus of history at Pitzer College. His research focused on the Civil War and memory, which tied into questions from the audience regarding the controversial debates in the United States regarding the removal of Confederate monuments. Overall, the event held in the Collaborative Commons in The Claremont Colleges Library was filled with stimulating conversation about the significance of cultural erasure and destruction, which according to Raphael Lemkin, the father of genocide-studies, always precedes physical and biological genocide.

These events were made possible through the generous sponsorship of DH@CC, The Claremont Colleges Library, the Department of Art History at Pomona, and the Department of History at The Claremont Graduate University. If you were unable to attend the event but would still like to watch the film, members of the Claremont community may now stream it through The Claremont Colleges Library website.

Abigail Beck is an M.A. student in the History Department at The Claremont Graduate University.

Fall 2019 Research Studio Series is in full swing!

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Now in the second week of the Fall 2019 semester, the DH@CC Team is gearing up for a variety of activities over the next few months. In addition to supporting digital humanities work in classes and digital humanities research projects here at The Claremont Colleges, in collaboration with The Claremont Colleges Library, we’ve recently launched a new set of programs called The Research Studio Series, a year long program of linked events (and refreshments!) on Friday afternoons hosted in the Research Studio, the Library’s hub of DH research and practice.

Fall 2019 Research Studio Series | Friday Afternoons | 2:00-3:30pm | Research Studio, Honnold/Mudd Library

Our first workshop was led by Mark Buchholz, the Digital Production Assistant at TCCL. In his presentation, entitled How I Made This: A Primer on Digitization Programs, Mark shared his experience from working with a broad array of digitization platforms, technologies, and workflows from libraries and other research environments.

This week, Leigh Anne Lieberman, director of the Digital Research Studio for DH@CC, will be hosting a Digital Pop Up entitled, “So, You’re Writing a Thesis” that will introduce participants to some of the digital tools that they might want to try if they’re embarking on a long-term research project.

We’ll be posting updates from the Research Studio Series throughout the semester, so keep an eye on our events calendar and our social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) for more information.

2019 DH Summer Institute

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We’re pleased to invite all interested faculty, staff, and students to attend the 2019 DH Summer Institute coming up on Friday, August 30th from 10:00am – 2:00pm in the Keck Classroom of the Honnold/Mudd Library.

This year’s workshop has been designed to introduce new faculty members to the wide variety of resources that are available to them through collaboration with the Digital Humanities Initiative at the Claremont Colleges. Participants will not only have an opportunity to brainstorm potential digital assignments with members of the DH@CC Team, but will also learn about a number of different successful projects that have been undertaken by members of the Claremont community. Lunch will be provided, so please RSVP by Wednesday, August 28th.

 

2019 DH@CC Summer Institute Poster

Microblogging as Scholarship

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Students in this year’s Digital Humanities Studio (DGHM 150): Archaeology in a Digital Age have spent the first half of the semester critically examining digital platforms and digitally curated data. Twitter, in particular, has got a bad rep. When most people think about the social media platform, they imagine brief snippets of news containing links to additional information, or the unsolicited thoughts of celebrities and the general public. Few conceive of Twitter and other social media platforms as effective means of teaching concise writing with a creative twist for pedagogical purposes. In a recent studio assignment, Microblogging as Scholarship, that coincided with Dr. Donna Zuckerberg’s lecture, “How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes”: The Alt-Right’s Infatuation with Stoic Philosophy, students in the studio “live-tweeted” to this end.

DZ Lecture

Live-tweeting has the potential to change the way audience members listen to, process, and engage with research, and this practice is consequently growing in popularity at conferences and academic lectures. Live-tweeting is posting a series of focused tweets that offer a minute-by-minute rundown on what is being shared by the speaker/panelists and what questions are being asked by the audience—all in real-time. Why are scholars and students live-tweeting in the first place? We live in an age where many of us own smart phones. For this reason, many of us have the ability to promote and communicate knowledge on a globally accessible platform with just the click of a button. By broadcasting information via platforms like Twitter, we can uphold our fundamental responsibility as scholars to openly share our work with a broad audience rather than only with other academics behind closed doors.

Because this was the first time many of the students had been encouraged to formally engage with a platform like Twitter, they composed their “tweets” in a form set up specifically for this assignment. Their collective “tweets” not only demonstrate their engagement with the topic but also provide a useful summary of the talk, readily accessible to those who weren’t able to attend. You can learn all about their take on this important subject, a play-by-play of the lecture itself, and some thoughtful reflections on microblogging as scholarship by accessing their “tweets” here.

For more information about the Digital Humanities Studio (DGHM 150), visit the course website.

How Deep The Rabbit Hole Goes – a lecture by Dr. Donna Zuckerberg

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Zuckerberg Poster

The DH@CC team is excited to welcome Dr. Donna Zuckerberg, Editor-in-Chief of Eidolon, to campus this week. Dr. Zuckerberg’s timely lecture, entitled “How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes”: The Alt-Right’s Infatuation with Stoic Philosophy will be this Wednesday, March 6th, at 4:15pm in the Founders Room in the Claremont Colleges Library. For more information, please contact the DH@CC Team.

Endangered Data Week (February 25 – March 1, 2019)

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DH@CC is excited to be contributing to an exciting schedule of programming during Endangered Data Week.

Click here to access a full size version of the events poster.

For more information regarding specific events, contact Jeanine.Finn@claremont.edu.

DH@CC 2016 Summer Institute Schedule

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The Summer Institute will run daily from 10am-4pm the week of May 23-27. All Claremont faculty and staff are welcome to attend any sessions that are of interest. All morning sessions will run from 10am-12pm and all afternoon sessions will run from 1pm-4pm. There will be a lunch break each day from 12-1pm.

Location
The Institute will be held in the Claremont Colleges Library. All talks/lectures will be in the new Digital Humanities Studio (DHS) on the third floor of Honnold. All workshops will be held in the Keck Learning Room (KLR).

Please note that the second floor of the Library will be undergoing construction the week of the Institute. You will be able to access the building either from the Honnold South Entrance (outside the cafe), or the Bridgeway (underneath the bridge that connects the two floors).

Preparation
Please watch the talks given by last year’s Summer Institute speakers prior to the Institute. They can be found here.

The Schedule
Monday:
-Morning Session (DHS): Introduction to Digital Humanities and resources available
-Afternoon Session (DHS): Speaker Jonathan Alexander discusses DH pedagogy. Please watch Liz Losh’s talk prior to the session.

Tuesday:
-Morning Session (DHS): Speaker Miriam Posner provides an introduction to DH and DH scholarship. Please watch Tara McPherson’s talk prior to the session.
-Afternoon Session (KLR): ArcGIS Workshop

Wednesday:
-Morning Session (DHS):Speaker Erik Loyer discusses Data Visualization. Please watch David Kim’s datalogical methods and mapping videos prior to the session.
-Afternoon Session (KLR): Omeka and Tableau Workshops

Thursday:
-Morning Session (DHS): Speaker Patty Ahn about DH pedagogy. Please watch Laila Shereen Sakr’s talk prior to the session.
-Afternoon Session (KLR): Scalar Workshop

Friday:
-Morning Session (DHS): Small group consultations with DH@CC team
-Afternoon Session (KLR): Reflection and Wine & Cheese Reception

Please email Alex Margolin at alex_margolin@cuc.claremont.edu with any questions.

Geert Lovink, USC Media Arts + Practice PhDs, and RUST LTD to Converge on the Claremont Colleges

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The presentresolved legal conflict between the FBI and Apple regarding access to the iPhone of the San Bernardino murderers is only one stage in the larger theater of privacy and government regulations made famous by whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Though even this broad conversation is part of a grander narrative on cultural values in our era of the Internet and social networks. Rather than letting the FBI and other government entities dictate those values, various theorists, activists, and hackers (hactivists, so the speak) have been working on the front-lines to create a balance between our personal lives and the networks we often take for granted. Coming to the Claremont Colleges to illuminate these stakeholders in the field called “tactile media” is a distinguished scholar on the topic, Geert Lovink, sponsored by the the Munroe Center for Social Inquiry at Pitzer College.

Geert Lovink Poster

Lunch Talk – Geert Lovink
Politics of Mask Design: Critical Internet Culture after Snowden
April 15 | 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. | Founders Room
RSVPs are required. Please email Rachel Durkin in the Dean of Faculty Office at rachel_durkin@pitzer.edu.

In conjunction with DH@CC, we’re excited to follow-up Lovink’s talk with a salon on media activism featuring activist gamers from Los Angeles and San Francisco in conversation with Lovink. They will be coming to our new Digital Humanities Studio on the 3rd floor of the Claremont Colleges Library in the evening as we showcase activist games that the gamers themselves helped create.

Salon on media activism with LA hactivists/gamers at DH@CC Studio
April 15 | 4 – 6 p.m. | Honnold/Mudd Library
LA-based Activist Gamers:
Adam Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz (RUST LTD & USC Media Arts + Practice PhD candidate)
Luke Noonan (RUST LTD)
Emilia Yang Rappaccioli (USC Media Arts + Practice PhD student)
Tonia Beglari (Browntourage & USC Interactive Media & Game Design MFA Candidate)
San Francisco-based Activist Gamer:
Cayden Mak (18 Million Rising)

We hope you’ll join us for both events on April 15th!

Apply for the 2016 Digital Humanities Summer Institute!

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The Summer Institute is an immersive, week long experience for faculty who are interested in learning more about what digital humanities is, understanding critical debates in and around digital humanities, and how to understand and use digital tools. There is a $1,000 stipend for attending. The 2016 DH Summer Institute will be held from May 23, 2016-May 27, 2016.

Throughout the week participants can expect a wide selection of presentations and hands-on sessions led by scholars working at the forefront of the digital humanities. Key topics at the symposium will include: discussions regarding the definition of the digital humanities and its uses, DH criticism, the advantages to infusing humanities courses with the digital, and controversies in the field. Hands-on sessions focused on getting started with tools such as Omeka, Scalar, video production and post production, mapping, and GIS.

Application is closed

The deadline to apply is Sunday, March 13, 2016.
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© 2019 Digital Humanities at The Claremont Colleges.
Unless otherwise indicated, all materials licensed by the CC 4.0 BY-NC License.

DH@CC has been made possible through a generous grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.