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DH Event on campus Project Update Research Projects Speaker Series

Report on “Pray for Us: The Tombs of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella”

In her public talk on January 16, 2019, Dr. Anne Leader discussed her DH project Digital Sepoltuario, which will offer students, scholars and the general public an online resource for the study of commemorative culture and medieval and renaissance Florence. Supported by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) team at the University of Virginia, Digital Sepoltuario will chart the locations, designs and epitaphs of tombs made for Florentine families in sacred spaces across the city from about 1200 to about 1500, and then uses archival data to analyze social networks, patterns of patronage and markers of status in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

While the project is not yet complete, it will include transcriptions, translations, photographs and analysis of fragile manuscripts, like registers that kept track of where different people were buried and records that indicate which tombs have been moved or destroyed. These documents demonstrate that tombs were frequently recycled from one family to another when lineages died out or when the family could no longer afford it. Because these records sometimes lost track of the owners of some tombs or the decorations faded away or disintegrated over time, there remains some uncertainty about some tombs’ owners that makes it impossible for historians to figure out now.

From these documents, scholars like Leader gain insight into why people chose certain tombs or churches as their final resting places. The tombstones are imbedded in the floors of churches in Florence, carpeting the churches with stone slabs that mark people’s final resting places and serving as reminders of everyone’s ultimate death. People would look down at the floor and contemplate what lay beneath the beautiful paintings and frescoes on the tombstones and within the churches, encouraging them to prepare for the final judgment and consider: am I ready for what’s to come?

By examining these records and incorporating them in a DH project, scholars can begin to answer questions about Florentines’ burial practices and ultimately about Florentines’ lives. Leader is interested in questions such as: How did Florentines decide on their final resting places, and how did they decide on the tombstones’ designs? So far, Leader noted that most people chose to be buried in their own parishes and close to their homes. However, she finds it interesting that increasing numbers of citizens requested burial elsewhere. This trend transformed the topography of Florence, causing tension within churches that relied on money from burying their dead and enriching some parishes while impoverishing others. Burial placement was one of the most important decisions Florentines would make, so considering why people wanted to be buried elsewhere and understanding the  implications these decisions had on social status help scholars today decipher how early modern Europeans thought about burial and death. Digital Sepoltuario will make all of this possible.

This event was sponsored by Washington and Lee University’s Art History Department, the Digital Humanities Cohort and the Digital Humanities Mellon Grant.

-Jenny Bagger ’19, DH Undergraduate Fellow

Categories
DH Event on campus Project Update Research Projects

DH Research Talk with Stephen P. McCormick

DH Research Talk with Stephen P. McCormick
Wednesday, February 6th, 2019
12:15 PM – 1:15 PM
IQ Center
Lunch is provided. Please register here!


Join Stephen P. McCormick to learn more about his Huon d’Auvergne project and his work with DH students!

McCormick will speak on his research and work with the digital and facsimile edition of Huon d’Auvergne, a pre-modern Franco-Italian epic. Linking institutions and disciplines, the Huon d’Auvergne Digital Archive is a collaborative scholarly project that presents for the first time to a modern reading audience the Franco-Italian Huon d’Auvergne romance epic.

This talk is sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program and the Digital Humanities Cohort.

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DH Event on campus Speaker Series

DH Speaker Series: Anne Leader

Portrait of Anne Leader

We’re happy to welcome Anne Leader to campus on January 16th, 2019 for a public talk on her DH project called “Digital Sepultuario.” Supported by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) team at the University of Virginia, Dr. Leader’s project charts the locations, designs, and epitaphs of tombs made for Florentine families in sacred spaces across the city from about 1200 to about 1500, and then uses archival data to analyze social networks, patterns of patronage, and markers of status in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period. The places people interred their forebearers said a lot about who they were and who they aspired to be. George Bent, our own Sidney Gause Childress Professor of Art, shared, “This project will be of great interest to those of us whose research and pedagogical interests revolve around burial rituals, concepts of the afterlife, commemorating the dead, and burnishing personal reputations. It will be geared to both students and faculty, and will address issues and challenges facing those of us engaged in Digital Humanities studies.” Dr. Leader will be joining Prof. Bent’s Italian Renaissance Art course as well.


Pray for Us: The Tombs of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella
Wednesday, January 16th, 2019
5pm
Northen Auditorium

Categories
Announcement Event on campus Pedagogy People Research Projects

Winter Academy 2018 — rescheduled!

[FYI this event has been rescheduled for January 16, 2019 from 12:15pm-1:15pm. Join us for the same great lineup! Please register on Event Manager.]

With a fresh snow and impending finals, it is certainly time to look toward Winter Academy offerings. The entire line-up looks great this year, but we invite you to join us for the following DH event:

Monday, December 10th, 2018
12:15-1:15pm
Hillel 101
Lunch provided

Digital Humanities Summer Research Panel
Curious about how “digital humanities”–whatever that means–can fit into your research? What it’s like to work collaboratively with undergraduates working on humanistic questions? What impact the research can have on your pedagogy? Then, you should hear from Mellon Summer Digital Humanities Faculty Research awardees and a Special Collections project.

Presenters: George Bent, Professor of Art History; Sydney Bufkin, Mellon Digital Humanities Fellow; Megan Hess, Assistant Professor of Accounting

Don’t forget to register at http://go.wlu.edu/winteracademy!


Looking to fill out the rest of your week? We recommend the following:

  • Leveraging Technology to Cultivate an Inclusive Classroom – Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy (UNC Chapel Hill), Monday at 9:15-10:45pm
  • Imaging in the IQ Center – Dave Pfaff, Monday at 2:15pm
  • How is Technology Affecting Your Mojo? Finding Mindfulness – Marsha Mays-Bernard (JMU), Wednesday at 2:30-4pm
Categories
DCI Event on campus

Report from Women and Technology “How the Web Works” Workshop

As a part of the Rewriting the Code initiative, the Creative Technology Cohort, which encourages W&L women to explore opportunities at the intersection of technology and the humanities, convened for the first of its fall workshops on Saturday, October 6th. Taught by Katherine Donnally, artist and web designer and developer, the “How the Web Works” workshop covered the basics of web design, HTML and CSS and introduced the women to working with their own web domains for personal or professional websites.

Aiming to teach the web in the way she wished she had learned it, Katherine explained the unfamiliar tech language that was made up just twenty years ago, acknowledged the complexities of web design and development by emphasizing that we were capable of understanding it, and encouraged us from the start to seek clarification on anything we did not immediately understand. Katherine, who learned HTML just one and a half years ago and now works as a web developer with a client base, also noted that, because a webpage contains only three elements, it’s really learnable and worth it to learn each element considerably well.

She explained that a website is simply text and introduced the basic ingredients in a webpage: HTML (which function as the buckets for text), CSS (which acts like paint-by-numbers instructions that make the page visually appealing), and the Browser (which is the text reader that executes these instructions). HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language, comes from a consistent set of rules to which web developers agree that results in the words and structure that form a webpage. CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheets, defines a language that dictates instructions for the style and design of the webpage. Playing with the style elements in CSS is like “undoing art,” Katherine noted because web designers can easily try out different colors, fonts and layouts until they find the perfect design. She continued, “Paper doesn’t forget, but webpages forget really easily,” permitting quick alterations and numerous possibilities. Identifying these ingredients, Katherine explained that all that web design is and all we were doing was writing things in a way that computers understand.

After a break for lunch of delicious chili and corn muffins, Professor Bufkin led the Cohort in exploring what having our own web domains entails and the options before us. She showed us how to use a CMS (Content Management System), which renders the desired content on the webpage, displaying it on a browser. Using a CMS, specifically WordPress, was extremely useful for our purposes because it was a simple way to get content on the web and the page up and running while working on HTML and CSS locally. WordPress allows web designers to use HTML in the text editor for posts or pages and customize additional CSS, allowing us to continue to experiment with HTML and CSS while we take advantage of the structure it provides for our websites without having to create our website from scratch. As we experimented with our websites, we considered important questions for web design, including what kind of pages do I need? How will users navigate my website? What kind of content will be on my webpage? Mostly photos or will I want writing? If I include a lot of writing, how should I use the white space on the page? What fonts should I use? The decisions and possibilities behind designing and customizing a webpage seemed endless.

A day of HTML, CSS and chili, the “How the Web Works” Women and Technology Workshop fostered a supportive environment and a collaborative group of women that I truly enjoyed. I appreciated the opportunity to expand my knowledge of web development and consider new questions and ideas as I embark on creating my own website.

-Jenny Bagger ’19, DH Undergraduate Fellow

 

Categories
DH Event on campus Speaker Series Undergraduate Fellows

Dr. Roopika Risam: Calling Attention to Activism through Digital Humanities

During her talk on Thursday, September 20th, Dr. Roopika Risam, Assistant Professor of English, Faculty Fellow for Digital Library Initiatives, and Coordinator of the Digital Studies Graduate Certificate Program at Salem State University, posed the question: what are the rights and responsibilities of humanities scholars in the 21st century?

While Risam draws an important distinction between digital humanities and activism, she argues that digital humanities methods can be effective tools for calling attention to campus activism in the past and supporting student activists on today’s college campuses. The Torn Apart/Separados project, which she created with seven other scholars in one week in June 2018,  served as a reaction to Donald Trump’s immigration policy and the family separation crisis and as a means to think about how to respond or intervene. Using data from documents that were previously obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the project displays a series of data visualizations that represent the landscape of ICE detention in the United States, showing that recent immigration policy impacts many places throughout the country, not just on the Mexico-United States border.

The reluctance amongst academics to tackle divisive issues or political work sparks the perplexing question: can one be both an activist and an academic? Risam claims that not tackling political issues in one’s work is a privilege, and Digital Humanities makes activism possible, offering hope for reappropriating knowledge production. For instance, the Torn Apart/Separados project is not an activist project, but it puts data into the hands of people who can make a difference. Instead of suggesting what consumers of this knowledge should do with it, the project recognizes the limitations of its own knowledge and simply aims to publish and display data. According to Risam, we should be excited about what is made possible by Digital Humanities methods yet remain wary about the utopian world they create.

Some of the most important work Digital Humanities does, according to Risam, is exert power over the means of producing knowledge. Specifically, Risam teaches her students at Salem State University how to conduct archival research, builds their soft and technical skills, and encourages them to think about the history of activism within their community: Salem State University and the city of Salem, Massachusetts. The students were overwhelmingly drawn to digital histories of activism, exploring records and archives of student organizations from the 60s, 70s and 80s to find out all they could about student activism on their campus. Ultimately, Risam and her students developed Digital Salem, a digital presentation of their research findings, that encourages students to engage with these issues in their lives and with contemporary political issues. The students feel validated when they are participating in activism, Risam stated.

So, what are the rights and responsibilities of humanities scholars in the 21st century? According to Risam, campus climate and student interests may require expanded responsibilities that academics previously did not consider their own, and Digital Humanities may be able to assist students in these activist endeavors.

-Jenny Bagger ’19, DH Undergraduate Fellow

Categories
Announcement DCI Event on campus

Rewriting the Code: Women and Technology–Join Our Creative Technology Cohort!

Apply to the Creative Technology Cohort, and attend Fall Workshops!

Join us this year as we explore opportunities at the intersection of technology and the humanities. Our Fall Workshops will introduce the Creative Technology Cohort to the basics of web development and programming in a relaxed and supportive environment. The Winter Forum will feature Chelsea Barabas as the Keynote Speaker and breakout sessions following her talk.


Workshop #1: How the Web Works
Saturday, October 6th at 10:30am-3:30pm
IQ Center

Participants will learn the basics of web design, HTML, and CSS. They will also get their own web domain so they can start working on a personal or professional website. This workshop will be run by Katherine Donnally. Lunch is included. Apply to the Cohort to attend.


Workshop #2: Coding 101
Saturday, October 20th at 10:30am-3:30pm
IQ Center

This workshop will serve as an introduction to computing and Python. No experience is necessary for either workshop. Coding 101 will be run by Zoe LeBlanc out of UVA Scholar’s Lab. Lunch is included. Apply to the Cohort to attend.


Keynote Speaker: Chelsea Barabas
Friday, March 1st at 5-6pm

Chelsea Barabas studies the role of data and algorithms in the US criminal justice system and writes and speaks on gender and diversity in technology. She works with communities around the world to examine how technology can serve the public good.

Check out the Women and Technology website to learn more! If you have questions, e-mail Sydney Bufkin at bufkins@wlu.edu and Kellie Harra at kharra@wlu.edu.

Categories
DH Event on campus Speaker Series

DH Speaker Series: Roopika Risam

We are beyond excited to welcome Dr. Roopika Risam to campus next week! Join us for her talk on September 20th, 2018 at 5pm in Northen Auditorium. Refreshments will be served.


Historicizing the College Color Line: Digital Humanities, Activism, and the Campus Climate

As our students renew demands for equity and justice on their campuses, how can digital humanities be engaged to address the college color line? Risam begins this talk by exploring the complicated relationship between digital humanities, public scholarship, and activism through her work on the Torn Apart/Separados team. She then considers how digital humanities can be used to assist activist-minded students in addressing pressing issues of race on our college campuses, based on her work at Salem State University. While Risam urges caution against quick conflation of digital humanities and activism, she argues that its methods can be effective tools for shedding light on histories of campus activism and supporting today’s student activists.

Roopika Risam is Assistant Professor of English, Faculty Fellow for Digital Library Initiatives, and Coordinator of the Digital Studies Graduate Certificate Program, and Coordinator of the Secondary English Education BA/M.Ed. Program at Salem State University. Risam is the author of New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Worlds in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (Northwestern UP) and co-editor of The Digital Black Atlantic for the Debates in the Digital Humanities series (University of Minnesota Press). She is the director of the NEH and IMLS-funded Regional Comprehensive Digital Humanities Network and co-founder of Reanimate (http://reanimatepublishing.org), an intersectional feminist publishing collective. Her scholarship has appeared in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Debates in the Digital Humanities, Popular Communications, South Asian Review, and College and Undergraduate Libraries, among others. Risam is also a recent recipient of the Massachusetts Library Association’s Civil Liberties Champion Award for her work promoting equity and justice in the digital cultural record. More information and her CV is available at http://roopikarisam.com.

Categories
Announcement DH Event on campus Incentive Grants Pedagogy Speaker Series

Day of DH at Fall Academy 2018

DH @ W&L is holding two Fall Academy sessions this year. Don’t forget to register and check out all the other amazing-looking sessions. Join us on Thursday, August 23rd, 2018 in Hillel 101 for the following:

10:45AM-11:45 AM Creating Open Course Websites
Course websites are a great way to increase access to your courses, share your teaching strategies and materials with colleagues, and organize information for your students. Creating a course website is also an opportunity to re-evaluate the structure of your class and imagine how a student will navigate the different parts of the course. Learn about the benefits of making course materials open and accessible to audiences beyond the university, hear how other people in DH are using course websites, and learn strategies for organizing your own course into an easy-to-navigate website.

Presenters: Sydney Bufkin, Mellon Digital Humanities Fellow; Mackenzie Brooks, University Library; Sarah Horowitz, History.

12:00 PM – 1:45 PM DH Incentive Grant Panel
Come learn about DH funding opportunities for research and the classroom. Hear from current grant holders how they incorporate DH tools and methods in their classrooms. Presenters include Paul Youngman, Chair of Digital Humanities; Ricardo Wilson, English; Shikha Silwal, Economics; Stephen Lind, Business Administration; Stephanie Sandberg, Theater.

Come learn about DH funding opportunities for research and the classroom. Hear from current grant holders how they incorporate DH tools and methods in their classrooms. Presenters include Paul Youngman, Chair of Digital Humanities; Ricardo Wilson, English; Shikha Silwal, Economics; Stephen Lind, Business Administration; Stephanie Sandberg, Theater.

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Event on campus Speaker Series

Reinventing an Ancient Wheel: Developing a Digital Resource for Pompeian Graffiti

We’re bringing it home for our final event of Spring Term with a special event from our Ancient Graffiti Project directors. Rebecca Benefiel, Associate Professor of Classics at W&L, and Holly Sypniewski, Associate Professor of Classics at Millsaps College, will present on their work on the Ancient Graffiti Project, a landmark DH project at W&L. Since 2014, the AGP team has been collecting inscriptions and figural graffiti from Pompeii and Herculaneum. Sara Sprenkle, Associate Professor of Computer Science, has led the development of the search engine and mapping visualizations so the data can be published widely and to other repositories. Over twenty undergraduates have contributed to all aspects of the project – fieldwork, translation, and web development. Join us to learn about this inspiring project!

Monday, May 7th, 2018
6pm
Northen Auditorium, Lower Level 1, Leyburn Library
Refreshments provided!

Holly SypniewskiRebecca Benefiel