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DH Project Update Trip Report Undergraduate Fellows

ILiADS 2017

As an incoming freshman last year, I never imagined I would have the opportunity to work as a research assistant by my second semester at W&L. During orientation week, I met Dr. Stephanie Sandberg and learned about her play, Stories In Blue, which tells the stories of six sex trafficking survivors in Michigan. Through the Digital Humanities Initiative, I was given an opportunity to work with Dr. Sandberg on the adaptation of her play into a website that is a resource for people to learn more about the intricacies of domestic sex trafficking as well as how they can help bring it to an end.

In the first week of August, I traveled with Dr. Sandberg, Associate University Librarian Jeff Barry, Digital Humanities Fellow Sydney Bufkin and Digital Humanities Librarian Mackenzie Brooks to the Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship (ILiADS) conference at the College of Wooster. As it says on their website, “ILiADS is a project-based and team-based opportunity for focused support of a digital project.” Making this conference unique, is the liaison model where each team is assigned an expert liaison who assists on different digital aspects of the project. Monday through Thursday were devoted to working as a team on our project, where we brainstormed what we wanted the structure of the website to be and then began building it as well as generating content. As a student with limited digital literacy skills, ILiADS provided me with an opportunity to not only take the research I have been collecting and turn it into synthesized articles, but to also learn more about what it takes to build a useable and informational website.

ILiADS is a great opportunity for students and faculty from different universities to come together for a week, work on digital humanities projects and compare what each of their institutions are doing to promote digital scholarship as technology becomes a necessity in higher learning. To be able to have this experience as a student was amazing for me because I not only got to see how important digital humanities is to our project at W&L, but how it is being used at other universities. Digital humanities is allowing the research done by students and faculty, that may otherwise get lost to the ages, to live on through easily accessible platforms.

Coming out of ILiADS, I will continue to work on research, but will also be writing more content for the website and entering my research into our hidden database structure that will make finding information easier.

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Announcement Event on campus Speaker Series UVA Collaboration

Day of DH @ Fall Academy 2017

While it’s still a little scary to admit that school will be starting in a month, we’re excited about this year’s Day of DH! Join us for a morning of pedagogy and digital scholarship discussion from some of your favorite faculty members. We’re thrilled to have Amanda Visconti (Managing Director of Scholars’ Lab) joining us for the lunch time talk. And don’t forget, there’s the third annual Library/ITS mixer in the afternoon.

Sign up for these sessions and check out all the great offerings in Fall Academy event manager.

9:00-10:00am Breakfast and Mellon and You: Graduate Student Teaching Fellows
Interested in the latest updates on the Digital Humanities grant from Mellon, including pedagogical and research opportunities? Paul Youngman (Professor of German and Chair of the Digital Humanities Committee) explains! Curious about the Graduate Student Teaching Fellows and how you could leverage a UVA graduate student in your class? Hear from Caleb Dance (Assistant Professor of Classics), Suzanne Keen (Dean of the College, Professor of English), and Taylor Walle (Assistant Professor of English) on their experiences with teaching fellows, what worked, what didn’t, and what students and faculty learned.
10:15-11:45am Incentive Grant Winners: WRIT 100
Last year’s Mellon DH incentive grant winners focused on multi-modal composition in their WRIT 100 courses. This group faced unique challenges and opportunities in working with first-year students in a variety of topics. Hear about their experiences, with time to discuss ideas further. Speakers: Sydney Bufkin (Mellon Digital Humanities Fellow, Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Topic: Romantic Comedy), Genelle Gertz (Professor of English, Topic: Faith & Doubt), Sascha Golubuff (Professor of Anthropology, Topic: Terror & Violence), Wan-Chuan Kao (Assistant Professor of English, Topic: The Good Wife), and Kary Smout (Associate Professor of English, Topic: Whole New World).
12:00-1:30pm Digital Humanities Guest Speaker Amanda Visconti: Community Design Takes Time
Amanda Visconti avatar
As we experiment with virtual ways of connecting digital humanities practitioners, what kind of human effort must we invest? I’ll share two recent projects I’ve worked on to explore the (sometimes hidden) work of designing DH communities and supporting the very real humans who make up these groups. Infinite Ulysses is a participatory digital edition of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. A variety of scholarly methods—design, coding, usertesting, blogging, and social science analysis—combined to try out a virtual space for conversations among readers from within and without the academy. The Digital Humanities Slack is an online forum for chatting about all aspects of DH. Over 1,500 people interested in DH from around the world are members, and anyone can join, regardless of experience or affiliation. I’ll use these projects to discuss what has and hasn’t worked for me in audience-nurturing DH projects, and how those experiences are shaping my part in the trajectory of the Scholars’ Lab.
4-5:30pm ITS and Library Mixer for Faculty and Staff
Attend the ITS & library reception for a fun and informative kick-off to the academic year. Meet the librarians and ITS staff and learn about our many resources and services. A wide variety of refreshments will be served. Eat, drink, and be merry with us! Hors d’oeuvres and tea will begin at 4:00. Beer and wine will be served from 4:30-5:30. This event will take place on the main level of Leyburn Library.