Month: March 2018

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Conference DH Event off campus Undergraduate Fellows

DH Fellows Attend 2018 UNRH Conference

“The potential for digital humanities is essentially boundless because there are no rigid definitions for such pursuits, and there is so much information to be observed, studied, digitized, and presented—not just academically speaking, but socially as well.”
–Colby Gilley ’20

In February, DH fellows Katherine Dau ’19 and Colby Gilley ’20 attended the Undergraduate Network for Research in the Humanities Conference at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. The conference, which is held annually and aimed at building a network for collaboration and providing a platform for peers to share projects, gave Dau and Gilley the opportunity to learn more about Digital Humanities.

Photo originally posted on the UNRH Twitter page

Dau and Gilley were able to present their project Florence As It Was to fellow undergraduate researchers, receive feedback on it, and explore the projects of other students interested in Digital Humanities. In particular, they were able to learn about ArcGIS, a geographic information system for working with maps and geographic data, and how useful it could be to their own digital reconstruction project of early modern Florence.

The keynote speaker was Dr. Jacob Heil, the College of Wooster’s Digital Scholarship Librarian and the Director of its Collaborative Research Environment (CoRE). According to Dau and Gilley, Dr. Heil emphasized the significance of the “betweenness” that comes to represent Digital Humanities. Because Florence As It Was incorporates various skills and disciplines, including website design, photogrammetry, 3D design methods, art history, architecture, history and religion, Dau and Gilley, like many other DH fellows, understand the importance of being able to maneuver between and transcend traditional academic boundaries.

Overall, Dau and Gilley highly recommend attending the UNRH Conference to students who are interested in learning more about Digital Humanities projects from around the world, sharing challenges and goals with a community of undergraduate researchers, and becoming a part of the next generation of scholars in Digital Humanities and academia.

This post was written using interviews with Katherine Dau ’19 and Colby Gilley ’20.

-Jenny Bagger, DH Undergraduate Fellow

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Event on campus Undergraduate Fellows

“My Beloved Community:” Uniting People Through Visual Activism

Photograph by Mackenzie Brooks

The opening of DH fellow Arlette Hernandez and classmate Ellen Kanzinger’s exhibition “My Beloved Community,” an ongoing art exhibition aimed at establishing an inclusive space where everyone’s humanity is acknowledged and everyone’s voice is heard, was emotional and candid. The exhibit consists of portraits, which were taken by Ellen Kanzinger ’18, as well as striking personal statements. It also contains a digital component, which was created by Arlette Hernandez ’18.

Depicting people on the social margins as well as those who fit society’s rigid expectations, the exhibit provides participants an opportunity to express their true selves. No matter how complex or unique it might be, every person’s story is important and deserving of representation.

Exploring the portraits and statements on the walls of the Wilson Atrium alongside fellow wanderers, I read provocative stories of discovering identity at W&L, realizing the differences between knowing versus seeing and being versus appearing, and believing in one’s own beauty. Suspenseful and honest, the narratives compelled me to consider the intricate history and expectations of my community.

Photograph by Mackenzie Brooks

The term “Beloved Community” was popularized by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., inspiring love, respect and acceptance between people. Created in response to the displays of white supremacy during August of 2017 in Charlottesville, VA, the exhibit is an example of effective visual activism that aspires for empathy and meaningful conversations about social justice and difference. During the exhibition’s opening, the Wilson Atrium was filled with serene understanding, appreciation and sense of community, rendering it a sweeping success.

 

There’s still time to go see “My Beloved Community” in the Wilson Atrium! The exhibit will be moved to Leyburn Library in March in case you miss it!

-Jenny Bagger, DH Undergraduate Fellow

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DH Event on campus Speaker Series

Dr. Gregory Rosenthal: Deploying Digital Technology to “Make Roanoke Queer Again”

When Dr. Gregory Rosenthal, Assistant Professor of Public History at Roanoke College, arrived in Roanoke in 2015, they wondered how they fit in with the distinct culture of Southwest Virginia. Transported from New York City, they embarked on a journey of public history research and community interaction through the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project, a community-based history initiative committed to researching and telling the stories of LGBTQ+ individuals and organizations in the region. They founded this project with self-taught digital tools to engage queer audiences and encourage people to think about the queer past in new ways.

Photograph by Assistant Professor of History T.J. Tallie

Assembling a collection of gay newspapers, such as The Virginia Gayzette, and other artifacts relating to local LGBTQ+ history found tucked away in attics and forgotten in shoeboxes of local people, Rosenthal and the members of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project built a physical archive of historical materials that were not otherwise preserved in regional museums or libraries. The LGBTQ+ History Collection is housed at the Virginia Room in the Roanoke Public Library and available for public access. Some highlights of the collection are available online.

Through this research, a map of gay bars in downtown Roanoke from 1978 was found, and the queer bar crawls were born. In their talk, Rosenthal spoke about how during these bar crawls, the members of the Southwest Virginia LGBQ+ History Project and other history-loving bar-goers visit the sites of old gay bars, read the words of people who went to them when they existed, and listen to what they were like in their heyday. While the queer bar crawls do not occur online and have little to do with digital tools, they highlight the significance of the physical spaces of LGBTQ+ individuals.

One of the goals of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project is reclaiming historically queer spaces that are no longer queer, which involves doing the physical work that is at the heart of the project, like organizing the queer bar crawls and walking tours of downtown Roanoke. The advent of the internet in some ways destroyed queer spaces as LGBTQ+ people today meet and socialize via the internet rather than in gay bars or gay bookstores, which in the past created ways for queer people to find each other and engage in social experiences. Although it demolished queer spaces in the past, digital technology can be used to draw attention to and reclaim queer spaces. Through Audacity to record the voices of LGBTQ+ individuals telling their experiences and SoundCloud to embed these recordings into an online exhibit, Rosenthal created the exhibit “Coming Out: Gay Liberation in Roanoke, Virginia, 1966-1980,” which is an accessible and engaging mode of communicating the unedited, raw oral histories of gay liberation and queer history in Roanoke.

As these social experiences move online and gay culture becomes mainstreamed, are these physical spaces needed anymore? Rosenthal believes they are. It is still a struggle to be queer in public, and claiming these spaces encourages “coming out of the closet and into the streets.” Through the efforts of the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project, a community of LGBTQ+ people forms both in physical space and online, which is the central goal of the project–aside from inspiring people to “Make Roanoke Queer Again.”

 

-Jenny Bagger, DH Undergraduate Fellow

This event was made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It was co-sponsored by the Washington and Lee History Department.