New Course in Digital Humanities!
Inspired by my fellowship at the Scholars’ Lab last year, I am teaching a course in the History Department this coming spring called, HIST 4501 “From Vellum to Very Large Databases: Historical Sources Past, Present, and Future.” The course will examine how information about the past has been (and is being) preserved.
Historians rely on primary sources to inform and defend their arguments about the past, but digital technology is altering the form and the content of available records and, in the process, raising fundamental questions about the nature of historical analysis. I have designed the course to be “hands on,” so students will have the chance to
- examine illuminated manuscripts
- operate an early printing press
- geo-reference historical maps
as they explore familiar and unfamiliar ways of recording information and reflect on how these formats affect the study of history.
The course is for undergraduates and will meet on Wednesdays from 3:30-6:00pm. For more information, check out the course page at http://www.jeanbauer.com/vellum_to_vldb.html.
“From Vellum to Very Large Databases” is a 4501 (Major Seminar), so students will sign up via a waitlist and then be added once they have received the instructor’s permission to enroll.
About the Author
Jean Bauer
Jean is an advanced graduate student in Early American history and was a Scholars' Lab Digital Humanities Fellows for 2008-2009. She is now a NINES Graduate Fellow for 2009-2010.
Read more about Jean and access her other posts here.
Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship
Through the generosity of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Scholars’ Lab will host a three-track Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship at the University of Virginia Library in November 2009 and May 2010. This Institute will bring scholars, cultural heritage professionals, and software developers together to support and develop geospatial projects and methods in the digital humanities. The NEH’s Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities program will support travel and lodging for 40 attendees as well as Institute faculty members. Dedicated funding is available for graduate students as well as faculty attendees. The Scholars’ Lab will provide $40,000 in funding for short-term scholar- and developer-in-residencies in humanities GIS to complement the Institute.
The Scholars’ Lab also will develop and host an online information clearinghouse and fund visiting fellows in an effort to promote ongoing scholarly engagement, software development, and information sharing by Institute attendees around the theme of Enabling Geospatial Scholarship.
See the Institute web site for more information — including application deadlines for each of our three “tracks,” on Stewardship, Software, and Scholarship.
Mapping the Digital Diaspora of a Dissertation Research Blog
At the onset of my field research in summer 2007, I launched a blog – YellowBuzz.org – with the intention to: 1) archive and organize my field notes in textual and audio-visual form; 2) convey my research purpose and progress to informant musicians and the public; 3) self-position as a “participant” in the scene. Since then, I have made over 160 posts, some directly linked and others tangentially related to my research findings about the activities and media of Asian American indie rock musicians. Over the past one and a half years, my field research blog has received attention from both print and online media. Evidently, this blog has constructed a community consisting of musician- and music-enthusiast-visitors with an interest in Asian American and transpacific music-culture. Read the rest of this entry »
About the Author
Wendy Hsu
Wendy Hsu is a PhD candidate in the Critical and Comparative Studies Program in the music department. Read her research blog @ YellowBuzz.org.
Pandora and the “genes” of music genres
Hello, it’s been a while since I blogged. You may remember me as the music Ph.D. student who was last heard from pondering the uses of Google Scholar. I’m on a new mission this semester, studying for my comprehensive exams. One of the topics I am researching and preparing an essay on is about genre in popular music. The concept may seem initially so self-evident, you may wonder what there is to write about it, per se. Oh, but there’s lots. This is because the issue of genre always involves the issue of classification, which inherently provokes debate. Take, for instance, a star performer like Beck. His music often includes acoustic guitar, and he’s covered Mississippi John Hurt. So he must be a folkie. Oh wait, but he also apes Prince on some funky jams. So maybe he’s a pop star. But he also headlines a bunch of big rock festivals, and we find his music in the “Rock” section at the record store (wait, what’s a record store?). So I guess we’ll call him a rocker.
My point being, popular music can be difficult to pin down using genre tags. You’ll find this evidenced in any number of press interviews with musicians who, when pressed by a journalist, pull out that time-worn chesnut that their sound is “unclassifiable”. Genre tags, be it pop, country, rock, hip-hop, salsa, what have you are almost like identifying pornography: I’ll know it when I see it. It’s often somewhat easier to identify what a genre isn’t than what it actually is. Read the rest of this entry »
Illuminating Historical Architecture
Following up on my introduction to using 3D models to recreate archaeological sites and perform meaningful academic analysis on simulated virtual environments, I will discuss in further detail my current project concerning the recreation of the House of the Drinking Contest in Seleucia Pieria, the port city of Roman Antioch.
Hide and Seek: Blacklight’s Smart Search Functionality
Bethany wrote recently in praise of Bess Sadler’s work on Blacklight, and its recent release (as “VIRGObeta”). I’d like to offer my own (admittedly anecdotal, perhaps insignificant) praise.
Electronic Text Analysis and the Wary Humanist
For a long list of complicated reasons, most practitioners of my discipline—political theory—tend to be suspicious of, if not altogether opposed to, the integration of computer technology into their research and teaching. While some scholars cite the superfluity of computer technology to the discipline (excepting, of course, Microsoft Word), others argue that the introduction of certain technologies might somehow actually endanger both thinking and learning (and who wouldn’t find the reduction of Plato to a series of PowerPoint slides, well, a tad reductive?).
Mining and Mapping Apocalyptic Texts, Part 2
As I explained in my last blog post, my dissertation will compare several statements about the final fate of humankind in Paul to similar statements in apocalyptic texts. In that post, I described how text-mining could help with the interpretation of the texts which stand at the center of my dissertation. In this post, I will discuss how geographic information systems (GIS) can help to visualize geographic relationships among texts. My ideas here, as in my first blog post, are the result of conversations with other staff members here at the Scholars’ Lab. The question that I pose and answer in this blog post is, What does geography have to do with the analysis of biblical texts? The short answer is, “Much, in every way.” But I can’t just assert that, I need to show it.
About the Author
Matthew Munson
Matt is a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies and a Scholars' Lab graduate consultant.
Read more about Matt and access his other posts here.
A Kindle for Every Student?
The blogosphere has been abuzz with diverse opinions on the release of Amazon’s new Kindle 2. So far, most of the news has surrounded the controversial text-to-speech function and whether or not it violates copyright law (more on this here and here). Regardless of its legality, the speech sounds mechanical, and I don’t see this posing a threat to genuine audio books read with intonation by real people. But my interest is not in this primarily, but in reading via ebook itself.Read more…
Day of Digital Humanities 2009
Ever wonder how folks in the Scholars’ Lab spend their day? Bethany Nowviskie, Director of Digital Research & Scholarship at the UVA Library and Joseph Gilbert, Head of the Scholars’ Lab, recently participated in the “Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities” project initiated by our friends at the University of Alberta. The “Day of DH” project encouraged scholars, administrators, students, and others who self-identify as “digital humanists” to blog about their day on March 18, 2009. You can read about Bethany’s day and Joseph’s day, as well as the experiences of a host of other participants.
