DH (& Other) Resources a the Library

Josh

In lieu of making slides, I thought a blog post outlining what I’ll be discussing informally at today’s NUDHL meeting might be a better resource for everyone. I would like to briefly discuss some of the resources available to faculty and graduate students, most of which can be filed under a very loosely defined digital humanities. Please feel free to leave a comment on this post or contact me directly at josh.honn@northwestern.edu with any questions or comments. I’m also online a lot.

  • Center for Scholarly Communication & Digital Curation
    This is where I work as Digital Scholarship Fellow along with my boss Claire Stewart, who is both head of the Center and Digital Collections. Claire is the go-to person for all things copyright, fair use, and data management. Me, I mostly research digital tools and methodologies and consult/collaborate with faculty and grad students on digital humanities and publishing projects. Though, by projects, I don’t necessarily mean BIG projects, but projects of all kinds, shapes, and sizes. Some types of projects we’re working on now include online manuscript transcription and annotation, a digital history course, various types text analysis  research, experiments in multimodal scholarly monograph publishing, born-digital web archiving curation and research, and others. Finally, I’ve also begun to provide presentations and resources on digital pedagogy and building an online scholarly presence.
  • A Guide to Digital Humanities
    One of my projects is this guide, which should provide a pretty basic and broad (but I hope high quality!) overview of many of the methods, tools, research, and projects that often fall under the umbrella term digital humanities. It’s also collocates many of the best repositories online, such as Bamboo DiRT for finding many, many kinds of digital research tools. A good amount of the tools and methodologies listed here I and other folks in the library have some experience with, so please feel free to consult with me/us. And if there’s something I don’t know, it’s part of my job to, at the very least, look into it! I’m also always looking for feedback on how to make the guide better, so please feel free to contribute ideas.
  • Digital Collections & the Digital Media Lab
    The Center and the Digital Collections department work very closely together and we also share a space in 2 East in the Library. Digital Collections works on digitization and other digital projects, checks out equipment, and also has a digital media lab which is open to faculty and graduate students. Digital Collections is an excellent source for learning about metadata, best practices for self-digitization in archives, learning and using new software, running OCR on PDFs, and a lot more. My colleague Brendan Quinn is a particularly great person to be in touch with when it comes to multimedia production and web design.
  • Northwestern University Library
    I don’t know everything that’s going on in the library, but there are a lot of other resources pertinent to digital humanities research, especially through many of our humanities librarians. For instance, if you want to find out more about what databases the library subscribes to and how to search and use them, Charlotte Cubbage is invaluable, especially for English. She’ll help you find everything from primary to secondary research resources online. If you’re looking to learn reference/citation management software like Zotero, I recommend making an appointment with Geoff Morse. And for GIS data and visualization, Ann Aler. For a full list of subject specialists, go here.

THIS FRIDAY: NUDHL #8 – “Defining DH @ NU”

Andrew Keener

THIS WEEK’S QUESTIONS:

What do we recognize to be the state of affairs of DH in practice at Northwestern? What kinds of digital work are faculty and graduate students taking on right now? How can we activate useful and responsible DH practice in the classroom setting? What technologies and resources are available through the Library, and what will be available in months to come? What resources and individuals can one turn to for assistance and guidance on digital projects?

We will address these and other, related questions during the first hour of this Friday’s meeting. Four presentations will deliver a picture of DH on-the-ground and in practice among graduate students, researchers, instructors, and librarians. (These samples of current work will serve as the basis of discussion in lieu of readings.) The second hour will serve as a forum for graduate students to discuss among themselves what they see to be useful approaches and techniques in DH going forward. In the hopes of bringing together our group in a less formal fashion, we’ll then gather for a collegial get-together at the Celtic Knot, where the conversation will continue.

DATE & TIME:

Friday, 17 May 2013
12pm – 1pm:  Presentations & Discussion
1pm – 2pm:    Graduate Student Forum
2pm and on:  Conversation @ Celtic Knot, 626 Church St., Evanston (click for map).

PLACE:

Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Conference Room, Kresge Hall, 1880 Campus Drive, #2-360, Evanston, IL 60208 (click for map).

FULL PRESENTATION & DISCUSSION AGENDA:

I.     Introduction: Emily VanBuren & Amanda Kleintop, Ph.D. Students, Department of History
II.   Brief Presentations: DH in Practice
a. Graduate Research:  Andrew Keener, Ph.D. Student, Department of English
b. Pedagogy: Michael Kramer, Department of History
c. Library Resources: Josh Honn, Digital Scholarship Library Fellow
III. Discussion about DH @ NU (with an eye toward its futures)
IV.  Graduate Student Forum (tools, workshops, presentations, goals)
V.   Walk into Evanston & Continued Conversation @ Celtic Knot

DH: A Historical “Refuge” From Race / Class / Gender / Sexuality / Disability?

Michael J. Kramer

Great conversation going on over at Postcolonial Digital Humanities:

OPEN THREAD: THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES AS A HISTORICAL “REFUGE” FROM RACE/CLASS/GENDER/SEXUALITY/DISABILITY?, http://dhpoco.org/2013/05/10/open-thread-the-digital-humanities-as-a-historical-refuge-from-raceclassgendersexualitydisability/.

 

Digital Dictionaries: Russian Visual & NUDe @ MMLC, Friday 5/17, 4pm

Michael J. Kramer

The MMLC is gearing up for another World.Wine.Web. event!

Stop by next Friday, May 17th, at 4:00pm in Kresge 1-375 for the last high-tech happy hour of the year!

Digital Dictionaries: Russian Visual & NUDe

The digital world opens a host of possibilities for teaching, but also for our students to negotiate meaning and learning. With the Russian Visual Dictionary, Lis Elliott (Slavic Languages) examines how we can make students be aware of misculturation and introduce so-called third places or intercultural comparison in language even at the very beginning levels. The Northwestern University Dictionary-e-version or NUDe is a new project, where Lis will guide students in their own creation of a digital-born dictionary of Northwestern, while thinking critically both about dictionaries and the waning age of information in physical book form. The discussion will be lively and the drinks will be flowing, so join us for another rousing event! Hope to see you there!

Cheers, Your Friends in the MMLC

Design and the Digital Humanities CFP

Michael J. Kramer

Co-organized by our own mighty NUDHL contributor Josh Honn!
Topic: Design and the Digital Humanities

With this year’s M/MLA topic of “Art & Artifice,” the new Permanent Section on Digital Humanities will explore issues of, experiments with, and provocations on design. Digital humanities (DH) is often equated with tool-oriented, procedural tasks like text analysis and data gathering. For example, the recent MLA open access publication Literary Studies in the Digital Age, focuses on textual databases, mining, analysis, and modeling. However, Johanna Drucker, Anne Burdick, Bethany Nowviskie, Tara McPherson, and others have argued that interface and systems design, visual narrative, and graphical display are not peripheral concerns, but rather important “intellectual methods” (Burdick et al. 2012). Likewise, DH projects and publications often segment (content first, design last) and/or outsource (hire a firm, select a template) the design process, overlooking the powerful and important dialectic of design and argument, at times to the great detriment of the project itself. In an effort to further the conversation, we invite papers related to any aspect of design and the digital humanities. Possible topics/questions may include, but are certainly not limited to:

  • design of interactive fiction, hypertext fiction, and electronic literature
  • games and virtual spaces
  • hybrid digital/analog fabrication practices and the ethos of hacking, making, and crafting that surrounds them
  • tensions between original designs and prefabricated templates and visualizations
  • the relationship between content and design in a scholarly edition, web archive, course website, or other digital content management project
  • design and affect, design and imagination
  • the tendency of DH project groups to separate designers and programmers on a team; tendency to divide design concerns from “technical” concerns
  • design standards, web standards, responsive & participatory design, and issues of accessibility of online publications and projects
  • skeuomorphism vs. born-digital design?
  • design and code as language art, code poetry, etc.?

Please send 250-word abstracts by May 31st to both Josh Honn (josh.honn@gmail.com) and Rachael Sullivan (sullivan.rachael@gmail.com).
Co-chairs: Josh Honn (Northwestern University) and Rachael Sullivan (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

Digitizing Folk Music History 3.0: The Syllabus

Michael J. Kramer

X-post from my Issues in Digital History blog: http://www.michaeljkramer.net/issuesindigitalhistory/blog/?p=1230.

—

Today I am turning away from the roiling waters of “What is DH?/What is not DH?/DH is evil!/DH is great!/DH is managerial neoliberalism wolf in flexible team member sheep’s wool (boo!)/DH is nice actually-existing socialism (hooray!)/etc.” (see here and here for starters) to a few posts on my current teaching. Oh, don’t think won’t be leaping back into that debate soon!

In the meantime, to teaching. I am in the midst of the third installation of Digitizing Folk Music History, in which a group of talented (and this year they are once again extraordinarily talented) upper-level undergraduates study the US folk music revival with me and then complete what I call interpretive digital history projects on a WordPress platform using original artifacts in the beta-version of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival Digital Archive. The WordPress platform and beta-digital archive are password protected right now for various reasons. First, there are still intellectual property issues to work out in terms of public digital use of the archive (we are confident these can be worked out by and large in the coming year). Second, I am still on the fence about public digital work by students (see a nice reflection on this here: http://hastac.org/blogs/superadmin/2012/11/30/guidelines-public-student-class-blogs-ethics-legalities-ferpa-and-more). But I suspect that next year the course’s digital components will be almost fully public in some manner.

In the meantime, here is the syllabus for the course. Your comments, critiques, suggestions, thoughts, and questions are all most welcome.

And in the coming weeks, I and my students will provide a few more peeks into the coursework itself as it has developed this spring term.

—

Digitizing Folk Music History Syllabus

Course Overview

Overview

Using the digital archive of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival, students explore the history of the folk music revival, American music, the culture of the Cold War, and theories of the archive while also working on the cutting edge of new digital history. In addition to weekly mini-blog assignments, students complete a final interpretive digital history project based on original research in the Berkeley collection. This project fulfills the History 395 research paper requirement. In the course, we ask what was at stake in the Berkeley Festival, which ran from 1957 to 1970, in relation to American culture and politics, questions of race, class, gender, age, and region, and issues of memory and music-making. We also seek to discover how digital media and tools can aid in this pursuit. This is an upper-level research seminar and includes intensive reading, listening, and viewing assignments. Be prepared to complete all work, participate actively in seminar discussions and an online course blog, and challenge yourself both in terms of how you understand history and the digital. Neither musical expertise, nor computer programming skills are needed to enroll in the course. Each student will be evaluated based on class participation, digital mini-projects, blog posts, presentations, and final interpretive digital history projects in WordPress based on primary sources found in the Berkeley Folk Music Festival collection.

Course Objectives

  • Deepen understanding of the folk music revival as a lens on modern US history.
  • Sharpen historical research skills by wielding evidence effectively to produce new analyses that are in conversation with existing interpretations of the past.
  • Investigate the new field of digital history: working with multimedia evidence and multimodal argument; using the digital database as a new kind of historical research and publication tool; doing “close reading” and “distant reading” of evidence in digital form; discovering new relationships between digitized archive, research workshop, publication, and scholarly communication; generating new modes of individual and collective historical inquiry using digital tools; creating new modes of narrative and historical interpretation in digital formats.
  • Contribute to the emerging digital repository for The Berkeley Folk Music Festival and the Digital Study of Vernacular Music Project.

Required Materials

(books available at NU Norris Bookstore and on 1-day reserve at NU Library Reserves desk)

  • Benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999)
  • Ron Cohen, A History of Folk Music Festivals in the United States (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008)
  • W.J. Rorabaugh, Berkeley At War: The 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
  • Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005)
  • Additional articles, videos, audio available on course WordPress website.
  • 1964 and 1968 Berkeley Folk Music Festival Digital Archive in Omeka. Log in here: http://webhost1.mmlc.northwestern.edu/bffsite/omeka/users/login.

Evaluation

  • Ten blog mini-projects, 5% each = 50%
    • Original post. Usually due on Sundays by midnight, except at end of the term.
    • At least one substantive and thoughtful comment on a fellow classmate’s post. Be critical, ask questions, respond meaningfully, but do so constructively and supportively. Usually due on Mondays by midnight.
    • One followup comment on your post in which you reflect on the mini-project in hindsight. What worked and did not work? What did the mini-project make you think about in terms of history, the folk revival, and using the digital to study the past? Usually due on Wednesdays by midnight.
  • Final interpretive digital history project = 30% (http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/01/30/final-project-instructions/)
  • Class participation and discussion = 20% (Please come to seminar meetings prepared to discuss the following: What is the most important point you learned from today’s materials? What is the most important question you have about today’s materials? Each student will receive a midterm evaluation, evaluation of final project, and final term evaluation in the course.)
  • You will receive a midterm evaluation before the drop deadline and a final evaluation at the end of the course.

Notes on Using a WordPress Course Blog

We will be using a networked WordPress blog as the main arena for writing, conversation, and digital research and publication beyond our classroom meetings. The blog url is http://bfmf.northwestern.edu. Log in using your Northwestern Net ID and password at https://bfmf.northwestern.edu/wp-login.php. WordPress is very simple blogging software. For basic instructions, see: http://codex.wordpress.org. But I suggest simply diving in and using it as WordPress is fairly intuitive.

Please note that by enrolling in the course, you agree that it is acceptable to share your classroom work as part of the larger Berkeley Folk Music Festival and the Digital Study of Vernacular Music Project. If you have any concerns—technical, personal, ethical—about public uses of your course blog entries, please feel absolutely free to confer with me to make arrangements. Generally, I advocate what has become known as “open access” in digital work, but there can be very important and worthy exceptions to this philosophy. If you are curious, here is more on the ethics of public blogs for classroom use here: http://hastac.org/blogs/superadmin/2012/11/30/guidelines-public-student-class-blogs-ethics-legalities-ferpa-and-more.

Academic Integrity

All Weinberg College and Northwestern policies concerning plagiarism and academic dishonesty are strictly enforced in this course. See http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/advising/integrity for more details. In addition, because we are using potentially copyrighted materials in digital form, you will be asked by the Northwestern library to sign a waiver form that you will not violate any copyright laws. If you do so, this also constitutes academic dishonesty. If you have any question as to what constitutes plagiarism or academic dishonesty or copyright violation, please feel free to contact the instructor. Please note that under WCAS and Northwestern policy, the instructor is required to report any suspected instances of academic dishonesty. The instructor also reserves the right to assign a failing grade for the course if a student is found to have violated college or university policy concerning academic integrity.

History Writing Center

The History Writing Center is a place students enrolled in history courses may come for help with their writing assignments. While the University Writing Place (http://www.writing.northwestern.edu/) remains an excellent resource, the History Writing Center, staffed by a department graduate student, offers advice tailored to the specific challenges of writing in a historical mode.

Special Needs

Students with special needs and disabilities that have been declared and documented through the Northwestern Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) should meet with the instructor to discuss any specific accommodations. For further information, see the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) website: http://www.northwestern.edu/disability.

Instructor

Dr. Michael J. Kramer

History & American Studies

email: mjk@northwestern.edu

Office hours: by appointment

Office location: 1908 Sheridan Road

Technology/Research Consultant

Josh Honn

Center for Scholarly Communication & Digital Curation

email: joshua.honn@northwestern.edu

Office hours: by appointment

Office location: Digital Collections, Level 2, East Tower, University Library

Week 1. Introductions

This week’s schedule:

  • Thursday, 4/4/13. Introductions. Of folk revivals and folksonomies: taking the folk revival digital.

Readings/Viewings/Listenings for Tuesday, 4/9/13:

Week 2. What Was the Folk Revival?

This week’s schedule:

  • Tuesday, 4/9/13. Discussion (Olivier, Kelp, Time article). Folk, Roots, Vernacular Music? (Readings from Week 1).
  • Thursday. 4/11/13. Computer Lab #1: WordPress for digital historians: the basics of site setup, posts, pages, widgets. **Meet in Multimedia Learning Center, Kresge 1-315.**
  • Sunday, 4/14/13. Blog Assignment 1 (Text annotation) due by midnight, instructions: http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/01/29/blog-assignment-1-text-annotation/.
  • Monday, 4/15/13. Blog Assignment 1 Comments due by midnight.

Readings/Viewings/Listenings for next Tuesday, 4/16/13:

Week 3. What Was the Folk Revival? Continued

This week’s schedule:

Readings/Viewings/Listenings for Tuesday, 4/16/13 and Thursday, 4/18/13:

Week 4. Reviving the Revival: Thinking About Sources and What Is Digital History?

This week’s schedule:

  • Monday, 4/22/13. Sunday. 4/21/13. Blog 2 Comments due by midnight.
  • Tuesday, 4/23/13. Discussion. Sources and themes in the Folk Revival. **Meet at Special Collections Library, Level 3, Deering Library.** See readings due below.
  • Wednesday, 4/24/13. Blog 2 Followup due by midnight.
  • Thursday, 4/25/13. Discussion. What Is Digital History? See readings due below.
  • Sunday, 4/28/13. Blog assignment 3 (WordPress Experiments 1) due by midnight, instructions: http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/01/30/blog-assignment-3-wordpress-experiments-1/.

Readings/Viewings/Listenings for Tuesday, 4/23/13:

  • Ellen J. Stekert, “Cents and Nonsense in the Urban Folksong Movement: 1930-1966,” in Transforming Tradition, 84-106, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Robert Cantwell, “When We Were Good: Class and Culture in the Folk Revival,” in Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined, ed. Neil V. Rosenberg (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 35-60, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Sam Hinton, “The Singer of Folk Songs and His Conscience,” Western Folklore 14, 3 (1955): 170-173; reprinted in Sing Out! 7, 1 (Spring 1957): 24-26, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Susan Montgomery, “The Folk Furor,” Madamoiselle, December 1960, 98-99, 118, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Alan Lomax, “The ‘Folkniks’—and the Songs They Sing,” Sing Out! 9 (1959): 30-31, reprinted in Alan Lomax, Selected Writings, 1934-1997, ed. Ronald D. Cohen  (New York: Routledge, 2003), http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lomax-The-Folkniks.pdf.
  • John Cohen, “In Defense of City Folksingers,” Sing Out! 9 (1959): 33-34, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Film: Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, dir. Jim Brown (2007), Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.

Readings/Viewings/Listenings for Thursday, 4/25/13:

Week 5. Dylanology

This week’s schedule:

  • Monday, 4/29/13. Blog 3 comments due by midnight.
  • Tuesday, 4/30/13. Discussion. Dylan, Chronicles, 1-104.
  • Wednesday, 5/1/13. Blog 3 Followup due by midnight.
  • Thursday, 5/2/13. Discussion. Interpreting Dylan: Shank, Hale, Scorsese.
  • Sunday, 5/5/13. Blog Assignment 4 (Deformance and Performance), instructions: http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/01/29/blog-assignment-4-deformance/.

This weeks’s readings/viewings/listenings:

  • Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004).
  • Ellen Willis, “Dylan,” from Cheetah (1967), in Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 1-20, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Barry Shank, “‘That Wild Mercury Sound’: Bob Dylan and the Illusion of American Culture,” Boundary 2, 29 (Spring 2002): 97-123, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Grace Elizabeth Hale, “Black as Folk: The Folk Music Revival, the Civil Rights Movement, and Bob Dylan,” in A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 84-131, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Film: No Direction Home, dir. Martin Scorsese (2005), Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.

Week 6. Berkeley in the Sixties

This week’s schedule:

  • Monday, 5/6/13. Blog 4 Comments due by midnight.
  • Tuesday. 5/7/13. Computer Lab #2: Open session for final project development in WordPress; **Meet in MMLC, Kresge 1-301.**
  • Wednesday, 5/8/13. Blog 4 Followup due by midnight.
  • Thursday, 5/9/13. Discussion. Berkeley in the Sixties.
  • Sunday, 5/12/13. Blog Assignment 5 (Thinking Spatially: Geocoding) due, instructions: http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/01/30/blog-assignment-5-thinking-spatially-geocoding/.

Readings/Viewings/Listenings for Thursday, 5/9/13:

Week 7. Thinking about Festivals

This week’s schedule:

Readings/Viewings/Listenings for Thursday, 5/16/13:

  • Ronald D. Cohen, A History of Folk Music Festivals in the United States (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008).
  • Robert Cantwell, “Feasts of Unnaming: Folk Festivals and the Representation of Folk Life,” in If Beale Street Could Talk: Music, Community, Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 71-110, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Ellen Willis, “Newport: You Can’t Go Down Home Again,” in Out of the Vinyl Deeps, 165-172, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Film: Festival, dir. Murray Lerner (1967), Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.

Week 8. Remix: The Folk Revival Revue Review

This week’s schedule:

Readings/Viewings/Listenings for Thursday, 5/23/13:

Reread:

  • Benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory  and American Roots Music (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).
  • American Roots Music, Episodes 1-4, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.
  • Archie Green, “Vernacular Music: A Naming Compass,” Musical Quarterly 77, 1 (Spring 1993): 35-46, Access through Blackboard, https://courses.northwestern.edu.

New articles/materials:

Week 9. Final Reflections Hootenanny

This week’s schedule:

  • Monday, 5/27/13. Blog 7 Comments due by midnight.
  • Tuesday, 5/28/13. Open for continued discussion, etc.
  • Wednesday, 5/29/13. Blog 7 Followup due by midnight.
  • Thursday, 5/30/13. Computer Lab #3: Wireframing and Storyboarding. **Meet in MMLC, Kresge 1-315.** (Note: Professor Kramer out of town at a conference. Josh Honn and Matt Taylor will oversee.)
  • Sunday, 6/2/13. Blog Assignment 8 (Field Recording Experiment) due, instructions to come.
  • Monday, 6/3/13. Blog 9 (WordPress Experiments 3: Wireframing) due, instructions: http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/01/30/blog-assignment-9-wireframing/. Blog 8 Comments due by midnight.
  • Tuesday, 6/4/13. Digital Hootenanny: Presentations of projects in progress. Blog 8 Followup due by midnight. Blog 9 comments due by midnight.

Final, Due 6/13/13

Final Project Instructions

Your final task in this 395 research seminar is to develop an interpretive digital history project based on original research. Your final digital project must develop a convincing and compelling interpretation grounded in, but not necessarily exclusively focused on, materials in the Digital Berkeley Folk Music Festival Archive using the digitized materials in Omeka. You may add additional materials to this source of material as well.

A successful project will address specific arguments in the existing historiography of the American folk music revival and related topics based on the secondary materials we have explored or additional relevant scholarship. It will do so by demonstrating how new primary evidence relates to this extant literature. The project will also explore inventive and creative uses of digital technologies, tools, designs, and capabilities with the WordPress content management system (cms) to further the interpretive stakes of the project. In other words, your job is not to simply past a paper online, but to investigate how to use the WordPress environment and the digital in general to create a new kind of publication based on original historical research.

Projects will be evaluated by its ability to (1) perceive new aspects of the source material in relation to an existing historiography (secondary literature; existing interpretations); (2) compellingly frame your research question and your thesis (you might quite literally create posts, pages, and/or widgets that articulate your research question, the existing interpretations, the materials and methods you plan to use, and your thesis/argument; (3) compellingly express the arguments of other interpreters; (4) narrative your interpretation by using the digital to wield historical evidence effectively in service of an argument about your topic and theme; and (5) track your research progress effectively in some section of your final project.

The final project should pair one person from column A with one theme from column B. If you have a different idea for the final project, speak with instructor to develop a revised version of assignment.

A

Joan Baez

Doc Watson

Sam Hinton

Charles Seeger

Almeda Riddle

Archie Green

Alice Stuart

New Lost City Ramblers

Mike Seeger

John Cohen

Tracy Schwarz

Bess Lomax Hawes

Barry Olivier

Alan Lomax

Schlomo Carlebach

Jesse Fuller

Congress of Wonders

Song of Earth Chorale

Sandy and Jeanie Darlington

The Gand Family Singers

Steve Mann and Will Scarlette

Karen Williams

Diesel Ducks

Clarence Van Hook

Sawtooth Mountain Volunteers

Dr. Humbead’s New Tranquility String Band

Dave Frederickson

Allan MacLeod

Maybe Smith

Larry Diggs

David and Tina Meltzer

Vera Johnson

Paul Arnoldi

The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company

Howlin’ Wolf

John Fahey

The Andrews Sisters of Berkeley

Crome Syrcus

The Morning

Huge Roach

Quicksilver Messenger Service

It’s a Beautiful Day

ED Denson

Daniel Moore

Richard Rollins

Ed Kahn

Mitch Greenhill

Theodore Bikel

Paul Hansen

Merritt Herring

Kathy and Carol

Pat Kilroy

Chris Strachwitz

Mark Spoelstra

DK Wilgus

Herb Pederson

Ralph Rinzler

Janet Smith

Carl T. “Doc” Sprague

B

Shifting definition of folk music

Genre

Free Speech Movement

Politics of 1968

Counterculture

Academic folklore

Commerce

Politics

Gender

Race

Class

Region

Age/Generation

Public space

Personal expression

Sound and history

Theories of culture

Imitation/Appropriation/Inspiration

Instrumentation (Significance of electric, acoustic, etc.)

Politics of dancing

Listening and sonic history

Sensory history

Urban

Rural

West coast

Cold War

Vietnam War

Labor movement

Radicalism

Conservatism

Romanticism

Authenticity

Community/Commons/Group/Social Belonging

Individuality

Freedom

Obligation

Responsibility

Americanness

Global culture

Concepts of the “vernacular”

Rubric:

1. Interpretation 25%

·      What is the interpretation?

·      Is the interpretation clearly, precisely, and evocatively conveyed?

2. Use of evidence 25%

·      Is the evidence from the Digital Berkeley Folk Music Festival Archive linked to the interpretation effectively and precisely?

·      Does the project deepen a reader’s understanding of the evidence from the archive?

·      Does the project effectively draw upon additional primary sources?

3. Use of secondary material 25%

·      Does the project effectively and compellingly link its interpretation and evidence to secondary materials?

·      Does it explain existing interpretations cogently?

·      Does it demonstrate clearly what is important about its intervention in the existing questions, debates, and dilemmas of scholarly understanding?

4. Use of the digital 25%

·      Does the project make innovative use of digital tools, capacities, technologies, and design to communicate its interpretation?

·      Does it do so conceptually?

·      Was the project able to implement this technology effectively?

NOTE: Citations and Bibliographic Requirements:

Your digital project should include an integration or section that lists credits and citations. These should include secondary sources (authors, titles, publications, dates) and any photographic credits you can locate. You may use Chicago Manual of Style as a rough guide for citation formats, but use common sense as well. Your task is to give your reader access to the sources you made use of in a clear and concise way and to credit ideas and materials you draw upon.

Examples of final projects:

Blog Assignment 1: Text Annotation

1. Create a crocodoc account (free) at http://personal.crocodoc.com/. This will allow you to save your annotated document as you work on it over time.

2. Use text annotation tool—http://personal.crocodoc.com/—to upload a pdf file of one of the readings and annotate it with your observations about particular words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs. What particular parts of the article seem most important to you? What do you observe about those particular parts?

3. Download your annotated PDF from Crocodoc by choosing “Download” and selecting the marked up PDF.

4. In WordPress, create a new post and upload/insert (click “Add Media”) your marked up PDF.

5. Embed your annotated PDF into your blog post. To do this:

  • In Crocodoc, click “Share”

  • Select “Embed” and copy the code

  • In your blog post, select the Text tab, paste code where you want the PDF to appear. Select “Visual” tab to return to composing your blog post.

6. Under the Tools icon on the lefthand side of your dashboard, select and use the wp-table-reloaded plug in—wp-table-reloaded. *Be sure to first create a copy of the table template, then use the copy, following the format for title.* Cut and paste or copy a description of each part of the document that you annotated (for instance a quotation from the text, a particular word) into the table in your blog post under item. Add in your description, analysis of significance, and any other comments as you think about the annotated item [WP-Table Reloaded Instructions].

7. Using the wp-table-reloaded plug in, embed your completed table into your blog post [WP-Table Reloaded Instructions]. There are two ways to do so. You can cut and paste the code from your WP-Table Reloaded table itself; it is written in the sentence “On this page…” above your table. Or you can use the “Insert a table” icon, which is just below the “visual” tab.

8. Assemble and edit your annotations into a coherent short analytic essay about three to five (3-5) paragraphs long. In the essay, your task is to flesh out what the precise link is between (a) the evidence from the article, (b) your annotated observation about that piece of evidence, and (c) the significance of your observation. Your essay should have a strong introductory opening, a clear and compelling sense of development, a clear topic sentence to begin each paragraph, explicit and articulated linkage of evidence to interpretation, and a strong conclusion.

(7) Select blog category from category choices–Blog 1.

(8) Add tags–the keywords of significance for your annotation and essay.

**Sample Blog Assignment 1 post: http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/01/01/sample-blog-1-assignment/**

—

(9) Print, sign, and return Researcher Agreement Form (pdf).

(10) Print, sign, and return Transfer Agreement for Research Papers/Portfolios Form (pdf).

Blog Assignment 2: Timeline

1. Go to the Timeline JS website, read the “About” section (particularly the “tips and tricks”) and browse and play around with some of the example timelines.

2. At the top of the page, click on “File Formats” and then select “Google Doc Template.”

3. In Google Docs, use this template to create your timeline data. First, retitle the document as “Last Name – BFMF Timeline.” In the document, follow the template format but update the data provided to include information on at least 10 events you wish to portray in your timeline.

4. When your spreadsheet is complete, follow the instructions from the “File Formats” page on Timeline JS website.

5. In Timeline JS, go to the “Embed Generator” and paste in the link to your Google Doc spreadsheet. (You don’t need to worry about any of the settings, but feel free to play around with the font choices if you’d like.)

6. Click “Preview” to make sure everything looks the way you want it.

7. Copy the embed code.

8. In WordPress, create a new post.

9. Select the HTML tab and paste the embed code.

10. In Google Docs, for File > Download as > Open Document Format (.ods) and upload/insert that file into your blog post.

11. Compose your post and click the big blue “Publish” button when you are finished.

12. Develop a short essay (1-3 paragraphs) that reflects on the experience of developing a timeline for the folk revival. What was difficult? How did you choose certain names, dates? Using what you learned from the decisions you made for constructing your timeline, what observations do you now have about the history of the folk revival in the US? What observations do you have about the entire concept of constructing a historical timeline and thinking of history in a linear chronological manner?

13. Select category Blog 2.

14. Be sure to add tags (keywords) to your post.

Blog Assignment 3: WordPress Experiments 1

1. General introduction to WordPress, what you’ve done so far (assignments 1-2)

2. Log in to WordPress, navigate to your final project WP site

3. Update the site metadata (title, subtitle, etc.)

4. Log in to Omeka, browse, locate, download one object, http://webhost1.mmlc.northwestern.edu/bffsite/omeka/users/login 

5. Back in WordPress, create a new page and upload/insert object

6. Step back and discuss widgets, menus, navigation, etc.

7. Play around, change a few things, see what happens.

8. Make a post in your final project space: write one paragraph imagining the topic (performer) and theme on which your final project might focus. Use the column choices from the final assignment instructions: http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/blog/2013/01/30/final-project-instructions/.

9. Back on the spring 2013 collective blog create a post. Paste in your proposed topic and theme paragraph, followed by any questions you have about using WordPress, developing the final project, etc. What is still confusing? What else did you notice?

10. Chose category Blog 3.

12. Add tags (keywords) to your sring 2013 blog post.

Blog Assignment 4: Deformance

1. In Omeka (http://webhost1.mmlc.northwestern.edu/bffsite/omeka/users/login), browse and select an image that interests you to download.

2. Read all of “Glitching Files for Understanding: Avoiding Screen Essentialism in Three Easy Steps” by Trevor Owens.

3. Go back and follow the steps he took in the “Edit an Image with a Text editor” section using the image you downloaded from Omeka. Make sure to save each version of the file as you follow the instructions. When you are done you should have (1) the original .jpg file, (2) the post-cut up .jpg file, and (3) the .jpg file after you pasted new information in.

4. On the web, go to paper.js, select one of the examples, play around and then select “source in the upper right hand of the screen.” Try and read the code, look for numbers in blue, and experiment by inserting new numbers. Click “run” in the upper right hand corner of the screen and see what’s changed. Feel free to repeat/go crazy.

5. In WordPress, create a new post and upload/insert each of your 3 images.

6. Write a one-two paragraph reflection: Might the unlikely concept of “deforming” evidence lead to new historical insights or not? Did you notice anything new or surprising about the object by “deforming” it? What was your experience of playing with javascript in paper.js? What does code allow you to do with objects? Did this make you think about the archival material in a new way?

7. Be sure to choose category Blog 4.

8. Add tags (keywords) to your post.

Blog Assignment 5: Thinking Spatially – Geocoding

1. Explore examples of mapping and geocoding:

2. In WordPress, create a new post and click “Save as Draft.”

3. At the bottom of the page, under the text editor, locate the MapPress section. Select “New Map.” Give your map a title. [see How to use Map Press Pro (scroll down to the “Using the Plugin” section for details).]

4. Open the PDF of 1968 address cards: http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/inu-brkflk-22-5-1.pdf

5. Select 15 or more artist address (when there’s a choice, use permanent address) and copy and paste each address into your map by under “Add Location.”

6. To edit and annotate each address, select it from the left side of the map and then select “edit” on the annotation box that pops up. Add title and annotation. You do not need to save the address in the annotation title and box once you enter it onto the map as Mapquest Pro preserves the address.

7. Give each location a different letter marker by clicking on the marker icon in the upper right hand corner of each annotation box. Choose the annotation markers with letter (A, B, C, etc.). Each location should receive a different letter.

8. When all of your addresses are entered, annotated, and marked, you can resize your map by using the plus, minus signs in the upper lefthand corner of the map and the center button located next to the save button.

9. Click “Save,” roll over your map title to reveal the option to “Insert Into Post.” Click on “Insert Into Post.”

10. Using the wp-table-reloaded plug in—http://bfmf.northwestern.edu/spring2013/wp-admin/tools.php?page=wp-table-reloaded—cut and paste your annotations into the table in your blog post [WP-Table Reloaded Instructions]. (You may alternatively assemble a spreadsheet on your own computer then cut and past annotations into the wp-table-reloaded template.) Each table item can be labeled using the respective letter of the marker in the time code slot, the title you have given the annotation for a title, and your annotation, plus any significance notes you wish to add.

11. Place your completed table into your blog post [WP-Table Reloaded Instructions].

12. Develop a brief explanation (one to three paragraphs) describing what you notice about your map. Are there any conclusions you can draw from the map? Anything that struck you in thinking spatially about performer locations?

13. Choose category Blog 5.

14. Add relevant tags (keywords) to your post.

Blog Assignment 6: WordPress Experiments 2

1. In WordPress, navigate to your final project space.

2. View your site and familiarize yourself its design and layout.

3. In the Dashboard, go to Appearance > Themes

4. Preview some of the themes and select a new one for your site by clicking on “Activate” under the theme of your choice.

5. View your site and see how its design and layout has changed.

6. In the dashboard, go to back to Appearance > Themes and under “Current Theme” see what types of options are available: Customize? Theme Options? Header? Any others? Feel free to change any of these settings—you can always undo them.

7. View your site again and capture it by taking a screenshot.

8. Repeat steps 4-7 with at least one other new theme.

9. In WordPress, create a new post on the collective blog. Upload/insert your screenshots to you post and then develop a one-three paragraph essay in which you note what strikes you about the relationship between theme design and historical narrative. Do the different themes offer different ways of telling a story? Describe specifically.

10. Choose category Blog 6.

11. Add relevant tags (keywords) to your post.

12. Finally, as you begin to develop your final project, in your site, add a preliminary interpretive digital history research question and thesis in a post, page, or widget (the question and thesis will most likely change as you continue your research).

Blog Assignment 7: History as Remix

1. Using Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net), create a remix using any of the sound files related to our course (archival recordings from the Berkeley collection or songs from the listening mixes). You may add additional material in if you wish.

2. Export your Audacity remix file as an mp3 file. Give it a title “Last Name – Remix.”

3. In WordPress, upload your Audacity remix mp3 file to the media library.

4. In WordPress, create a new post and link to your Audacity remix mp3 file.

5. Below the linked Audacity remix mp3 file, write a brief reflection (one-three paragraphs) that develops an explanation and analysis of your remix: what sound files did you bring together? What remix strategies/ideas/tactics did you use to create the remix? Did this make you think about the original recordings in a new way? How would you use your remix to think about the history of the folk revival or another related history topic.

6. Chose category Blog 7.

7. Add relevant tags (keywords) to your post.

Blog Assignment 8: Field Recording

1. Make a field recording of music, sound, or some other aural material and upload to the collective blog. You may use Garageband, Italk, or some other recording software of your choice. Ipads are available for rental at the library. Josh Honn and Brendan Quinn of the NU library are available for any technical consultation you might require. Output the file as an mp3 and use Audacity to edit if needed.

2. Develop a one-two paragraph essay describing and analyzing your field recording. What was it like to become a “song catcher,” or at least a “sound catcher”? Did it make you think about the work of folklorists such as Alan Lomax in a new way?

3. Chose category Blog 7.

4. Add relevant tags (keywords) to your post.

Blog Assignment 9: Wireframing

Now that you are familiar with WordPress and its themes, it’s time to begin creating wireframe and storyboards for your own final project. Even though the themes available to you may ultimately limit your vision, it’s good to use the wireframe and storyboard tools to map and design your argument for your online space.

1. Go to wireframe.cc (Wireframing is a practice that is still very paper-based, so feel free to mock-up your website on paper, take photos of those, and upload/insert them to WordPress. If you are using an iPhone, you may want to check out the POP app too.)

2. Begin drawing in the browser window provided. Play around with the tools available (add a picture, add some dummy text, etc.)

3. Construct a wireframe for the first page users will see when they visit your website.

4. Click the save icon and copy the unique URL that is created for your wireframe. Paste that URL somewhere safe so you can come back to it later.

5. Now begin a new wireframe for one of the pages in your website that is not the front page. Think about how that page might look different and how users will navigate from it to other pages, etc.

6. Repeat step 4 (and repeat step 5 as many times as you’d like).

7. In WordPress, create a new blog post and paste the two (or more) URLs of your wireframe

8. Develop a one-two paragraph reflection comparing your wireframe designs with any constraints you see for implementing the wireframe designs within WordPress. What might work? What is difficult to achieve? What is the interpretive thrust driving your design? What is the narrative of your design? How do these emerge within your wireframe? How might they function within your final WordPress project? What can you do outside of WordPress that themes enable within WordPress? What are the limitations of WordPress themes? Which theme might be most appropriate for your project? What else did this exercise make you consider about your final project and developing an interpretive digital history project in general?

9. Select category Blog 9.

10. Add relevant tags (keywords) to your post.

Blog 10: Tag Cloud Analysis/Reflections

1. In a WordPress blog post on the Spring 2013 Collective blog, analyze your experience of designing an interpretive digital history project in WordPress. How has working in the digital domain, particularly in WordPress, been similar and/or different from a traditional research essay? What do you feel you have learned thus far about the folk revival, modern U.S. history, digital history, or simply history in general? What have been the challenges, dilemmas, or problems of researching and writing history in this form?

2. Examine the collective blog tag cloud for the spring 2013 course. What do you notice in terms of keywords? Try pasting texts of posts into http://voyeurtools.org/. Do you notice anything qualitatively in the quantitative analysis of the corpus/archive of our course blog (or some portion of it)? If so, describe.

3. Look back at your initial sketch from our first class meeting, in which you quickly drew out a vision of what folk music was. Has your sense of folk music changed? Has anything been confirmed? Explain with reference to the sketch. Draw a new sketch and upload it to your post if you wish to do so.

4. Select category Blog 10.

5. Add relevant tags (keywords) to your post.

Call for Responses: Teaching with Technology

Beth Corzo-Duchardt

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/cfr-teaching-technology

The MediaCommons Front Page Collective is looking for responses to the
survey question: What does the use of digital teaching tools look like
in the classroom?

Several educational institutions
(NCTE<http://www.ncte.org/cee/positions/beliefsontechnology> for
example) have addressed teaching with technology, including both the
necessity for it and the need for using technology within sound pedagogy.
Teaching with digital tools is growing and offering online sections is
becoming the norm. With this survey, we hope to bring together teachers and
scholars who utilize technology in their own classrooms to talk about not
only tools that scholars can apply, but also some of their findings in
their own classrooms. This project will run from May 20 to June 21.

Responses may include but are not limited to:

  • Digital tools used in the classroom
  • Digital tools for grading/class organization
  • How digital tools shape the classroom
  • Creating multimodal assignments
  • Using digital tools from a student’s perspective
  • Unexpected/unforeseen outcomes of using digital tools

Responses are 400-600 words and typically focus on introducing an idea for
conversation.  Proposals may be brief (a few sentences) and should state
your topic and approach. Groups may also submit a cluster of responses.
Submit proposals to mediacommons.odu@gmail.com by *May 10* to be considered
for inclusion into this project.

In case you are unfamiliar with *MediaCommons*, we are an experimental
project created in 2006 by Drs. Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Avi Santo, seeking
to envision how a born-digital scholarly press might re-conceptualize both
the processes and end-products of scholarship. MediaCommons was initially
developed in collaboration with the Institute for the Future of the Book
through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation and is currently supported by
New York University’s Digital Library Technology Services through funding
from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment
for the Humanities.

artist-built tools and slippery standards: a conversation with jon.satrom

Michael J. Kramer

artist-built tools and slippery standards:
a conversation with jon.satrom

May 19, Noon
@ HCL 1401 W. Wabansia
Free
RSVP here

HCL’s new monthly Cultural Conversation seriesinvites you to meet some of Chicago’s most innovative and inspirational artists and cultural producers as they share the intimate details of their projects, passions and inspirations. Join us for casual brunch time talks and take part in the dialogues that propel guest artists, scholars and thinkers to investigate their unique perspectives across a diverse range of creative forms.

Jon Satrom is an artist who undermines interfaces, problematizes presets, and playfully bends data.

He spends his days fixing things and making things work. He spends his evenings breaking things and searching for the unique blips inherent to the systems he explores and exploits. His works and warez have been enjoyed on screens of all sizes. His artwork and efforts have been featured in glowing-rectangles and on dead-trees. Collaboratively, Satrom performs with I ♥ PRESETS & PoxParty and co-organizes the GLI.TC/H conference/festival/gathering.

Satrom will share some of his favorite artist-built tools and discuss some of his own current projects.

http://highconceptlabs.ticketleap.com/jon-satrom/

Digital Sensations: Reflections on Renaissance and Digital-Age Text-Use

Becky Fall

In March I had the pleasure of presenting a paper at the Society for Textual Scholarship’s annual conference, held this year at Loyola University in Chicago. Along with fellow Northwestern graduate students Seth Swanner and Simon Nyi, I organized a panel focused on textual editing and the relationship between material textuality and embodiment in early modern England. My own paper, entitled “Editorial Touches: Text-use and Tactile Relations in Renaissance England,” examined the sense of touch, which I argue was central to reading practices and discourses in the period, despite our general inclination to think of reading primarily as a visual activity. Although my presentation concerned itself with the historicizing the ways in which reading practices and textuality were imbricated with the sense of touch in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and did not “touch” on the digital-age modes of reading with which we are generally concerned in NUDHL, considering the sensory experiences of reading in the Renaissance does point to important questions that digital humanists might take up today: where do the “lower” senses—touch, smell, and taste—stand in the realm of the digital? Do we need to engage them more effectively? How?

In the Renaissance, I discovered, touch was central to reading practice because it was considered to be the key to learning: impressing one’s body upon the page allowed the text to impress itself upon the reader’s mind. Geffrey Whitney’s 1586 Choice of Emblemes, for example, pairs a poem with an engraving of two kinds of readers surrounded by books. On the left stands a reader holding a book passively, touching its cover but not digitally engaging with it. On the right, another reader leans over a lectern, his fingers actively touching the recto page of a folio volume.[1] Accompanying the emblem is a poem that urges readers to touch their books actively:

 

Geffrey Whitney, A choice of emblems (Imprinted at Leyden: In the house of Christopher Plantyn, by Francis Raphelengius, M.D.LXXXVI [1586]), STC 25438 (Huntington Library copy), p. 171.

Proper reading, that which “printe[s] in minde, what wee in printe do reade,” involves more than merely “vewe[ing]” a text. It demands deliberate tactile engagement with it: marking and annotating. To impress a book’s contents upon the mind, to ensure that what we “do reade” touches the intellect, the reader must touch back. To “marke” a text is thus the first step of “practise” and meaningful learning.

Whitney was not alone in advising tactile textual engagement. It was a commonplace among Renaissance humanists that “making one’s mark” on a text, as William Sherman puts it,[2] was an effective reading method and imperative for learning. I can’t help but think these early humanists were right. When we read with our whole bodies, it seems, we learn better—or at least I do. It seems my students do, too, even though they are second-generation digital natives. What, then, do we lose when we “go digital” and the material text with which we interact is abstracted into code and ethereal, digitized data? What is the status of the body in digital humanism?

Of course, advances in technology bring us ever closer to using our whole bodies to do digital work and interact with digital texts. The iPad affords the possibility of tactically manipulating the visual field of the text in ways not possible with paper works: we can zoom in and out, stretch, and shift the screen. The digital is thus increasingly digital—that is, something we consume with our fingers. Nonetheless, computer technologies integrate new levels of mediation between user and text that remove us further from our objects of study. The shape of our relationship to texts changes, and so does the way we learn.

Touch is—and was understood in the Renaissance as—a radically reciprocal sense. It dissolves the distinctions between subject and object, since the touched is always also touching the toucher. Accordingly, the relationship between reader and text was, I argued in my paper, fluid and unfixed. The reader impressed herself upon the text in order to impress the text more effectively in her mind; as the text “touched” the reader, the reader touched back. In this way, the reader’s manipulation of the text, her contribution to its construction (through material marking or annotating, or through her figurative manipulations of its material) effected her learning. Figuratively and physically merging with the text allowed “wisedome” to “ensue” “euermoore.”

Digital texts, however, require a reimagining of the relationship between text and user to accommodate a new constellation: text, user, technology. This is not to say, of course, that the codex book is not a mediating technology. But for many Renaissance humanists, the book was the text; though texts could exist in the abstract—temporally surpassing, as Shakespeare’s sonnet persona writes, “gilded monuments” or “unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time”—the text, at least when it came to learning, was something a reader “vse[d]” physically. When we “use” a digital text, however, the technology on which it is manifested claims a greater and more independent role. Instead of the mutual interaction of text and reader, a reciprocal relationship develops among text, user, and technology. This is in some ways a function of the vast capacity of digital technology; an iPad contains a legion of texts, rather than a single text.[3] We necessarily must recalibrate how we touch a text when subject and object dissolve not into each other, but into their medium.

Although my instinct is to think of what is lost physically and intellectually when we “go digital,” it is more effective—and more interesting—to reimagine entirely our relation to texts. We neither lose nor gain when we touch a screen rather than a page. We simply do it differently. Although we can and should draw on other modes of text-use, the digital advent sees us creating a whole new method of learning. This may require us to teach ourselves new ways of embodying our reading practice. Books smell; (most) iPads don’t. If we can’t smell our digital technologies, we may need to rethink the ways we use them. For even if we are coming to inhabit texts in entirely new ways, we still inhabit bodies, and should, I think, vigorously insist that our bodies and not just our minds take part in the educational process. This demands the conscientious and careful use of our digital media, and a reconceptualization of our relationships to them.

[1] See Bradin Cormack and Carla Mazzio, Book Use, Book Theory 1500-1700 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 1-4, on text-use and Whitney’s emblem.

[2] William Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, 3.

[3] For simplicity’s sake, I will decline here to discuss the Barthesian plurality of any given text; that is a conversation for another day!

WGBH Media Library and Archives

Beth Corzo-Duchardt

From: Allison Pekel <allison_pekel@wgbh.org>
Date: Wed, May 1, 2013 at 12:04 PM

I am working with a project that I thought might be of interest to the
American History Community.

I work for WGBH, Boston in the Media Library and Archive and the Archive
has been funded by the Mellon Foundation to work with academic scholars who
have interest in utilizing our moving image and sound materials through the
course of their research. We hope to increase public awareness of the vast
collections that digital repositories hold by publishing our entire
archival catalogue online, for open access and use.

Placing the catalogue online however is only the first step, as records may
be incomplete or misleading. To help enhance the quality of our records, we
are inviting scholars, teachers and students to research our catalogue and
contribute their own discoveries and findings back to us. There are even
limited opportunities there to catalogue and curate an online collection
specific to your field of research as part of Open Vault (
http://openvault.wgbh.org<http://openvault.wgbh.org/>). Final products
could include essays on your topic, streaming public access to one
selection of media in your collection, supplying metadata for the items in
your collection and/or presenting your findings at a conference.

As a producer of Frontline and Boston Local News, we have quite a few
materials in the American History genre, so if you have an ongoing research
project and would consider utilizing moving image and sound materials in
your work, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Allison Pekel
WGBH Media Library and Archives
Allison_Pekel@WGBH.org

Damon Horowitz, Google “In-House Philosopher” Speaks @ NU

Michael J. Kramer

NU News Press Release:

Damon Horowitz to deliver Contemporary Thought Speakers Lecture April 30

April 29, 2013 | by Wendy Leopold

EVANSTON, Ill. – Damon Horowitz, director of engineering and “in-house philosopher” at Google, will speak at Northwestern University Tuesday, April 30, as part of the University’s Contemporary Thought Speaker Series.

Horowitz, whose work explores what is possible at the boundaries of technology and the humanities, will speak at 6 p.m. in Ryan Auditorium in the Technological Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston campus. His lecture is free and open to the public.

A “serial entrepreneur,” Horowitz was cofounder and chief technology officer of Aardvark, a popular social search engine acquired in 2010 by Google. He has taught courses in philosophy, cognitive science and computer science at institutions including Stanford University, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania and San Quentin State Prison.

Horowitz’s work has been featured in popular media outlets from The New York Times to the Discovery Channel, and in TechCrunch, a web publication that provides technology news and analysis along with profiles of startup companies, products and websites. With a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a Ph.D. in philosophy, Horowitz advocates for the importance and integration of both subjects in today’s world.

The Contemporary Thought Speaker Series brings leading intellectuals to Northwestern to foster community-wide discussions on important subjects of the day. The series dates back to the 1920s and 1930s and, over the years, has brought Jane Addams, Frank Lloyd Wright, Clarence Darrow, W.E.B. DuBois, Carl Sandburg, Bertrand Russell and other notable figures to campus.

The series was revived last year when the Office of the President and Office of the Provost agreed to support an undergraduate initiative to reinstate the lecture series.

Tickets are not required but can be reserved online through the Norris University Center Box Office. For more about the Contemporary Thought Speaker Series, email Ellie Graham at jegraham@u.northwestern.edu.

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2013/04/google-in-house-philosopher-and-director-of-engineering-to-speak.html

Kramer’s HASTAC 2013 Talk: The Digital Berkeley Folk Music Festival & the Sonification of the Ephemeral Past

Michael J. Kramer

Slides for my short talk today at HASTAC 2013 in Toronto. You can follow the proceedings online, many panels being streamcast, plus on Twitter at hashtag #hastac2013.