cultural studies

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

NUDHL #6, Fri., 3/8, 12-2pm: Research Presentation – Michael J. Kramer, “Alan Lomax, Harry Smith, and the Proto-Digital Study of Folk Music”

Michael J. Kramer

THEME:

Alan Lomax’s controversial “cantometrics” study of folk music worldwide, begun in 1959, was an early use of quantitative data and digital technologies (punch cards) to study vernacular music and culture. Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, created in 1952 for the famous Folkways label, offered a different mode of research: a whimsically annotated, quasi-mystical collection of rare American folk, blues, and ethnic commercial recordings from the 1920s and 30s. As two distinctive sonic and informational conceptualizations of how to organize musical traditions, these “proto-digital” projects offer valuable lessons for thinking about the representation of folk music within contemporary digital humanities research, particularly when it comes to assembling and interpreting what a digital archive can be and do.

Additional material below.

TIME:

Friday, March 8, 2013, 12-2pm.

PLACE:

Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Conference Room, Kresge Hall, 1880 Campus Drive, #2-360, Evanston, IL 60208 (map: http://maps.northwestern.edu/#latlngz=42.051%2C-87.675%2C17&lookupid=116).

FOOD:

Lunch provided.

SLIDES AND TEXT OF TALK:

**PLEASE NOTE: THIS PRESENTATION IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CIRCULATE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF AUTHOR, mjk@northwestern.edu**

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL:

More on The Berkeley Folk Music Festival and the Digital Study of Vernacular Music Project at www.bfmf.net.

Alan Lomax’s Global Jukebox Demonstration Video (1998):

A Cantometrics coding card:

Armand Leroi, “The Song of Songs” – Evolutionary biologist uses data from the Global Jukebox Project (video, 2007).

Cover of liner notes booklet to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (1952):

The rest of the liner notes are here.

Gadaya’s “Old Weird America”: an online study of the Anthology of American Folk Music.

Drew Christie’s “Some Crazy Magic: Meeting Harry Smith”: short animated film about John Cohen meeting Harry Smith:

Excerpt from documentary film about the Anthology of American Folk Music (From The Harry Smith Project: The Anthology of American Folk Music Revisited):

Alan Lomax’s Association for Cultural Equity.

Harry Smith Archives.

Opportunity: Cultural Studies Association Conference—2013 Digital Humanities Fellowship

Michael J. Kramer

Calling all HASTAC Scholars@NUDHL interested in cultural studies, here is an opportunity to participate in this year’s Cultural Studies Association conference in Chicago (don’t forget to x-post on NUDHL blog if you do this!):

The Cultural Studies Association (US) is looking for three HASTAC Scholars to participate in a pilot Digital Humanities Fellowship program. In particular, we are looking for three Scholars to help promote the work of CSA and to foster dialogue between the digital humanities and cultural studies. Using social media networks, DH Fellows will highlight relevant internet content (blog posts, news stories, videos, etc), promote CSA-sponsored events and projects (particularly our annual conference), and increase the organization’s visibility in digital spaces. In addition, DH Fellows will be asked to participate in a roundtable discussion on social networking and cultural studies at the 2013 CSA conference in Chicago, May 23-26, 2013. Registration fees for all Fellows will be waived.

If you would like to be considered for a Digital Humanities Fellowship, please email me (Megan Turner) at M2Turner@ucsd.edu at your earliest convenience. Fellowships will be awarded on a first-come-first-served basis.

Thanks,

Megan Turner

Program Coordinator

http://hastac.org/opportunities/cultural-studies-association-conference—2013-digital-humanities-fellowship