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Social Constructs in Digital Humanities

April 16, 2017

It seems as thought Digital Humanities is not immune to the diversity argument. It reminds a lot of the literary canonical debate I encountered during college. Generally, the literary cannon has been mostly "dead white guys" until relatively recently. I remember growing up reading mostly white, western male authors. This was until I read Langston Hughes in Survey of American Literature in high school. Then again, I did not have a conventional high school English teacher. The trend continued during my senior year when I encountered 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Though it was not just simply reading the texts for the sake of reading diverse texts. My scholarly inquiries lead me to look at diverse texts in different contexts and under multiple critical lenses.

It seems from the readings that DH projects are going through the same diversification. According to Amy Earhart, the digital “canon skews toward traditional texts and excludes crucial work by women, people of color, and the GLBTQ community,” If the goal of DH projects are to analyze multiple studies in new and digital ways, then diversifying content to represent various social constructs should be apart of this canon. It seems DH projects would have an easier time with diversifying projects and taking up many contemporary issues. Yet, Kim Gallon states that "Although work on racial, ethnic, and national difference is emerging in the digital humanities, discussions about the lineage of Black studies within the digital humanities are almost nonexistent." Is it because there are still more texts by traditional canonical authors or is it due to the lack of diversity in the academic field of digital humanist?

It could be what Earhart and Toneisha Taylor deem "an overreliance on high-end technologies in digital humanities projects" The idea that DH projects need to be high tech or more complex in technology echoes the same thoughts about literary canon. It must be a certain why by certain people. This line of thought "excludes those outside of well-funded, elite academic institutions." Social media is probably the most basic form of artifact gathering. Someone live streaming an event, taking pictures, tweeting, snap-chatting, etc can be a way to create a low cost DH project. It also diversifies who is telling or sharing the narrative as such historical events unfold in real time. A potential DH project could be gathering, cataloging and analyzing various social media posts from civilians in Syria. Another DH project could be a history of civil rights protests of the 1950's and 1960's with that of the Black Lives Matter and Women's March protests.

Long Post #2: DH Project in My (Former) Field

April 9, 2017

Finding a digital humanities project in my current field of Technology Education was not going well this week. I had a difficult time finding a project that related to my current field of teaching in general. I decided to find a DH project that would be useful for eighth grade Language Arts. I stumbled onto MIT Global Shakespeare Project during my search. The Global Shakespeare Project is one of the few DH projects featured in MIT's HyperStudio. The goal of the project is to compile an open source database of Shakespeare performances from around the world. Specifically, the goal of Global Shakespeare is to catalog performances from regions like Asia (divided in Southeast/East and India), the Middle East, Brazil, and Europe. There is also a section for performances from the United Kingdom and North America. The website has a News section for recent analysis or experiences of Shakespeare abroad. A resource sections provides different content in the form of interviews, scripts, past scholarly essays or reviews and a Bibliography. This resources allows for teachers and scholars alike to watch different interpretations of iconic Shakespeare plays from across the world. It answers the question of how different cultures interpret and perform Shakespeare plays. This would have been a great resource for me when I taught Romeo and Juliet. Analyzing productions of Shakespeare was part of the curriculum and it would have been nice to analyze something other than the over the top Baz Luhrmann film.

The website has a good design, with a minimalist modern theme. The homepage features some of the recent videos in each collection. The default option is for videos of live performances. Deselecting this box automatically refreshes the page to feature all collected content, including film and television productions. Using the regional menu, each region comes with an introductory analysis of themes presented in the region's plays. The introduction is condensed to feature the first two or three paragraphs. A link at the end of the preview provides the full text. It is a nice feature so the page does not become overly cumbersome. Clicking on a video will take you to the performance's main page where it features the full performance and information about it It also includes any reviews or scholarly articles, a cast list, and related videos and performances. The videos themselves are viewed through MIT's TechTV. Other videos are featured on different a variety of streaming services with the exception of Vimeo and Youtube. The video usually features the entire performance and some even have commentary before the play begins. There are also a few highlight videos as well as interviews that are sometimes featured on the page. The only issue is that many performances, or the ones I encountered, did not have subtitles or translations. This was extremely frustrating as I am not a cunning linguist by any means and would truly love to see how the lines were translated. I thought there was something I missed in the settings. Upon clicking the TechTV logo in the bottom right corner, I was taken to a webpage with the following message: TechTV is currently unavailable and will remain unavailable for an extended time." IF MIT is upgrading or creating a new streaming service, that is fine. However, taking down the video player webpage seems like a poor decision if someone has a question or has issues with the service.

Again, this resource is valuable to witness and analyze the cultural interpretations of Shakespeare. I could have used this resource for a variety of things, such as comparison of iconic scenes, cultural analysis, and much more. I could even analyze the same production from two companies in the same region. Alas, time was always of the essence at the end of the year. Due to testing and snow days, the fourth term was always mad dash to fit in a Shakespeare play in hopes of preparing my classes for literary analysis in high school. I never had ample time to discuss and analyze visual productions of Romeo and Juliet. I had to prioritize the written analysis over the performance. Though I did have my students read scenes aloud and acting out the iconic ones. Yet, I heard that Romeo and Juliet is leaving the middle school curriculum altogether. I figure this is mainly due to the new textbooks that arrived last year. The 8th grade book does not feature any Shakespeare play and is more focused on preparing students for PARCC testing. Only the high schools books have them printed in their additions and have access to all online content associated with it. I will however forward this on to the LA teachers as I know they will find a way to use this resource. Despite some of the flaws, I would highly recommend teachers use this resource. It can be used for a multitude of content areas and can only help a student's understanding of Shakespeare.

Work Cited:

"Homepage." MIT Global Shakespeares. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d. Web. 8 Apr. 2017. <http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/#>.

"HyperStudio – Digital Humanities at MIT." HyperStudio – Digital Humanities at MIT. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2017. <http://hyperstudio.mit.edu/>.

Planned Obsolescence Lecture

April 3, 2017

This is a stream of notes taken while watching Dr. Kathleen Fitzpatrick lecture.

• The real industry of publishing differs from Europe to the United States.
• The ways of working are becoming obsolete - The book is not dead, just not serving the community as well as it use to
• The idea to say the "death" of something creates more a commodity of it.
• The marketing department "too much financial risk." University press does not work on a viable economical model
  • This makes sense. Who would want to make money off of my original humanities capstone idea?
  • Then again, my potential action research capstone for this current masters could be profitable. Education seems like finding a new catchphrase or fad and someone always profits off of it.
• 
  

Future of Academic Publishing

April 2, 2017

Publication of journals, research, and other academic texts are in print and digital form. However, there is a debate about the openness of the academic publication. Should it be open to the public or should it be in academic databases for those with subscriptions? Is it to be seen by everyone or those with a university access? To profit or not to profit?

Such a debate is plays out in different formats. It seems as though digital humanities projects that I have encountered are generally open for public access. The scholarly papers discussing research and other ventures are beginning to experiment with digital design. For instance, the reading "Planned Obsolescence" is housed on the Media Commons Press website. The format allows for comments on paragraphs, seemingly instant feedback, and author response. Responding and commenting on specific paragraphs helps the reader focus their comment within that context. Also, it helps the author pinpoint exactly what the reader is referencing. Also, it seems very user friendly as I am able to navigate to different parts of the text without much trouble.

These sites, including Vector and the others, are redefining how academic research is presented to users. These sites also have a peer review process before just publishing journal or text. However, how does funding for these projects happen? Vector used a grant system until it seemed to run out. The last update to Vector seems to be in 2013. Which leads to another conundrum of open scholarship: How do you keep it going? Money is obviously needed to maintain websites, servers, editors, and various other needs. With the current political climate as it stands, can this form of publishing scholar texts and DH projects survive if there are massive cuts to NEA and NEH grant money?

Evaluating DH Projects

March 5, 2017

There are various Digital Humanities projects to explore. It was quite daunting to figure out where to begin. I decided to look at the DH Commons website and read some overviews of various projects. Some project links were either password protected or did not work. It seems some were graduate or doctoral projects and their domains have expired. Others seemed incomplete or haven't been updated in a few years. However, one project did catch my eye: The First World War Poetry Digital Archive. This archive is important as a collection of literature from an important time in British history. The Poetry Digital Archive is a DH project that collected poems from prominent English writers during World War I. The Archive is comprised of many artifacts besides poetry: diaries, letters, and photographs are also maintained and stored on the website. Also, there are numerous historical articles to provide context The project allowed "remote contributions of digital items," where people could digitally submit artifacts. While some artifacts came from individuals, others came from the Imperial War Museum through digitization. The project won a grant in 2009 to continue collecting texts and artifacts. Researchers and scholars were collecting artifacts over the course of eight years, releasing blocks of new information and artifacts when they could.

The menus on the website are nicely organized. The poems are one item featured in a biographical page about each author. Below the author's information is a search option to search the poems or works of the author. When looking at a poem, the search yields all published versions of the poem on print. Most of the time, each version is accompanied by a picture to show hand writing, and, at times, a progression of drafts. On the biography page towards the bottom are links to other artifacts the author has written. The basic idea of having a photograph of the original artifact to me is a good idea. This way, the user can know the difference between each revision to the poem. Overall, some design aspects seems very cumbersome to me. I feel it could be more efficient with certain functionalities of the webpage. For instance, instead of a search engine for each poet, the page should list the works or artifacts as the appear. Their homepage also seems like a mix of different links and things thrown together. When I first visited the project homepage, I thought I had clicked on the wrong website. The web page design of the Education section seems more organized and efficiently crafted.

The vast amounts of information within the project is great. There are many artifacts to look through in each collection. Each artifact has three pages of information: Page image, Page description, and Document description. The amount of information varies depending on the artifact, but the information is easy to read once it is found. The pictures of artifacts seem like they are in high resolution and has an auto-zoom feature to look at specific parts of the photograph. Within the Education section, there are different sections for teachers, students, college students, and others. This section offers lesson plans, interviews from World War I, and videos from battles. There is also the Great War Archive. This section allowed users to submit stories of their experiences during World War I. This is merely a small part of the larger Europeana DH project, which is an entire archive of "untold stories and official histories" of World War I. The information on this project is vast. It seemed like I could go from literature and history very easily. I still have yet to make considerable head way reading artifacts in both projects. It seems the Europeana project is well funded, as indicated this is an ongoing project with a user login and the phrase "co-funded by the EU." at the bottom of its homepage. The design of the site seems sleeker and takes care of the problems I had with Poetry Digital Archive. I would recommend exploring both projects.

Webpages used:

“First world war poetry digital archive homepage.” First World War Poetry Digital Archive. 2016. Web. 2 Mar. 2017. <http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa>.

“Perhaps - -.” First World War Poetry Digital Archive. 2010. Web. 4 Mar. 2017. <http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/document/3084/2738>.

“The Great War Archive.” The First Wold War Poetry Digital Archive. 2010. Web. 3 Mar. 2017. <http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa>.

“The Vera Brittan Collection.” First World War Poetry Digital Archive. n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2017. <http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa>.

“Untold stories & official histories of WW1.” Europeana 1914-1918. Europeana 1914-1918, n.d. Web. 4 Mar. 2017. <http://europeana1914-1918.eu/en>.

Representing Literary History

February 26, 2017

Moretti's Graphs, Maps and Trees starts by defining "distant reading." Distant reading is defined as "the reality of the text" that undergoes a process of "deliberate reduction and abstraction" in the form of graphs, maps, and trees (Monretti, 2-3). In these various forms, we can deconstruct a text in various ways, not just a traditional literary analysis. The various examples in Monretti's book show how different each abstraction signifies an important component of the text, such as when and where a text was written.

Using the Voyant tools, I compared three Shakespeare tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, and Titus Androncicus . I wanted to see how I could represent different aspects of the plays while still comparing them overall. I have never used the Voyant Tool before, but it seems to provide various graphs and maps about the words that are used the most in each play. It also compares how these words connect with various characters. Such as the relationship of the word "good" with each titular character. Hamlet and Macbeth are associated more with the word "good" and have more frequency in lines pertaining to the word. The word "good" is never associated with Titus, nor is the word as prevalent in the play as it is in the other two. I also enjoyed the manipulation of some of the maps and graphs. It is an added element to for further analysis and quite fun to move around.

An interesting digital project would be to complete a graph analysis of where and when distopian YA novels were written. It could give some clue as to how series evolve or why certain elements are in series and not the next. Even within the same series, it may interesting to see how the series evolved based on when and where each book was written. Another thought would be to display the real life geographical locations for popular series. Many take place within a future after the world has suffer great wars, famine, epidemics, etc. It would be interesting to map where major plot events take place and maybe find out if there is a correlation with geography and cultural influence.

Mark-Up Language

February 19, 2017

From the readings, it seems that XML is HTML's more rebellious cousin. The primary purpose of XML is "to store, transport, and exchange data" (Meloni), while HTML is to display webpages to a screen. HTML is used in conjunction with CSS and Javascript to create webpages. XML can be used with any program that unitizes data transfers. XML allows the user to create their own tags (Meloni). This, to me at least, would enable the user to use XML for almost anything. HTML has a defined set of tags that must be used if you wish to have your webpage displayed. Both languages, however, have a rigid order that must be followed.

XML needs defined rules, which would be whatever framework is being used for application. Based off of those rules, XML tags can be created and used freely. Much like HTML, "XML is not a programming" (Meloni). It cannot run on it's own and must use other programs to run. XML, like HTML, is a framework that defines rules for formatting information. Programs, like apps, can then utilize the XML coded data for whatever use was programmed.

When talking about XML with my husband this past week, he mentioned that XML is becoming "outdated" due to the use of JSON. It seems JSON's is "lighter" than XML in syntax. When I did a simple google search about JSON and digital humanities, seems like there are a few blogs and journals debating about teaching students XML vs. JSON. While Javascript is still highly confusing to me, JSON doesn't seem as bad. Learning and teaching basic HTML reminded me of prescriptive grammar exercises, the kind that are loathed by both teachers and students. I intend to read some of the JSON vs. XML posts I found tomorrow.

Learning Python, Teaching Python

February 12, 2017

My life as a teacher can be quite interesting at times. I am currently learning Python using Python Room's online tutorial. This seems a bit easier than trying to learn Javascript or Ruby. Python's syntax is function oriented and very cut and dry by design. It reminds me of when I was learning Algebra, very formulaic and full of functionality that made sense. Though I am still working on the basics, I have a better grasp about programming. I also feel confident about teaching this subject matter. Since my background , like many CTE teachers, is not in computer science or something technical, I can write lessons plans with that idea in mind.

I figured Python was more accessible to them with the way it works and seems to be more "concrete" in terms of language. It also compares with more simple math skills, which boosts confidence in the majority of my students. What scares me is that some of my students are very good at programming and they may eventually pass me in learning Python. Sometimes, it can a be a good thing to show your students you do not know everything. You can go on a learning adventure together with the class. Yet, I teach middle school, so the idea that I could lose the engagement of my students constantly nagging at me as I teach.

"Those who do not learn..."

February 6, 2017

"As We May Think" by Dr. Bush was initially a strange reading to encounter. Why this old reading? What could I learn from a reading in 1945?

As I read the essay, it resonated with some things that are going on today in the world of academia and our government. The current election climate has government employees going "rogue," with some scientist logging data to save research on climate change before the incoming administration. can alter or delete it. Others suggesting to read Orwell's classic 1984 on Project Gutenberg Australia. It seems digital resources are needed more than ever in a such a time.

Bush had stated that World War II had effectively forced scientists to "buy their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause." Rather than competing on an academic stage, scientists were working for a common goal toward the greater good in a sense. Nuclear weaponry and technology effectively ended the war, it was at a terrible cost. Yet scientists "shared greatly and learned much...working in an effective partnership." It seems like scientists during World War II had aspects of digital humanists; sharing information as freely as they could to educate and advancement of the mind. This is essentially what DH texts like Gutenberg do; share information digitally and freely as they can to the masses.

Bush touched on another idea about how we process information into DH texts: "the creative aspect of thinking is concerned only with the selection of the data and the process to be employed and the manipulation thereafter is repetitive in nature and hence a fit matter to be relegated to the machine. " Digital humanists, among other academics in other disciplines, essentially choose what goes into a DH text and what does not. We are now thinking of different ways to log it, much like our rogue scientists trying to save climate change data. The data is being downloaded as a data set and bundle, not as a pdf or word document. This essentially allows the data to be easily transferred and eventually restored if, let's say, a different administration is elected.

What's in? What's out?

January 29, 2017

As I mulled over some ideas from the readings, I came upon an Atlantic article about a Twitter project known as the "St. Louis Manifest." The twitter account, created by Russel Neiss and Charlie Schwartz, documents the fates of 254 refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939. The account was a way to recognize victims of the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was also a way to acknowledge the Executive Order banning Muslim refugees from seven Muslim majority countries. The account uses individual tweets for each person, with their name, the phrase "I was turned away by America," and where they perished. Some tweets include pictures of the passengers.

Would this be considered a valid Digital Humanities (DH) text? As someone relatively new to this subject, I asked myself this question and used the readings to try and make sense of it.

Lisa Spiro explains the idea of Experimentation as a value of DH in her essay "This Is Why We Fight": Defining Values of the Digital Humanities" She states that "the language of experimentation runs throughout the digital humanities, demonstrating its support of risk taking, entrepreneurship, and innovation." The :"Manifest" is certainty experimental (to me) by presenting historical in via tweet. Instead of a curated list on a website or a printed list on a physical document, the Tweets attempt to engage the other Digital Humanists and the public. Twitter is becoming "the back-channel and progressive grapevine for hundreds of people who self-identify as digital humanists" (Kirshenbaum). I do believe that "Manifest" is trying to go beyond common networking of people (DH scholars in particular). It uses the tweet to start conversations about refugees and victims of the Holocaust, among other issues.

However, as Spiro says "Not all experiments succeed as originally imagined." Some responses were positive and sparked some scholarly conversation. A good portion of the comments used the opportunity to post inflammatory remarks and start arguments among users online. Such is the risk with posting anything on social media: some users will circumvent intended purpose of a post for their own reasons. Such comments, to me, seem to devalue social media tools like Twitter. The risk of loosing control of scholarly purpose is much greater than on a controlled website.

I do think "Manifest" is a valid DH resource, but could be improved. Instead of Twitter, a social media platform that caters to hyper reactionary comments, maybe another digital medium should be explored. This project could grow substantially by adding more documentation of the surviving passengers and perhaps sharing their stories as well. A theory I had was to possibly create a Subreddit (r/St.Louis Manifest) to share this information. The subreddit would allow Neiss and Schwartz to create different threads, categorizing the passengers o the St. Louis by their fate. IN each thread would be the same information (potentially more) found in the tweets. These would be posted as comments. Niess and Shwartz could modify the scripts to essentially lock the thread from other comments or ban users who create inflammatory comments for the sake of trouble.

Hello!

This is a test post for my blog for Digital Humanities. Seeing how things are published and what not. More to be here soon!