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Dissertation
Dissertation
Title: "Virtual Actualities: Technology, Museums, and Immersion"
Dissertation Prospectus Abstract:
In this dissertation, I build discussions around the use of digital technologies in association with art and art historical contexts to ask greater cultural heritage questions regarding humanity’s relationship with digital technology. My work reflects on the emergence of digital humanities as a field in response to the experimentation and incorporation of digital methods, with an emphasis on extended reality (XR) technologies, for conducting humanities research in relation to arts and culture-based organizations. I investigate the advantages and disadvantages digital tools bring to the field of Art History today. In particular, the project focuses on modes of publishing, display, and information-capture in museums and archives that illustrate a break from “traditional” models. In doing so, I argue that digital modalities provide a distinctly different paradigm for epistemologies of art and culture. Extending previous research in museum studies and media studies, I address a selection of the latest technological interventions within museum and cultural heritage contexts that operate within a spectrum of immersive modalities and use extended reality technologies. The dissertation brings together many humanities disciplines to investigate how sharing XR within a museum both disrupts and complements the time-tested benefits of object-centered methods of display, representation, and education.
The phase “virtual actualities” within the title of the dissertation signals changes in practice that are being brought about as digital technologies, and particularly XR, become incorporated into fields of arts and culture. “Actualities” connote the practical matters associated with producing, presenting, and preserving digitally immersive materials in the contexts of gallery, library, archive, and museum (GLAM) organizations. “Reality” in turn is reserved for the qualities perceived when discussing the characteristics that define 3D and XR production. At the fore in addressing new topics in museum practices and by conducting new experimentation through the application of immersive technologies, this dissertation can offer new information for digital art history, cultural heritage, and museum studies. The aggregation of examples throughout the dissertation aims to provide a survey of the field of XR in its current state within GLAM settings in order to offer insight and guidance for future development and implementation.
Master's Thesis
Master's Thesis
Title: "Visiting Digital Tombstones: Unearthing Questions of Digital Personhood, Commemoration, and Remembrance Processes"
Master's Thesis Abstract:
In this paper, I investigate digital device users and their relationships with devices in order to tease out the ways human and computer interactions are shaping concepts of personhood by utilizing Alfred Gell’s concepts of the art nexus and the distributed person as frameworks for examining digital applications that are being incorporated by some users in processes of remembrance and mourning. First, I consider the metaphorical vocabulary and terminology applied to technical tools and their use, which ascribe a level of agency to the technological objects or systems. Secondly, I dissect two applications that were developed to run in tandem with the social networking platforms Twitter and Facebook, and designed to directly address processes of death, loss, and remembrance through the digital social network. I evaluate the two digital applications, called ifidie.net and LIVESON, to consider the ways in which people are incorporating digital devices and digital media into critical cultural practices, particularly those related to death and remembrance.
Teaching Experience
Teaching Experience
With eight years of experience in higher education teaching, instructional design and technical support, I am passionate about preparing sharing knowledge, fostering collaboration, and preparing students for the future. As a Teaching Fellow for the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA, I taught classes that provided students with the fundamentals of cultural, visual, and performance studies. Additionally, I have taught in UCLA's Digital Humanities program for fives years, leading the DH 101 labs where I instructed students on using digital tools for data cleaning and management, visualization, mapping, and web building. I've also been developing courses and instructing for the European Cultural Center's Performance Art branch, demonstrating how new technologies can be used in performance. Please see my CV for a detailed list of courses.
Another focus of mine is building programming and digital educational resources. Within my Digital Portfolio, I have a number of digital educational projects, starting from my work at the Getty Research Institute in the department of Digital Art History in 2011. At UCLA, I continued that work by assisting with building a Wiki for Indigenous Languages, organizing and hosting two summer institutes on Digital Art History (DAH), and compiling an online digital art history textbook. In 2017 and 2018, I served as Content Coordinator on an NEH grant, funding the development of a new version of VSim, a platform for presenting 3D models for teaching and research, and an online archive of academically rigorous 3D models at the UCLA library. I also organized a seminar series for the field of Digital Humanities with Visiting UCLA Professor Patrik Svensson and participated in a UCHRI funded DH Graduate Working Group with eight other students from three California Universities to share our Digital Humanities (DH) research, workshop ideas around DH themes, and attend DH programming.
More recently, I have sought to get involved with organizations that are shaping the future of arts education. As a HASTAC Scholar (2016-2018), I helped organize a Twitter Chat on Public Humanities. I am currently a Contributing Editor for Art History Teaching Resources (AHTR), I manage social media outreach and focus on building content that connects the fields of art history and digital humanities in the classroom. In addition, I received a post on the College Art Associations Educational Committee, where I am conducting interviews for the CAA Conversations podcast and formulating a guide for incorporating digital tools into the art history classroom.
DH101 Summer 2019 Class
Teaching Philosophy
Teaching Philosophy
Coming from an interdisciplinary background and continued practice, I believe that inquisitiveness is fundamental in making new and unique connections across disciplines and is what ultimately makes for enjoyable and motivated learning. In my classroom, I want to begin to teach my students how they can teach themselves by exposing them to unusual perspectives and materials that they might not encounter in a traditional classroom through various mediums, including books, films, physical enactments and exercises, and so forth.
Often times we talk about our lives as if they were books – starting a new chapter when moving to a new town or turning the page when we wish to put an experience behind us. I believe building one’s own bibliography is very important, and so I hope to expose these students to new references via books, news articles, images, digital tools, movements, theories and people, so that they can add them to their own personal repertoire.
In addition, my classes hope to build on what students already know – surrounding them first with material and concepts they feel familiar and comfortable with and then open them up in new ways by piquing their curiosity. Finally, I want to encourage and motivate students to want to do their own critical thinking. I hope to achieve this through pointed questions, engaging readings, presentations of images, and individual and group work which taps into the collective knowledge of the class.
Teaching Evaluations
Teaching Evaluations
The following is a sampling of anonymous student evaluations for courses taught through the UCLA Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance and the UCLA Digital Humanities Program, with a summary of the quantitative evaluation score for “Overall evaluation of this Instructor.” Comments are quoted verbatim from those on the original forms, which are available upon request. Below are the averaged scores from quarter-end evaluation forms, which are out of 9 possible points.
2012 Fall WLARTS 100B: Art and Moral Action - 8.6/9
2013 Fall WLARTS 22: Introduction to Folklore - 8.7/9
2014 Fall DGTHUM 101: Introduction to Digital Humanities - 8.3/0
2015 Fall DGTHUM 101: Introduction to Digital Humanities - 8/9
2016 Winter WLARTS 20: Introduction to Cultural Studies - 8/9
2016 Fall DGTHUM 101: Introduction to Digital Humanities - 8.2/9
2017 Winter WLARTS 20: Introduction to Cultural Studies - 8.7/9
2017 Winter WLARTS 186A: Senior Honors Projects - 9/9
2017 Spring WLARTS 186B: Senior Honors Projects - 8.9/9
2017 Fall DGTHUM 101: Introduction to Digital Humanities - 8/9
2018 Winter WL ARTS 186A: Senior Honors Projects - 9/9
2018 Spring WLARTS 186B: Senior Honors Projects - 9/9
2019 Summer DGTHUM 101: Introduction to Digital Humanities - 8.9/9
2020 Spring WL ARTS C142/242: Myth and Ritual - 9/9
2020 Spring DGTHUM 101: Introduction to Digital Humanities - 8.4/9
2021 Spring DGTHUM 101: Introduction to Digital Humanities - 8.4/9
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