4Humanities Event at CSUN

Date: May 16, 2014
Time: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Location: The Linda Nichols Joseph Room of Jerome Richfield Hall (JR 319), California State University, Northridge (Map)
Contact: Scott Kleinman (scott.kleinman@csun.edu)

4Humanities is a group of digital humanists who seek to assist in advocacy for the humanities by harnessing the skills and resources of the digital humanities community. On May 16, the local Southland 4Humanities chapters will meet at California State University, Northridge to work on the WhatEvery1Says Research Project (#WhatEvery1Says).

WhatEvery1Says emerges from the local chapter of 4Humanities at UC Santa Barbara (4Humanities@UCSB) to identify public perceptions of the humanities, formulate the core value(s) of the humanities, and strategize ways to “frame” these values for effective communication (through framing narratives, metaphors, scenarios, paradigms). The project’s purpose is to canvass and analyze public and academic discourse about the humanities in order to help advocates develop a coherent message about why the humanities matter to people and society. The project will conduct systematic, strategic research on perceptions of the humanities, on what academics and others believe the core values of the humanities to be, and on the way people “frame” narratives about the humanities. Data will be gathered through text mining and analyzed through forms of computational analysis such as topic modeling. Further information is available on the Project Overview Site.

Anyone who would like to become involved with 4Humanities or WhatEvery1Says is welcome to join us. Although the primary goal of the meeting will be planning and strategizing for WhatEvery1Says, there will be a time slot for people to talk give short presentations on whatever DH topics they would like. Lightning talks to longer demos will both be considered, and the timetable below will be adjusted accordingly.

The following is a preliminary schedule which is likely to undergo some change before the date of the meeting.

10:00-12:00

• Introductions
• Background on the Project
• Discussion of opportunities for grant funding to support WhatEvery1Says and/or other 4Humanities activities.
• Creating some timelines for some smaller 4Humanities projects or discussion of structures for collaboration.

12:00-1:00: Lunch

1:00-4:00

• Introductions of afternoon attendees and morning re-cap.
• Preparatory work and training for topic modelling.
• Collective or small group run-through on a small corpus.

4:00-5:00

• A time slot for spill-over from the previous session and for people to talk about and/or demo their DH projects, either in the form of lightning talks or "extended" lightning talks.

Getting to and Parking at CSUN

Driving Directions can be found on the CSUN Visitor Parking Information website or from Google Maps. Please go to Parking Booth #2 on the corner of Prairie and Darby to purchase a daily parking permit ($6). The Parking Booth only accepts cash, but the parking lots have dispensers that accept credit cards. Please keep your receipt; you will be reimbursed afterwards.

Getting to JR 319

Walk down Prairie towards campus. Cross Etiwanda and walk to the right around Sierra Center. On the other side of Sierra Center there are stairs leading up to the third floor. These provide direct access to Jerome Richfield Hall right outside JR 319.

Wifi Access

Visitors from campuses with Eduroam may be able to access the internet using that service. Otherwise, you will be given a password upon arrival.