Digital Humanities - Southern California

Open Position at UCLA for a Digital Humanities Program Coordinator and Research Technology Consultant

2011-07-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

UCLA College - Division of Humanities - Digital Humanities

ACADEMIC ADMINISTRATOR (Salary Range $54,192 - $78,660; Level and salary range commensurate with qualifications)

The University of California, Los Angeles, invites applications for the position of Academic Administrator as the Digital Humanities Program Coordinator and Research Technology Consultant. Reporting to the Chair of the Digital Humanities Program, the Program Coordinator is responsible for developing courses and teaching in the Digital Humanities program, advising undergraduate and graduate students, and overseeing a variety of faculty research and student support initiatives. The Coordinator will work closely with the Digital Humanities Chair and affiliated faculty to schedule and plan course offerings, place students in mentorships and/or apprenticeships, perform project management duties for those students and their related, faculty-sponsored research projects, recruit and advise students, and collaborate with Centers and Institutes at UCLA, including, but not limited to, the Center for Digital Humanities (CDH), the Digital Library Program, the Institute for Digital Research and Education, the Experiential Technologies Center, and the Office of Instructional Development. The Coordinator will contribute research technology expertise to CDH initiatives, and will serve as a key CDH liaison with the Digital Humanities program.

The successful candidate must have a demonstrated ability to work collaboratively across disciplines and facilitate broad-based humanities research and teaching projects, which are cooperative ventures between humanists, technologists, scientists, and designers. Administrative experience working with humanities faculty, technology staff, and funding agencies is highly desirable. The successful candidate must have a PhD, preferably in a Humanities discipline. For more information, please visit: http://www.digitalhumanities.ucla.edu/

Initial screening of applications will be on August 22, 2011, although we will accept applications on a rolling basis until the position is filled.

For the full job description and to apply, please go to: http://www.cdh.ucla.edu/resources/job-openings.html

UCLA is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.

CfP: DH Reading Group at UCLA

2011-07-05T08:54:00.001-07:00

The UCLA Digital Humanities Reading Group meets twice a quarter at UCLA to discuss the work of a student, faculty, or staff member at UCLA (or any other school in the area). If you think you might be interested in presenting your work in the 2011-2012 academic year, please email me at David Shepard with a brief description of a project you might like to present and, roughly, when you would want to present it ("January" or "early winter" is close enough). Projects should be digital humanities related (broadly defined), and can include research, pedagogy, or anything in between. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Matthew Kirschenbaum to speak at UCLA

2011-04-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

IS Colloquium Series
Matt Kirshenbaum
April 21, 2011 3-5pm
GSEIS 111
Reception in 2nd Floor Salon

Title: Born-Digital Humanities: Toward A Research Agenda

Abstract: Much has been made lately of digital humanities, which has rapidly become institutionalized and professionalized as a research paradigm at the intersection of cultural heritage, digital tools and technologies, big data, and humanistic scholarship. Yet digital humanities has had surprisingly little contact with researchers in digital preservation and personal digital archiving, an omission all the more surprising given that our born-digital archives of today will be the cultural heritage of tomorrow. In this talk I will draw from my experiences on three recent projects, each of which served to educate me in various aspects of digital preservation practice: Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use, which included archivists at the Ransom Center and Emory University; Preserving Virtual Worlds, a multi-institutional collaboration adopting a case-study approach; and Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections, which resulted in a published report for CLIR. Each of those projects suggests ways in which a research agenda at the intersection of digital humanities, digital preservation, and personal digital archives might be cultivated, and I will use this talk to elaborate them. The issues will be framed in relation to wider topics, including digital materiality, retro computing, digital legacies, and computer history.

Bio: Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland, Associate Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH, an applied thinktank for the digital humanities), and Director of Digital Cultures and Creativity, a living/learning program in the Honors College. He is also an affiliated faculty member with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at Maryland, a Vice President of the Electronic Literature Organization. His first book, Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination, was published by the MIT Press in 2008 and won the 2009 Richard J. Finneran Award from the Society for Textual Scholarship (STS), the 2009 George A. and Jean S. DeLong Prize from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), and the 16th annual Prize for a First Book from the Modern Language Association (MLA). In 2010 he co-authored (with Richard Ovenden and Gabriela Redwine) Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections, a report published by the Council on Library and Information Resources. Kirschenbaum speaks and writes often on topics in the digital humanities and new media; his work has received coverage in the Atlantic, New York Times, National Public Radio, Wired, Boing Boing, Slashdot, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. See http://www.mkirschenbaum.net for more information.

UCLA Digital Humanities Reading Group - Winter/Spring Line-up

2011-01-05T11:41:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to announce that we have a very full schedule for upcoming Digital Humanities Reading Group meetings. The schedule is below; all meetings will take place in Humanities Building 250.

Jan 18 (please note the date change), 1-3pm: Willeke Wendrich and Jacco Dieleman (UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) -- The UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology

Feb 8, 1-3pm: Chris Johanson (UCLA Department of Classics) and Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant -- A Walk with the Dead

April 12, 1-3pm: Johanna Drucker (UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies) -- Designing the Museum of Writing

May 10, 1-3pm: Two projects funded by Google Digital Humanities Awards
This session will involve presentations by Timothy R. Tangherlini (UCLA Scandinavian Section) and Peter Leonard (University of Washington Department of Scandinavian Studies) on their project "Northern Insights: Tools & Techniques for Automated Literary Analysis, Based on the Scandinavian Corpus in Google Books." and Todd Presner (UCLA Department of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature), Chris Johanson (UCLA Department of Classics), and David Shepard (UCLA Department of English), on HyperCities Geoscribe, their tool for geo-temporal reading.

--
David Shepard
Project Manager, Hypercities (http://hypercities.com/)
PhD Candidate, Department of English
UCLA

CFP: Mapping Place: GIS and the Spatial Humanities

2010-11-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

Call for lightning talks and poster presentations: Mapping Place: GIS and the Spatial Humanities Friday-Saturday, February 25-26, 2011
Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UC Santa Barbara

Mapping Place will examine the intersection between Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the spatial turn in the humanities. Participants have been asked to describe their mapping projects in relation to humanities methodologies, research objects and/or concerns. In particular, the conference will examine the contributions that GIS make to our evolving ideas of place. We welcome proposals for 3-5 minute lightning talks and poster presentations. Please send a 500 word abstract and brief CV to mappingplaceconference@gmail.com by January 14, 2011.

For further information about mapping place, visit www.ihc.ucsb.edu/mappingplace.

CFP: International Association for Language Learning Technology conference at UCI, June 2011

2010-11-02T13:23:00.000-07:00

The International Association for Language Learning Technology announces its Call for Papers for the upcoming meeting (June 2011) at UCI.

For more information: http://www.iallt.org/

UCLA job opening - Librarian for Digital Research and Scholarship

2010-10-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

The UCLA Library has initiated recruitment for the position of Librarian for Digital Research and Scholarship in the Collections, Research & Instructional Services Department, and is actively seeking nominations and applications. The first consideration date for this position is December 1, 2010. More info is available here.

USC Digital Studies Symposium fall line-up

2010-10-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

Fall 2010
All presentations will be held in the Fanny Brice Theatre, SCA 110, unless otherwise noted. For more information about location, please click here.

8/31, 7:00 pm James Frost
geometric informatics: capturing visual information

9/7, 7:00 pm Sue Huang
experiential and mobile art

9/14, 7:00 pm Peter Brinson | Kurosh ValaNejad
intersections of history and interactive games

9/21, 7:00 pm Sean Donahue
media design and design research

9/28, 7:00 pm Pia Tikka | Mauri Kaipainen
database cinema, neuroimaging and embodiment

10/12, 7:00 pm Peter Samis
digital engagement : empowering public education

10/19, 7:00 pm Craig Dietrich | Darren Butler | Ricky Smith | Ronan Hallowell | Jake de Grazia
The Network of Ecology: Panel Discussion

11/2, 7:00 pm Dan Goods
visual strategy : communicating science through art

11/9, 7:00 pm Natalie Bookchin
new notions of documentary practice and research

11/16, 7:00 pm Anne Bray
urban screens: creating and transforming mobile environments

11/23, 7:00 pm Rachel Mayeri
intersections of art, science, and society

11/30, 7:00 pm Doreen Nelson
design-based learning: empowering student creation

For more information on the Digital Studies Symposium and the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at USC, click here.

UCLA Digital Humanities Reading Group, 2010-2011 Line-up

2010-10-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

Fall Quarter:
November 9: Marie Saldana (UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design), Using CityEngine for architectural analysis

Winter Quarter:
Jan 11: Willeke Wendrich and Jacco Dieleman (UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures), on the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
Feb 8: Chris Johanson (UCLA Department of Classics) and Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant, "A Walk with the Dead"

Spring Quarter:
May 10: Two projects funded by Google Digital Humanities Awards:
Timothy R. Tangherlini (UCLA Scandanavian Section) and Peter Leonard (University of Washington Department of Scandanavian Studies) "Northern Insights: Tools & Techniques for Automated Literary Analysis, Based on the Scandinavian Corpus in Google Books."
Todd Presner (UCLA Department of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature), Chris Johanson, and David Shepard (UCLA Department of English), "HyperCities Geoscribe: A Tool for Geo-temporal Reading"

CFP: Reimagining the Archive

2010-07-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

Reimagining the Archive

A Three-Day Symposium
November 12-14, 2010
James Bridges Theater
School of Theater, Film & Television
University of California, Los Angeles

Organized by:
UCLA Film & Television Archive
UCLA M.A. Program in Moving Image Archive Studies (MIAS)
Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), Paris
INA’Sup / European Centre for Research, Training and Education on Digital Media
With additional support from:
National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP),
U.S. Library of Congress
Department of Information Studies /
Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA Cinema & Media Studies Faculty, Department of Film, Television & Digital Media /
School of Theater, Film & Television, UCLA

Digitality has radically and dynamically transformed the role of traditional archives and museums as repositories for revered, to-be-safeguarded cultural objects. As de facto archives created by users and industry organizations proliferate online; as the social engagement and complexity of Web 2.0 culture expand; and as expansive copyright regimes entail ever more intrusive forms of monitoring and enforcement, archives’ traditional missions of custody and controlled access are being challenged by the new habits and expectations of scholars, researchers, and the general public alike.
The unquestioned trust and task of defining the authenticity, provenance, and movement of archival objects and collections – once the sole province and prerogative of legacy institutions and expert curators – has become more open, participatory, and fluid. In the face of “remix culture,” “archive fever,” and emergent “long tail” phenomena, institutions and rights holders are struggling to come to terms with these new, shared missions and responsibilities. The way ahead for reinventing cultural heritage institutions is uncharted, but inaction is not an altermative. They must adapt or risk irrelevance.
Reimagining the Archive will explore the changing role of archives and cultural heritage institutions, and the new opportunities presented by the remapping and remixing of traditional, cherished, and seemingly immutable institutional models and practices. How might archives build new relationships and professional paradigms, and perhaps ultimately a new philosophy of archives and archiving that embrace and enrich the contemporary “many to many” landscape of media culture?
The Symposium aims to bring together archival and cultural scholars, professionals from private and public cultural organizations, mainstream and independent creative artists who make digital media and artworks, and specialists from major information technology and media firms engaged in all aspects of digital asset management, conservation, and preservation. The Symposium will provide a forum for wide-ranging discussion and debate on all aspects of archival practice, technology, and research.
Symposium organizers invite the submission of competitive presentations in a range of formats (e.g., papers, posters, interactive demonstrations, media projects, artworks) related to any of the following conference themes, broadly conceived:
• Transition
New roles for archives: circulation, annotation, mediation and evaluation
Shifts in institutional focus from archives of objects to archives of events -- from archive as entity/repository to archive as activity and performance
The proliferation of de facto archives
From “audiences” to “users”: from reception to engagement and social production
The documentation, annotation and evaluation of emergent and innovative objects, forms, genres, e.g., games, net apps, social media, “worlds”

• Navigation
The changing legal, regulatory, ethical, and policy landscape of digital cultural heritage, nationally and internationally; threats fair use and the public domain
Digital creation and clearance culture: remix and policing
Intellectual freedom v. digital rights management (DRM)
Peer-to-peer architectures and collections
The cloud and the archive
Internet, archives, or both? Does the Internet need to be archived? Is it a container of content, content in itself, or both? Can it be archived in the absence of designated archival responsibility or action?

• Curation
The future of archives as knowledge references and authorities
Digital challenges to core archival principles
Assigning value, selection, collecting
The significance of independent / amateur media production
Persistence of memory, ecstasy of forgetting: issues of exclusion, selection, sorting, and choice; what to keep and why? Where and when is memory, remembering, forgetting?
Archives as memory and knowledge. Digitization and new possibilities for scholarly, analytical and critical reading. Do digital media convey knowledge in a new way, and if so, what kinds of knowledge? What are the implications for education, cultural transmission, and pedagogy?

Submission Guidelines
All proposals must include the following information:
• Name, title and affiliation of each author (please indicate student authors)
• An extended abstract (500 words) describing the presentation, including illustrations or diagrams for installation as needed
• Requirements for technical support (e.g., AV, space, electrical) required for presentation or installation, if needed
• First author’s name and page numbers on all proposal pages
Student submissions are strongly encouraged.
Proposals should be submitted as attachments to email.
Please send proposals and other inquiries to:
digital@ucla.edu

Important Deadlines
• Proposals will be considered as they are received
• Preliminary deadline for receipt of proposals: August 1, 2010
• Acceptance notification by September 1, 2010

Jaimie Baron and Dawn Fratini
digital@ucla.edu
Email: digital@ucla.edu

Call for submissions: 2010-2011 UCLA Digital Humanities Reading Group

2010-06-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in presenting your work to the Digital Humanities Reading Group next year, please let me (David Shepard) know. We're looking for any work using or investigating digital technology, in a relatively polished state, such as a dissertation or book chapter, digital project in alpha stage, or the like. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Tracy Fullerton, "Experimental Game Design: Process, Provocation and Play," June 3, UCI

2010-06-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

Experimental Game Design: Process, Provocation, and Play
Tracy Fullerton
6011 Donald Bren Hall
U.C. Irvine
Thursday, June 3, 2010
4PM

In the shadow of the commercial game entertainment industry, experimental
and serious game makers are exploring the nature of games, play and
learning in projects that have the potential to change the way that we
view and value participatory media. There are many different approaches
to experimental game design – some designers function best at frantic,
free-for-all “game jams,” others work on the edges of the commercial game
industry carving out a viable market for small indie games, still others
are working within the realm of artists grants or academia. There are
equally as many different ways in which we can “experiment” with games –
with their form, their feel, their function, their style, or their overall
place in our lives and experiences.

This presentation describes the work of a group of experimental game
designers in the USC Game Innovation Lab, led by Director Tracy Fullerton,
who spend their days asking risky, irreverent questions about what games
are and what they might become. This team looks at a range of unexpected
sources for inspiration, and does their best to evolve creative practices
that can allow elegant, meaningful solutions to come from their
impertinent design questions. Examples will be presented recent projects
that have come out of the Game Innovation Lab including The Night Journey,
an experimental game being created with media artist Bill Viola, and
Walden, a game, which is about the experience of author Henry David
Thoreau at Walden Pond.

Co-founder and director of the EA Game Innovation Lab, Tracy Fullerton is
a game designer, entrepreneur, and author of Game Design Workshop, a
design textbook in use at game programs worldwide. Among her courses are
Introduction to Interactive Entertainment, Intermediate Game Design and
Development and Advanced Game Project.

Recent credits include game designer for The Night Journey, a unique
game/art project with artist Bill Viola; game designer for Liberty Under
the Law, a collaboration with Activision and KCET funded by the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and faculty advisor for the
award-winning student games Cloud and flOw. Prior to joining USC, she was
president and founder of the interactive television game developer,
Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s
webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ, Sony Game
Show Network’s Inquizition and TBS’s Cyber Bond.

Before starting Spiderdance, Fullerton was a founding member of the New
York design firm R/GA Interactive, creative director at the interactive
film studio Interfilm and a designer at Robert Abel’s early interactive
company Synapse. Notable projects include Sony’s Multiplayer Jeopardy! and
Multiplayer Wheel of Fortune and MSN’s NetWits, the first multiplayer
casual game. Her work has received numerous industry honors including an
Emmy nomination for interactive television and Time Magazine’s "Best of
the Web"

RSVP required: venita@ics.uci.edu

UCSB Literature.Culture.Media Center Third Annual Research Slam

2010-05-12T17:54:00.000-07:00

http://lcm.english.ucsb.edu/?p=558

The Literature.Culture.Media Center proudly presents the schedule for our Third Annual Research Slam, taking place on Friday, May 21. We are fortunate to have a group that spans disciplines from Computer Science to Women's Studies to History and an historical range from the early modern to the present day. Please join us for a hyperactive afternoon of interdisciplinarity and temporal disruption to celebrate the myriad ways that humanities research can meet with technological disciplines.

UCSB’s Literature.Culture.Media Center is devoted to investigating and highlighting innovative ways of combining traditional humanities research with concepts and methodologies related to information media and technology. The goal of the Research Slam is to combine the best features of traditional academic humanities venues like lectures and roundtables and combine them with the free-flowing, hyperattentive and participatory focus of the poster session and poetry slam. The format includes a series of parallel presentations, followed by a plenary discussion at the end of the afternoon. Glow necklaces will be provided!

3rd Annual Research Slam

Opening Remarks: 12:50 (South Hall 2635)

Session 1: 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm (SH 2635)

Salman Bakht (Media Arts and Technology) – Nodes and Passages
Anne Cong-Huyen (English) - The Transnational Geo-Social Configurations of Catfish and Mandala
Zach Horton (English)/Lindsay Thomas (English) – Academic Media Production as Generative Circuit: The Collaborative Media Commons
Jana Remy (UCI History) - Scholars and the Social Web
Amanda Phillips (English) – The Potentials of Network Mapping for Hypertext Studies

Session 2: 2:10 - 3:10 (Early Modern Center - SH 2510)

Roberta Gilman (Linguistics, History) – In Place, Out of Place: "Bordertown" Hip Hop
Zach Horton (English)/Alison Reed (English) - Language as Pure Affect: Emoticon Shakespeare
Penny Richards (UCLA Center for the Study of Women) – Letters from Sanquhar/The Mordecai Female Academy: Transcribing Women's History Through Blogging
Liberty Stanavage (English) - Speaking Revenge: Analyzing Revengers' Rhetoric Through Language Visualization

Session 3: 3:20 - 4:20 (Literature.Culture.Media Center - SH 2509)

Harrison Desantis (English)/Jonathan Svilar (English, Philosophy) - Monster Mashup
Laura Devendorf (Computer Science) - Association Constellations
Pehr Hovey (Media Arts and Technology) – Tweet Delete: Visualizing Erasure Online
Amanda Phillips (English) - On the Download: The Sexual Economies of Second Life
Dana Solomon (English) – Twitter Urban Sensorium Project

Closing Remarks/Plenary Session 4:30 - 5:30 (South Hall 2635)

Reception to follow.

Conference at USC on Critical Code Studies (announcement and call for submissions)

2010-05-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

Announcing a 1-Day conference on Critical Code Studies at the University of Southern California

Critical Code Studies @ USC
July 23, 2010
Hosted by The Center for Transformative Scholarship & The Institute for Multimedia Literacy
Keynote: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown University

As digital humanitarians continue to turn their attention to the software and hardware that shape culture, the interpretation of source code offers a rich set of symbols and processes for exploration.

Critical Code Studies names the practice of explicating the extra-functional significance of source code. Rather than one specific approach or theories, CCS names a growing set of methodologies that help unpack the symbols that make up software. While still in its initial state, this nascent area of study has been growing rapidly over the course of 2010.

Following the massively successful Critical Code Study Working Group, we will be gathering at USC for a one-day conference to present readings of code. We are currently exploring the innovative publication of conference proceedings through Vectors and others partnerships.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics, will present a keynote address. During the Working Group, she presented a powerful chapter from her monograph, Programmed Visions: Software, DNA, Race (forthcoming MIT, 2010).

Please submit a 250-word abstract to markcmarino at gmail dot com by June 1, 2010 (Subject: "CCS @ USC 2010"). Presenters will be notified by June 15.

Visit Critical Code Studies Working Group at: http://critcode.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

More events at UCLA in May

2010-04-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

Please mark your calendar for two upcoming events sponsored by the UCLA Department of Information Studies:

Laura Mandell, 4 pm Tuesday May 4th GSEIS 121

"Close and Distant Readings:: Archives, Visualization, and Other Matters"

Laura Mandell is the mind behind 18thConnect, the Poetess archive, and other substantial projects in Digital Humanities. She is Professor of English at Miami University in Ohio and has published on topics related to women, poets, psychoanalysis, digital humanities, and the 18th century.

Jerome McGann, 3-5 pm Thursday May 27th, GSEIS 111

"The Rossetti Archive and its Implications for Digital Humanities, Textual Scholarship, and other matters"

Jerome McGann is a renowned figure in the field of Romanticism, Digital Humanities, and Textual Criticism. He has published widely on topics at the intersection of textual criticism and digital humanities. He was the recipient of a Mellon Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on the Rossetti Archive and other projects at the University of Virginia. His book, Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web, was published in 2004.

This is the second annual Breslauer Lecure in Biblio+Info.

2010 IML Showcase (USC)

2010-04-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

On May 6th, 2010, the IML will host its annual Showcase event. Our faculty and students have worked very hard this year on a variety of projects and initiatives; this is our opportunity to share our experiences with our colleagues, friends, and community.

The 2010 Showcase celebrates the efforts of the third cohort of students to complete the Honors in Multimedia Scholarship program. These students have completed four years of IML coursework, learning the theory, creation, and integration of academic digital media. To receive their Honors designation, each student has individually created an honors thesis project, a media-rich exploration of their diverse studies at USC. Their work is a testament to their creativity and research abilities, reflecting the academic rigor and innovative thinking needed to imagine scholarly production as it is transformed through media tools and networks.

This year’s showcase also presents projects from other IML courses and cross-campus collaborations. Projects include explorations of social media relevance, animated information visualization, 3-D virtual theatre, computational cinema, user-enhanced musical history, interactive documentaries, and much more.

The opening of the showcase will be May 6th from 4:30 pm - 6:30 pm. Afterwards, the showcase will remain open to the public until Thursday, May 13th.

We hope to see you there!

For abstracts about this year’s senior projects and more information, please view the event announcement on the IML website.

Job Announcement

2010-04-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

Mukurtu Project Developer II
Digital Dynamics Across Cultures, Kimberly Christen

We’re pleased to simulcast this announcement for a job opportunity at the Mukurtu Project. The project, directed by Vectors Fellow alum Kim Christen (Digital Dynamics Across Cultures), is developing an open-source archive software based on Aboriginal cultural protocols.

For more information, see the job posting on the Vectors blog.

Events in May at UCLA

2010-04-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

Re-scheduled Friday May 28, 2010, 1-5 pm: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, "Meaning What We Play: Games, Fiction, and Expressive Processing"
(Visualization Portal, 5826 Mathematical Sciences Building)

Today's games have well-developed models of spatial movement, combat, and economics. But their models of fiction barely deserve the name. Even those supporting the most ambitious games are burdensome and bug-prone for authors - while providing the player quite limited ranges of meaningful choice. This talk discusses examples of more dynamic approaches to fiction, considering lessons past work presents for designers wishing to craft models that express their visions for playable fiction. At the same time, the talk argues that critics need to begin to interpret the computational processes of computer games (and digital media generally) and connect them to an understanding of audience experience.

Since this event is re-scheduled, even if you RSVPed to the earlier announcement, please RSVP again, letting David Shepard know whether you are able to attend on this date. See PEOPLE for David's contact info.

Monday, May 24, 2010, 4-6pm: Alkim Almila Akdag Salah, "The Role of Bibliometrics in Humanities"
(Humanities Building 193)

Bibliometrics has turned into a research area specialized in the analysis of growth, relations and interactions in scientific fields based on bibliographic information, such as citation data collected from scientific journals. For humanities scholars, an arduous investment is needed to achieve a level of 'visual literacy' to interpret the citation networks, which are one of the main outputs of bibliometric research. Without doubt, bibliometrics is a valuable tool for information retrieval, but the debate over reference or citation index is dominated by the aspect of evaluation. For humanities scholars the challenge is to gain insight to scientometrics in order to protest against positivistic attempts to evaluated humanities scholars, journals and institutions within the rhetoric of scientometrics itself, i.e. by rendering visible the defects in evaluation humanities based on citation counts.

Data/Visualization Tools in the Humanities: from Excel to XML (and beyond)

2010-04-05T14:29:00.000-07:00

Date: Thursday, April 8, 2:30-4:00pm
Location: UCLA, Visualization Portal (5628 Math Sciences)
Presentation by Libbie Stephenson (Director, ISR Data Archive)

This IDRE-HASIS Tool Time! event will focus on the ways that you can work with web-based tools and humanities-focused data resources. Humanities scholars have found that they spend a significant amount of time “massaging” their materials to prepare various types of analysis or visualizations for their research or classroom. To address this problem, many data sites are providing integrated online tools.

The seminar will include a demonstration of the Teaching With Data portal and the data analysis/visualization tools available through the Cultural Policy and the Arts National Data Archive (CPANDA). Come learn how to find, use, and visualize materials using a variety of techniques with software supported at UCLA.

Seating is limited, please RSVP.
Questions? Please contact Jennifer Dillon at jenniferdillon@ats.ucla.edu.
For a full list of upcoming IDRE events, please visit our website.

Feel free to forward this invitation to anyone who may be interested, we look forward to seeing you there!

Sincerely,

The IDRE-HASIS Team

THATCamp SoCal #2

2010-04-02T15:02:00.000-07:00

Conversations are already underway for calendaring another THATCamp "un-conference" in Southern California, possibly either the weekend before or after MLA2011. We'll be building on the successes of the THATCamp held at Occidental College on March 13th. If you'd like to be part of the planning committee, drop a line in the comments.

If you blog it, they will come...

2010-04-01T14:08:00.000-07:00

It seems like everyone is getting into the blogging action these days! Nearly every event or conference initiates a blog as part of their packaged web presence. For example, just today I received word about the archive of talks from the Networks & Enclaves conference held at UCI a few weeks ago. The conference talks were so provocative, certainly there ought to be some vigorous discussions happening in the blog affiliated with the event. But...not so.

Perhaps the larger question at hand is also how we, as scholars with limited time, can be a part of so many blog discussions while not unduly fragmenting our efforts? I'm embarrassed to reveal how many blogs I am involved with (a few dozen too many). How can I keep on top of these spaces, read important writings on not-my-blogs, and still get my research work done? Certainly using GoogleReader helps by managing my various blogfeeds, but it's not still not enough. And is there also some sort of cautionary tale at play here--about a tool that is now so widely used that it's losing some of its usefulness?

So let me ask you: how do you manage your blog reading and writing? How do you balance your engagement with social media while still getting your work done? And, are you struggling, like me, to keep up?

Literature.Culture.Media Research Slam - EXTENDED

2010-03-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

This call went out a couple months ago to the UCSB campus, but I'd like to extend the invitation to any DH SoCal scholars that wish to participate!

Call for Submissions

Literature.Culture.Media Center Research Slam
Down from the lectern and into the crowd!

Friday, May 21
1 pm – 530 pm

University of California, Santa Barbara

Department of English
South Hall (various locations)

Please send project description, technical requirements (if any), and a short biography by May 9 to researchslam@gmail.com.

Have you done recent work that you're particularly proud of? Are you working on a project and would like to get feedback from your peers and faculty? Interested in seeing the diversity of scholarship occurring on campus? UCSB’s Literature.Culture.Media Center is devoted to investigating and highlighting innovative ways of combining traditional humanities research with concepts and methodologies related to information media and technology. In this tradition, we are hosting the third annual Research Slam to showcase the unique work done by scholars across campus.

The goal of the Research Slam is to combine the best features of traditional academic humanities venues like lectures and roundtables and combine them with the free-flowing, hyperattentive and participatory focus of the poster session and poetry slam. The format includes a series of parallel presentations, followed by a plenary discussion at the end of the afternoon. Glow necklaces will be provided!

A Research Slam is:

• Non-linear intellectual encounters
• Smaller, more personalized discussions, followed by a large group session
• Multi-media, multi-modal, and/or multi-temporal
• Inclusive of faculty and students
• Performative, interactive, playful
• Interested in new paradigms of sharing scholarly work

A Research Slam is not:

• Divided and structured hierarchically
• Quiet or stationary
• Lecture-based
• Traditional or conventional
• Boring

The Literature.Culture.Media Center is now soliciting multimedia projects, research posters, and other creative or scholarly works taking advantage of the intersections between academics, information and technology to showcase at the Slam, regardless of department, class level, or period of focus of the contributor. We invite faculty, graduate students, or undergraduates to apply! If you think your project fits the structure of the event, we'd love to have you!

Potential Critical Nodes:

archives
history
reading/audience practices
educational technology
media arts
popular culture
activism
GIS/mapping/locative media
communication studies

(Please note that the Research Slam does not endorse exhaustive lists. Please expand at your will.)

Form now live

2010-03-19T16:29:00.001-07:00

A rudimentary online form has been created by which users can request to be added to PEOPLE or have privileges to post to CONVERSATIONS or EVENTS. The form is at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/956CC72

Welcome!

2010-03-16T14:44:00.000-07:00

After learning after the fact about a digital humanities event at another campus that I would have liked to have attended for the umpteenth time, I decided to create a central clearinghouse for event announcements and a site for virtual conversations related to digital humanities for students and scholars living in southern California. I'll be sending out invitations to contribute shortly. If you would like to be involved in posting announcements or participating in the conversation, let me know.