Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Separating Markup From Text, Ronald I. Greenberg, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

As more and more online versions of Humanities texts are created, it is becoming commonplace to embed elaborate formatting, for example, through the use of HTML. But this can interfere with computerized analyses of the original text. While it may seem, at first, straightforward to simply strip markup from text, this is not the reality. Many digital texts add things that appear to be legitimate content according to the markup syntax, for example, line numbers, and even apart from this issue, existing tools for stripping markup produce inconsistent results. Apart from adopting and enforcing strict conventions for adding markup to …

Publishing Tools In Sermon Studies, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

“Green.” “Gold.” “DOAJ.” “APC.” These terms – and many more – are part of the vocabulary of open access publishing, a model that is becoming increasingly prevalent with both established presses and independent journals. In this talk, Robert Ellison surveys current patterns and trends in the open access world, and discusses some of the decisions that must be made when starting a new open access journal. As a case study, he outlines the process of launching Sermon Studies, an online-only, peer-reviewed publication that has recently “gone live” at Marshall University.

Wear And Care Feminisms At A Long Maker Table, Jacqueline Wernimont, Elizabeth M. Losh

Elizabeth Losh

Although there is a deep history of feminist engagement with technology, the FemTechNet initiative (a feminist collective of which we are both a part) argues that such history is often hidden and that feminist thinkers are frequently siloed. At the same time, initiatives to promote critical making, acts of “shared construction” in which makers work to understand both the technologies and their social environments, often exclude women and girls from hacker/makerspaces that require both explicit permissions and access to implicit reserves of tacit knowledge. Even attempts to provide superficial hospitality can inflict microagressions on those who feel excluded from the …

Navigating The Global Digital Humanities: Insights From Black Feminism, Roopika Risam

Roopika Risam

As the field of digital humanities has grown in size and scope, the question of how to navigate a scholarly community that is diverse in geography, language, and participant demographics has become pressing. An increasing number of initiatives have sought to address these concerns, both in scholarship—as in work on postcolonial digital humanities or #transformDH—and through new organizational structures like the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organization’s (ADHO) Multi-Lingualism and Multi-Culturalism Committee and Global Outlook::Digital Humanities (GO::DH), a special interest group of ADHO. From the work of GO::DH in particular, an important perspective has emerged: digital humanities, as a field, can …

Toxic Femininity 4.0, Roopika Risam

Roopika Risam

This paper examines constructions of toxic femininity within fourth-wave feminism. Taking hashtag feminism as its focus, this article contends that charges of toxicity lobbed online reproduce divisive dynamics that have shaped earlier trends within feminist movements in the United States. It further suggests that Twitter, as a platform, amplifies deep discomfort with theories of intersectional feminism while shaping how normative gender is reproduced online.

Rethinking Peer Review In The Age Of Digital Humanities, Roopika Risam

Roopika Risam

For academics, double-blind peer review processes remain the gold standard for validating scholarly work. The value accrued by scholarship has traditionally flowed mono-directionally from peer review. In the hierarchies that govern academic hiring and tenure and promotion practices, the single-authored monograph from the distinguished scholarly press sent out for review upon completion occupies a position of prominence. Among shorter forms, the prestigious academic journal provides readily legible markers of academic quality. Yet, for scholars working in digital formats or within digital humanities, conventions governing the gatekeeping of “scholarly” work feel increasingly mismatched to the digital milieu. Therefore, digital scholarship requires …

Revising History And Re-Authouring The Left In The Postcolonial Digital Archive, Roopika Risam

Roopika Risam

In November 2013, the National Archives of Britain revealed a secret stash of declassified colonial documents that had been hidden illegally by the Foreign Office for decades past their allotted 30-year suppression period. The archive includes:

[M]onthly intelligence reports on the ‘elimination’ of the colonial authority’s enemies in 1950s Malaya; records showing ministers in London were aware of the torture and murder of Mau Mau insurgents in Kenya, including a case of a man said to have been ‘roasted alive’; and papers detailing the lengths to which the UK went to forcibly remove islanders from Diego Garcia in the Indian …

Beyond The Margins: Intersectionality And The Digital Humanities, Roopika Risam

Roopika Risam

This article examines the relationship between intersectionality and the digital humanities. Intersectionality offers a critical approach to debates between theory and method in the field, transcending simplistic hack vs. yack binaries. This article situates debates over difference in the digital humanities within the context of the culture wars within the U.S. academy during the 1980s and 1990s, locating the stakes for diversity in the digital humanities. It surveys digital humanities projects, outlining the need for alternate histories of the digital humanities told through intersectional lenses. Finally, the article proposes ways of looking forward towards the deeper intersectional analysis needed to …

Building An Ethical Digital Humanities Community: Librarian, Faculty, And Student Collaboration, Roopika Risam, Justin Snow, Susan Edwards

Roopika Risam

This article examines work building a digital humanities community at Salem State’s Berry Library. The initiatives are comprised of a three-pronged approach: laying groundwork to build a DH center, building the DH project Digital Salem as a place-based locus for digital scholarship and launching an undergraduate internship program to explore ethical ways of creating innovative research experiences for undergraduate students. Together, these initiatives constitute an important move toward putting libraries at the center of creating DH opportunities for underserved student populations and a model for building DH at regional comprehensive universities.

Transforming The Landscape Of Labor At Universities Through Digital Humanities, Roopika Risam, Susan Edwards

Roopika Risam

No abstract provided.

Building An Ethical Digital Humanities Community: Librarian, Faculty, And Student Collaboration, Roopika Risam, Justin Snow, Susan Edwards

Justin Snow

This article examines work building a digital humanities community at Salem State’s Berry Library. The initiatives are comprised of a three-pronged approach: laying groundwork to build a DH center, building the DH project Digital Salem as a place-based locus for digital scholarship and launching an undergraduate internship program to explore ethical ways of creating innovative research experiences for undergraduate students. Together, these initiatives constitute an important move toward putting libraries at the center of creating DH opportunities for underserved student populations and a model for building DH at regional comprehensive universities.

Data Storytelling With Policymap Across Disciplines, Katie M. Wissel, Lisa Deluca, Elizabeth Nash

Kathryn Wissel, MBA, MI

When Technology Is Too Hot, Too Cold Or Just Right, Jonathan Howell

Jonathan Howell

Many instructors acknowledge the importance of quantitative literacy in non-STEM fields and may themselves use advanced tools for data analysis, statistics and visualization. But how, if at all, does an instructor introduce quantitative methods into the classroom without overwhelming and disengaging students who may have been drawn to the field precisely because it has not traditionally required any skill or interest in science, technology, engineering or math? I present a model of iterative assignment design illustrated by the evolution of a phonetic exercise in which students are asked to measure vowels from their own speech and to plot their measurements …

Looking Forward To Look Back: Digital Preservation Planning, Jennifer Brancato, Kayla Harris

Jennifer Brancato

Digital information resources are a vitally important and increasingly large component of academic libraries’ collection and preservation responsibilities. This includes content converted to and originating from digital form (born-digital). Preserving digital material, such as social media and websites, is essential for ensuring that future generations know everyone’s story, especially those groups which have been historically underrepresented in official records. This presentation will detail the steps undertaken by a digital preservation task force to first assess the weaknesses in current practice, and then develop a plan to implement a digital preservation policy and workflow. As part of the project, the task …