Digital Humanities Commons^™

Towards Sustainable Digital Humanities Software, George K. Thiruvathukal, Shilpika Shilpika, Nicholas J. Hayward, Saulo Aguiar, Konstantin Läufer

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Our work in software quality for digital humanities was borne of an effort to address sustainable practices in scientific software development, where the speaker (Thiruvathukal) co-authored a position paper on the case for software engineering in scientific software development as part of an all-encompassing strategy to create more sustainable scientific software (an example of a well-known scientific software package is LINPACK). In this position paper, we addressed how “progress in scientific research is dependent on the quality and accessibility of software at all levels". This progress depends on embracing the best traditional--and emergent--practices in software engineering, especially agile practices that …

On Purpose: Teaching The Digital Humanities, Thomas Keegan, Matt Gilchrist

Tom Keegan

Matt Gilchrist and Tom Keegan, co-directors of Iowa Digital Engagement and Learning (IDEAL), discuss the philosophical and pragmatic reasons for adopting 21st century technologies in humanities courses. On Purpose is a project that explores and reflects on the shifting technological and pedagogical landscape of higher education.

This Week In Digital Humanities And Pedagogy, Dominique Zino

Publications and Research

Report on the NEH Summer Institute for Community College Faculty held in July 2015 at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon.

Computational Analysis Of The Body In European Fairy Tales, Scott Weingart, Jeana Jorgensen

Jeana Jorgensen

This article explores how digital humanities research methods can be used to analyze the representations of gendered bodies in European fairy tales, a flexible and pervasive genre that has influenced Western children's education and acquisition of gender identity for centuries. By blending the theoretical and methodological concerns of folkloristics, gender studies, and large-scale scientific research, this article demonstrates the utility of cross-disciplinary collaboration in asking traditional questions of traditional materials with new methods. To facilitate this research, a hand-coded database listing every reference to a body or body part in the 233 fairy tales was created. Analysis revealed strong indications …

The Black And The White Bride: Dualism, Gender, And Bodies In European Fairy Tales, Jeana Jorgensen

Jeana Jorgensen

Fairy tales are one of the most important folklore genres in Western culture, spanning literary and oral cultures, folk and elite cultures, and print and mass media forms. As Jack Zipes observes: ‘The cultural evolution of the fairy tale is closely bound historically to all kinds of storytelling and different civilizing processes that have undergirded the formation of nation-states.’¹⁴³ Studying fairy tales thus opens a window onto European history and cultures, ideologies, and aesthetics.

Understanding ‘The Body’ In Fairy Tales, Scott Weingart, Jeana Jorgensen

Jeana Jorgensen

Computational analysis and feminist theory generally aren’t the first things that come to mind in association with fairy tales. This unlikely pairing, however, can lead to important insights regarding how cultures understand and represent themselves. For example, by looking at how characters are described in European fairy tales, we’ve been able to show how Western culture tends to bias the younger generation, especially the men. While that result probably won’t shock anyone more than passingly familiar with the Western world, the method of reaching these results allows us to look at cultural biases in a new light. Our study and …

Going Analog And Getting Artsy: Programming In The Academic Library, Lisa A. Forrest

Articles

At Hamilton College's Burke Library, innovative programming has been implemented to highlight the creative work of Hamilton’s students and faculty. Apple & Quill provides opportunity for students to participate in writing workshops and analog makerspace activities (such as book making), and publicly share their writing through organized reading events in the library. As a result, the series has attracted students and faculty to the physical library building, forged new personal connections, improved collaborations with campus partners, and engaged the community with the library.

Reporting On What Jane Saw 2.0: Female Celebrity And Sensationalism In Boydell’S Shakespeare Gallery, Janine Barchas

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This essay reports on ongoing efforts to build an accurate digital model of John Boydell’s popular Shakespeare Gallery precisely as it looked in August 1796—when a 20-year-old Jane Austen visited London’s sites, staying within a ten-minute walk from the gallery. The essay argues for the substantial difference between studying Boydell’s pictures in a paper volume (whether as lists, illustrations in books, or engraved folio plates) and viewing them as an exhibition of paintings on walls, albeit virtual ones. For example, the digital reconstruction illuminated commissions from several female participants in Boydell’s male-dominated gallery, especially Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) and Anne Seymour …

Digital Humanities In Ten Pages Or Less! Engaging Students With Digital Texts Through Sustainable Collaboration, Julie Thompson Klein, Judith Arnold, Graham S. Hukill

Library Scholarly Publications

Digital Humanities projects are somewhat new to many librarians, particularly those who are liaisons to faculty who are venturing into this area. Because of this “newness,” many librarians are unsure of their role in engaging with faculty or other librarian colleagues who are working with digital collections and editions, text mining, or other applications of technology to humanities scholarship. A digital humanities project need not be intimidating. Opportunities are nascent in everyday projects and technologies. Through the example of a digital humanities project integrated into a senior-level writing intensive course for English majors, this session will offer attendees a working …

A "Digital Wasteland": Modernist Periodical Studies, Digital Remediation, And Copyright, Roxanne Shirazi

Graduate Student Publications and Research

The nonlinearity of magazine reading is an important consideration in the emerging field of modernist periodical studies, one that deserves greater attention in the development of digital collections. As modernist scholars begin to generate a theoretical foundation for periodical studies it becomes evident that digital technologies must go beyond reproducing the printed page. This paper reviews recent scholarship and digital projects in modernist periodical studies and introduces non-consumptive research methods as a partial solution to the post-1923 copyright conundrum.

Interim Report, Hd-51897-14, Image Analysis For Archival Discovery (Aida), Elizabeth M. Lorang, Leen-Kiat Soh

CDRH Grant Reports

In the first six months of work on "Image Analysis for Archival Discovery," the project team has made significant strides toward our goal of analyzing more than 7 million newspaper pages in Chronicling America for poetic content. Although we have made some adjustments to our work plan, we remain on task to perform the major research outlined in our proposal. Activities undertaken from June–November 2014:
• Preparation of training set images (completed)
• Processing of initial data sets to extract/derive features from image data (completed)
• Development of algorithms for describing image characteristics (completed, but future iterations/revisions are likely)
• …

The Trees Within The Forest: Extracting, Coding, And Visualizing Subjective Data In Authorship Studies, Krista Kennedy, Seth Long

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition - All Scholarship

Kennedy and Long tackle questions related to the treatment of digital texts as evidence of writing activity, where the object of inquiry is the author and authorship more generally. With sections on extracting, coding, and visualizing data, they offer a useful set of methods that can form the core of a study or be recruited to triangulate analysis of primary source materials.

Introduction: What Is New And Digital Media?, Thomas Kenny Mphil, Jamie N. Cohen Ma

Faculty Works: DH & NM (2010-2019)

First edition

The word media, the plural term for medium, covers a broad spectrum describing communications through television, film, radio, and print. Media require a viewer, a listener, a reader, or a spectator to carry any effect whatsoever. In our rapidly advancing hypermedia landscape of the present, where all traditional media have become singular on the screen-based Internet, the reader, viewer, and listener can participate as as well and truly use media as communication. Technology has inevitably transformed our traditional media into a multitude of interactive platforms, now read and listened to on mobile devices, tablets, e-readers, flat screens, and …

Data Curation Needed To Avoid A Digital Dark Age, Desiree Butterfield-Nagy

Maine Policy Review

An increasingly recognized need for digital cura­tion, or the active selection of digital files and taking steps toward preserving them, has been a natural evolution in an environment where vast amounts of intellectual and cultural content is born digital and may not be represented in tangible form. Desirée Butterfield-Nagy explores the measures that individuals and organizations need to take to ensure we avoid a Digital Dark Age.

Developing Civil War Washington, Katherine L. Walter, Elizabeth M. Lorang, Stacy Rickel, Karin Dalziel

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The Civil War Washington project team at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln includes scholars, librarians, technologists, and students, both undergraduate and graduate. Individuals are affiliated with the English and History Departments, the University Libraries, the School of Geography, and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. Our successes as a team can be attributed to many things, including sound project management and the fact that our participants have been committed to achieving set goals. Most important, the interdisciplinary nature of the team has been highly advantageous in the research itself and in creating the composite web site.

The project was …

Digital Humanities And The Common Good, Pamela Fletcher, Crystal Hall

Maine Policy Review

Digital humanities is an emerging field of scholarship, teaching, and outreach, in which digital and computational methods are brought to bear on the traditional materials and questions of the humanities. Some claim this new field will save the humanities; others worry that it will crowd out traditional methods of reading, looking, writing, and teaching. It is our belief that neither of these outcomes is likely. Instead, the authors believe that bringing computational tools to the study of the humanities and humanistic inquiry’s focus on questions of historical perspective and context, ethics, and value to the study of technology will benefit …

The Digital Humanities Imperative: An Archival Response, Pauleena Macdougall, Katrina Wynn

Maine Policy Review

The authors offer a look at how as archivists at the Maine Folklife Center they are using new digital tools to both preserve historical resources and improve public access to them.

The Maine Memory Network: Re-Imagining The Dynamics And Potential Of Local History, Stephen Bromage

Maine Policy Review

Stephen Bromage explores the Maine Historical Society’s experience creating, nurturing, and sustaining the Maine Memory Network (www.mainememory.net), a nationally recognized statewide digital museum. In particular, the article focuses on the opportunities that the digital humanities create to foster collaboration, to engage communities in the practice of history, and to collapse traditional geographic and institutional boundaries.