Digital Humanities Commons^™

Researcher Access To Born-Digital Collections: An Exploratory Study, Julia Y. Kim

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

While a small, but growing number of institutions offer access to born-digital collections, there is scant literature documenting researcher interaction with these materials. This paper addresses this gap through documenting and analyzing researcher interactions to portions of born-digital collections at New York University (NYU) Libraries, with the cooperation of NYU’s Fales Library and Special Collection and the Digital Library and Technology Solutions Department, as well as the National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) program. From September 2014-May 2015, NYU Libraries began implementing an “access-driven” born-digital workflow for their 3 archives: Fales Library and Special Collections, NYU University Archives, and the Tamiment …

Using Digital Mapping Techniques To Rapidly Document Vulnerable Historical Landscapes In Coastal Louisiana: Holt Cemetery Case Study, Alahna Moore

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis outlines a technique for rapid documentation of historic sites in volatile cultural landscapes. Using Holt Cemetery as an exemplary case study, a workflow was developed incorporating RTK terrain survey, UAS aerial imagery, photogrammetry, GIS, and smartphone data collection in order to create a multifaceted database of the material and spatial conditions, as well as the patterns of use, that exist at the cemetery.

The purpose of this research is to create a framework for improving the speed of data creation and increasing the accessibility of information regarding threatened cultural resources. It is intended that these processes can be …

Currents Of Consumption: How National Narratives Of Japanese Cuisine Collide With Localized Forms Of Sushi In Northern California, John Ostermiller

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper examines how national narratives of Japanese cuisine collide with the expectations, preferences, and perceptions of American consumers (particularly Northern California). The global economy has benefited the circulation of positive images of Japan managed by the Japanese government, but the commercialization of Japanese cuisine is also at odds with government efforts. In Japan, sushi is often synonymous with nigirizushi: sliced seafood and a daub of wasabi atop vinegared rice. As part of Japan’s washoku tradition, this singular image of sushi (allegedly) reflects the deepest essence of Japanese cultural sensibilities tied to simplicity, perfection, and nature. But in America, consumers’ …

The Vanishing Line, Jacopo Mazzoni

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is an exploratory effort to bridge the rift that political and monetary powers created between art and technology. In my practice, these socio-political motivations are exposed through the creation of non-utilitarian inventions that use different technologies as charged metaphors. I research mass media language and construct interactive pieces while borrowing strategies from the entertainment industry to make environmental, social, and political issues more palatable than documentary films or raw data could. In my work, technology is regarded as a semidivine entity with supernatural powers that can both elevate and reduce the human experience. My work functions differently according …

Invisible In 'The Archive': Librarians, Archivists, And The Caswell Test, Bridget Whearty

English, General Literature, and Rhetoric Faculty Scholarship

This presentation, "Invisible in 'The Archive': Archivists, Librarians, and The Caswell Test," was given at the 53rd International Congress for Medieval Studies, on May 11, 2018. It argues that medievalists, and humanities scholars more broadly, have erred in writing and theorizing about "the archive" as an abstract, depopulated space, untouched by human labor and laborers. Building on the work of M. L. Caswell, Eira Tansey, Amy Hildreth Chen, Myron Groover, and other scholars of library and information sciences, it proposes that humanities scholars adopt what I call "The Caswell Test."

Based on the famous "Bechdel Test" for gender representation in …

Player-Response: On The Nature Of Interactive Narratives As Literature, Lee Feldman

English (MA) Theses

In recent years, having evolved beyond solely play-based interactions, it is now possible to analyze video games alongside other narrative forms, such as novels and films. Video games now involve rich stories that require input and interaction on behalf of the player. This level of agency likens video games to a kind of modern hypertext, networking and weaving various narrative threads together, something which traditional modes of media lack. When examined from the lens of reader-response criticism, this interaction deepens even further, acknowledging the player’s experience as a valid interpretation of a video game’s plot. The wide freedom of choice …

Review Of The Shelley-Godwin Archive, Stacey L. Kikendall

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

Review of The Shelley-Godwin Archive

A Martin Luther King Jr. Amendment To The U.S. Constitution: Toward The Abolition Of Poverty, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prescribed that we add an economic bill of rights to the U.S. Constitution. A King-Inspired bill of rights should include a constitutional amendment that enumerates a natural human right to be free from economic poverty, and appropriate enforcement legislation.

For the sake of abolishing slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment says:

(Section 1) Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

(Section 2) Congress shall have power to enforce this article by …

Amjambo Africa! (May 2018), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

Welcome to Amjambo Africa! Welcome to Amjambo Africa! We are Maine’s free newspaper for and about New Mainers from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Amjambo Africa! is here to help New Mainers thrive and to help Maine welcome and benefit from our new neighbors.

Amjambo Africa! will serve as a conduit of information for newcomers as they navigate life in Maine.

Amjambo Africa! will include background articles about Africa so those from Maine can understand why newcomers have arrived here.

Amjambo Africa! will profile successful New Mainers from Sub-Saharan Africa in order to give hope to those newly arrived as well as make …

Tangible Things: The Matter Of Susan Howe, Thomas Lewek

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Tangible Things: The Matter of Susan Howe” examines materiality in two books, That This (2010) and Debths (2017), by the contemporary American experimental poet Susan Howe. More specifically, this examination finds a double movement in both collections between foregrounding the materiality of writing and of the text and meditating on the vibrant nature of matter itself. To frame the first part of this double movement, the thesis draws on recent digital humanities scholarship from Matthew Kirschenbaum and Johanna Drucker that highlights the technologically and materially mediated nature of writing processes and the texts they produce. Then, to frame the second …

Symbols Purely Mechanical: Language, Modernity, And The Rise Of The Algorithm, 1605–1862, Jeffrey M. Binder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades, scholars in both Digital Humanities and Critical Media Studies have encountered a disconnect between algorithms and what are typically thought of as “cultural” concerns. In Digital Humanities, researchers employing algorithmic methods in the study of literature have faced what Alan Liu has called a “meaning problem”—a difficulty in reconciling computational results with traditional forms of interpretation. Conversely, in Critical Media Studies, some thinkers have questioned the adequacy of interpretive methods as means of understanding computational systems. This dissertation offers a historical account of how this disconnect came into being by examining the attitudes toward algorithms that existed …

Sculpting Fantasy Realism Creatures Of The Desert, Peter Eisenbrey

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Creature design and sculpture is about representing life with three dimensions. To begin designing a creature, the process begins by looking at real life. Studies of existing wildlife and anatomy reference provided the foundation for the creation process. The goal of this project was to study creature design and attempt creating feasible results. The background and location origin of these creatures are based on the environmental location of Arizona. The goal was creating and rendering four creatures with the attempt of achieving fantasy realism.

Weaponization Of Data For Governmentality, Juliana Son

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Who is a citizen? Who is a threat to public safety? Who is worthy of protection? What it means to be a valued body in the United States has been written into code, where the state and corporations have embraced an algorithmic approach to national security. Algorithms, previously praised for their neutrality, have been taking a neoliberal turn.

This thesis will examine how data is used by the state as a governance practice, specifically looking at how such practices have left certain communities more precarious and vulnerable than others. My aim is to show how the weaponization of data is …

Miami: Then & Now, Dana Mcgeehan

Library Research Scholars Program 2017-2018

This project consists of an ArcGIS Story Map of Miami-Dade County. Each “then” and “now” photo set will be marked with an icon on the map. The side-bar will show viewers two photos of the same physical space. These photos can be placed side-by-side. These spaces will mostly be buildings, but may also focus on the landscape through maps and how this has changed over time. The “then” photos come primarily from the UM Library’s Special Collections and the Florida State Archives website, floridamemory.com. The “now” photos are ones that I’ve taken myself. A paragraph or two of contextual/background information …

Episode 12: All Things In Murderation, Tanner Elrod

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Patterns, Collaboration, Practice: Algorithms As Editing For Historic Periodicals, Elizabeth Lorang

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

This presentation positions my recent work on the algorithmic “discovery” of poetic material in historic newspapers within the contexts of my various roles as an editor of periodical literature and also consider how duplicative processes and algorithms encode principles and values and function as editorial acts. Ultimately, I hope to pose a range of questions to prompt discussion around the place (or not) of machine learning in identifying and selecting texts and bodies of work; what ideas we’re actually exploring/are able to explore when we enlist technology in stages of this work; and the stakes of these activities, whether human …

Digital History Profile, Angela Sutton

Madison Historical Review

This year at the Madison Historical Review, we chose to profile an exciting digital history project out of Vanderbilt University. We interviewed Angela Sutton who is a historian and Postdoctoral fellow in Digital Humanities at Vanderbilt University, where she helps manage projects with the Slave Societies Digital Archive (SSDA). Her publications about the archive and its contents can be found in sx archipelagos (Issue 2, September 2017) and the Afro-Hispanic Review (coming out later in 2018).

Episode 11: Blunt Force Drama, Michael Painter

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Episode 10: He's Come Undone, Kristen Daly

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.

Episode 09: Killer Heels, Rachel Collinsworth

Season 3: Standards of Behavior

No abstract provided.