Digital Humanities Commons^™

Senior Seminar Write-Up, Reanna Phillips

IPHS 484: Senior Seminar

No abstract provided.

Watching And Talking About Aids: Analog Tapes, Digital Cultures And Strategies For Connection, Alexandra Juhasz, Theodore Kerr

Publications and Research

This paper is a conversation between activist videomaker Alexandra Juhasz and writer and organizer Theodore (ted) Kerr that explores the contemporary role of AIDS activist videos from the past.. Key to the text are ideas around history, technology, time, and community. Together they discuss and enact intergenerational dialogue, what to do with the imperfection of archives, and strategies for shared looking at the history of HIV through epochs. Their conversation is focused on a community created tape from, Bebashi — Transition to Hope, a Philadelphia non-profit.

Quantifying The Rising “Blue Wave”: The Five Metro Areas That Determined The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, Jake Davidson, Jon Chun, Katherine Elkins

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

With the 2020 Presidential Election completed and Joe Biden elected as the United States’ 46th President, strategists of the Democratic Party must now shift their focus toward defending this victory in 2024. We will be assessing the outlook for the Democratic Party going forward by examining changes in voting behavior from 2016 to 2020 in five key counties: Milwaukee County (WI), Maricopa County (AZ), Wayne County (MI), Philadelphia County (PA), and Fulton County (GA). These counties were chosen for two reasons. First, they are all in states President-Elect Biden flipped from President Trump. Secondly, while they are all urban counties, …

Improv Theater And Artificial Intelligence, Izzy Michels

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

Improvisational theater is an art form where unscripted theater is performed. Dialogue, characters, and actions are created on the spot. Errors made within an improvisational theater scene are encouraged, and can form an input to how the scene evolves. Ultimately this project focuses on the evolution and creation of artificial intelligence bots interacting with the world of improv theater. Chatbots Versus Improv Bots A chatbot is a software application used to conduct an online chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. There are many different types of chatbots ranging from …

Equal Prize Money In Grand Slam Tennis: A Sentiment Analysis Of Tweets, Ilana Blackwood

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

Gender inequality in sports has been an issue for a very long time. Two major disputed issues have been the difference in media coverage as well as the disproportionate attention given to male athletes1. Over the years, tennis has been at the forefront of the fight against these issues. One of the most important moments in this movement came in 1973 when Billie Jean King threatened to boycott the U.S. Open which led to the finally agreeing to equal pay for men and women. In the same year she further sealed the legitimacy of equal pay in the sport when …

Social Media’S Impact On Immigration Policies Public’S Response To Children In Cages, Celeste Ramirez Diaz

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic, there has been many political movement and involvement throughout social media regarding each political party’s response to the economic situation undergoing in the United States as well as how they prepare to target certain issues within the political agenda. One of the first points for both parties was to ensure the most accurate response to the safety and protection of U.S residents who are affected by this pandemic in many ways. However, there was a question if the current administration was also considering the lives, safety, and protection of those in facilities where they are to …

2020 Election Fraud: What Can Twitter Teach Us?, Jill Noorily

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

Through data analysis, we can explore the intersection of social media and politics. Focusing on election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, I collected 36,000 tweets and used topic modeling to analyze the tweets. Using topic modeling to find word frequency and topics, I was able to further understand how social media, specifically Twitter, interacts with individual’s views of US democracy and the electoral process. Throughout the project, it becomes clear that social media is a platform that can be used to amplify anxiety, fear, concerns, and misinformation. This study of voter fraud provides insights into the inner workings of …

Global Trends In International Music: How Does Globalization Affect The Way We Consume Music?, Beckett Pechon-Elkins

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

In this project, I used Python to analyze trends in foreign music in four different countries around the world: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Brazil. Using various top singles charts, I was able to create a dataset of foreign singers for each country spanning the decades from the 1950s/60s to present day. After cleaning, filtering and processing this data, I applied historical events to analyze trends in the data and found a notable decrease in music produced by international artists in recent years. This contradicts the prevailing notions of globalization, forcing us to ask the question: Is …

Minecrafting Bar Mitzvah: Two Rabbis Negotiating And Cultivating Learner-Driven Inclusion Through New Media., Owen Gottlieb

Articles

In 2013, a boy with special needs used the video game Minecraft to deliver the sermon at his bar mitzvah at a Reform synagogue, an apparently unique ritual phenomenon to this day. Using a narrative inquiry approach, this article examines two rabbis’ negotiations with new media, leading up to, during, and upon reflection after the event. The article explores acceptance, innovation, and validation of new media in religious practice, drawing on Campbell’s (2010) framework for negotiation of new media in religious communities. Clergy biography, philosophy, and institutional context all impact the negotiations with new media. By providing context of a …

Analyzing Twitter Conversations About Vaccines, Michaela Brydon

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

As of today, there are two COVID-19 vaccines being distributed to healthcare workers across the country. Some are thrilled at this news, hopeful that vaccines will put an end to the quarantines and social distancing. Others are more skeptical, worried at the prospect of mandatory injections. According to the experts, for the US to reach herd immunity, 60-70% of the population would need to be immune to the disease. As such, if not enough people are on board, then vulnerable populations will still be at risk. In light of this dilemma, I decided to focus my final project on vaccination. …

Tiktok’S Non-Inclusive Beauty Algorithm & Why We Should Care, Priya Melonio

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

This project will be a meta-analysis of how the popular social media app known as TikTok takes into account image recognition in their machine learning algorithms through the data it analyzes from its users. It will also see how it identifies and pushes the most beautiful to fame and virality. Though we don’t have access to the actual Tiktok algorithm, we are going to use a very similar dataset known as SCUT-FBP5500. We will analyze how it perpetuates toxic western and eastern beauty standards that are only based on far too simple analyses of what is considered beautiful. We will …

Meditations In An Emergency: A Regional Analysis Of The Relationship Between Union Membership And Minimum Wage In An Age Of Labor Decline, Dante Kanter

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

The general consensus amongst labor historians is that the election of Ronald Reagan led to a marked decline in Union Membership that, with a few exceptions, has continued steadily up until the present day. Beginning with the Air Traffic controller strike in 1981, where the Reagan administration fired and permanently replaced striking union controllers, and continuing with Reagan members of the National Right to Work Committee to the National Labor Rights Board, a legal and political climate hostile to union organizing emerged in the U.S.. In my research, my hope was to take popular and agreed upon census data and, …

The Gpt3 Re-Imagining Of “Howl” By Allen Ginsberg: What Are The Strengths And Weaknesses Of This Representation?, Emmy Roday

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

With AI technology rapidly advancing, natural language processing systems are producing higher quality creative work like music and poetry. With the arrival of GPT-3, the generative pre-trained transformer, in May 2020, we are now confronting more opportunities to question its strengths and weaknesses. These transformer models have been known to successfully recreate the styles and themes of specific authors, writing across genres, and creating exciting new reversals. The main criticism remains that the AI cannot maintain coherent arguments or narrative threads.

Gpt-2: Girl Detective Analyzing Ai-Generated Nancy Drew With Stylometry, Rebecca Lawson

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

Writing styles are often viewed as unique to their writers–a compositional fingerprint of sorts. An analytical tool based upon this assumption is stylometry: the statistical analysis of the variations in the literary styles of works, often used to determine the most likely author of a particular work. Stylometric techniques abound in a multitude of fields, including history, literary studies, and even courts of law. Stylometry is often used as a form of evidence as to the identities of authors of written material pertaining to legal cases, a famous example being the conviction of the Unabomber based upon stylistic similarities between …

Watercolorization In The Digital Landscape: Traditional Watercolor Painting Simulated In Computer Generated Art, Elena Ruiz

IPHS 200: Programming Humanity

With the rapid advance of digital technology in the 1990’s came the development of computer generated imagery (CGI) and graphics, allowing access to new forms of algorithmic and artistic media that would ultimately open up and transform the landscape of contemporary digital art. This continued advancement of computers and graphic software has furthered the ways in which we can share and convey imagery and video, especially through digital platforms. In this regard, as the popularity of creating and sharing digital art via the internet continues to rise, I felt compelled to consider the relationship between (subjectively speaking) art produced by …

Clashing Cyphers, Contagious Content: The Digital Geopolitics Of Grime, Orlando Woods

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper seeks to expand popular geopolitics in line with the digital worlds in which many of us now live. By interpreting geopolitics as a method of cultural (re)production, it becomes a creative tool that can be used to shape and elevate the affective appeal of content. Digital technologies are centrally implicated in the production of such content. By decoupling space and time from their physical anchors in the real world, digital technologies imbue them with a creative latency that can be deployed in both agentic and affective ways. Specifically, decoupling creates spatio‐temporal openings that offer new opportunities for content …

St. Norbert Fights Racial Injustice

St. Norbert Times

News

• St. Norbert Fights Racial Injustice
• #RedAlertRestart: Red Across Campus
• Lillian Medville Dissects Privilege
• SNC Exhibits 2020 Senior Art
• Lecture Series: Art in a Democratic Society
• Leymah Gbowee Advocates for Peace

Opinion

• COVID-19 Damages Social Life
• An Update On Our Political Climate
• Sacrifice and Perseverance
• The Price of Life

Features

• University “Uglies”
• Campus Queens
• Respect at St. Norbert Looks Like…
• New Staff: Laura Krull (Sociology)

Entertainment

• Student Spotlight
• “The Misfit of Demon King Academy”
• Book Review: “CHIP” by Lisa Sail
• Review of “Community”
• Three Essentials to Watch From Netflix’s BLM Playlist
• Junk Drawer: Favorite Song of All-Time

Sports

• COVID-19: A …

Middle English "Tarantulas": A New Edition Of The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Kara Mcshane

Faculty Baden Presentations

In this Baden presentation, Kara McShane gives an overview of her forthcoming edition of the understudied Middle English Destruction of Jerusalem, a late medieval siege narrative, and explores how the poem expands contemporary understandings of religious and cultural contact, conflict, and exchange in medieval English literature. The talk includes an interactive introduction to editing medieval texts.

Covid-19 Brings Campus Changes

St. Norbert Times

News

• COVID-19 Brings Campus Changes
• Remembering George Floyd
• SNC Students March for Veterans
• SNC Launches Respect Initiative
• Norbert’s Ninth Semester
• So Long, Farewell: Commencement 2020

Opinion

• Reading Five Pages A Day
• SNC Parent Facebook Page
• Police Brutality: What Can We Do?
• Dear Everyone

Features

• Behind the Mask: New Staff at SNC
• “CHIP”: An SNC Inspired Novel

Entertainment

• Student Spotlight
• Weeb Corner: “The God of High School”
• Why You Should Watch “Pose”
• Book Review: “Normal People” by Sally Rooney
• Top Three Reads of the Summer
• Coming Soon to Netflix
• Upcoming Events
• Junk Drawer: Favorite Movie Watched During Quarantine

Sports

• CANCELLED: Dan …

Here For A Reason: 1969 To 2019 - Fifty Years Of Ethnic Studies At Cal Poly, Grace Yeh, Catherine Trujillo

Creative Works

This project commemorates 50 years of Ethnic Studies student activism and the program’s development. In 1968, students protested across the nation and at Cal Poly against institutionalized racism and educational inequities, leading to the establishment of the first Ethnic Studies programs. Cal Poly’s Ethnic Studies Department was created in Fall 1969 as a culmination of these students’ efforts to recruit and retain students and faculty of color and to transform the curriculum to serve the community. The department disappeared in the 1980s but, again, through student organizing and movement building, was reborn 25 years ago in 1994. This catalog represents …