Digital Humanities Commons^™

Unsettling: The Real Influx Of Syrian Refugees, Isabel M. Riofrio, Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn, Marguerite Ward

Capstones

While heated arguments have been sparked by President Obama’s plan to accept more Syrians, one key aspect remains little examined in the public debate: the government’s long-running program for helping refugees establish new lives in America.

The federal government oversees a complex program to help refugees come to this country. But is is an effort that does not live up to all its promises, leaving the path more difficult for refugees to adapt to their new homeland. A NYCity News Service investigation examining hundreds of audits, financial filings and internal government reports found government-funded refugee charities contracted to help the …

December 30, 2015: Mckittrick Keynote Opens Ellis Series Spring Season, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

The Department of English Anthony Ellis Scholarly Speakers Series WMU Faculty Keynote Lecture Casey McKittrick

December 17, 2015: 2016 Green Rose Prize From New Issues, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

The 2016 Green Rose Prize Chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum by Nadine Sabra Meyer

December 16, 2015: The Gwen Frostic Reading Series Spring 2016, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

The Gwen Frostic Reading Series Schedule for Spring 2016 Semester

Travel Tales: The Role Of Storytelling In Abroad Experience And Healing, Colleen N. Mcmurray

Capstone Collection

This capstone paper examines the perceived effectiveness of storytelling in the healing process. It aims to answer the question: What role does storytelling play in the healing of returning travelers? The study was conducted by analyzing forty digital videos, categorizing themes, and analyzing the themes in relation to themes found within several articles about the power and effects of storytelling. Five principal themes were used from the data collected. The themes were then used to gain a deeper understanding of how storytelling makes the storyteller feel and how storytelling can be used for healing. The author of this paper has …

December 12, 2015: Spring 2016 Anthony Ellis Scholarly Speakers Events, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

No abstract provided.

English Language Literacy And The Prediction Of Academic Success In And Beyond The Pathway Program, Jennifer Haan, Karyn E. Mallett

English Faculty Publications

Widespread emphasis on internationalization in higher education has generated tremendous growth in international student enrollments at U.S. colleges and universities. In fact, from 2002/2003 to 2012/2013, the number of international students in the U.S. increased from 586,323 to 819,644, an increase of almost 40% over ten years (Institute of International Education 2013). These students are primarily multilingual, contributing varying levels of English proficiency and, often, a new sense of institutional diversity. In addition, these students often pay out-of-state tuition, making it possible for the university to diversify tuition streams as well.

Partially motivated by these realities, and in order to …

Word-Length Correlations And Memory In Large Texts: A Visibility Network Analysis, Lev Guzmán-Vargas, Bibiana Obregón-Quintana, Daniel Aguilar-Velázquez, Ricardo Hernández-Pérez, Larry S. Liebovitch

Publications and Research

We study the correlation properties of word lengths in large texts from 30 ebooks in the English language from the Gutenberg Project (www.gutenberg.org) using the natural visibility graph method (NVG). NVG converts a time series into a graph and then analyzes its graph properties. First, the original sequence of words is transformed into a sequence of values containing the length of each word, and then, it is integrated. Next, we apply the NVG to the integrated word-length series and construct the network. We show that the degree distribution of that network follows a power law, P(k)∼k−γP(k)∼k-γ, with two regimes, which …

The Half-Life & After-Life Of New Media, Nancy Austin

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

It is fitting to think of the half-life of new media using the time-based metaphor of radioactive decay. As a metaphor, an object’s half-life can be a useful way to talk about the potent technological modernity of new media and, like Walter Benjamin’s well-known notion of the aura, call attention to an object’s performativity. However, Benjamin’s aura remains a constant reminder of irrevocable originality whereas remarking on half-life references a quality that changes over time. But what happens after the rhetorical impact of being new has run its course? What is the life expectancy of once-new media and what of …

Marshall University Special Collections Digitization Workshop, Lori Thompson, Nat Debruin

Librarian Research

This workshop, Digitization 101: To Digitize or Not to Digitize? was presented at the West Virginia Library Association (WVLA) Fall Conference on October 6, 2015. The focus of the workshop was to introduce the participants to factors and considerations that should be taken into account prior to starting a digitization project for the preservation of textual and graphic materials. Also included was a technical session (Session 2) on the selection of hardware and software for digitization as well as accepted best practices.

November 6, 2015: Carol Symes Lecture, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

The Department of English Anthony Ellis Scholarly Speakers Series featuring Carol Symes

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 …

Chawton Novels Online, Women’S Writing 1751-1834 And Computer-Aided Textual Analysis, Anne Bandry-Scubbi

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

Using Chawton House Library’s “Novels Online,” several corpora have been set up for a computer-aided textual analysis of the use of vocabulary by women writing “domestic novels” from 1752 to 1834. This corpus stylistics approach makes it possible to map texts according to their word usage and to identify quantitative keywords which provide vocabulary profiles through comparison and contrast with contemporary male and female canonical texts. Items identified include pronouns, markers of dialogue and of intensity; others can be grouped into specific lexical fields such as feelings. One text from the collection then forms the object of a …

Session 3: Digital Merrill, Shannon Davis, Annelise Duerden, Heidi Lim, Joe Loewenstein, Timothy Materer

James Merrill SymposiumOctober 22-23, 2015

1:15 p.m. — Session 3: Digital Merrill

• Shannon Davis, digital library services manager, WU: The James Merrill Digital Archive: Process and Product
• Annelise Duerden, PhD candidate in English, WU — “Admit It Arguably A priori Admittedly I have failed”: Re-vision in the Merrill Archive
• Heidi Lim, PhD candidate in English, WU — To Tag or Not to Tag: The Digital Markup Process as a Form of Reading
• Timothy Materer, professor emeritus, University of Missouri — The Poem as a Netscape

Visualizing Fantasy Fiction: Design Of A Class In Digital Scholarship And Visualization, Including Research, Organization And Digital Visualization, That Does Not Require Programming Or It Support, Charles W. Kann

Computer Science Faculty Publications

This paper outlines a course to integrate digital visualizations into undergraduate research. These visualizations will include mapping and timelines of events, and the ability to hyperlink the events, characters, and story lines in a fantasy fiction story such as Lord of the Rings or A Game of Thrones. The digital scholarship will involve the methodology for collecting, organizing, and representing the data for the visualizations.

The topic for the visualizations in this paper is fantasy fiction; however the methods to develop these visualizations will be applicable to many academic disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences.

The paper outlines …

October 5, 2015: David Bleich Lecture, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

The Department of English Anthony Ellis Scholarly Speakers Series featuring David Bleich

Exploring Place In The French Of Italy, 1st Edition, Laura Morreale Phd, Heather V. Hill

Fordham Archived Digital Projects

The goal of the site is to map all of the place names mentioned in a selection of medieval French-language works created or copied on the Italian peninsula from roughly 1250 to 1500 and featured on Fordham's French of Italy website.

Mapping place names provides a view of these texts that varies from more traditional approaches, which often focus on close reading or the examination of one particular textual tradition over time. Exploring these texts from a more distant vantage point is a valuable exercise for both literary and historical interpretation – the maps you see displayed here suggest patterns …

Chinese Internet Literature: Preserving Born-Digital Literary Content And Fighting Web Piracy, C. David Hickey

Journal of East Asian Libraries

This paper undertakes to define Chinese internet literature (CIL) and discuss the unique circumstances that make the subject of CIL content preservation so problematic. Copyright infringement and text corruption, in which the text is changed or adapted without author’s permission, are major problems in China. Text corruption mostly results from censorship or web piracy. A recently-developed type of anti-piracy scheme called “literary works fingerprinting” can protect the content of the works themselves, guarding them against plagiarism. If as many of the original CIL documents as possible are consistently archived and digitally fingerprinted, then the born-digital works that remain online will …

Orpheus, Fall 2015: Form, University Of Dayton

Orpheus: UD's Literary and Artistic Magazine

No abstract provided.

October 1, 2015: Safe On Campus Training, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

Learn to be a better advocate and ally to lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender people. Participants receive information on practical strategies for addressing homophobia, learn ways to support students who are coming out, and gain an understanding of respectful language use.

September 24, 2015: Cfp: 2016 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

Call for Papers: 2016 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference

Sharing Authority And Agency: A Multilogue Response To Goldenberg’S “Youth Historians In Harlem,” Part 2 Of 2, Jack Dougherty

Education's Histories

Jack Dougherty (Trinity College) provides a multilogue response to Part 2 of Barry M. Goldenberg's Youth Historians in Harlem series.

September 13, 2015: Ellis Series Kick-Off Event: New Discussion Forum, Department Of English

Gleanings: Department of English Blog Archive

The Department of English Anthony Ellis Scholarly Speakers Series featuring The New Discussion Forum

Engaging Many Minds: Nurturing Collaboration In A Steam Context, Mark Dzula

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This field note describes a recent interdisciplinary project facilitated by Jeremy Gercke, an art teacher at the Bishop's School in La Jolla, California. The project creates ceramic tile markers for flora around the Bishop's School campus. The markers feature QR codes linking to websites populated with student content, including: drawings, information, and oral histories. In this project, Mr. Gercke synthesizes his interests as an artist; maximizes his social connections to mentors, peers and students; and bridges disciplines to create opportunities for interdisciplinary (STEAM) inquiry.

Prancing Shadow Connecting Worlds, Tiffany D. Randle

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The practice of being conscious about the environment and how shadows, light, and movement create an intellectual space for different interpretations allows the viewer to make their own associations. Concrete, the ground that people of different shades walk on, to one person can look and seem like an ethereal and unknown environment, but to another may seem like a moving body of liquid. When artists stop and look at the simple things such a concrete, and water, or passersby they can capture a moment in time that transcends the mundane and suddenly the artist is in a position to present …

Youth Historians In Harlem: Exploring The Possibilities In Collaborative History Research Between Local Youth And Scholars, Barry M. Goldenberg

Education's Histories

During 2014-15 academic year, high school students and Barry M. Goldenberg work together to study the history of education in Harlem.

Heirloom: A Piper's Orchard Abecadarian, Shin Yu Pai

The Goose

Poetry by Shin Yu Pai

Forging Connections And Building Collections: The Mass. Memories Road Show At Umass Boston, Jessica R. Holden

Joseph P. Healey Library Publications

In this presentation, I explored three aspects of the Mass. Memories Road Show: the public event, the digital collection, and the archival record of Massachusetts communities. I discussed bringing archival resources out into communities (rather than vice versa), and thus reaching new audiences, as well as building new partnerships within those communities.

The Mass. Memories Road Show is a state-wide digital history project that documents people, places, and events in Massachusetts history through family photographs and stories. In partnership with teams of local volunteers, we organize public events to scan family and community photographs and record “the stories behind the …

Mvst 4654 Medieval London: Omeka Report Instructions, 2015, Maryanne Kowaleski

Digital Pedagogy: Omeka Medieval London

Instructions for the object and site assignments that will assist students in completing their object and site assignments for the 2015 offering of MV 4654 Medieval London at Fordham University

Crossed, Meredith Doench

English Faculty Publications

Book 1 in the Luce Hansen thriller series.

Description from the publisher:

Agent Luce Hansen returns home to Willow’s Ridge to catch a serial killer who has been murdering young women. It’s the case she’s been waiting for, the case that compels her to return to the small town she turned her back on nineteen years ago, the case she plans to ride from the Ohio BCI all the way to the FBI.

The case worth risking her shaky relationship with her lover, Rowan. But the horrors of the case recall the unsolved murder of Luce’s first girlfriend, and Luce …