Digital Humanities Commons^™

Editor's Introduction, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

An overview of African Catholicism. Part Two: Retrospect and Prospect, third issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism. A summary of the work of Bradford Hinze, Mary Gloria Njoku, Matthias Scharer, Mary Sylvia Nwachukwu, and Bernhard Udelhoven. Among the topics considered: African ecclesiology, African wellness and quality of life in Africa, interreligious dialogue in Africa, African Biblical scholarship, witchcraft and the Catholic Church.

Rethinking The Potential Of Documentation Of Culture As A Data Gathering Practice, Tomasz Umerle

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In this article, I examine the documentation of culture (DoC). This is the practice of gathering and producing the information and data relevant to intangible cultural phenomena. DoC is generally practiced by teams of documentalists generally outside GLAM institutions (i.e., galleries, libraries, archives and museums). As such, it differs from the preservation and description of concrete objects of cultural heritage done within those institutions. I examine how DoC finds it increasingly difficult to clearly define and communicate its role: a) in relation to LIS; b) to the broader academic community; and c) in digital age of information overload. In this …

[For The System, Alternate Title: If It Sort Of Looks Like A Duck: Reflecting On Bad Photographs And Chains Of Custody], Jodi Kearns, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Though the system will not permit it, our abstract is an out-of-focus photograph of ducks at 1900 pixels wide and black and white, which is approximately 20% the size of the original color photograph we use for our title. By most technical standards, it is a bad picture. Straightening the horizon, cropping the image to emphasize the two foremost ducks, brightening the image to highlight the feet, and adding a caption that indicates activity might yield a “better” picture for some viewers. This piece captures nearly 20 years of conversations about good and bad pictures, and continues the conversation from …

Designing For Human-Machine Collaboration: Smart Hearing Aids As Wearable Technologies, Krista Kennedy

Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition - All Scholarship

This study examines design aspects that shape human/machine collaboration between wearers of smart hearing aids and their networked aids. The Starkey Halo hearing aid and the TruLink iPhone app that facilitates real-time adjustments by the wearer offer a case study in designing for this sort of collaboration and for the wearer’s rhetorical management of disability disclosure in social contexts. Through close textual analysis of the company’s promotional materials for patient and professional audiences as well as interface analysis and autoethnography, I examine the ways that close integration between the wearer, onboard algorithms and hardware, and geolocative telemetry shape everyday interactions …

Orpheus, Fall 2017: Hive/Swarm, University Of Dayton

Orpheus: UD's Literary and Artistic Magazine

No abstract provided.

Perspectives On Video Games As Art, Jeroen Bourgonjon, Geert Vandermeersche, Kris Rutten, Niels Quinten

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Perspectives on Video Games as Art" Jeroen Bourgonjon, Geert Vndermeer­sche, Kris Rutten and Niels Quinten engage in discussing whether or not video games can be considered a form of art. Although this question has already been discussed elaborately, the debate is guided by many differ­ent and often conflicting positions. The aim of this article is to revisit this debate by mapping out a range of perspectives on video games as art. The authors explore the relation between games and differ­ent definitions and functions of art, different motives of artists, and the potential impact of the arts. The …

Digital Art History “Beyond The Digitized Slide Library”: An Interview With Johanna Drucker And Miriam Posner, Miriam Kienle

Artl@s Bulletin

Johanna Drucker and Miriam Posner were two of the organizers of the Getty/UCLA Summer Institute in Digital Art History “Beyond the Digitized Slide Library” that took place in the summers of 2014 and 2015. With their extensive expertise in the field, they developed a program that challenged participant to think about the broad theoretical implications of their respective projects and to gain practical tools in digital art history. In this interview, they will describe some of their thinking behind the institute and the state of the field of digital art history, including a discussion of the impact of network visualizations …

“What You See Is What You Get: The Artifice Of Insight”: A Conversation Between R. Luke Dubois And Anne Collins Goodyear, Anne C. Goodyear

Artl@s Bulletin

The metaphorical relationship between sight and knowledge has long been recognized: the double-entendre of “illumination” promises both light and understanding; “I see” signifies that one “gets it” intellectually. This conversation between R. Luke DuBois and Anne Collins Goodyear addresses how data accrues meaning through pictorial structures that represent it. An artist, DuBois has consistently played with conventions for depicting information visually, revealing the intersections between data and desire they represent. Reexamining the interfaces through which we view the world, DuBois and Goodyear consider what our filters threaten to hide.

La relation métaphorique entre la vue et la connaissance a longtemps …

Enriching And Cutting: How To Visualize Networks Thanks To Linked Open Data Platforms., Lea Saint-Raymond, Antoine Courtin

Artl@s Bulletin

Networks are developing very quickly in the social sciences, and they are beginning to emerge in art history. This paper explores the making of network visualizations, from the building of the dataset to the analysis of results. Starting from an initial corpus regarding the Parisian auction sales for modern paintings, we developed a methodology to enrich it, thanks to linked open data platforms and technologies for realigning datasets. We then call into question the visualization of networks. Although it brings about an overview of the market and allows a very close reading, the best is the enemy of the good: …

The Computer As Filter Machine: A Clustering Approach To Categorize Artworks Based On A Social Tagging Network, Stefanie Schneider, Hubertus Kohle

Artl@s Bulletin

Image catalogs containing several million reproductions of artworks still pose a costly or computationally intensive challenge if one tries to categorize them adequately, either in a manual or automatic way. Using crowdsourced annotations assigned by laypersons, this article proposes the application of a clustering algorithm to segment artworks into groups. It is shown that the resulting clusters allow for a consistent reclassification extending the traditional categories (history, genre, portrait, still life, landscape), and thus enable a finely-grained differentiation which can be used to search in and filter image inventories, among other things.

Network Analysis And Feminist Artists, Michelle Moravec

Artl@s Bulletin

This article examines the benefits and drawbacks of using social network analysis to study feminist artists’ networks. Looking at two of the author’s digital humanities projects, it explores the systemic and structural barriers that limit the utility of social network analysis for feminist artists. The first project on the social network of artist Carolee Schneemann analyzed her female circles through a correspondence network. The second project attempted to trace the circulation of feminist art manifestos in American feminist periodicals. Three factors are identified as constraining network analysis in these case studies, the lack of feminist artists’ archives, an insufficient amount …

Keeping Our Eyes Open: Visualizing Networks And Art History, Stephanie Porras

Artl@s Bulletin

Network visualizations have the potential to translate messy archival work into clouds of connection, powerful maps of relations that can reveal hidden agents or nodes of production. But network visualizations must also be understood as artifacts of our own visual culture, laden with the biases and limits of both past and present knowledge systems. Rather than seeing networks as uniform webs of connection, social network analysis must productively interrogate how biopolitical, cultural and social power are manifested within these visualizations, reinforcing the biases and lacunae of the archive.

Continuity And Disruption In European Networks Of Print Production, 1550-1750, Matthew D. Lincoln

Artl@s Bulletin

Computational analysis of the potential historical professional networks inferred from surviving print impressions offers novel insight into the evolution of early modern artistic printmaking in Europe. This analysis traces a longue durée print production history that examines the changing ways in which different regional printmaking communities interacted between 1550 and 1750, highlighting the powerful impact of demographic forces and calling in to question narratives based on single key individuals or the emergence of specific national schools.

Between Nodes And Edges: Possibilities And Limits Of Network Analysis In Art History, Miriam Kienle

Artl@s Bulletin

This article examines a number of prominent network analysis projects in the field of art history and explores the unique promises and problems that this increasingly significant mode of analysis presents to the discipline. By bringing together projects that conceptualize art historical networks in different ways, it demonstrates how established theories and methods of art history—such as feminist and postcolonial theory—may be productively used in conjunction with quantitative/computational approaches to art historical analysis. It argues that quantitative analysis of art and its networks can expand the qualitative approaches that have traditionally defined the field, particularly if theorizing is not positioned …

Quantitative Historical Analysis Uncovers A Single Dimension Of Complexity That Structures Global Variation In Human Social Organization, Peter Turchin, Thomas E. Currie, Harvey Whitehouse, Pieter François, Kevin Feeney, Daniel Mullins, Daniel Hoyer, Christina Collins, Stephanie Grohmann, Patrick Savage, Gavin Mendel-Gleason, Edward Turner, Agathe Dupeyron, Enrico Cioni, Jenny Reddish, Jill Levine, Greine Jordan, Eva Brandl, Alice Williams, Rudolf Cesaretti, Marta Krueger, Alessandro Ceccarelli, Joe Figliulo-Rosswurm, Po-Ju Tuan, Peter Peregrine, Arkadiusz Marciniak, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Nikolay Kradin, Andrey Korotayev, Alessio Palmisano, David Baker, Julye Bidmead, Peter Bol, David Christian, Connie Cook, Alan Covey, Gary Feinman, Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Axel Kristinsson, John Miksic, Ruth Mostern, Camero Petrie, Peter Rudiak-Gould, Barend Ter Haar, Vesna Wallace, Victor Mair, Liye Xie, John Baines, Elizabeth Bridges, Joseph Manning, Bruce Lockhart, Amy Bogaard, Charles Spencer

Religious Studies Faculty Articles and Research

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information …

Letter From The Editor, Rachel L. Wood

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

No abstract provided.

St Augustine Historical Society Research Library Digital Projects, Robert F. Nawrocki, Chad Germany

DHI Digital Projects Showcase

No abstract provided.

Preliminary Data Of The Smartsignplay Prototype: A Sign Language App For Families With Children Who Are D/Deaf Or Hard Of Hearing, Caroline A. Guardino, Brianna Balch, Sarah Rearick

DHI Digital Projects Showcase

SmartSignPlay is an app aimed to assist children who are d/DHH and their families learn functional signs to support early communication development. The app is interactive and can be played on smartphones and tablets. The process of developing the app and preliminary results of the pilot study will be presented.

Stereotypes: What We Perceive Vs Actuality, Ricder Ricardo

DHI Digital Projects Showcase

Stereotypes: What We Perceive Vs Actuality

Its important to bring awareness to the different minorities that are being affect by today’s turmoil that is our government system. We need work that exposes what we stand for as young artists without the modesty or fear of being direct, aggressive, or explicit. We need to make our voices be heard and enlarge the number of people who care about human rights and diversity.

Applied Deep Learning: Automated Segmentation Of White Matter Hyperintensities (Wmh) On Brain Mr Images, Matt Berseth

DHI Digital Projects Showcase

Small vessel disease plays a crucial role in stroke, dementia, and ageing. White matter hyperintensities (WMH) of vascular origin are one of the main consequences of small vessel disease and well visible on brain MR images. Quantification of WMH volume, location, and shape is of key importance in clinical research studies and likely to find its way into clinical practice; supporting diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of treatment for dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases. It has been noted that visual rating of WMH has important limitations and hence a more detailed segmentation of WMH is preferred. Various automated WMH segmentation techniques …

Exploring The Role Of Emerging Communication Technology And Social Media In 21st Century Veteran Education, Margaret Stewart, Carol M. Walker

DHI Digital Projects Showcase

This poster presents the findings of critical literature assessment across the areas of military culture of learning, social media, and collaborative pedagogy studies in order to discuss the role and potential benefits of utilizing emerging communication technology, such as social media and mobile devices, to enhance the educational experience for military veterans in the college classroom. By examining these variables within the context of Social Learning Theory, this project seeks to review and analyze strategies that may be of potential value of using communication technologies in order to better support the transition of military veterans from the battlefield to the …

The East Florida Papers: Assessor's Inventory, Cameron T. Adelsperger

DHI Digital Projects Showcase

The East Florida Papers contain the complete local government archive of Spanish East Florida from 1784 to 1821. The St. Augustine Historical Society Research Library has dedicated its time and resources to catalog a section of the East Florida Papers titled the Assessor’s Inventory that describes a census conducted around June 1801. The Papers described houses, specifying their location, owner, price value, and more. It was my job to translate these documents from Spanish to English so that the St. Augustine Historical Society could organize the entries onto an online catalog.

Open Humanities: Strategies For Creating Open Access Course Materials, John Venecek, Christian Beck, John Raible, Sarah A. Norris, Lily Flick

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

As textbook affordability and access to information become important topics on university campuses and within the population more generally, finding ways to decrease book costs in a humanities classroom while providing the best possible resources for students emerges as a multi-disciplinary strategy that requires cooperation across campus. Open Access texts are a way to offer content for free, but humanities assembling this type of text in the humanities is often restricted by copyright and intellectual property. Utilizing materials found in public domain or with a Creative Commons license, however, provides an opportunity to create Open Access texts. In spring 2016, …

1997 Homecoming: "A Cardinal Tale Of Love, Spirit And Triumph", Otterbein University

Homecoming Weekends

The Program of Events and Activities for the 2016 Homecoming Weekend.

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

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

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 …

Review Of Locating London's Past And London Lives 1690 To 1800: Crime, Poverty And Social Policy In The Metropolis, Shawn W. Moore

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

Review of Locating London's Past and London Lives 1690 to 1800: Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis

Wwabd? Intersectional Futures In Digital History, Tonya L. Howe

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

WWABD: What would Aphra Behn—world traveler and spy, playwright and poet of scandal, innovator of novelistic forms—do, were she to imagine a future for digital humanities in period-specific scholarship? This essay outlines a vision for the DH section of Aphra Behn Online: An Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830. In particular, I see three important and interrelated places for development: theorizing the feminized labor of digital recovery, editing, and textual preparation; offering thoughtful and feminist approaches to digital pedagogy that are specific to the work we do in the period; and critically assessing the absences in existing …

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

Marian Library Faculty Presentations

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 …

Digital Scholarship, With Undergraduates, In The Library, R.C. Miessler

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Three different Pennsylvania liberal arts colleges, Lafayette, Gettysburg, and Bucknell, have adopted library-led summer internship models as part of the effort to teach students about research using digital methods. Panelists from these colleges discuss perspectives on designing, leading, and adapting such programs, and on collaborating within and between institutions.

A Preservationist’S Guide To #100hardtruths-#Fakenews: One Fake News Preserve, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

The author created a media project, #100hardtruths-#fakenews, to collect and preserve media relating to fake news that was generated during the first 100 days of the U. S. Presidency of Donald J. Trump. Her resulting website chronicles fake news as well as the many media responses to it. This article describes the author’s construction of the site, characteristics of the posts, and ways in which she navigated the large volume of fake news and related posts. The project explores the complex issues that attend such a project. The goal was to induce energy and insight so that thoughtful professionals might …