In anticipation of the upcoming Modern Language Association annual convention, here's a crowdsourced list of digital humanities sessions at the conference: MLA 2016 Digital Humanities Sessions. Jump to specific days: Thursday, January 7 Friday, January 8 Saturday, January 9 Sunday, January 10 This community-authored work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Use, add,… Continue reading Digital Humanities at MLA 2016January 7-10, Austin
Author: Mark Sample
Digital Humanities at MLA 2016
A protest bot is a bot so specific you can’t mistake it for bullshit
A Call for Bots of Conviction In 1965 the singer-songwriter Phil Ochs told an audience that “a protest song is a song that’s so specific you can’t mistake it for bullshit.” Ochs was introducing his anti-war anthem “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”—but also taking a jab at his occasional rival Bob Dylan, whose expressionistic lyrics by… Continue reading A protest bot is a bot so specific you can’t mistake it for bullshit
What are the bottlenecks of Davidson Domains?
A bottleneck is a great conceptual metaphor to describe those pedagogical moments where a significant number of learners get stuck. Identifying bottlenecks is the first step toward designing learning pathways through those bottlenecks. I’m borrowing the idea from the Decoding the Disciplines project at Indiana University. As Joan Middendorf, one of the project leaders, puts… Continue reading What are the bottlenecks of Davidson Domains?
Assistant Professor of Art and Digital Studies
Davidson College Tenure Track
The Digital Studies program at Davidson College is growing! We now offer an interdisciplinary minor and, through our Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (CIS), an interdisciplinary major. Last year Digital Studies and the History Department partnered on a tenure-track search—leading to Dr. Jakub Kabala joining Davidson as a digital medievalist with a background in computational philology… Continue reading Assistant Professor of Art and Digital StudiesDavidson College Tenure Track
Your Mistake was a Vital Connection
Oblique Strategies for the Digital Humanities
This summer I attended the first annual Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship (ILiADS) at Hamilton College. It was an inspiring conference, highlighting the importance of collaborative faculty/student digital work at small liberal arts colleges. My own school, Davidson College, had a team at ILiADS (Professor Suzanne Churchill, Instructional Technologist Kristen Eshleman, and undergraduate Andrew… Continue reading Your Mistake was a Vital ConnectionOblique Strategies for the Digital Humanities
Electronic Literature Think Alouds
2015 ELO Conference, Bergen
I'm at the Electronic Literature Organization's annual conference in Bergen, Norway, where I hope to capture some "think aloud" readings of electronic literature (e-lit) by artists, writers, and scholars. I've mentioned this little project elsewhere, but it bears more explanation. The think aloud protocol is an important pedagogical tool, famously used by Sam Wineburg to… Continue reading Electronic Literature Think Alouds2015 ELO Conference, Bergen
Password Protecting PDFs on Course Blogs
This is a quick note to myself, so I remember the best way to protect PDFs behind a password on a course blog. Joe Ugoretz highlights the problems with most methods, and then proposes the solution I'm using here: Ben Balter's WP Document Revisions plugin. There are a few tricks involved to get WP Document… Continue reading Password Protecting PDFs on Course Blogs
“Warning: Infected inside, do not enter”
Zombies and the Liberal Arts
On Saturday, April 18, I gave the following talk at Bard College, as part of Bard's Experimental Humanities Mellon lecture series. Sorry if it doesn't read as an "academic" talk. It's written to be told. I’m going to tell you a story today about zombies and the liberal arts. There are a lot of places… Continue reading “Warning: Infected inside, do not enter”Zombies and the Liberal Arts
“Deep” Textual Hacks
A computational and pedagogical workshop
I put "deep" in scare quotes but really, all three words should have quotes around them—"deep" "textual" "hacks"—because all three are contested, unstable terms. The workshop is hands-on, but I imagine we'll have a chance to talk about the more theoretical concerns of hacking texts. The workshop is inspired by an assignment from my Hacking,… Continue reading “Deep” Textual HacksA computational and pedagogical workshop
Digital Humanities at MLA 2015
Vancouver, January 8-10
Here is a list of more or less digitally-oriented sessions at the upcoming Modern Language Association convention. These sessions address digital culture, digital tools, and digital methodology, played out across the domains of research, pedagogy, and scholarly communication. If I've overlooked a session, let me know in the comments. You might also be interested in my… Continue reading Digital Humanities at MLA 2015Vancouver, January 8-10
Digital Humanities and the MLA
On the state of the field at the MLA
Since 2009 I've been compiling an annual list of more or less digitally-oriented sessions at the Modern Language Association convention. This is the list for 2015. These sessions address digital culture, digital tools, and digital methodology, played out across the domains of research, teaching, and scholarly communication. For the purposes of my annual lists I… Continue reading Digital Humanities and the MLAOn the state of the field at the MLA
Closed Bots and Green Bots
Two Archetypes of Computational Media
The Electronic Literature Organization's annual conference was last week in Milwaukee. I hated to miss it, but I hated even more the idea of missing my kids' last days of school here in Madrid, where we've been since January. If I had been at the ELO conference, I'd have no doubt talked about bots. I… Continue reading Closed Bots and Green BotsTwo Archetypes of Computational Media
Difficult Thinking about the Digital Humanities
Five years ago in this space I attempted what I saw as a meaningful formulation of critical thinking—as opposed to the more vapid definitions you tend to come across in higher education. Critical thinking, I wrote, "stands in opposition to facile thinking. Critical thinking is difficult thinking. Critical thinking is being comfortable with difficulty." Two… Continue reading Difficult Thinking about the Digital Humanities
DIG 210: Data Culture
A new course for the Digital Studies program at Davidson College. Influences for the syllabus abound: Lisa Gitelman, Lauren Klein, Ben Schmidt, Matt Wilkens, and many other folks in the digital humanities. Course Description “Data” is often considered to be the domain of scientists and statisticians. But with the proliferation of databases across nearly all… Continue reading DIG 210: Data Culture
Sites of Pain and Telling
The Expressive Work of Spaces of Torture in Videogames At the 2014 MLA conference in Chicago I appeared on a panel called "Torture and Popular Culture." I used the occasion to revisit a topic I had written about several years earlier—representations of torture-interrogation in videogames. My comments are suggestive more than conclusive, and I am… Continue reading Sites of Pain and Telling