Month: November 2016

Okay so Bucknell.

I enjoyed people being interested in my project and laughing at my jokes. Above all I have to say I did enjoy the Twitter attention, being quoted and retweeted made me feel like my voice was being heard and my words were taken to heart.

What we had with DSSF was incredibly unique and independent. All the undergraduate research that was presented at BUDSC16 was either in relation to a professor’s work or highly regulated with papers and essays that accompanied their project. We had the opportunity and privilege to conduct truly independent research that was guided by workshops to give us the tools to work with. The opportunity that DSSF gave us was absolutely priceless.

“Tell me all about your project. I want to know all about the Civil War.” One man said while Lauren snorted in the background because she knew what was coming. This man was a speaker that teaches at UMass at Amherst in the Latin American Literature Department. I happen to know another professor that studies Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst, Ilan Stavans who was a mentor to me at the Great Books Summer Program hosted through Amherst College. He had a daughter interested in the Civil War as well and we talked at length about both interest in the Civil War, my time with Dr. Stavans, and my project.

Since my cadets came from everywhere I made connections with a lot of libraries that have something or another on at least one of them. For example: the librarians from Rochester didn’t know that O’Rorke bridge, a prominent bridge in Rochester I’m guessing, was named after my cadet Patrick O’Rorke and that they had papers in their collections from Patrick O’Rorke and from his wife as well and invited me to visit some time. This happened many times over.

The Digital Humanities community is way more open and casual than I expected. I stated in my presentation that in Digital Humanities that I could be judged by my work and not by who I was, even though I got a tweet that disagreed with me I largely found that anyone could do research on anything. However, digital humanities need funds. Yale put together a huge project based on crowd-sourcing and student’s stories that they collected in a view months and Lauren and I were in awe in how they could pull something together that fast and have it be so organized and nice. We quickly were reminded that it was Yale and they had money for DH. Yale quality DH requires funds, time, and tons of manpower. But with that said, DH is still a community of practice. At panels Q&A there were many suggestions of new tools or platforms to use, constructive criticisms and comments that were taken into account. Because new tools are always evolving creating new possibilities for everyone no matter how experienced or inexperienced someone is.

Bucknell was an incredible, yet exhausting, experience that I believe was helpful for all of us and gave us insight to the DH community outside of our little library space.

-Julia

People love to sort things into binaries. Digital is traditionally the opposite of the humanities, failure the opposite of success, and student the opposite of professor. At the Bucknell University Digital Scholarship conference, whose theme was “Negotiating Borders Through Digital Collaboration”, I witnessed the dissolution and blending of all of these binaries.

Throughout the summer, we discussed the ways that digital tools can be used to present traditional humanities materials in new ways, and that this started to dissolve the binary between the two. This conference continued to bring the two closer to one another  in my mind because I was able to see how digital tools can also be used to inform the humanities. A number of projects presented at the conference used some form of crowdsourcing to gather information, form narratives, and complement or enhance humanities materials that already existed. Dr. Safiya Noble’s keynote was especially important in recognizing the way that search engines influence our perceptions of humanity and reinforce hegemonic narratives. Much as people may like to think of them as being two separate spheres, it is clear that digital tools, including those that are common knowledge, are continually influencing the material that influences the humanities.

Similar to the way that the conference showed digital and humanities as being complements to one another, failure and success were also posited as being congruent. A number of panels discussed the struggles they encountered with regard to their work, but each used it as an opportunity to reevaluate their projects and methods or shift their focus. The conference emphasized that failure allows for greater discovery; it is not an endpoint, but rather a beginning.

Most striking to me though was the erasure of a student/faculty binary at the conference. In the beginning of the digital scholarship summer fellowship in May, the conference seemed like a very abstract concept. To me, conferences always seemed like lofty places, reserved for a select group of scholars that I could hope to accompany,and only become after years of education and having published a substantial amount of published material. Bucknell smashed this expectation to pieces. Not only was my and my cohort’s undergraduate research regarded as being significant, but the conference affirmed and included the work of scholars at all levels, and proved that the people doing work on the digital humanities aren’t on a binary, but really function as a community of practice, where students, professors, librarians, educators, and technologists all rely on and influence one another. The implicit task after this conference seems to be to expand the community of practice even further. As dictated in Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s keynote, it is incredibly important to introduce and establish the digital humanities at those institutions, such as community colleges, tribal colleges, and historically black colleges, that have often and unjustly been left at the margins of academic communities. The community of practice cannot function if it only features the voices of an elite some, while denying access to the voices of an inclusive many.

The Bucknell Digital Scholarship Conference proved to be a great experience for all. The digital scholars were able to meet a lot of great people and learn more about the community of digital scholarship. Reflecting back on my experience, I really enjoyed being able to interact with other digital scholars. Since I am new to digital scholarship, it was nice to be able to talk with people about their experiences with digital tools and workshops. I also enjoyed many of the presentations I went to. It was nice to see other undergraduate students engaging with digital scholarship, creating these impressive and diverse projects. One presentation about digital storytelling as a tool to preserve the history of the Williamsport Black Community made me want to do a similar project at Gettysburg College. Other projects included a neat Art History archive that three Bucknell students created and an interesting History Harvest project at Susquehanna University. And it was nice see the Lafayette Digital Scholars again.

I made a couple interesting connections. N. C. Christopher Couchgave a presentation about the circulation and use of Indigenous language texts in New England. Being interested in Indigenous studies I decided to go to his presentation to see what he was doing. It turns out that the project is in its early stages of planning but after the presentation I went up to him and had a nice discussion about his project. I told in about my interest in Native American Studies and he was able to give me more information about what he is planning to do with his project and the Indigenous scholars he is planning on contacting.  He gave me his card and told me to update him on my career plans.

What was probably my favorite thing about this conference is the twitter feed.  I have never been so popular on twitter before this conference. It was really interesting to see people tweeting about our presentation and quoting us.  All the positive tweets about presentations and panel discussion really allowed me to see that digital humanities is a community of practice. The cohort discussed this value of DH throughout the summer but I was able to really see it at the conference.  Everyone was so supportive and enthusiastic about our projects and other presenter’s projects.  Even before my presentation on women saw how nervous I was and told me that I was “among a community of friends” and was going to do a great job. We were getting continuous complements throughout the day and were mobbed during our poster presentations.  The presentations themselves focused on diversity and inclusion. The keynote speakers all focused their speeches around how to diversify the DH community and many other presentations were about how DH includes many different voices.

Overall, I am glad that I was able to go to digital conference and present. It was a great experience and I learned a lot about digital humanities and the community of DH.