Month: July 2016

I can honestly say that before this fellowship, I was a technophobe. I disliked technology with a strong passion. I always preferred doing things the “old fashioned way” (this could have been a sign that I was a budding historian or that I was a pretentious hipster). I prided myself on the fact that I didn’t know how to use social media but I knew how to work a 1960s Polaroid camera. Our discussion on Monday about how we use and view digital tools made me think about my own hesitations towards anything digital.

The discussion on Monday was accurate in pinpointing the reasons why some students are still uncomfortable with using technology in an academic setting. From personal experience, my technophobia stems from what I was taught in elementary school and high school. I can still remember having to go to the library to do a research project. When the internet started to become more widely used, I was taught that the internet was an unreliable source. (Who has gotten the Wikipedia spiel?) This trend continued throughout my middle school career until the message “the internet is unreliable” was embedded in my mind.

When I came to Gettysburg I fell into my routine of only using books. I found myself struggling to use the online resources for research because I didn’t know how to navigate the online resources. Even though I was brought up in a very digital world, the people who are/were my teachers were not and still stick to the traditional learning methods. I don’t think there is anything wrong with sticking to the traditional methods of teaching, however, I think it is important to show that digital sources can assist us in the classroom. This summer I have learned about the benefits technology brings to academia and I can say I am no longer a technophobe. If the digital humanities community wants to continue, we must encourage students to explore the depths of technology.

Last week, we discussed “elevator speeches”, which contain introductions to a person’s project and appeals for people to be involved–all in 30 seconds or less. The goal is that the information contained in the speech is compelling and clear so that the listener is intrigued and not confused.

The sample speech that I’ll write below is meant for a student or alumni audience. As I’ve continued to do work on my project, I’ve realized that I will need to appeal to current students and alums to build on the research I’ve done this summer.  Without further ado, here is one version of my elevator speech.

“Hey guys, my name is Lauren White, and I have been researching and learning about digital tools this summer as a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow in Musselman Library. Based on what I’ve learned about digital scholarship, I have created an interactive website using Scalar and Timeline JS. By using these kinds of digital tools, we can make the humanities more public facing and inviting.

Specifically, my project places instances of social justice at Gettysburg from 1980-1990 on a digital timeline. I hope to expand the date range in the coming school year. Many of you have supported my involvement in this project, thank you so much for doing so! I’d love to collect more stories to build on my project. In order for this to happen, I hope you’ll share your experiences and tell others about the timeline. By doing this, we can document and encourage student activism at the college.

I know that this is a lot of information. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

Hello. My name is Keira Koch and I am a student at Gettysburg College. I have been researching women’s experience at Gettysburg College during the 1950s and learning about digital humanities during the summer as a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow in Musselman Library. Based on what I’ve learned about digital humanities, I have been able to create a website by using the digital tool Scalar, to tell the narrative of women during the 1950s by looking at their academic, social, and personal lives at Gettysburg College. By using digital tools, we can create digital projects that can display research in an interactive way that a paper cannot. Specifically, my project pertained to Gettysburg College women of the 1950s. Now that I’ve done this part, my next step is to expand upon my research by looking at women from other time periods at the college. You have been a supporter of undergraduate research, and I thank you for your continuous support. I would like to show other undergraduate students how to use digital tools for their research. In order to this, I hope you will consider introducing digital humanities to your students. If we are able to move forward, I expect to see an increase in the number of the students who are interested in research and an increase in the number of students who are interested in using digital tools. I know that’s a lot of information. I hope we will be able to meet again soon.

To be completely honest, I had no idea what an elevator speech was until our workshop. Now, since I know what an elevator speech is, I realize how important they are. An elevator speech is an introduction to you and who you are and what you are for, a first impression. I think it is safe to compare an elevator speech to and advertisement or commercial. You say all that you can and need to say about yourself in 30 seconds but it is up to the person or audience that you are speaking to, to decide whether they are interested or not interested. These people who you are talking to can range from being a friend to a very important donor.

Because you may be talking to different types of people, the meaning of your elevator speech might change. If I were talking to a friend, my elevator speech would be much more relaxed and informal. My elevator speech would most likely be trying to convince her/him or apply for the Digital Summer Scholarship Fellowship or to simply tell them what I did this summer. My elevator speech to a very important donor would be very professional and probably encouraging them to continue donating money to digital humanities. My elevator speech to students in a class would be still formal but possibly more personable. The message of my elevator speech would be to introduce them to digital humanities or convince them to use digital tools for their research.

The elevator speech above is aimed at professors. My goal is to tell them about my research and my work with digital tools, as well as convince them to use digital tools in their classrooms and introduce digital humanities to their students. Although this speech was written for a hypothetical situation, there is a strong possibility that I will deliver this speech to professors or people I meet at Bucknell. With some tweaking and drafting, I can say I am ready to deliver my elevator speech.

The scholars and I have been working increasingly hard over the past week. There have been many days spent on the second floor of the library working and many nights spent in Glatfelter Hall….working. From uploading images to writing metadata, we all agree that we have a lot of work still to do on our projects. It can sometimes feel overwhelming, the more I think about what I have to do in order to finish my project. But will the project that I present this summer be the final project? Most likely not. And I think almost all of the fellows believe that our projects to not end with the summer. We all have ideas of expanding our projects and furthering our research.

My meeting with the working group this past week has helped me see what I can and cannot accomplish this summer. I believe that I can accomplish what I set out to do, build a digital project that shows women’s experience during the 1950s at Gettysburg College. But there is no limit to how in-depth I go with my research. Right now, I know how deep I want to go into my research. But there are a plethora of other statistics, topics, and women I can research as well. The beauty about researching a topic of your choosing is that there are no boundaries to how far you want to go with it.

In the workshops and sessions, we talk a lot about the direction of our projects and what is the ending going to be for them. I believe that what I have and am going to accomplish this summer is not the end of my project but just the foundation and beginning.

Matthew Kirschenbaum’s “Am I a Digital Humanist? Confessions of a Neoliberal Tool” and Roopika Risam’s “Digital Humanities in Other Contexts” affirms my personal feelings towards and experiences with the digital humanities.

Far from focusing on the supposed corporate devils that were waiting to consume my soul as I practiced the digital humanities,  Kirschenbaum and Risam focused on the individuals that make up the DH community. In his piece, Kirschenbaum writes that

“the people most drawn to the early humanities computing centers at UVA were the book nerds. Far from seeing computers as an abandonment or repudiation of books, archives, and the material remains of culture and society, the new technologies were understood to be extensions of those preoccupations.” I can apply this quote to all the people I’ve worked with this summer without hesitance. Everyone at the Musselman Library, or in other DH circles, work to expand the humanities by presenting their passions in a digital space. Not one person has refuted the importance of the physical humanities. Risam also heralds “a digital humanities of the students, by the students, and for the students”, which I have undeniably experienced at Musselman this summer. The library fosters an environment where we, as undergraduate scholars, can immerse ourselves in our projects and work to be mentors to the next future digital humanists. Risam aslo notes that “institutions like [her’s] – whether regional comprehensives like Salem State, access universities, or community colleges  – are left out from trenchant critiques of digital humanities” even though they “serve the vast majority of students receiving post-secondary education, often the most diverse groups of students”. In my mind, this quote emphasizes the idea that the digital humanities are for everyone; they are built by diverse and often unrecognized people–not popular and wealthy corporations.  Perhaps this concept is best summarized by Kirschenbaum, who writes, “It’s hard to avoid naming names in these paragraphs since the individuals were so much a part of what was happening”. The digital humanities could not thrive or be the robust field it is today without the people who make it up.

In my mind, the number of individuals who contribute to DH and their personal investment in the field cause the impassioned debates surrounding the topic. As Kirschenbaum so eloquently states, “what we do, what we choose to work on and who we choose to work with emerges out of a complex skein of personal history, personally held values, circumstances, encounters, and all the other agents of chance, privilege, and socialization.” Because each person experiences the digital humanities in their own way, and develop projects out out their own passions, it makes sense that people are quick to be defensive of the way their experiences and interpretations. However, as has been repeatedly pointed out, the digital humanities primarily relies on community, and can only exist if people listen to each other and think critically about other people’s stances.

The fact that I am once again addressing an act of systemic violence in this blog makes me furious.

Before I begin to address the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile, I would like to acknowledge that my identity as a white woman distances me from these tragedies. My feelings and reactions are undeniably different than those of people of color–I do not feel that I am under threat because of the color of my skin. However, the multiple acts of violence warrant productive discussion and action, regardless of race.

In wake of the two shootings, many people, myself included,  took to social media to express their thoughts and feelings. On the one hand, it was affirming to see so many people reacting to the injustices the two men faced with anger and sadness. However, I realized that for a majority of the people who posted, their response would stop with the hashtag; that is, they would express condolences and frustration in words, but not act to change the systems that necessitated the hashtags.

College students not only have the opportunity but also the responsibility to take action and affect change. Hashtags, prayers, and condolences are not trends–they are motivators. I sincerely urge every person who reads this to find out what they can do to alter the systemic racism evidenced by these two shootings and make a more just world. It is within our power to do so.

This week’s topic of discussion was about Data Visualization. There are a lot of different ways to display a data set. For my own project, I do not have a specific data set. The only type of data I have now is in regards to academics. I have a list of women’s majors and minors from the class of 1954 that could be compiled into some sort of data visualization. I am currently trying to figure out a way to display this data in a way that is both informative and visually pleasing to users.

My first thought was a pie chart. A pie chart would be an easy way to show the different subjects women majored in. A pie chart could both display the total number of women in the class of 1954 as well as the breakdown of majors. I could also use a bar graph to show this data as well but it would only show the breakdown of majors. Since I am only showing one particular class, there is not much data. There were only 63 women in the class of 1954. However, I could compile a bigger data set if I were to do multiple class years. With a larger set of data, there would probably be more options for showing and displaying that data.

I could break down the majors themselves using line graphs to show the increase or decrease of their popularity. I could also show the difference between what women and men majored in if I decided to gather a list of subjects men preferred major in. It would be interesting to put this data into Voyant Tools to see the frequency of majors and minors throughout the years. It would also be neat to see the majors in a word cloud as a visual aspect to my project.

Besides academics, I could also compile data on student clubs and activities. This data may be a little harder to gather because the only way of gathering the data is by paging through the yearbook. It would be interesting to see what types of clubs women were involved in and the shifting of interests throughout the years. I would also use pie charts, line graphs, and bar graphs to display this data.

I am currently working on a map that shows the day in the life of a 1950s college student by using StoryMap JS. Although the map serves as an extension to my narrative, I could also use a map as a way of displaying data. I would be able to use a mapping tool (something like Carto) to display the areas where women were living on campus throughout Gettysburg College history.  I assume that over time the points on the map would grow as the college expands and women are given more freedom.

Although I am currently only working on the lists of women majors and minors, there is a possibility of adding more datasets to my project in the future. These datasets will add depth to my project and narrative to my project.

Usually when asked about the 4th of July, people think about fireworks, barbecue, and other activities to celebrate the freedom bestowed upon us from the tyranny of Great Britain. Readings of the Declaration of Independence were prominent on its 245th anniversary.

I have a Fourth of July reading that you won’t see from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It’s called What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, an address given by Frederick Douglass at a Fourth of July celebration in 1852. In 1852, the Civil War hadn’t started, nor had slavery been fully abolished.

With the resounding words “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.” Douglass highlighted the great hypocrisy of America and her people. For how could a nation claim to be free when half of it holds fellow men in bondage?

This is relevant today in the discussion of American freedom and liberty. Douglass brings up the reality that our founding fathers, the men who built this nation were mostly slave owners.

“Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies of souls and men shout-“We have Washington to our father.””

Part of being a citizen of any nation is realizing and accepting your history. To sweep slavery, genocide, and racial discrimination under the grand rug of the history of the United States of America is an injustice and mockery to the very concept of freedom. We must acknowledge that at one time, America was not free because others were enslaved. I do not say this to create guilt or out of a lack of patriotism, I say this because it is something that our nation needs to acknowledge and once we do, we can move forward unto a new birth of freedom.

-Julia

I grew up in Georgia, to a very southern family. I grew up wanting to be Scarlett O’Hara and taught that the Yankees took everything not tied down, and everything they didn’t take was burned to the ground. I grew up hearing about the “War of Northern Aggression” and how Marse Robert (E. Lee), was a god among men.

I often find myself wondering, considering my background, how I am not a Lost Causer.

And then I remember it is because I think that PoC deserve equal rights, that slavery was wrong, and a society built on racial hierarchy should not exist.

This is the most common argument defending the Confederacy and the Battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. And to anyone and everyone who says this, I say to you:

It’s my heritage too. My ancestors were Louisiana planters and slave owners from Baton Rouge and Colfax. They fought and some died for the confederacy. It is my heritage. But I recognize my heritage is full of hate. Slavery started as an economic institution, but in the Southern United States it quickly became a social and cultural institution that built a racial hierarchy that benefited from the suffering, labor, submission, and oppression of blacks. The Confederacy fought and died to keep that institution alive, even after the end of the Civil War white southerners did everything in their power to keep blacks from gaining basic freedoms and rights. White supremacy groups like the KKK fly this flag with the knowledge that it means racial hierarchy through oppression and violence of minorities, so don’t you dare tell me that the Confederacy or any other confederate symbol is justified because of your heritage.

-Julia

 

 

Tuesday morning I hopped on the trolley to the Visitor’s Center to see the love of my life.

In case you haven’t gathered that I really love Alonzo Cushing.

The Gettysburg Visitor’s Center has a little exhibit on Medal of Honor Recipients in the battle of Gettysburg. Which includes (you guessed it)

Alonzo.(Lon actually, he hated being called Alonzo)

The exhibit featured Lon’s Medal of Honor, his belt worn by him on July 3, 1863, two letters: one from Lon to his aunt and another to Lon from a friend, Confederate currency sent by Lon to his aunt as a souvenir, and a photograph of Alonzo from Fredericksburg.

I also saw the cyclorama and noticed this little gem that hurt my heart. But while at the cyclorama, I realized why I’m here, why I’m doing my project, why I went up north.

This is sacred ground. “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

The world may have forgotten or never even heard of names like Alonzo Cushing, George Woodruff, or Julius Adams, but they served, they fought, they died so that this nation could have a future. I am doing this so that people will know of their sacrifice, of their names, of what they did. For as long as there is a breath left in my body, these cadets will never be forgotten.

-Julia