“It’s Like a Class Trip…Except Some of Your Classmates Die on the Way”

At the end of Week 5, I set myself to the grand task of compiling what battles the cadets fought at and where they were together. I did this using the information I compiled from Cullum’s Register (I honestly cannot say how much I love George Cullum, he is a godsend).

So I made a board.

board

And then I made a map.

The Army Markers are for Graduation and Training/Defense of DC

army

The Green Markers are the battles of the Manassas Campaign

green

The Pink Markers are for battles in the Southern Theater that were not a part of the Atlanta Campaign.

pink

The Blue Markers are for battles in the Western Theater

blue

The Yellow Markers are for the battles of the Peninsula Campaign

yellow

The Light Blue Markers are for the battles of the Maryland Campign

blue2

The White Markers are for the battles of the Rappahanock Campaign

white

The Red Markers are for the battles of the Pennsylvania Campaign

red

The Green Tree Markers are for the battles in Virginia 1864 and onward

green2

The Red Flame Markers are for the battles of Sherman’s Atlanta and Carolinas Campaigns

fire

And the White Flag Marker is for the battles around Appomattox.

flag

There are 74 battle locations that I included in the map, not counting skirmishes or the arsenals that they were also posted at. I got the places and dates that I wanted compiled but I’m not sure if Tour Builder is for me because the presentation style is a bit of a mess, especially with this many markers.

-Julia

 

“Are you interested in the Civil War, Julia? I had no idea.”

The end of Week Four of DSSF left off at an interesting place. Leaving me to go to the annual Civil War Conference hosted by the Civil War Institute here at Gettysburg. It was amazing and I had the time of my life going to lectures about Reconstruction, probably the least talked about period in Civil War Era history.

I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and to a very deep-rooted Southern family that can trace back heritage to the 1600s. A family that not only served in the Confederate Army but that also owned slaves as planters in Louisiana. So growing up I just heard of Reconstruction in passing as the worst thing since Sherman and how those “darn Yankees” ruined the southern way of life. (Honestly it’s a miracle that I’m not a lost causer considering my background) It was honestly refreshing to get a new view of reconstruction and to debunk some myths that had been pounded into my head ever since I was old enough to watch Gone With the Wind.

So often historians of the Civil War get carried away with tactics, generals, weapons, and battles that we forget why it was fought and how it impacted us as a nation. But by placing the focus of the conference on the topic of Reconstruction the CWI made me remember that the war was not just how many men died at Gettysburg but rather what they died for: not just that “that nation might live” but to also redefine that nation and give it “a new birth of freedom”.

(The title comes from a quote by my dear friend Thomas)

-Julia

Lesbians, Feminism, and Social Change, OH MY!

The project is called Lesbians, Feminism, and Social Change, OH MY!, it is a part of The Student Timelines of Women’s Studies 101 at Wheaton College in Norton, MA (Fall 2013) collection. The topics are Art, Beauty, Civil Rights, Health & Reproduction, Film, Labor, LGBTQ, Music, Political Inclusion, and Human Trafficking. The project was created by Ray Souza, Kimberly Belgrave, and Dani Dickinson. The project was created to give a brief overview of the history of lesbians around the world and feminist involvement in American LGBTQ movements and the progress that has been made through them.
The audiences of this project are women, people who are interested in the history of the LGBTQ movement with a focus on lesbians, and people who just want brief information/synopsis/breakdown of the LGBTQ movement. It is not for particular hard-core academic use, but rather for the public to give them an insight into the history of the LGBTQ movement and progress of lesbians.
This timeline covers moments in the American LGBT movement and international progress of lesbians in politics and media. The thesis of the project is trying to prove that progress has been made through these events and movements perpetuated by lesbians and women.
The project is minimalistic and only has a couple of pictures for illustrative purposes, with that said because it is minimalistic it is very easy to navigate through options and not have to look through another page to get to the one that the user is looking for. The homepage has a very organized block of subjects and the user clicks on one to discover a timeline on that subject.
The writing is clear and succinct but it is simplistic. The project is really only a synopsis on LGBTQ and lesbian movements rather than a drawn out analysis of a scholarly paper. Most of the text of the project is less than two paragraphs, very brief and only giving a summary rather than going into details.
Is there an About page, or other information page? Is there any technical information about the creation of the project?
There is an about page on the main page of the project, but not about the LGBTQ project specifically. In this about page there is mention of the use of TimelineJS, which was used for all of the projects.
Only pictures and text are included in the timeline. Minimal metadata is available, only the source of the photograph and the title are provided.
TimelineJS was the basis of the project; actually the entire project was just one Timeline. TimelineJS was chosen to exhibit the changes and progress over time and the history of the movement.
Because this project is only a brief history of lesbians and the LGBTQ movement it just gives a cut summary of the events. It gives less information quicker and covers more ground faster than a traditional research paper could, giving the user a baseline knowledge of the history of lesbianism and feminism in the American LGBTQ movement and progress of lesbians around the world.

-Julia

Dreaming and Tinkering – Keystone DH 2016

It’s not often that I go to a keynote speaker at a conference and feel like I’ve come away from a sermon.

Normally, keynote speakers are generally useful for setting the tone of a conference; library conferences tend to have a keynote speaker that coaleses around some common theme, especially emerging issues. Diversity, understandably, is discussed a lot (which is really helpful in DH conferences that sometimes straddle the line of pedagogy/library/tech) as DH practitioners try to come to grips with the reality that it is still a white male-dominated corner of academia (perhaps more so than the other corners).

At the 2016 Keystone DH conference, keynote speaker Roopika Risam talked more about love than any sort of technical/practical understanding of DH; yet her methodology re: love is vital to understanding how we do DH in our institutions and as a broader DH community. She spoke a bit on how love builds community and care in the digital humanities; that we, as DH practitioners, put a lot of ourselves into these projects because not only do we value what we do, but because we think we can build a better world through the world we do. We can tear down walls, seek to repair damage done from colonialism, and empower the powerless to do amazing things.

We are dreamers and tinkerers in DH; one of the themes of this summer’s fellowship has been “Dream big,” which we try to take to heart. We want people to be ok with tinkering, with messing around, with failure, all on the way towards realizing dreams. Of course, not all dreams can happen immediately, but we can get them started, and nurture them throughout our fellows’ academic careers.

Of course, love has a dark side as well; as discussed, love can be exploited, especially for free/cheap labor. Often bandied about is the idea that if you really love doing something, it isn’t work … and in turn, that can become an excuse to deny or reduce compensation for something. DH practitioners at all levels should be compensated in some manner for their work in a sustainable and ethical way; often we turn to grants in DH (and higher education in general) to fund something new and exciting, but love in this context means that grants may not cut it, that we need to look to ways to make sure those doing DH are going to be taken care of in the long haul.

That love for digital humanities is why this fellowship was created, in a lot of ways, so that students could explore DH in a safe environment, with funding, and be able to tinker and dream to create new worlds. I’m glad to be a part of this endeavor, and honored to work with this core group of students.

About Jack Peirs….

This week, I decided to review the Jack Peirs Project. The link can either be found on our Project resources page or here http://jackpeirs.org/.

A professor, archivist, and a group of students at Gettysburg College created this project as a way to share this World War I letter collection with the public and to provide a learning opportunity for students. Although not specifically stated , the audience is the general public, students, scholars, and whomever has an interest in World War I. The research questions that the project appears to be asking is: Who is Jack Piers? and What was it like to be a soldier during World War I?

Overall, the website is very easy to use. There are only a couple tabs to navigate and they are all labeled for easy navigation. The home page is aesthetically pleasing, clean, and neat. However, I found that the site was slow to load. The writing was very clear and concise. Although it was scholarly writing, I was able to understand what was written. The site did not read like a traditional paper; it had a more personal tone to it.

The site contains two About pages. One page is about the project and the other is about Jack Peirs. But, there is no other technical information regarding the creation of the project. The site is powered by WordPress. There is a Timeline embedded in the site powered by Timeline JS, and twitter is embedded at the bottom of the page which updates and lets the viewer see tweets from Jack Peirs. Although I am not using Timeline JS, this was the main digital tool that was used as for the project. I think Timeline JS was chosen because it was able to represent at which point the letters were written. It is both a visual aspect of the project and a form of navigation. My only critique is that the Timeline was very slow to load. I also saw that there was a map in the making. I think the map will add another visual dimension to the project. It will be interesting to see where Jack Peirs toured in Europe and what battles he fought in.

There is a lot that you learn from this  project that you wouldn’t be able to learn from a traditional research paper. You wouldn’t be able to have an interactive timeline and map in a research paper. There also would not be any hyperlinks or tags that allowed you to learn more about what you were reading. Overall, the project was very well made and interesting. There is a story behind the project that makes it interesting and engaging to read.

The Tales of Women

This week I meet with Dr. Birkner to discuss some questions I had about my project. He gave me some very interesting advice. He said, “to make your project interesting, find the story, find the personal narrative.”  I know I had originally planned to use Barbara Holley as a featured woman, but I wonder what other ways I could incorporate other women’s stories. How can I make a cohesive narrative out of multiple women’s stories? I have been reading the Oral histories of women who attended college during the ’50s. Each has their own unique story and not all women fit the mold of the 1950s woman. I don’t know how I will display each women’s story through my project yet, but am excited to see how it turns out.

Mapping Time

This week’s discussion about time really threw me for a loop. While the group was discussing timelines and how they display time, I was having an existential crisis. Time is a very tricky thing, a man made invention. Everyone perceives time differently, so how can you use a digital tool to show the different perceptions time? The western world conceptualizes time as a straight line. I have been reading the book Outlander which is about a WWII combat nurse who travels back in time to 1746. If you make a straight timeline of her life, it wouldn’t make any sense. To complicate this issue of the straight line, imagine what the Doctor’s timeline from Doctor Who would look like. Most of the digital timelines we have looked at are linear. Is there a way to create a time mapping tool that isn’t a line and doesn’t utilize a western perception of time?

StorymapJS Review!

This week, I decided to critique “The Garden of Earthly Delights” which is an example project for Storymap JS. The project offers background and interpretation on the painting it details, “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch. It can be found at https://storymap.knightlab.com/examples/bosch-garden/.

Something unique and appealing about this particular story map is that the “map” platform it uses is an image, rather than a traditional geographical map. Because it’s a large image, it is sorted into Storymap’s gigapixel collection, which is created for large, detailed, images. By moving around, the storymap brings the image to life and draws the user’s attention to the most important and distinguishing features of the image. As such, the learning is more interactive than if a user were to read about it in a textbook. However, the site has the potential to be even more interactive by integrating more media sources than just text. The text that is included as a part of the project is simple enough for the average user to understand, while still being useful and informative.

One of the drawbacks of this project is that it does not feature an about page for the project. A link in the introduction takes the use to a Wikipedia page about the time period the piece was created in, which is helpful but not necessarily reliable. However, the project is clearly made on Storymap JS. A link at the bottom left of the site takes the user to the Storymap JS website which has information about how to make and use Storymap. The metadata on the image is provided in the introduction to the website and includes the title of the piece, the artist, the date it was created, and the place where it is housed.

Given that the website does not have an about page and is hosted on the Storymap JS site, it appears that the intended audience is people who are interested in see what a project using a gigapixel image on Storymap JS would look like. If this were to be a more fully-fleshed DH project, it would need to have more of a sense of community by including and about page and contact page, and increasing interactivity by incorporating more forms of media.