Interested in exploring scholarship in sound and image? Want to explore new possibilities for conducting analysis and conveying arguments in a multimedia form about multimedia objects of study? Middlebury’s NEH-funded Advanced Institute in Videographic Criticism returns again, this time as the DLA Summer Institute, a tuition-based workshop organized by Middlebury College faculty members Jason Mittell and Chris Keathley, with guest mentor Catherine Grant, Professor of Digital Media and Screen Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. For two weeks, you can spend all of your hours in beautiful Vermont, learning how to make video essays and participating in a robust community of practice fondly known as “video camp.”
The DLA Summer Institute 2019 focused on videographic criticism is open to any participant with a terminal degree (PhD preferred) or currently in a graduate program of study. Participants are not expected to have experience producing videos as the workshop is aimed at exploring the new format and stimulating new ideas. The workshop will strive to create a community of practice among participants, as well as connecting participants to a broader community of videographic critics and scholars.
By Ryan Clement, Data Services Librarian, Middlebury College
On January 17-18, 2019, Middlebury is hosting a Software Carpentry workshop for faculty, staff, and students. This workshop is co-sponsored by the Middlebury Library, the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research (CTLR), the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative (DLA), and the Director of the Sciences.
The Carpentries are a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives. They teach skills that are immediately useful for researchers, using lessons and datasets that allow you to quickly apply what you have learned to your own work. I’m really excited about using the Software Carpentry curriculum here to help our faculty, staff, and students become more efficient in their research.
This workshop is discipline agnostic. The curriculum will include:
Shell scripting in the bash shell (using the command line)
Version control with git and GitHub
Data manipulation, analysis, and visualization with R/RStudio
The target audience is learners who have little to no prior computational experience, and the instructors will put a priority on creating a friendly environment to empower researchers and enable data-driven discovery. Even those with some experience will benefit, as the goal is to teach not only how to do analyses, but how to manage the process to make it as automated and reproducible as possible. For instance, after attending this workshop you will be able to:
Write a loop that applies one or more commands separately to each file in a set of files
Share your code and make it easy to cite
Read tabular data from a file into R and perform operations on it
Manage files and projects in RStudio
Use ggplot2 and R to create publication-quality graphics
Please join the DLA and Davis Educational Foundation Curricular Grant Steering Committee in welcoming Scott Saul, professor of English and American Studies at University of California-Berkeley, to Middlebury on Wednesday, May 2nd, and Thursday, May 3rd. Scott will be discussing his digital research, teaching, and public scholarship. The following events are open to faculty, students, and staff.
Scott Saul is a Professor of English at UC-Berkeley, where he teaches courses in American literature and history. The author of Becoming Richard Pryor and Freedom Is, Freedom Ain’t: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties, he is also the creator of Richard Pryor’s Peoria, an extensive digital companion to his biography of the comedian, and The Berkeley Revolution: A digital archive of one city’s transformation in the late-1960s & 1970s, a website and collective project that emerged from an honors undergraduate seminar in American Studies at UC-Berkeley, “The Bay Area in the Seventies,” taught by Scott in the spring of 2017. He also writes as a cultural critic in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, Bookforum, and other publications and hosts Chapter & Verse, a books-and-arts podcast sponsored by UC-Berkeley’s Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities that probes the cultural imagination—what Joan Didion once called the stories we tell ourselves to live. It delves into novels, nonfiction, poems, music, film, and other touchstones of our culture, with an eye to the spells they cast and the questions they raise.
Contact Sheet of James Baldwin photographs, May 3, 1976, Rainbow Sign archive, private collection of Odette Pollar. Featured in The Berkeley Revolution.
The Digital Fluencies Series investigates what it means to develop more critical facility and engagement with digital technologies. Meetings usually combine 1-3 readings (a link to materials will be provided when necessary) and a case study for hands-on exploration. Faculty, students, and staff are all welcome to participate regardless of digital skills. Upcoming topics include: Bots, Data, Platforms, Archives, Gender in Code, Digital Racism, Open Access, Podcasting, Remix, Publishing and Peer Review, Animation, Glitching and Deformance Tactics, Memes, Web Design, the Template, Data Visualization, GIS and Spatial Data/Thinking, and User Experience. Feel free as well to suggest a topic as well. Co-sponsored by DLA, CTLR, Davis Library, and DLINQ. Organized by Leanne Galletly, User Experience & Digital Scholarship Librarian, and Michael J. Kramer, Assistant Professor of the Practice, Digital History/Humanities and Associate Director of the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative. Middlebury go link: go/digitalfluencies.
Paul’s Cross, from 50 feet. From the Visual Model, constructed by Joshua Stephens, rendered by Jordan Gray.
Seth Denbo, Director of Scholarly Communication & Digital Initiatives at the American Historical Association, visits the DLA and CTLR on Wednesday, March 7th, 2018. Seth, an alumnus of Middlebury College, will give a lecture on “Doing History in the Era of the Web” and, in a workshop, he will discuss “Digital Scholarship & Professional Evaluation.” He will also be meeting informally with DLA Fellows and others on campus interested in digital scholarship.
Seth Denbo.
Seth Denbo is Director of Scholarly Communication and Digital Initiatives at the American Historical Association. Seth majored in history at Middlebury College, and after graduating in 1990 he spent several years working in academic publishing at Routledge in New York and then London. He earned his PhD from the University of Warwick in England, where he worked on the cultural history of eighteenth-century Britain. After teaching for several years, Seth moved into digital humanities work, as part of teams developing innovative digital projects, first in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London and then at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland. At the AHA he oversees the publication department and attempts to keep up with the changing landscape of digital scholarship in history and the impact of the digital age on scholarly communication more broadly.
Next week, there will be another event related to writing pedagogy—a panel entitled “Engaging New Learning & Public Spheres with Technology,” which will place on Monday March 5th, at4:30pm in Axinn 229. Please see below for more details.
Title: Engaging New Learning and Public Spheres with Technology
Description: Technologies in the classroom can be used to create complex, collaborative projects that challenge students cognitively and rhetorically. Faculty in this “Show & Tell” panel conversation will discuss how they develop invigorating learning spaces that include writing in digital spaces.
Panelists and topics:
MaryEllen Bertolini (WRPR, Writing Center): Digital Storytelling
Laurie Essig (GSFS): Feminist Blogging
Ellery Foutch (AMST): Teaching with Tableau Vivants
Jason Mittell (FMMC): Videographic Film Studies
Hector J Vila (WRPR, CTLR): Online Writing for Publication (and will be moderator)
Please join us on various Tuesdays this spring from 12:15-1:30pm in the CTLR Lounge for the DLA Behind the Scenes Series. Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP for each event so that we can order enough food.
Happy New Year! 2018 marks a new beginning for the DLA, as we welcome a new colleague in Michael Kramer. This week we also are sponsoring a lecture from a major thinker about the future of higher education, Cathy Davidson, on Wednesday afternoon. Read more below to learn about Michael, and see what is in store for the DLA in January!
-Jason Mittell, Faculty Director of the DLA
In this issue:
Welcome to Michael Kramer!
Cathy Davidson on The New Education
DLA-related events in Winter Term
Professor Michael J. Kramer Joins the DLA
The DLA is excited to announce that we have hired Professor Michael J. Kramer to join us at Middlebury! Michael will be the Associate Director of the DLA and Professor of the Practice in digital history. He comes to Middlebury from Northwestern University, where he was Visiting Assistant Professor of History and co-founded the Northwestern Digital Humanities Laboratory. His research focuses on the cultural history of 20th century America, with expertise on music, popular culture, and technology, as exemplified by his book The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (Oxford University Press, 2013; paperback, 2017), as well as his writings on digital history.
Michael will manage day-to-day operations of the DLA based in the CTLR, as well as work with other faculty to integrate digital pedagogy and research strategies into their work. He joins us mid-year in January, and will start teaching courses in digital history in the fall. Stop by Davis Library 215 to say hello!
Special Event: Professor Cathy Davidson on The New Education
On Wednesday, January 10 at 4:30pm in Dana Auditorium, Professor Cathy Davidson will discuss her new book, The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux. Professor Davidson, an educational innovator and a distinguished scholar of the history of technology, is an avid proponent of active ways of learning that help students to understand and navigate the radically changed global world in which we now all live, work, and learn. Davidson is Distinguished Professor of English and Founding Director of the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the R. F. DeVarney Professor Emerita of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University where she served as Duke’s (and the nation’s) first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies. Davidson is the cofounding director (2002-2017, now co-director) of HASTAC (“Haystack”), Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory. She is on the Board of Directors of Mozilla and served on the National Council of the Humanities as an appointee of President Barack Obama (2011-2017). She is the 2016 recipient of the Ernest J. Boyer Award for Significant Contributions to Higher Education, she champions new ideas and methods for learning and professional development–in school, in the workplace, and in everyday life. Professor Davidson’s visit is co-sponsored by the Office of the President, the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative, the Library, and the Center for Teaching, Learning & Research.
Professor Davidson’s lecture kicks off a Winter Term full of events relevant to the DLA. Check out the CTLR’s site featuring numerous presentations and sessions as part of the Contemporary Pedagogy Series, as well as a series of sessions focused on digital tools and techniques for teaching. We hope to see many of you at these events!
If you have any questions about the DLA, please contact us at dla@middlebury.edu.
Come hear Professor Cathy Davidson, Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Wednesday, January 10th, 4:30pm, Dana Auditorium
In The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux, Professor Cathy N. Davidson argues that the American university is stuck in the past—and shows how we can revolutionize it to prepare students for our age of constant change. Our current system of higher education dates to the period from 1865 to 1925, when the nation’s new universities created grades and departments, majors and minors, graduate and professional schools in an attempt to prepare young people for a world transformed by the telegraph and the Model T. This approach to education worked for most of the 20th century, says Davidson, but is unsuited to the rapidly changing “gig economy.” From the Ivy League to community colleges, Davidson introduces us to innovators who are remaking college for our own time, by emphasizing student-centered learning that values creativity, dexterity, innovation, and social change. In this talk she shows how we can revolutionize our universities to help students be leaders of change, not simply subject to it.
Cathy N. Davidson, educational innovator and a distinguished scholar of the history of technology, is an outspoken proponent of active ways of learning that help students to understand and navigate the radically changed global world in which we now all live, work, and learn. The 2016 recipient of the Ernest J. Boyer Award for Significant Contributions to Higher Education, she champions new ideas and methods for learning and professional development–in school, in the workplace, and in everyday life.
Davidson was appointed to the National Council on the Humanities by President Obama (2011-2017) and serves on the Board of Directors of Mozilla. A frequent speaker and consultant on institutional change at universities, non-profits, corporations, and other organizations, Davidson writes for the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, Times Higher Ed, as well as many other academic and trade publications in the U.S. and abroad. She has published some twenty books on technology, the history of the book, literature, education, and cognitive neuroscience, including Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America; Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory, with documentary photographer Bill Bamberger; The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, with David Theo Goldberg; and Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn.
Her most recent book, The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux, was published in September of 2017 by Basic Books. The title recalls Harvard President Charles Eliot’s 1869 manifesto which laid the groundwork for reshaping the Puritan college into the modern university, designed to train and credential America’s new professional-managerial class. Instead, Davidson argues, we need a “new education” to transform the university we have inherited for the one we need now. Rather than resisting new technologies, she places them in the context of past technological changes and helps us to master them in order that they do not master us. “I would not now be a good analyst of the Internet as cultural, political, and technological force,” Davidson has said, “if I had not been trained as a historian of the book as a cultural, political, and technological force.”
Sponsored by the Office of the President, the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research, the Library, and the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative
Photo by Flickr user Theen Moy, used under fair use.
Special Sessions
In spring 2015 the DLA launched a successful, new lunchtime series called “Behind the Scenes: Demystifying Projects in the Digital Liberal Arts.” During these informal lunches, Middlebury faculty and staff shared stories and tips from their experiences creating digital projects.
We are thrilled to announce that we will continue to host the Behind the Scenes series as a monthly luncheon in 2017-2018. We’re still arranging our lineup for this academic year, so watch this space or sign-up for the DLA newsletter (in the right-hand column) for updates. If you would like to be featured in a Behind the Scenes luncheon, contact dla@middlebury.edu.
Lunch will be provided, so please RSVP in the space below to ensure we have ordered enough food.
Upcoming Sessions
Behind the Scenes: “Paratexts in Arabic Literary Translation”, by Dima Ayoub, Department of Arabic
September 26, 2017
12:15 to 1:15
CTLR Lounge
My project, “Paratexts in Arabic Literary Translation” collects data from paratexts in translations of Arabic literature into English – these include glossaries, footnotes, introductions, and translators’ forewords. The data collected will be crucial in answering questions about the role of paratexts in shaping the circulation and consumption of Arabic literature in English translation published between the 1960s until the present. This period became my sample because it is during this time that translations from Arabic to English proliferated – particularly in light of the political and cultural shifts that shape the relationship between Arabic as source language on the one hand, and English as target language on the other.
I began my research by assembling a corpus of texts that I digitized and classified in a database that I designed for this purpose. In my talk, I will describe the tools and methods that I employed in gathering and managing data from over 300 sources as well as the approach I intend to use in their analysis.
[sign_up_sheet id=45]
Behind the Scenes: Border Rites and Border Rights: Indigenous Nations Astride the US-Canada Border, by Guntram Herb, Department of Geography
October 17, 2017
12:15 to 1:15
CTLR Lounge
The presentation engages with the process of creating a multi-media website that seeks to draw attention to the challenges of native nations living in the US-Canada borderlands. The site includes interactive maps, video, photography, art, poetry, stories, and pedagogical tools. I will outline my original goals for the project, trace the steps I took to try to realize them, discuss the challenges I encountered in the production of the digital platform, and consider possibilities for its future development.
[sign_up_sheet id=46]
Behind the Scenes: Digital Story-Telling about Trout and Ecology: Matt Dickerson, Department of Computer Science
Delayed until February
CTLR Lounge
I worked with a student summer research assistant on digital storytelling. The student went with me on a month-long place-based research and writing trip to Wyoming. While I worked on my personal research and writing for a book project, I worked with the student to communicate that same material through short narrative and narrated videos. I was responsible for content, we collaborated and script and storyline, but the student had considerable creative flexibility in presenting the final videos.
[sign_up_sheet id=47]
Past Sessions
“Behind the Scenes: Kirsten Hoving”
April 25, 2017
12:15-1:30
CTLR Lounge
Join us on Tuesday, April 25th from 12:15-1:30pm for our next Behind the Scenes presentation in the CTLR lounge.
Kirsten Hoving, Professor of History of Art and Architecture will discuss her DLA project of creating a digital exhibition catalogue for the Middlebury College Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibition, “Land and Lens: Photographers Envision the Environment.” The catalogue will be available on iPads for museum visitors to consult while in the exhibition and includes text, videos, and student-composed music.
Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP so that we can order enough food.
[sign_up_sheet id=44]
“Behind the Scenes: Marcia Collaer and Anthony Richardson”
March 23, 2017
12:30-1:30
CTLR Lounge
Join us on Thursday, March 23rd from 12:30-1:30 for our next Behind the Scenes presentation. Professors of Psychology Marcia Collaer (Middlebury College) and Anthony Richardson (Saint Michael’s College) will present their work exploring the development of body ownership as assessed in the virtual world. Their work extends investigations of the rubber hand illusion into digital space. The traditional rubber hand illusion explores sensory and perceptual factors that give rise to a sense of ‘body ownership’ that can develop for an inanimate object (e.g., a rubber hand/arm). Extending these questions to virtual reality via a head mounted display allows them to investigate additional factors that may influence the degree of body ownership that develops. Specifically, they are investigating how agency, in the form of voluntary motion, and ‘naturalness’, the degree to which the object looks similar to or different from a hand influences how easily a person can feel like the object belongs to their own body. Marcia and Tony will be talking about the collaborative aspects of the project, the benefits of using VR for their research, and the process of using digital tools (many developed by Mayra Alvarez, a St. Michael’s student) to build their experiment.
This talk is co-sponsered by the Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium. We look forward to continuing last month’s theme of collaboration and sparking engaging dialogue with our neighboring institutions!
“Behind the Scenes – Desperate measures: Visulalizing the effects of abortion clinic closures in Texas”
February 21, 2017
12:30-1:30
CTLR Lounge
Join us on Tuesday, February 21st from 12:15-1:30 for our next Behind the Scenes presentation. Tara Martin from Middlebury Union High school will join us to talk about her experience using the Collinwood project in her high school classroom. Middlebury Union High School Juniors investigated the events of the Collinwood Fire using digital media resources. In doing so, they found that history often leads to more questions. Join to hear how a collaboration between college professors and a high school history teacher has evolved into a learning opportunity for all.
Tara Martin has been teaching social studies at Middlebury Union High School for twelve years. She teaches a variety of courses including World History I, World History II, and America in the World, a humanities course she team teaches. She recently collaborated with Middlebury Professor Michael Newbury and Daniel Houghton on a teaching section for their digital media site, Collinwood, 1908.
January 25, 2017
12:15-1:30
CTLR Lounge
Join us on Wednesday, January 25th from 12:15-1:30 for our next Behind the scenes presentation. Caitlin will present new work visualizing the effects of Texas HB-2, a law that caused more than half of Texas’ abortion clinics to close their doors in late 2013. Working with Middlebury students Anna Cerf and Birgitta Cheng, Caitlin has tracked and visualized the closures of abortion clinics across Texas. She combines this information with data on health outcomes to estimate how decreasing access to abortion services has impacted women’s health.
“Digital History as Team Sport: Applying Design Thinking to the Study of the Past”
December 12, 2016
12:15-1:30
Axinn 229
Tom Scheinfeldt, Associate Professor of Digital Media and Design, Associate Professor of History, and Director of Digital Humanities in the Digital Media Center at University of Connecticut, will be visiting Monday, December 12th, 12:15-1:30 for a lunch time lecture.
Applying digital methods to the study of history requires re-thinking roles, responsibilities, and process. We’ll look at how lessons from the world of design thinking are being applied to digital scholarship, see examples of the sort of work made possible through this new way of working, and explore the questions and insights that can be gleaned by this approach.
Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to ensure we have ordered enough food.
“Behind the Scenes: Mike Dash”
November 29, 2016
12:15-1:30
CTLR Lounge
A successful introductory statistics course should help students develop an intuitive understanding of how statistics are used to make conclusions despite the inherent uncertainty of inferential tests. In this lunchtime talk, Mike Dash will discuss his development of web-based, interactive tutorials that enable students to explore the relationships between chance and common statistical tests. Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP below.
“Behind the Scenes: Mahri Poetry Archive”
October 12, 2016
12:15-1:30
CTLR Lounge
Sam Liebhaber has been working on converting his existing Mahri Poetry Archive from a WordPress site to Scalar, which provides a platform for non-linear content exploration. The project is under contract to be published by Stanford University Press. The October 25th,12:15-1:30 Behind the Scenes will feature Sam and his Summer Research Assistant, Jeff Holland ’19, discussing the work done to create the project.
“Behind the Scenes: Kintamani”
October 12, 2016
12:15-1:30
CTLR Lounge
Legends of Kintamani is an original cello concerto composed by Professor of Music Su Lian Tan to be performed live by cellist Darrett Adkins and the Burlington Chamber Orchestra with guest conductor Evan Bennett. During the composition process, Tan collaborated with Arts Technology Specialist Daniel Houghton and students Hosain Ghassemi and Coumba Winfield, under the auspices of our new Middlebury College Animation Studio, to create five large animated digital murals of mythical Bali that will be projected during the performance.
On Saturday, October 8th at 8pm, the piece will be performed at the Mahaney Center for the Arts in Roberts Hall. To learn more and purchase tickets, please visit the Performing Arts Series 2016-2017 Season schedule.
Join us after the performance on Wednesday, October 12th from 12:15-1:30 for a special Behind the Scenes with Daniel Houghton and his animation team to discuss the technical aspects of the project. Come see how computer generated artwork is built through a process of iteration, collaboration and perseverance. We will present the creative process and then discuss possible ways that computer graphics and animation could play a role in your research projects. Lunch will be provided.
“Bronze Swords, 3D scanning, and Networks of Knowledge”
September 27, 2016
12:15-1:30
CTLR Lounge
Our first Behind the Scenes Lunch will feature our new Postdoc, Kristy Golubiewski-Davis, as she demonstrates the 3D scanning tools and techniques she used in her doctoral research. This project is a case study using 3D scans of Late Bronze Age swords (~1200-800BC) to recreate community networks of knowledge. The aim of the work is to link the decisions of specialized craft workers to morphological data. Those data were in turn used to represent links in a social network. In this way, networks of specialized knowledge could be visually represented across space. Come learn about 3D scanning, statistics, and network analysis. The talk will include a brief demonstration of the David Scanner. Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP below.
“Using GitHub to Encourage Open Learning and Feedback”
May 3, 2016
12:15-1:30
Location TBA
Inspired by a humanist colleague’s approach to grading papers and discussions taking place in statistics pedagogy circles, I present my use of the GitHub web-based repository hosting service in my Introduction to Data Science course to encourage open and collaborative development of students’ coding skills and to facilitate the delivery of feedback from instructor to student. This short presentation will be followed by discussion of using digital tools for feedback in the classroom, so come with your questions. Lunch will be served, so please RSVP at go/DLAscenes.
Albert Y. Kim is originally from Montreal Quebec. After completing his PhD in statistics at the University of Washington in Seattle, he worked at Google as a Data Scientist for two years, followed by a two-year visiting stint at Reed College. He joined the Middlebury faculty in August 2015.
“The Collinwood Fire, 1908”
April 26, 2016
12:15-1:30
Axinn 232
DLA Faculty Fellow Michael Newbury (American Studies), Arts Technology Specialist Daniel Houghton, and their student research assistants will talk about the process of collaborating on The Collinwood Fire, 1908, an online project uniting digital animation and historical research. The project tells the story of an elementary school fire in Collinwood, Ohio that killed 172 children. In an animated film and written materials, the project offers paths into thinking about the horror of the event and the historical moment that surrounded it.
“Digital Surrealism as Research Strategy”
April 5, 2016
12:15-1:30
CTLR Lounge
Most digital humanities approaches pursue traditional forms of scholarship by extracting a single variable from cultural texts that is already legible to scholars. Instead, this talk advocates a mostly-ignored “digital-surrealism” that uses computer-based methods to transform film texts in radical ways not previously possible. Kevin Ferguson (Queens College, CUNY) scientific image analysis software to compare for corpora of different genres of film: (1) the animated features produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, (2) a representative selection of the western genre (including American and Italian “spaghetti” westerns), (3) a group of gialli (stylish horror films originating from Italy that influenced American slasher films), and (4) the series of popular Japanese Zatoichi films, following the adventures of the titular blind masseuse and swordsman living in 1830s Japan.
“The Real Work”
March 1st, 2016
12:15-1:30
Axinn 232
DLA Faculty Fellow Jamie McCallum (SOAN) will screen his short film “The Real Work,” produced during his DLA fellowship. He will then discuss the challenges of conveying sociological ideas through film and the tension between creating a documentary and constructing a scripted narrative through which those sociological ideas emerge.
“Midd Italiano”
December 15th, 2015
12:30-1:15
CTLR Lounge
Join Tom Van Order (Italian) and Mikaela Taylor ‘15.5 (co-author, Post Graduate Fellow for Special Collections and Archives) as they discuss Midd Italiano, a new online text for introductory Italian courses. Beginning this fall, the Italian dept. has moved to its own online text and lab/workbook. Tom and Mikaela will discuss the challenges of putting the program together, as well as the many advantages that Midd Italiano offers to students and faculty.
“Body and Earth: Seven Web-Based Somatic Excursions”
November 3rd, 2015
12:30-1:15
Axinn 232
Join professor Andrea Olsen, dance & digital media artist Scotty Hardwig, DLA staff members Daniel Houghton and Matt Lennon, and performer Miguel Castillo ‘17 for a short screening and discussion of the process of creating a web-based learning series for courses linking the environment with the deep intelligence of the body. Discuss the challenges and invitations of shaping an educational and artistic experiential film in international locations. See body-earth.org to preview the films.
“Fifty Years of Green: A Digital Exhibition”
October 20th, 2015
12:30-1:15
CTLR Lounge
Professor Kathy Morse (History) and Postdoc Alicia Peaker (DLA) will discuss the goals, process, successes and stumbles in having students build a series of collaborative, digital exhibits to mark 50 years of environmental studies at Middlebury. Fifty Years of Green, built using Omeka & Neatline, showcases the work of students in a Spring 2015 Environmental History course (HIST 222). During their talk, Kathy and Alicia will reflect on collaborative digital work; modifying an existing course with an experimental project; and student reactions to learning new software and skills.
“What is Videographic Criticism?”
September 22nd, 2015
12:30-1:15
CTLR Lounge
Join Film & Media Culture professors Christian Keathley and Jason Mittell as they provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of their NEH-funded summer workshop on creating video essays as a form of academic criticism. See the workshop’s website for more information and resources.
We have a packed calendar of events this J-term. We thought we’d create a round up post so you could see everything in one place! The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research is coordinating the “Contemporary Teaching in the Liberal Arts” series of talks and workshops throughout J-term. Many of our events are a part of this structure, and you will need to click through to an external website to sign up for them. Check out the CTLR Pedagogy series for many more talks and workshops than we’ve shown here!
We encourage you to join us for as many of these events as you are interested in attending!
Intro to 3D Workshop
Presenters: Kristy Golubiewski-Davis, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Digital Liberal Arts and Daniel Houghton, Academic Technology
Friday, January 13, 1:00 – 5:00, Wilson Media Lab
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work in a 3D environment? Join Daniel Houghton and Kristy Golubiewski-Davis as they lead you through working with 3D for the first time. This workshop will walk you through the process of 3D scanning an object, manipulating that object in a 3D environment, and preparing scenes to be viewed online or using a 3d virtual headset. Each participant will have the opportunity to scan an object and create a virtual exhibit of previously scanned objects. No prior experience is needed for this workshop. Limit of 6 participants per session. Please contact Kristy Golubiewski-Davis (kgolubiewskidavis@middlebury.edu) or Daniel Houghton (dhoughton@middlebury.edu) for more information.
Sign up limited to 6 participants.
Sign up for the Intro to 3D Workshop through the CTLR here.
Behind the Scenes
Desperate measures: Visulalizing the effects of abortion clinic closures in Texas
Presenter: Caitlin Myers (Economics)
Wednesday, January 25th from 12:15-1:30
Join us on Wednesday, January 25th from 12:15-1:30 for our next Behind the Scenes presentation. DLA Fellow Caitlin Myers (Economics) will present new work visualizing the effects of Texas HB-2, a law that caused more than half of Texas’ abortion clinics to close their doors in late 2013. Working with Middlebury students Anna Cerf and Birgitta Cheng, Caitlin has tracked and visualized the closures of abortion clinics across Texas using GIS tools. She combines this information with data on health outcomes to estimate how decreasing access to abortion services has impacted women’s health.
Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP through the DLA events page so we can order enough food.
New Realities at Middlebury
Presenters: Joe Antonioli, Academic Technology Group & Kristy Golubiewski-Davis, DLA Fellow
January 26, 1:30 – 3:00, Wilson Media Lab, preceded by lunch at 12:15 in the CTLR lounge
As technology advances, Middlebury strives to support it’s use in the classroom, for research, and for public outreach. Join Joe Antonioli and Kristy Golubiewski-Davis as they demonstrate some of the most recent and exciting technologies available at Middlebury. Stations will be set up in the Wilson Media Lab to showcase the HP 3D David Scanner, the Oculus Rift, and the Leap Motion. Experience these technologies for yourself, learn about the current projects Middlebury is participating in, and engage in your own discussions on how you think they could push your work forward. Please contact Joe Antonioli (jantonio@middlebury.edu) or Kristy Golubiewski-Davis (kgolubiewskidavis@middlebury.edu) with questions.
Sign up for New Realities at Middlebury through the CTLR here.
Intro to 3D Workshop (Repeat)
Presenters: Kristy Golubiewski-Davis, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Digital Liberal Arts and Daniel Houghton, Academic Technology
Friday, January 27, 1:00 – 5:00, Wilson Media Lab
Sign up limited to 6 participants.
Sign up for the Intro to 3D Workshop (Repeat) through the CTLR here.
Data Bootcamp
Presenters: Ryan Clement, Research Librarian, and Kristy Golubiewski-Davis, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Digital Liberal Arts
Tuesday, January 31st, 1:00 – 4:00, Wilson Media Lab
Wednesday, February 1st, 1:00 – 4:00, Wilson Media Lab
Are you new to working with data for digital scholarship? Data Services Librarian Ryan Clement and DLA Post-Doc Kristy Golubiewski-Davis will be offering a pair of workshops that will introduce participants to the basics of working with and visualizing data as well as some helpful resources for further learning. Day one will cover “Working with Data,” including topics such as finding and interpreting data and codebooks. Day two will include cleaning and visualizing data, including creating original visualizations! Both sessions are 3 hours long and will include discussions of background concepts as well as hands-on work. Because these courses will be tailored to the participants’ interests and disciplines, please sign up by January 17th at the latest. Contact Ryan Clement (rclement@middlebury.edu) or Kristy Golubiewski-Davis (kgolubiewskidavis@middlebury.edu) with questions.
Note that when you sign up, you are signing up for both the Tuesday and Wednesday sessions.
Sign up for the Data Bootcamp through the CTLR here.
Bring Your Own Data Workshop
Presenters: Ryan Clement, Research Librarian and Kristy Golubiewski-Davis, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Digital Liberal Arts
Friday, February 3rd, 1:00 – 4:00, Wilson Media Lab
Join Ryan Clement and Kristy Golubiewski-Davis in a drop-in session to collaboratively work on your data in a community setting. We encourage you to bring your own data sets for cleaning, visualization, or connecting your conceptual thoughts about your project to the data. Come for help and stay for the collaboration! If you want to work with data but don’t have a specific dataset in mind, we will have a few examples for you to play with while you’re there. Please contact Ryan Clement (rclement@middlebury.edu) or Kristy Golubiewski-Davis (kgolubiewskidavis@middlebury.edu) with questions.
We encourage you to sign up below ahead of time to have an idea of how many people will attend, but please feel free to drop by during the workshop even if you haven’t signed up.
[NOTE] Please ensure that your data are cleared for viewing by other workshop participants. Any issues with confidentiality can be cleared or addressed by “greeking” the data so that confidential information is obscured.
Sign up for the Bring Your Own Data Workshop through the CTLR here.
Other Events of Note:
Moving Away from Lecturing – Practicing the Flip
Presenter: Joe Antonioli, Academic Technology Group
Tuesday, January 10, 1:30 – 3:00, Wilson Media Lab, preceded by lunch at 12:15 in the CTLR lounge
Explain an assignment in your own voice. Show students the steps you took to solve a problem. Allow students to become familiar with important software that you would like them to use in classroom activities. Introduce your students to you and the course before they enter the classroom. Panopto, a new video streaming service for Middlebury, has a screen-recording tool that allows you to record the activity on your computer and save it online to be shared with your students. The tool will also use your computer’s camera and mic to record your explanation of the material. This workshop will introduce you to the screen-recording tool and explore ways to use it. Please contact Joe Antonioli (jantonio@middlebury.edu) with questions.
Sign up for Moving away from Lecturing through the CTLR here.
Zotero
Presenters: Ryan Clement and Wendy Shook, Research Librarians
Tuesday, Jan 24th, 1:30 – 3:00, Wilson Media Lab
Let Middlebury librarians Ryan Clement and Wendy Shook help you on the next stage of your journey as a power researcher. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to save, organize, and cite sources using Zotero.
Zotero is a free, easy, and powerful citation management tool that can help scholars and researchers collect, organize, and annotate resources as well as creating citations and bibliographies using thousands of styles. Available to both Mac and PC users, with plugins available for most modern web browsers as well as Microsoft Word and Libre Office.
The DLA invites all faculty and staff interested in exploring themes and issues related to the digital liberal arts to join the DLA reading group. Led by Kristy Golubiewski-Davis and Jason Mittell, the reading group is an open forum for learning about the plurality of approaches and critically assessing their applications in digital scholarship and projects. This year there will be two reading groups.
The DLA will purchase copies for participants of the newly published anthology A New Companion to Digital Humanities, 2nd Edition edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, from which readings will be selected each month.
In order to establish a community and ongoing conversation, we ask that you commit to regularly attending the reading group for the academic year. If you are unable to attend regularly, the Behind the Scenes luncheons are an excellent “drop-in” alternative and opportunity to learn about and discuss digital work on campus.
Apply
The application period for this years reading group has passed. If you would like to join at a latter date, please contact Kristy Golubiewski-Davis.
Logistics
Each DLA Reading Group will meet once a month, on Fridays from 1:30 – 3:00 P.M. The location and specific dates of the reading groups are to be determined. On Fridays with scheduled all faculty meetings we will end at 2:30 P.M. If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the physical access provided, please email the DLA.
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