DiSC Events

Fall 2016


Digital Project Planning Workshop for Faculty

10/21, 1-3 PM, Clemens 830  **Please note new date**

Are you thinking about how to add a digital dimension to your existing research or even starting a new “born digital” project? Perhaps, you already have a clear idea of where you would like to go but aren’t sure how to get there. Or, you might just want to begin to explore what possibilities are out there?

The Committee on Digital Scholarship and Cultures (DiSC) will be hosting a digital project planning workshop open to all faculty, especially those working with humanities material or social science data. Participants at any stage of planning are welcome, from those who are interested in, but not yet committed to, research using digital methods, to those who have submitted grant applications in this area but might be looking for ways to increase their chances of getting funding. The event will be led by Jeff Good (Linguistics) and Nick Wasmoen (English), but, depending on the interests of participants, faculty with experience in digital research working in other areas may be invited to help offer advice on project design in their disciplines.

To participate in the workshop, please contact Nick Wasmoen (nlwasmoe@buffalo.edu) with a statement of interest along with a brief description of what you hope to get out of the workshop.

 Social Media Workshop: Creative and Critical Applications

11/1, 1–5pm, Clemens 128

Nikolaus Wasmoen, Postdoctoral Fellow in English and the Digital Humanities, University at Buffalo

Learn how to mine interesting data from social media and even create your own Twitter bot or social media text generator. We will explore tools and methods that will equip you to research social media and the data they contain, while also exploring the creative possibilities opened by these platforms. No previous experience required; everyone welcome. RSVP Link

Digital Exhibit and Portfolio Workshop

11/10, 2–5pm, Clemens 128

Nikolaus Wasmoen, Postdoctoral Fellow in English and the Digital Humanities, University at Buffalo

Learn how to use web publishing platforms (Omeka and WordPress) to document multimedia work and to engage communities of interest online. This workshop will focus on the creation of a dynamic site to showcase a large collaborative undertaking using the example of the Techne Institute’s election-night performance event, as well as on techniques for telling persuasive stories about your personal media work using ePortfolios and other tools. RSVP Link

Spring 2016


GIS and the Humanities: A Basic Introduction to ArcMap

4/3, Clemens 128

Emily Holt (UB Anthropology), Andrew W. Mellon Mediterranean Regional Research Fellow, Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris, France)

You may never have considered how Geographic Information Systems – or GIS – can support your research as a humanist, but manipulating spatial data has lots of applications for understanding humanistic questions.

For example:

You’re interested in the diffusion of a new coinage and have access to a lot of searchable text that might contain the word. Once you’ve identified instances of the word’s use, you can track down when and where the works containing the word were written. GIS can help you analyze the word’s chronological and geographical distribution, allowing you to examine the spatial aspects of language diffusion and reconstruct lived networks of intertextuality.

Or:

You’re interested in how medieval mapmakers understood space. You have scans of several medieval maps, but don’t know how to explore the ways space is represented and distorted. GIS can allow you to overlay medieval maps on a base map of the physical world and analyze variables like viewsheds (what people can see when standing in a particular place), least-cost-paths (the easiest route to get from one place to another in terms of energy), and travel time estimates for different routes.

This workshop will provide a basic introduction to ArcMap, one of the most widely used GIS programs, for humanists who want to explore how GIS can enhance their research.

The workshop will cover introductory skills such as making maps using ArcMap’s existing base maps, importing map images into ArcMap, georeferencing imported images, creating points on maps and assigning meaning to them, altering the visual representation of points to convey meaning, adding north arrows and scale bars, and exporting a finished map.

Materials to work with will be provided, but you are encouraged to bring your own materials if you already have some. Maps should be in JPEG or Bitmap format (pdfs cannot be imported directly into ArcMap). Tables or lists of data should be in an Excel spreadsheet. If you already know some coordinates you want to use, make sure you know what coordinate system they were taken in. If you have multiple sets of data – like a map plus some points you’ve pulled off Google Earth – make sure they’re in the same coordinate system.

 


 

Digital Scholarship Week, 2/29–3/6

“Digital humanities” and “digital scholarship” are increasingly frequent watchwords among the academic avant-garde, but do these tools radically change what scholars can do? Digital Scholarship Week will offer seven days of events to explore this question with programing for two distinct groups on the UB campus. The week will provide an introduction for faculty and students curious about how digital methods could enrich their scholarship, and it will bring together scholars already engaged in digital scholarship to introduce their work to the UB academic community and to exchange methods and ideas. Together, this week will offer UB faculty and graduate students the chance to delve into key trends in digital scholarship.

Digital Scholarship Week is presented by the Committee on Digital Scholarship and Cultures (DiSC) and the Humanities Institute with support from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development and the College of Arts and Sciences.

DiSC Scholarship Week Poster
DiSC Scholarship Week Brochure

UB Digital Scholars Lightning Round

Monday, 2/29, 2-4PM, Capen 107

In five-minute lightning talks, UB faculty from the humanities, social sciences, arts, and engineering will present their digital work to a diverse audience ranging from those familiar with digital methods to those who want a basic introduction to the possibilities opened by digital scholarship. Followed by a panel Q&A and discussion of the state of UB’s digital scholarship and how best to support its future.

Melanie Aceto (Theater & Dance)

Josephine Anstey (Media Study)

Peter Biehl (Anthropology)

Neil Coffee (Classics)

Jordan Geiger (Architecture)

Jeff Good (Linguistics)

Walt Hakala (English)

Rohini Srihari (Computer Science & Engineering)

“The Marianne Moore Digital Archive Notebooks Project, With Reflections on the Future of Digital Scholarship and Funding”

Tuesday, 3/1, 2–4 PM, Capen 107

Cristanne Miller, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Edward H. Butler Professor of Literature, UB’s Department of English

One of UB’s most prominent digital humanists will discuss her Marianne Moore Digital Archive Notebooks Project, which will make digital reproductions of American modernist poet Marianne Moore’s notebooks accessible in a manner that is fully searchable, annotated, and linked to sources and databases to give context. This talk will be of interest to literary scholars of all persuasions and those in any field who are interested in using digital tools and platforms to present or edit historical documents online. One of the hands-on workshops on the following weekend will directly complement this presentation.

Cristanne Miller heads a team of UB scholars that received a 2015 IMPACT Award for the Marianne Moore Archive (MMA): Notebooks Project from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. Her books include Reading In Time: Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century.

Digital Scholarship: An Introduction for the Curious

Wednesday 3/2, 2–4 PM, Capen 110 (Faculty Only)

Thursday, 3/3, 10 AM–12 PM, Capen 110 (Faculty & Graduate Students)

Micki McGee, Chair of the Digital Humanities Working Group, Associate Professor of Sociology, & Director of the American Studies Program, Fordham University

RSVP (huminst@buffalo.edu) by Friday, Feb. 26 to get your spot in one of two working sessions led by Micki McGee of Fordham University. These workshops will help UB faculty and graduate students learn how their own research fits within larger trends of digital scholarship, with an emphasis on digital humanities. Sessions are limited to 20 participants on a first come, first served basis. The Wednesday workshop is for faculty only; Thursday is open to both faculty and graduate students.

Sessions will be oriented to those new to the field who are contemplating adding a digital dimension to their research.

A pioneer of advanced digital technologies for humanities scholarship, Micki McGee is the author of Yaddo: Making American Culture and Self-Help, Inc.

“Building a Better Past: Digital History and the Virtual St. George’s (Bermuda)”

Friday, 3/4, 1–3 PM, Park 532

Michael J. Jarvis, Associate Professor, History Department, & Director, Digital Media Studies Program, University of Rochester

This talk presents ongoing efforts to digitally reconstruct St. George’s, Bermuda’s first capital and the oldest town in English America. The project combines historical, visual, GIS, architectural, and archaeological data to create an interactive 3D model of the town in 1775 to explore gender, race, politics, trade, and other aspects of daily life in an early modern Atlantic seaport. Jarvis offers audience members a “how to” guide for reconstructing and visualizing past landscapes in their own scholarship.

Michael Jarvis is author of In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783, which won the James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History from the American Historical Association.

Digital Scholarship “How To”: Two Hands-On Workshops

In 4-hour workshops, participants will gain direct experience working with the technologies that facilitated the research described in each talk. Each workshop will assume no previous experience, and will be of particular interest to those seriously considering using digital scholarship methods in their research.

Digital History: Geo-spatial Analysis and Visualization

Saturday, 3/5, 10 AM–12 PM, Clemens 128

Led by University of Rochester Digital Humanities Center staff in conjunction with Michael Jarvis’ talk.

Digital Literary Studies: Editing and Analyzing Texts for Research, Sunday

3/6, 10am–2pm, Clemens 128

Led by Nikolaus Wasmoen, Technical Director of the Marianne Moore Digital Archive, in conjunction with Cristanne Miller’s talk.



Fall 2015


Encoding Visual Objects, 11/14

Instructor: Nikolaus Wasmoen

View Workshop Materials


Encoding Primary Sources, 10/31

Instructor: Nikolaus Wasmoen

View Workshop Materials