News from the Association for Computers and the Humanities

Leadership Positions Available

ACH Exec — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

ACH invites applications for the following officer positions:

Communications Officer
Deputy Treasurer
Deputy Secretary

Each of these roles serve as critical members of the ACH leadership team, contributing to our work and ensuring our smooth operations. Details about each of these positions are provided below.

Each of these positions may be filled by one person, or two people serving as co-officers.

Eligibility

You are very likely eligible! Our key needs are willingness to contribute effort, and enthusiasm for involvement with DH and the ACH—whether or not you’ve been involved in the past, or are keen to get started. We benefit from the perspective of folks new to DH or academia, just as much as folks who can bring past DH experience to the role. We hope for a set of applicants diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession (including students, folks in non-academic jobs), citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds. Membership to ACH before or upon appointment is required.

Application Process

To apply, please email the following to secretary@ach.org by August 7, 2026:

Your name, email address, and current affiliation and position (if relevant)
A brief statement of interest, including any relevant experience (150 words or less)

We will be considering applications starting August 7 and will be back in touch then regarding your application and to answer any questions you might have. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until a good match of candidate and ACH needs is found. Applications, as well as any questions you have, can be sent to our our Co-Presidents, Liz Grumbach and Pam Lach (president@ach.org) and our Co-Secretaries, Jajwalya Karajgikar and Emily McGinn (secretary@ach.org).

About our Leadership Positions

In addition to the specific duties listed below, all of our officers attend monthly officer meetings and executive council meetings, as well as initiating or contributing to ongoing Exec projects matching your interests, skills, and availability.

Communications Officer

Our Communications Officer oversees all aspects of our communications, including keeping website content up-to-date (familiarity with GitHub a plus but not required), developing quarterly member newsletters, managing our social media accounts, and assisting in promoting major events (such as our annual conference). We seek individuals who enjoy this kind of outward-facing work, and would welcome a team of individuals who would like to work together. This is a four-year term that would, ideally, include time to collaborate with a future Deputy Communications Officer.

Deputy Treasurer

Our Treasurer manages ACH financial operations, including tracking our budget, issuing payments and honoraria, and managing official filings with the IRS in accordance with ACH’s 501(c)(3) status. This is a four-year term: for the 2026-2027 academic year, the Deputy Treasurer will shadow our current Treasurer (Kathy Torabi) to learn all aspects of the work. In summer 2027, the Deputy Treasurer will become our Treasurer for the remaining years of their term, and partner with a future Deputy Treasurer. See the ACH Constitution & Bylaws for a full list of Treasurer duties: https://ach.org/about/constitution/. Note: while ACH is incorporated in Texas, our Treasurer may reside in any state.

Deputy Secretary

Our Deputy Secretary works with our Co-Secretaries to organize the work of ACH: scheduling meetings, note-taking, sharing info, answering member emails, maintaining documentation and knowledge base. In short, our Secretariat is responsible for the day-to-day administration of ACH. This is a four-year term: for the first two years, you'll serve as Deputy Secretary in partnership with the current Co-Secretaries (Jajwalya Karajgikar and Emily McGinn); the second two years, you'd become the full Secretary and partner with a new Deputy Secretary.

Results of the ACH 2026 Elections

Pam Lach and Liz Grumbach — Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Congratulations to our newly elected officers and council representatives!

ACH Co-Vice Presidents/Co-Presidents Elect
Mandy Regan and Brandon Walsh (2026-2030)

ACH Executive Council
Hannah Alpert-Abrams (2026-2030)
Samantha Blickhan (2026-2030)
Rachel Starry (2026-2030)
Laura Braunstein (2026-2028)

We’re grateful to all of our fantastic candidates who were willing to offer their time, labor, and passion to our organization. Our volunteers ensure that ACH remains strong in the coming years.

Interested in getting involved? Email secretary@ach.org to learn more.

Call for proposals: DHQ institutional host and Editor in Chief

ACH Exec — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) seeks a new Editor in Chief as well as an institutional host for Digital Humanities Quarterly (DHQ). The new Editor in Chief will serve for a five-year renewable term. Collaborative multi-editor and multi-institution arrangements are welcome.

Responsibilities include:

Recruiting, coordinating, and leading the editorial and production teams
Setting strategic direction and serving as liaison to sponsors and the host institution
Managing staff, finances, and grants
Representing the journal publicly and communicating with authors, special issue editors, and the broader academic community

Initial expressions of interest are due by August 30 and should include:

The candidate(s)' qualifications, editorial philosophy, and vision for DHQ (up to 3 pages)
A description of available institutional support (i.e., managing editor funding, production hosting) (up to 3 pages)
Tentative confirmation of support from relevant institutional leadership

Selection criteria include strategic vision and alignment with ACH and DHQ’s missions, degree of institutional support, and publishing and project management experience.

Timeline

The search committee will meet with shortlisted candidates in summer 2026 to discuss proposals in depth. We aim to select a candidate by December 2026, begin transition planning in 2027, and complete the transition by summer 2028.

About DHQ

DHQ was founded in 2005 by ADHO and ACH to be the associations’ outward-facing journal, serving an ambassadorial role to a wide audience in the humanities and other DH-adjacent domains. It has been published since 2007 on a “diamond” open-access model, with no charges to either readers or authors. Funding for the journal’s production work is provided by ACH and the institutional host(s), with additional subvention from ADHO. ACH is grateful to Julia Flanders for over two decades of innovative leadership and dedicated service to the journal. For more about the mission and values of ACH and DHQ, visit ACH.org and dhq.digitalhumanities.org/.

DHQ’s core philosophy and values include a commitment to:

diamond open access publishing
an R&D-based approach to journal publishing, centered on open-source development and open data
inclusive, values-driven, and collaborative methods
supporting multilingualism

ACH and DHQ welcome inquiries. Please reach out to Julia Flanders (j.flanders@northeastern.edu), DHQ Editor in Chief, and Eduard Arriaga (earriaga@clarku.edu), ACH and DHQ Liaison.

ACH 2026 Elections

Pam Lach — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

All current members of ACH are eligible to vote. Those wanting to vote in the election must join or renew their membership (if expired) by March 20, 2026. Voting is anticipated to open April 1 via a Qualtrics survey that will be emailed directly to all members.

To check your membership status:

Visit https://members.ach.org/
On the Membership dropdown menu, select “Login”
Once logged in, hover over the same “Membership” menu and select “Member Dashboard”
Scroll to the bottom to confirm your membership expiration date
If you need to renew, you can do so by clicking on the “renew your membership” link at the top of the page. If you experience problems renewing, you may need to log out.

A note about the ballot: Names are listed in alphabetical order by position.

Nominees for ACH Co-Vice Presidents/Co-Presidents Elect

1. Eduard Arriaga

Bio: Eduard Arriaga is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Language, Literature and Culture at Clark University. He has published six books and numerous articles on literature, literary theory and digital humanities, Afro-Latinx and Black digital humanities in outlets such as DHQ, Debates in the Digital Humanities, Hispania, etc. His most recent co-edited volume, Afro-Latinx Digital Connections (Florida Press, 2021) is a collection of essays and interviews that explore ways in which Black Latinx communities engage our digital world. He is currently working on a book project under contract with Vanderbilt University Press, tentatively titled Afro-Brazilian Community Data Networks.

Candidate Statement: I am excited to stand for election for the role of Vice-President of the ACH, so I can continue to help making the association and the digital humanities spaces where care and community building go hand in hand with the development of scholarly and professional goals. I have been honored to serve as an ACH council representative for the last four years in diverse capacities: member of the conference committee (2023, 2024, 2025), member of the professional development committee (2023 and 2024) liaison for the DH2025 (ADHO) Conference Program committee, and publications liaison (2026). All these experiences have allowed me not only to get to know better the association but also to explore the diversity of perspectives that are part of our growing digital humanities communities. As ACH Vice-President, I welcome the opportunity to continue placing social justice and human values at the center of ACH and the digital humanities as a complex field of research, practice, and scholarship. In this capacity, I also expect to bring my intercultural, multilingual, and international experience to continue making the ACH much more inclusive and expanded in its pursuing to fostering our shared humanity in an age of computational and algorithmic determinism.

2. Mandy Regan and Brandon Walsh

Bio: Amanda (Mandy) Regan is an Assistant Professor of History and Interim Associate Director of the Digital History Ph.D. program at Clemson University—the nation's first. She has served as ACH Communications Officer since 2024 and as ACH Liaison to the American Historical Association. As a historian of the late 19th and 20th centuries, she specializes in women, gender, and sexuality as well as digital humanities methods and pedagogy. She is co-director of Mapping the Gay Guides, an award-winning digital history project that explores the historical geography of LGBTQ life in North America. Her scholarship appears in Digital Futures of Graduate Study in the Humanities, the Journal of Sport History, and the Journal of Digital History. Her book, Shaping Up: Physical Fitness Initiatives for Women, 1880-1965, is forthcoming with the University of Virginia Press.

Brandon Walsh is Head of Student Programs in the Scholars’ Lab, a part of the Digital Humanities Center in the University of Virginia Library. His primary research focuses on digital humanities pedagogy, looking at the ways it can reflect and enact infrastructural change in higher education. He was a regular instructor at HILT, and he serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. He has work published or forthcoming with Programming Historian, Insights, the Digital Library Pedagogy Cookbook, Pedagogy, Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, among others. His current book project is entitled Embedded Pedagogies: Digital Humanities Teaching and the Infrastructure of Change (under review). He currently serves as the ACH liaison to the Modern Languages Association and previously as a member of ACH's Executive Council.

Candidate Statement: We believe professional organizations should be communities of care, and our current moment demands this work be active and intentional. ACH has modeled this approach through recent advocacy—mobilizing around NEH funding threats, organizing town halls, and creating resources for affected members. We're committed to sustaining and expanding this care-based approach to professional community by focusing on mutual aid and collective action that centers the needs of early-career scholars, students, and staff.

We envision focusing our own efforts on three areas:

Professional Development - We resolve to work in partnership with other digital humanities training organizations as we build ACH into a space that empowers teachers and students working with emerging technologies. We will assess this year's pre-conference ACH workshop pilot and build it into a sustained space for professional and pedagogical development.
Digital Humanities in Public - We need digital humanists in public now more than ever. During our term, we plan to build on previous rapid response efforts and training opportunities to prepare digital humanists to leverage their research and teaching in the public sphere. We also promise to shape a community that acts in solidarity with those who attempt to do so.
Impact of Artificial Intelligence - We cannot ignore that artificial intelligence is reshaping higher education and digital humanities in ways that don't necessarily align with our values. AI is likely to affect all corners of digital humanities work from our research methods to our pedagogical practices and institutional relationships. We will remain committed to ensuring that ACH leads critical conversations about how humanistic values, ethics, and justice should guide our engagement with these technologies.

This statement is our own, but we envision this work as collective. We hope to use our term to elevate and enable the contributions and energies of our community. It takes all of us.

Nominees for ACH Executive Council

1. Grace Afsari-Mamagani

Bio: Grace Afsari-Mamagani (she/they) is a product lead at WorkIt Labs, a nonprofit tech studio developing tools to support labor unions, organizers, and movements in building worker power. On the side, she is a doctoral candidate in English at New York University, where her research has focused on applications of literary study and women of color feminist theory to data ethics and pedagogy. She has taught courses in generative AI and stylometrics, surveillance studies, critical data studies, and humanities computing, and continues to run data and design workshops for DH practitioners. Grace received her MA in English from NYU, with a focus on contemporary U.S. immigrant literature, DH, and GIS. Throughout her decade-long career in public interest tech, she has applied the frameworks she has cultivated in digital humanities spaces — including participatory design and data justice — to projects impacting underserved communities across the U.S.

Candidate Statement: When I first attended ACH in 2019, I was struck by the diversity, interdisciplinarity, and collaboration at the community’s core. As a member of the Executive Council, I hope to renew my commitment both to the ACH and to digital humanities as a broader community of practice. I have spent much of my career delivering programs and services to hundreds of community-based organizations, cultural institutions, and constituents across the U.S. and Latin America. Along the way, I have had the privilege of consulting on DH and ethical technology projects funded by the NEH, NSF, Henry Luce Foundation, and Irvine Foundation, among others. I believe this combined background positions me to support ACH’s advocacy and bridge-building work, particularly in a political moment where humanities funding (and many of our very identities) are under attack. I’m particularly eager to champion ACH’s commitment to mentorship and professional development for members across disciplines and skill levels. My relationship to DH is, admittedly, fairly unconventional, as I don’t inhabit an institutional position typical of an ACH Council member. However, my experience has allowed me to be a resource for dozens of students as they have considered the diverse potential applications of their DH educations — I’d be grateful to continue to build infrastructure and resources that expand the horizon of possibilities for students and early-career DH scholars. Now, in my daily life leading a team of software engineers and designers, I attribute my professional ethics of care primarily to my training in the humanities, and I hope to bring that perspective to the ACH Executive Council if elected.

2. Hannah Alpert-Abrams

Bio: Hannah Alpert-Abrams (she/they) is a writer, scholar, labor advocate, grants administrator, and member of Sidra Collaborative. Hannah entered digital humanities dramatically in 2013 when she published a regrettably aggressive takedown of a scholarly article written by two grad students who would go on to become leaders in the field. Since then, she has tried to develop a more supportive, generous, and community-oriented approach to DH while working in special collections libraries managing culturally sensitive digital collections and in the NEH Offices of Digital Humanities and Data and Evaluation. Hannah's favorite DH project to work on was the Academic Psychic Friends Network, a satirical tarot deck and virtual community space developed during the height of the coronavirus lockdown. Other favorite projects include the Academic Job Market Support Network, the Visionary Futures Collective, Where the Money Resides, Finding Your Purpose, and Taking Action in Higher Ed.

Candidate Statement: I am honored to accept the nomination for Executive Council at ACH. As a representative, I would be interested in thinking about how we can build infrastructure for ACH as an organization that advocates for the interests of its members and provides material support to foster digital humanities scholarship. During a time of austerity and public attacks on the humanities, coupled with rampant technosolutionism unfettered by humanities perspectives, digital humanists deserve a space that will protect us, care for us, fight with us, and allow us to thrive.

3. Sara Arribas Colmenar

Bio: Dr. Sara Arribas Colmenar is Data Artist and a Lecturer in Spanish at Christopher Newport University. She holds a Ph.D. in Spanish and Visual Studies from Penn State University. At Penn State, she served as a Graduate Research Assistant in Digital Liberal Arts in the Digital Pedagogies and Initiatives Office, where she developed expertise in digital methodologies and collaborative project design. Her interdisciplinary digital scholarship explores the intersections of literature, performance, and visual culture in early twentieth-century Spain, with a particular focus on gender studies, archival research, and Social Network Analysis. By integrating digital humanities tools with cultural and performance studies, she maps interdisciplinary artistic communities and collaborative spaces such as the literary gatherings at Café Pombo, the Residencia de Señoritas, and the Ballets Espagnols dance company. Her research highlights how these creative networks fostered artistic innovation and redefined women’s roles within Spain’s cultural sphere. Through this work, she analyzes how intellectual and artistic collaboration shaped the country’s cultural landscape, underscoring the transformative power of cross-disciplinary exchange in literature, dance, and performance. At Christopher Newport University, Dr. Arribas Colmenar actively supports institutional Digital Humanities initiatives. She is a convener of the 5x5 Lab, a faculty-driven collaborative space where colleagues develop and refine digital humanities projects, and she serves on the Digital Humanities Minor Committee, contributing to the ongoing development and revision of the DH curriculum within the College. Through this work, she fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and builds sustainable, community-centered digital practices grounded in collaboration, mutual respect, and shared learning.

Candidate Statement: I would be honored to serve on the Executive Council and to contribute to ACH’s continued efforts to cultivate an equitable, supportive, and forward-looking Digital Humanities community. My work in Digital Humanities has been shaped not only by projects and methodologies, but by community. I am a member of the #DHMakes community, where digital humanities are approached through practices of care, mutual support, and collective making. In that space, I have experienced firsthand how transformative it can be to build networks grounded in generosity, listening, and collaboration. Without that community, my own digital project and professional growth would not have been possible. I believe the future of Digital Humanities depends on our ability to cultivate spaces where we serve and support one another, especially across institutions, ranks, and career stages. As convener of the 5x5 Lab at CNU, I have seen how vital it is to create environments where faculty can experiment, ask questions, share unfinished ideas, and build projects collaboratively. This work, along with my service on the Digital Humanities Minor Committee, has deepened my understanding of the opportunities and challenges faced by teaching-focused institutions and emerging DH programs. I am particularly attentive to issues of access, curricular development, and long-term institutional sustainability. If elected as Executive Council Representative, I would work to strengthen ACH’s role as a platform for connection, mentorship, and advocacy across diverse institutional contexts. I am especially committed to initiatives that support emerging scholars, faculty at smaller institutions, and practitioners navigating hybrid roles in teaching and digital scholarship. I am also interested in advancing conversations around sustainability, and practices that foreground equity and care. Serving on the Executive Council would be an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to a field that has profoundly shaped my professional path.

4. Samantha Blickhan

Bio: Dr. Samantha Blickhan (she/her) is co-Director and Humanities Lead for the Zooniverse.org crowdsourcing platform. In her role, she guides the strategic vision for Zooniverse Humanities efforts, manages development of new digital tools and resources, consults with researchers on building and running projects, and produces original research about crowdsourcing, digital humanities, sustainable development, ethics in public participatory research, and user experience design. An active fiber artist, she is a member of the #DHMakes community and uses her experiences as a maker to inspire new thoughts around ideas like optimization, value, labor and the concept of ‘wasted’ time. Her work has been supported by funding from the IMLS, NEH, NSF, ACLS, Kavli Foundation, and Schmidt Sciences. Blickhan is co-I of the Collective Wisdom project, which produced The Collective Wisdom Handbook, an authoritative book on the ‘state of the art’ in cultural heritage crowdsourcing, in 2021. She is currently leading development of the first-ever AI ethics framework for the Zooniverse platform and is also a co-PI of the recently funded “Communities in the Loop: AI for Cultures & Contexts in Multimodal Archives” project, a multi-institutional collaboration that aims to open the pages of the early African American press through combining community and AI-powered efforts. Dr. Blickhan holds a dual BA/BM in English literature and Voice Performance from the University of Iowa, a MSt in Musicology from Oxford University, and a PhD in Musicology from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Candidate Statement: I see ACH as a lodestar professional organization in its commitment to social justice, creativity, and high standards of research -- as well as in recognizing that these categories are not in opposition to one another. I appreciate how ACH has created space for those of us working in nontraditional humanities spaces, and if elected to serve I will work to continue these traditions, particularly around providing resources and professional development opportunities for GLAM workers, technologist-humanists, early career and independent scholars. I bring a range of collaborative, interdisciplinary experience as well as organizational, administrative, and strategic development skills that would make me a useful and effective colleague to the rest of the Council. I have profoundly benefited from participating in ACH conferences and professional development opportunities, and I see participation in the Executive Council as an opportunity to give back to a community that has taught me so much, and brought me into fellowship with many wonderful people. Now more than ever, we need strong professional organizations that rise to the moment, rather than retreating into isolation. ACH has been a leader in rapid response efforts, and continues to be a support system during times of great instability. I am proud to be a member, and would be proud to serve the community as a part of the Executive Council.

5. Laura Braunstein

Bio: Laura Braunstein is the Head of Digital Scholarly Engagement at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she leads three teams: Digital by Dartmouth Libraries, the Jones Media Center, and the Evans Map Room. She has been a library professional for over 25 years, working at the intersection of the humanities and digital technology. She is the co-editor of Digital Humanities in the Library (ACRL, 2015; 2nd edition, 2024), and has been published in Debates in the Digital Humanities (2024), #DLFTeach Toolkit (2019), Archive Journal (2018), DH+Lib (2017). She is also a widely published crossword constructor who advocates for diversity and inclusion in puzzles.

Candidate Statement: The material conditions that support and enable digital humanities work are at an inflection point. Academic funding for positions, programs, and centers is dwindling, despite student and scholarly engagement with digital culture at all levels. As well, while user interest in digitized cultural heritage is increasing, the traditional model of grants from public and private funders is in jeopardy. If DH has always been “in crisis,” we are now facing a political crisis of a different scale. I believe that ACH, in collaboration with other scholarly organizations, can advocate to maintain and improve our members’ working conditions during these times of constant crisis. As a humanities-oriented library leader with over 25 years of experience in scholarly organizations, I will serve on the Executive Council with the mission of helping ACH’s members negotiate changing times while remaining true to our values.

6. Lívia Clarete

Bio: Lívia Clarete is a researcher in computational linguistics and applied natural language processing. She holds a Master’s degree in Data Analysis and Visualization from the CUNY Graduate Center and has formal training in social science research methods. Her research combines traditional machine learning, large language models, and computational linguistic methods to analyze large-scale textual data. She works with multilingual corpora in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, focusing on how language is produced by online communities and how collective patterns emerge from unstructured text. Across academic and industry settings, Lívia has applied these methods to study different aspects of society. Her work includes analyzing the voice of patients to understand experiences and needs in healthcare and pharmaceutical contexts, examining public discourse around environmental and climate issues, and studying patterns in public opinion related to topics such as corruption and governance.

Candidate Statement: I’m interested in joining the ACH Executive Council as a way to be more actively involved in the community and to contribute to its ongoing work. ACH offers a space where interdisciplinary exchange is taken seriously, and being part of the Council would allow me to support that work in a more direct and sustained way. I see this role as an opportunity to both contribute and learn. I would like to help strengthen community engagement, support inclusive participation, and contribute to discussions about how computational methods are shared, evaluated, and sustained within the humanities. At the same time, serving on the Council would allow me to learn from others involved in shaping ACH’s direction and priorities.

7. Dr. Kay Coghill

Bio: Dr. KáLyn “Kay” Coghill is a dynamic and award-winning educator, activist, and practitioner who is an outspoken advocate specializing in online gender-based violence, particularly digital misogynoir. They are currently the Community Safety and Support Steward for Blacksky Algorithms, providing content moderation, research, and trust and safety services. Blacksky Algorithms builds open-source, community-driven infrastructure for decentralized social media. With their extensive background in working with Black women and non-binary people to create innovative harm reduction tactics online to combat issues like misogynoir, they seek to work diligently as a trust and safety steward for Blacksky to help mitigate the harms of anti-black harassment and misogynoir. Dr. Coghill addresses pressing issues not only through their research but also through digital content creation on topics such as misogynoir, race, technology, and the nuances of gender-based violence in the digital realm, particularly on social media platforms. They have a passion for protecting Black womxn and girls and dedicate their work to doing just that. Their mission is to continue to build communities online that are safe for Black people across the globe while also finding ways to protect them from harm in the process.

Candidate Statement: As a student member turned independent scholar member, the ACH was the first conference I ever presented at when I was a doctoral student back in 2021. The community has always been full of people who were resourceful and affirming. As someone who is not a traditional academic but finds community in this space, I want to be able to provide the same resources and affirmations I received during my journey and beyond. These moments have led me to keynoting and holding a week-long digital humanities workshop at the University of Guelph on digital misogynoir, advising students at schools like Carnegie Mellon on their grant projects focusing on toxic environments and restorative justice in the online gaming space, and most recently contributing insights for the Black Information Futures Symposium. I have been involved in many different groups that have allowed me to hone my leadership skills. I am on the board for my local abortion fund. I am the Associate Director for the Blackgirlhood Studies fellowship and also on the board for Justice for Black Girls and The Plunk Foundation. I have also been an adjunct instructor for a decade, creating unique courses that have engaged my students on topics focusing on race and the internet. Community organizing and being a scholar activist are a part of my foundation. I have taken my work and applied it to my role as the Community Safety and Support Steward for Blacksky Algorithms, combining research, policy creation, and harm reduction on decentralized social media networks such as Bluesky. Being on the executive council will allow me to put my interdisciplinary background to work, affirm others in the field, and build out our network of traditional and non-traditional scholars!

8. Jessica Dauterive

Bio: Jessica Dauterive is a digital public historian who specializes in the cultural politics of the US South. Her current project explores how the development of Cajun culture industries in the twentieth century shaped the identity of Southwest Louisiana by engaging with the opportunities mass culture presented for power, preservation, and profit. As the Program Manager at the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies at the University of New Orleans, Dauterive leads digital humanities initiatives for the Center and teaches digital humanities and public history courses for the history department’s MA program. For the past decade, Dauterive has also worked as a digital humanities consultant for various local and national organizations including the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, the National Park Foundation, the New Orleans Jazz Museum, Xavier University of Louisiana, and most recently the ACE Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. She has published about her digital work in varied spaces, including the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Southern Cultures, and the Park Stewardship Forum. She is the managing editor of the place-based storytelling project New Orleans Historical and a project associate for the grassroots community archive Frenchmen Notes.

Candidate Statement: I am honored and excited to accept this nomination to join the ACH Executive Council. Digital humanities has shaped my path as a graduate student and now early career scholar. Throughout that time, I have been committed to building out DH projects that center the needs of the communities they serve. While having only attended the ACH conference once in person and once virtually, I was very inspired by the conversations it facilitated about how to create and support ethical and justice-oriented models for the field. In my position at the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies, I am able to work with students, faculty, and community members to build digital capacity in the region. As an incubator of public humanities research in New Orleans, we frequently partner with local organizations working for economic, racial, and environmental justice by identifying the digital tools that can best support and amplify their work. As a digital humanities consultant,I have also been able to work with a wide range of partners across the country, most recently with the ACE Mellon Humanities Program that has hosted 31 postdoctoral fellows across the US and Guam. While fellows worked with their own partners in communities, historic sites, and public lands, I assisted with and learned from their varied models of collaborative digital work. All of this work has led me to develop a community-rooted approach to digital humanities that foregrounds the local in bigger national and global conversations. If elected, I would draw on these experiences of working at multiple scales and with various partners to expand and support ACH’s role in leading and advocating for new conversations that bring in the voices of scholars, students, and communities alike.

9. Mehulkumar Desai

Bio: I am a research scholar at Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad. My research work is situated at the intersection of Electronic literature, Interactive Digital Narratives, Digital Humanities, and the creative industries. My research examines how born-digital literary forms, narrative interactivity, and computational creativity reshape contemporary cultural production, with particular attention to emergent practices in the Global South. Through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates literary studies, media theory, and digital humanities methodologies, I seek to advance both critical scholarship and creative praxis in digital narrative environments. To foster creativity, collaboration, and scholarly engagement in interactive digital narratives, I recently co-founded, along with Dr. Shanmugapriya, the Indian Consortium for Interactive Digital Narratives, an initiative dedicated to building research networks, supporting creative experimentation, and promoting pedagogical innovation in this evolving field. In parallel, I serve as a core committee member of Electronic Literature India, where I actively contribute to community building and the curation of electronic literature projects and creative works. My scholarly contributions include peer-reviewed publications in reputed academic journals, addressing themes such as electronic literature, digital storytelling, and humanities-led approaches to emerging technologies. I have also curated creative and practice-based works of electronic literature, bridging critical inquiry with artistic production. My professional affiliations include membership in the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) and Digital Humanities Alliance for Research and Teaching Innovations (DHARTI), reflecting my commitment to international and national digital humanities communities. In addition to research and creative practice, I am engaged in academic service and editorial work. I currently serve as Editor-at-Large for DHNow and have acted as Guest Editor for a Special issue titled, “Digital Futures: Archives, AI, and Access in Indian Digital Humanities” in the journal IJHAC, contributing to the dissemination of scholarship in Digital Humanities and specifically in Interactive Digital Narratives. Collectively, my work aims to strengthen interdisciplinary dialogue, expand access to digital literary practices, and contribute to the development of interactive digital narratives as a vibrant area of research and creative inquiry.

Candidate Statement: I seek to serve ACH with a strong commitment to advancing inclusive, interdisciplinary, and globally engaged digital humanities. My scholarly and creative work at the intersections of interactive digital narratives, electronic literature, digital humanities, and creative industries positions me to contribute a fresh perspective grounded in the Global South, one that foregrounds emerging practices, alternative knowledge systems, and context-sensitive modes of digital cultural production. Through my experience in research, creative curation, community building, and editorial service, I have worked to bridge theory and practice while fostering collaborative networks across academia and creative industries. If elected, I aim to support ACH’s core activities by strengthening international partnerships, amplifying underrepresented voices, and encouraging dialogue between scholars, artists, technologists, and practitioners. In particular, I hope to help expand ACH’s engagement with interactive and born-digital forms, creative industries frameworks, and computational creativity, recognizing these areas as vital to the future of humanities scholarship. I am especially interested in contributing to ACH initiatives related to conferences, publications, mentorship, and professional development, with a focus on building pathways for early-career researchers and creators from historically marginalized regions. By bringing perspectives shaped by Global South contexts and practice-based research, I seek to help ACH further its mission as a truly global intellectual community, one that values diversity of methods, cultures, and creative expression while advancing innovative approaches to digital humanities.

10. Laura Fretwell

Bio: Laura Fretwell is Assistant Professor of Digital and Public History at Florida Atlantic University. Her work explores the intersections of digital humanities, public history, and spatial theory with the histories of race, gender, memory in the American South. She earned her PhD in History from George Mason University, where she held fellowships with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg, and the Center for Humanities Research. She has also served as a digital and historical consultant for institutions including the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution. She teaches digital and public history and leads community workshops in oral history, digital methods, and content management systems.

Candidate Statement: Over the past seven years, the digital humanities community has shaped my development not only as a scholar and digital humanist, but also as a collaborator, thinker, and advocate for community engagement. Through my work at ADHO’s Digital Humanities conferences and my Digital History fellowship at the University of Luxembourg’s Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, I’ve gained a deepened understanding of cross‑regional and cross‑institutional collaboration, and I am eager to bring that experience and enthusiasm to ACH as an Executive Council Representative. I am currently directing the development of a digital history lab at a Hispanic‑Serving Institution, where I lead collaborative projects, guide grant applications, and teach courses and workshops designed to build capacity for digital inquiry and inclusive digital storytelling. My goal is to create a space where scholarly and public collaborators can engage digital tools to ask critical humanities questions. For the past five years, I have also served as a digital consultant for public and community organizations, including African American communities marginalized by historical inequities. This work reinforces my commitment to democratizing history, elevating marginalized voices, and producing innovative historical scholarship through digital means. Across my teaching, consulting, and lab‑building efforts, I prioritize training others to be critical consumers and creators of information, integrating ethics of care into data and AI practices, and fostering responsible, community‑oriented digital scholarship. If elected to the ACH Executive Council, I will advocate for expanded access to open‑source tools and training, support anti‑racist and justice‑focused DH projects, and help ACH engage more deeply with urgent questions about the ethics, accessibility, and sustainability of emerging technologies, including AI and other data infrastructures.

11. Estelle Guéville

Bio: I am a historian and digital humanist specializing in medieval manuscript cultures, women religious, and computational approaches to textual artefacts. I am currently pursuing my PhD at Yale University, am Associate Researcher at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and Visiting Researcher at the LaMOP (Université Paris 1). My doctoral research reconstructs the first large-scale dataset of female scribal production in Christian Europe before 1600, integrating codicology, paleography, and computational analysis to illuminate the scribal agency, literacy, devotional and liturgical contributions of premodern women. I am also the co-director of the Paris Bible Project and am co-author of the forthcoming book "Medieval Manuscripts and the Computational Humanities: Big Data, Scribes, and the “Paris Bible.”" More broadly, my work advances data-driven approaches to medieval book cultures and the creation of open, interoperable resources for the study of premodern textuality.

Candidate Statement: If elected to the ACH Executive Council, I would be committed to strengthening ACH as an inclusive, supportive, and intellectually vibrant community for digital humanists across career stages and institutional contexts. In particular, I am invested in ensuring that graduate students, early-career scholars, and practitioners from the GLAM sector feel fully represented, supported, and empowered within the organization. I would actively contribute to existing ACH initiatives, including the annual conference and member-facing activities, while also helping to develop new forms of support focused on mentoring, networking, and skills-sharing. These might include structured mentorship opportunities, spaces for peer-to-peer exchange, and programming that addresses both technical and professional development needs within digital humanities. I am particularly committed to supporting equitable access to digital humanities training, resources, and professional opportunities, especially for students, contingent scholars, and practitioners working outside well-resourced institutions. Drawing on my experience working across museums, libraries, and research institutions in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, I am also interested in fostering stronger connections between Digital Humanities and Public Humanities across continents, as well as in supporting digital initiatives in premodern fields. I see ACH as a key space for building collaborations that cross institutional, national, and professional boundaries, and for supporting forms of DH work that are collaborative, public-facing, and sustainable. I would be honored to support ACH’s ongoing work in service of its members.

12. Jing Han

Bio: Jing Han is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of California, Riverside. She leads initiatives in digital scholarship and scholarly communication, including the Digital Scholarship Certificate, the Open Research and Creative Activities Forum, The Reference Desk podcast, and expanded Open Access Week programming. She serves as UCR’s eScholarship (institutional repository) Liaison with the California Digital Library. Jing currently serves as Divisional Chair of the Research & Professional Development Committee for the Librarians Association of the University of California (LAUC), Treasurer of California Academic & Research Libraries (CARL), and a member of the CARL Conference Planning Committee. She is also a member of the UC Scholarly Communication and Digital Humanities Common Knowledge Groups and the Code4Lib Community Support Squad (CSS). She holds a PhD in Media and Communication with a research focus on computational text analysis from Temple University.

Candidate Statement: I am excited to stand for election as an Executive Council Representative and to contribute more actively to the ACH community. My work centers on building collaborative, sustainable ecosystems that connect research, infrastructure, and community engagement. Through leadership roles in LAUC and CARL, conference planning, and community service initiatives, I have worked to strengthen professional networks, support emerging practitioners, and expand access to scholarly resources. If elected, I would prioritize community visibility, inclusive participation for early-career scholars, and support for open, sustainable scholarly infrastructure. I am committed to contributing thoughtfully and collaboratively to ACH’s continued growth and impact. Thank you for your consideration!

13. Amanda Hartman

Bio: Mandy Hartman is a software engineer and information professional whose work bridges software development and cultural heritage. Drawing on over a decade of experience in institutional and private collections, she builds accessible, searchable digital platforms for museums, archives, and universities. She has led development of multiple grant-funded digital archive initiatives, including projects at the Asheville Art Museum (CLIR) and Penland School of Craft (NEH), and built the Black Mountain College Yearbook, a digital archive later sold to the Black Mountain College Museum & Art Center.

Candidate Statement: I worked for nearly a decade in museums and archives before moving into software development. That time included digitizing collections, managing grants, and building metadata standards. Working across collections and code has shaped how I approach digital projects and consider end users. A project that I am particularly proud of is the Black Mountain College Yearbook, a digital archive I developed and later sold to the Black Mountain College Museum & Art Center. I'm drawn to ACH because it supports practitioners across roles and disciplines, not just faculty, but librarians, staff, and independent scholars. If elected, I’d bring a builder’s perspective to the council. I hope to contribute to ACH’s work supporting the broad community of people doing this work, wherever they sit.

14. Hilary Havens

Bio: Hilary Havens is Associate Professor of English and the founder and Chair of the Digital Humanities Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Tennessee, which offers both an undergraduate minor and a graduate certificate program in Digital Humanities. She is one of the editors of the Maria Edgeworth Letters Project (MELP | https://mariaedgeworth.org/), an open-access archive containing the correspondence of the Anglo-Irish Regency author Maria Edgeworth. MELP features over 250 of Edgeworth’s letters transcribed by volunteers using the Zooniverse platform and encoded in TEI. It is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with the ultimate goal of publishing the remaining 3,000+ letters using minimal metadata standards. Hilary is also the author of Revising the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Authorship from Manuscript to Print (Cambridge UP, 2019), and the editor of Didactic Novels and British Women’s Writing, 1790-1820 (Routledge, 2017). Her co-edited edition of Samuel Richardson and Edward Young’s correspondence and her edition of Frances Burney’s Cecilia are forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Candidate Statement: Ever since I arrived at the University of Tennessee in 2014, I have been working towards building a robust Digital Humanities program and community in Knoxville. I have helped UT grow from a small community of scholars to a thriving graduate and undergraduate program. We have several visiting speakers and send at least 5 people to DHSI every year. We also have internal fellowships that provide expert assistance with digital projects. I am working on building an internship program and coordinating with initiatives in digital games, but I have so much to learn from members of the executive council and the ACH community. I believe that DH is an essential way of engaging both with cultural criticism and new technologies – allowing the humanities to retain a seat at the table, even (or especially) with the rise of AI, while providing a space for marginalized voices that is not usually available in traditional (print) forums. I would be able to participate in this important work through the ACH executive council. Thank you for your consideration.

15. Jessie McCarty

Bio: Jessie McCarty is a multi-published, multi-certified information science professional, specializing in the l intersections of metadata, publishing, and digital asset management for the humanities. Jessie holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and maintains certifications in systems migration and rare book cataloging (DCRMB). They are an incoming MLIS student in Information Management, with a specialization in bilingual metadata practices for large-scale asset libraries. With over three years of experience working across content systems and cataloging standards, Jessie brings a poet’s precision to organizing information across industries. Since 2022, they have supported theatrical productions, digital archives, education technologies, and auction platforms by applying qualitative research methodologies and structured inventory systems to their assets.

Candidate Statement: Hello, I am Jessie McCarty, and I am honored to be considered for the Executive Council Representative role at ACH. I look forward to serving as an advocate for the LIS and MLIS communities by fostering critical conversations around cataloging practices, metadata ethics, and bilingual taxonomy development across our database platforms. My work intersects the digital humanities and information systems, and I am committed to advancing equitable, interoperable, and sustainable metadata frameworks. If elected, I will prioritize collaborative dialogue, technical transparency, and inclusive open-source standard development to ensure our archival systems reflect the communities they serve. Digital humanities is not only an academic interest for me, but it is a guiding framework for how I approach organization and knowledge sharing. I would be honored to contribute that perspective during this term as an Executive Council Representative. I would be thrilled to commit to the 4-5 tasks that are responsible in this role and to representing the ACH at conferences. I have spoken for folk-metadata practices at the 2024 Queer Bibliography Conference for the California Rare Book School, the IIIF Open Meeting 2026, and the 2026 Digital Conference at the Digital Repository of Ireland in June 2026.

16. Danielle R. Mehlman-Brightwell, PhD

Bio: Dr. Danielle R. Mehlman-Brightwell is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Communication and Director of the Office of Community Outreach at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. She teaches courses in argument, interpersonal communication, rhetoric and public policy, policy practicum, theories of persuasion, and public speaking, and serves as public policy major advisor. She earned her Ph.D. in Communications Media and Instructional Technology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on political communication, digital media, public opinion, and technology policy. She has published in the Journal of Communication Technology and the International Journal of Communication, examining how digital media environments shape civic engagement, polarization, news credibility, and concerns about foreign interference in elections. Dr. Mehlman-Brightwell serves as a faculty affiliate in quantitative analysis for the Center for Applied Research at Pitt-Greensburg and is a member of the Pitt Disinformation Lab at the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. Her work bridges communication, technology, and public policy, with a strong commitment to mentorship, interdisciplinary collaboration, and community-engaged scholarship.

Candidate Statement: I am honored to stand for election to the ACH Executive Council. As a scholar whose work sits at the intersection of communication, technology, and public life, I am deeply aligned with ACH’s mission to support digital humanities research and cultivate a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach. I am particularly drawn to ACH’s recognition that digital humanities work is inherently sociopolitical. My research on digital media, polarization, and information ecosystems reflects a commitment to understanding—and improving—the technological structures that shape democratic discourse. I believe ACH plays a vital role in advocating for thoughtful, socially engaged uses of computing in the study of humanistic questions. If elected, I would work to expand mentorship opportunities, strengthen pathways for emerging and institutionally diverse scholars, and promote open-access and open-source initiatives that broaden participation in digital humanities work. I am especially interested in supporting programming and outreach that connect research, pedagogy, and public engagement, ensuring that digital humanities scholarship remains accessible and impactful. I value collaborative governance, transparency, and inclusive leadership. I would be grateful for the opportunity to help shape ACH’s priorities in ways that support its members and advance community-centered digital humanities practice.

17. Arjun Sabharwal

Bio: Arjun Sabharwal joined the University of Toledo Libraries faculty as Digital Initiatives Librarian in January 2009. His areas of responsibilities include digitizing manuscript collections and archival records and developing virtual exhibitions at the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, managing the University of Toledo Digital Repository, and curating the Toledo's Attic Virtual Museum [Archived Site] Since 2017, he has also been the system administrator and lead technical contact for the Open Journal Systems, which houses several Open Access journals at the University of Toledo. He is the selector for the following disciplines: Geography and Planning, Music, Political Science and Public Administration, and Hungarian Literature/Language. He also oversees the collections for the Margaret M. Papp Perry Memorial Hungarian Culture Endowment Collection. His research interests include Digital Humanities, interdisciplinary approaches to digital curation, digital preservation, archival science, information architecture, data visualization, artificial intelligence, and multimodal literacy. He is the author of Digital Curation in the Digital Humanities: Preserving and Promoting Archival and Special Collections (Oxford, UK: Chandos Publishing, 2015) and has authored and co-authored several research articles and chapters.

Candidate Statement: As a professor and digital initiatives librarian at the University of Toledo Libraries, I am interested in serving the DH community. I approached digital curation practice from a DH angle as well as archiving and librarianship. My LibGuide serves to support DH scholarship. I have presented on DH-related topics at several conferences, and published a book titled Digital Curation in the Digital Humanities and numerous articles and chapters. I lead digital projects, manage our digital repository, and curate a local history virtual museum and public DH project called Toledo’s Attic. It also serves students and teachers participating in National History Day competitions. As co-chair of the Northwest Ohio Cultural Heritage Group, I continue to bring interest in DH to participants representing the region’s heritage institutions. I have reviewed several submissions for ACH and ADHO presentations and completed book reviews for ALA on various DH topics. With GenAI on the scene, I am seeking opportunities to extend my interest in DH towards AI. I recently presented at a Library Journal conference on AI affecting archives and DH and am currently preparing a manuscript on AI impacting historical research and digital curation. As our university’s AI Fellow and co-chair of the AI Task Force, and previously the chair of the AI Subcommittee for Research, I follow AI trends impacting higher education and have collaborated on drafting recommendations on the responsible use of AI towards institutional implementation. I recently assembled an Arts and Humanities Subcommittee to represent creative disciplines in the conversation on AI. As the University Libraries’ Inclusion Officer and Chair of the DEI committee, I focused on enriching our services and collections. If elected to serve on ACH’s Executive Council for the upcoming 4-year term, I will bring my dedication to DH and diversity to support the mission of the ACH.

18. Rachel Starry

Bio: Rachel Starry (she/her) is the Head of Digital Scholarship & Publishing at the University of Pittsburgh libraries where she leads a team of library staff in supporting digital humanities and data-intensive research, teaching, and publishing. She holds a PhD in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College; it was at Bryn Mawr that she identified a career interest in providing library-based support for under-resourced DH practitioners through her participation in an inaugural cohort of Digital Scholarship Graduate Assistants in the BMC library. Her work in digital humanities began in 2011 when she collaborated on a text mining project analyzing rhyme patterns in Latin and Greek poetry, and since then she has engaged in a wide range of digital projects as both a practitioner and educator. She is a dh+lib Review Editor, serves as peer reviewer for several DH publications, and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship. Her research and professional contributions have focused on humanities data management, sustaining interdisciplinary communities of practice, and accessibility in data visualization and digital projects.

Candidate Statement: I have found ACH to be an incredibly vibrant and welcoming professional community since I attended the ACH conference in 2019, and I particularly love that this community includes and supports DH practitioners in a variety of roles, from students to researchers to library workers like myself. Since 2019 I have sought opportunities to contribute to this organization and its mission, including ACH initiatives in support of anti-racist practices in our field like the publication of "Towards Anti-Racist Technical Terminology" and the associated Inclusive Technology bibliography in 2020. I have greatly appreciated the opportunity to contribute to sustaining ACH through my past service on the ACH Nominations Committee and the Affiliates & Liaisons Committee (as Liaison to the Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship, ILiADS), and I would be grateful for the opportunity to continue contributing to the mission of ACH as a member of the Executive Council. If elected, I would bring my expertise in conducting and supporting digital humanities projects, my passion for supporting students and early-career scholars, and a commitment to centering issues of justice and accessibility in the work of this organization.

19. Serenity Sutherland

Bio: Serenity Sutherland is associate professor of Communication Studies and Gender & Women's Studies at SUNY Oswego where she teaches undergraduate and graduate students. She received her PhD in History from the University of Rochester. Her research expertise includes the history of gender in science and technology, the digital humanities, and media studies. Published digital humanities works that combine these interests include a digital edition of the papers of chemist Ellen Swallow Richards, the first woman to attend MIT and to teach there, and a co-authored network visualization project “Visualizing Women in Science at the American Philosophical Society." Dr. Sutherland is also finalizing her biography of Ellen Swallow Richards for publication at the University of Massachusetts Press.

Candidate Statement: I am interested in serving on the ACH executive committee to help sustain both scholarship and scholars in the digital humanities. It is neither a stretch nor alarmist to say that in a time of increased political attacks on social institutions and higher education, loss of funding for important digital projects, and the erosion of civic values, one small measure of resistance we have is by joining with each other. For this reason, I am committed to serving on ACH executive council to help strengthen the ties between scholars working in diverse disciplines and methodologies. My goals on the executive council beyond representing the membership and the organization will be to support programming and initiatives focused on helping ACH and its members produce meaningful, scholarly digital and computational work. I have experience leading organizations with a three-year presidential cycle at the Association for Documentary Editing, serving on the board of the journal Scholarly Editing, and serving as PI on digital projects. I'm committed to equitable labor and look forward to the opportunity to collaborate with other ACH leadership and members. I strongly identify with the ACH's mission statement that holds a capacious view of DH scholarship, and this is represented in the type of published works and projects I've contributed to: including pedagogical materials, network visualizations, digital publishing cooperatives, online curation and scholarly digital publication. I've worked both inside and outside of academia, I am a first-generation student/academic, and I believe in the power of working with other board members and ACH members to sustain our community. As always, our work in DH remains sociopolitical and my goal is to serve the ACH community with a fresh point of view that combines good humor with a frank assessment of troubling realities and a sustaining hope for the future. Thank you for your consideration.

20. Steven Teasdale

Bio: Steven Teasdale is currently a part-time research associate with the Istituto Storico Germanico di Roma where he is involved in the development of an online database on Genoese merchant networks and the slave trade between the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. His research combines detailed archival analysis with digital methodologies to investigate the socioeconomic world of slaveholders and the enslaved in the Mediterranean world from 1300 to 1550. He has authored papers on Genoese merchant activity in the Atlantic and North African regions during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and has created an online portal (built upon Omeka-S and modeled with CIDOC-CRM) that has encoded thousands of historical documents related to premodern Mediterranean slavery. This database maps the socioeconomic networks of thousands of slaveholders and enslaved persons attested in Genoese notarial contracts enacted during the late medieval and early modern periods. He is particularly interested in the possibilities of using digital humanities to reveal aspects of the social world of enslaved persons in the Mediterranean, a population that has been largely marginalized in traditional scholarship. Steven has previously worked with the University of Genoa and received his PhD from the Department of History from the University of Toronto.

Candidate Statement: None provided

21. Carmen Thong

Bio: Carmen Thong (she/her) is a researcher in cultural analytics, postcolonial studies, and sociology of literature in the English Department at Stanford University. She is a Core Research Member at the Stanford Literary Lab, an affiliate of the Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis, and ran the Stanford Humanities Center workshop, “Colonialism, Post-, and Anti- in the Digital Age” (CPADA), which is now a colloquy on Stanford Arcade. She is also co-editor and co-author of UNESCO’s The African Book Industry. Her computational literary work is published with venues such as Modern Language Quarterly, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and Medical Humanities. Her current projects focus on infrastructural constraints for postcolonial digital humanities.

Candidate Statement: I am honored to be nominated to stand for election as an Executive Council Representative. As a researcher working at the intersection of postcolonial studies and digital humanities, I hope to contribute to ACH’s long-standing commitment to widen participation in digital humanities by supporting collaborations across geographic and field boundaries. As the organizer of digital humanities initiatives such as the interdisciplinary and grant-funded research workshop entitled “Colonialism, Post, and Anti, in the Digital Age,” along with a few stray years in strategy and business management in telecommunications, I bring field-building and project management experience, and a commitment to supporting global and postcolonial approaches across the many communities that make up DH.

22. Archana Venkatesh

Bio: Archana (Arch) Venkatesh (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of History at Clemson University. She is a historian of gender and modern South Asia, with a focus on medical history. Her work on the history of women doctors in India is under contract with McGill University Press. In addition to her work in South Asian Studies, she has published in oral history, and has been doing oral history for over a decade – both as a practitioner and as an instructor. She is looking forward to working to expand DH applications in diverse fields, particularly South Asian history and history of migration.

Candidate Statement: I am honored to be nominated to the ACH Executive Council. I am excited to explore the new directions in digital humanities, which I see as an important tool in democratizing scholarly inquiry. In my work, I am committed to uncovering and sharing the grassroots or subaltern narratives in history, and digital tools have been crucial to this process. I have worked over the past decade with oral history data, and I am eager to continue to expand the reach of the historical narrative to include underrepresented communities – both in the US and globally. I am looking forward to serving as the co-Tech chair for the forthcoming ACH conference. If elected to the Council, I would help further the mission of the ACH, and bring my own experiences working with oral history data in diverse communities to bear on the new direction the digital humanities is taking. I am especially invested in the need to be mindful towards the humanity of our endeavors in DH, especially in an era where technological and other forces seem intent on ignoring it. It is more important than ever to sustain a duty of care in our work. I look forward to working with scholars and practitioners from a variety of fields to harness the potential of DH and computational tools to build community rather than sow discord.

ACH Nominations 2026

Pam Lach — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

ACH seeks nominations for the following positions:

Co-Vice Presidents/Co-Presidents Elect (2026-2030)
Three new Executive Council Members to serve a 4-year term (2026-2030)
One new Executive Council Member to serve a partial term (summer 2026-2028)

Nominations are due Friday, February 13, 2026 at 5pm Pacific Standard Time (PST) via our brief nomination form. We encourage you to not only consider nominating yourself, but to nominate colleagues with an interest in DH with time and energy to contribute to supporting our field.

About Executive Council Representatives

What does an ACH Executive Council Representative do?

ACH undertakes a range of activities, including holding an annual virtual conference, organizing professional development events, distributing bursaries and other awards to the community, and engaging in advocacy work on behalf of the digital humanities community in the United States. This work is supported by infrastructure run and maintained by the ACH Exec, and is informed by a series of liaison relationships with other organizations. Executive Council Representatives shape and execute these threads of work on behalf of the organization (in accordance with the constitution and bylaws). Representatives are required to follow ACH codes of conduct, such as our conference code of conduct.

What is the time commitment for an ACH Executive Council Representative?

The council meets once a month for an hour (with no meetings in January, July, and August). Typically the meetings are split between discussion of organizational business requiring council input and breakout sessions to make progress on our work.

The work of ACH is organized into tasks. These could be as small as “organize a professional development event” or as large as “chair the conference program committee.” Over the course of a year, we ask each council member to commit to 4-5 small tasks or one large (conference-related) task to ensure that the organization’s work is fairly distributed among council members. Council members also participate in the yearly ACH conference by serving as peer reviewers and session moderators.

Who is eligible to be an ACH Executive Council Representative?

About the ACH Presidency

What are Co-Vice Presidents/Co-Presidents Elect?

Our bylaws permit either a single person to serve as Vice President/President Elect, or two people to share the role.

In recent years, ACH moved towards a collaborative leadership model for our Vice President and President roles. Our collaborative leadership model engenders more disciplinary perspectives in decision making, and supports a more equitable and sustainable distribution of labor.

Individuals interested in running, whether alone or as a pair, are urged to speak to the current Co-Vice Presidents and/or current Co-Presidents before the nomination period ends to gain a thorough understanding of the expectations and workload.

What do ACH Co-Vice Presidents/Co-Presidents Elect do?

The Co-Vice Presidents/Co-Presidents Elect serve as officers for two years, before serving as President for another two years. In the first two years they work with the current Co-Presidents to facilitate the business of ACH, including determining and distributing the work of the organization, setting financial priorities, and helping to advance the overall work of the Executive Council. When two individuals co-occupy this role, they distribute the work while sharing a single vote.

What is the time commitment for an ACH Co-Vice Presidents/Co-Presidents Elect?

In addition to the time requirement of an Executive Council Representative (see above), the Co-Vice Presidents/Co-Presidents Elect attend monthly officers’ meetings. Regular meetings with the current Presidents is also anticipated.

Who is eligible to be an ACH Co-Vice President/Co-President Elect?

Anyone who is a current ACH member (or who is willing to join ACH if elected), familiar with ACH's work (such as through presenting or attending at our conference or Exec+ meetings) and supportive of its mission, and is willing to perform the work of the organization and advocate for our membership and other digital humanists is eligible. Prior participation in an ACH leadership role, such as member of the Executive Council, conference committee member, or officer, is highly desirable to be able to hit the ground running.

Who are we looking for?

We especially hope for a slate of candidates that is diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession, citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds.

Demonstrated commitment to digital humanities is more important to our work than professional affiliation, academic/professional status, or job title. We welcome participants from a wide range of communities including universities and colleges, galleries, libraries, museums, community groups, and other organizations engaged with the digital humanities, as well as independent scholars. We seek individuals with and without academic or professional degrees, including current students.

How does nomination work?

You are encouraged to self-nominate, as well as nominate others, using the very brief nomination form. Nominations are due by February 13, 2026.

The nomination form includes the option to add brief candidate materials—a short bio and candidate statement (no more than 300 words each). The Nominations committee will follow up with nominees who choose not to include these materials when filling out the form.

Sample candidate bios and statements from previous years are available on our website (see the 2024 candidate slate and the 2025 candidate slate). For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of Executive Council members, please see our Constitution and Bylaws.

For questions about nominations please contact ACH Co-Vice President Pam Lach (plach AT sdsu DOT edu).

We’ll be holding an informal info session on Friday, January 23 to answer questions about the process from 9am-10am Pacific / 10am-11am Mountain / 11am-12pm Central / 12pm-1pm Eastern. Register for the Zoom link. If you’re unable to attend this session, email Pam Lach to schedule a conversation.

About ACH

ACH is the US-based professional organization for digital humanities. ACH supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH advocates for and supports all of our members in their digital humanities work. Digital humanities is a broad term encompassing a wide range of subject domains, methods, and communities of practice, including (but not limited to) computer-assisted research, pedagogy, and software; resource creation, curation, and engagement; physical computing; the use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship; and humanistic research into and about digital objects and culture. ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for positive social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects.

ACH@MLA26

Brandon Walsh — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Please join us for the (virtual) ACH-sponsored session at MLA 2026.

Logistics

Session 486. Digital Humanities and Contemporary Book Studies Saturday, 10 January 1:45 PM-3:00 PM (EST)

Description

Applying digital methods to the study of contemporary literary production and reception globally, speakers discuss the affordances of using digital humanities to approach a range of topics: the role of literary publishing agents, community formation through bestseller lists, the intersections between social media and the publishing industry, how collective identities are formed through literary distribution, and mechanisms of discovery for postcolonial literature.

Speakers

Angelina Eimannsberger (U of Pennsylvania)
Laura McGrath (Temple U, Philadelphia)
Jacinta Saffold (Emory U)
Carmen Thong (Stanford U)
Melanie Walsh (U of Washington, Seattle)
Presiding: Brandon Walsh (U of Virginia)

More information

Angelina Eimannsberger (U of Pennsylvania)

Angelina Eimannsberger is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, with a certificate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, at the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation is titled Trivial Pursuits: Women Readers, Materialist Feminism, and the New Life of Bookishness in the Twenty-First Century and explores possibilities and limitations of feminist reading communities in and around book clubs, social media, and the romance genre with a mixed-methods approach that includes literary criticism, digital humanities and ethnography, and gender studies. Her most recent publication is the co-authored essay "Genre Juggernaut: Measuring ‘Romance’" in PublicBooks and she has the peer-reviewed article “The Romance Shop Around the Corner: How Women Readers Created a New Kind of Independent Bookstore” forthcoming with New Americanist.

Laura McGrath (Temple U, Philadelphia)

Laura is an Assistant Professor of English at Temple University and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Prior to joining the faculty at Temple, she was the Associate Director of the Literary Lab at Stanford University. Her academic writing has been published in New Literary History, American Literary History, Post45, CA: The Journal of Cultural Analytics, and the Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020. She is Special Features editor of CA: The Journal of Cultural Analytics, founding co-editor of the Post45 Data Collective, and the “Culture Industries” section editor at Public Books. A former Kennedy Fellow with the Smithsonian Institute of American History, her work has been supported by the NEH, the Mellon Foundation, ACLS, and the Big Ten.

Laura’s first book, Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction will be published by Princeton University Press in April, 2026.

Jacinta R. Saffold (Emory U)

Since 2014, Jacinta R. Saffold has been building the Essence Book Project, a computational database and cultural heritage endeavor based on Essence Magazine’s bestsellers’ list, which was published monthly from 1994-2010 and includes nearly 1,000 discreet texts, most of which were written by and about Black people. In recent years the project has expanded to include public humanities interviews with authors from the list--including Alice Walker, Terry McMillan, and Bernice L. McFadden--and a project reading room at Tulane University's Howard-Tilton Library

Carmen Thong (Stanford U)

Carmen Thong is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University. She works in postcolonial studies, digital humanities, and sociology of literature. Her work is published with MLQ, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Medical Humanities and World Literature in Motion (Columbia UP: 2020). Her current project uses network models to examine how postcolonial novels are “discovered” within the global literary supply chain.

Melanie Walsh (U of Washington, Seattle)

Melanie Walsh is an Assistant Professor in the Information School and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Washington. She is currently working on a book called When Postwar American Fiction Went Viral: Protest, Profit, and Popular Readers in the 21st Century, which traces how late 20th-century American authors like James Baldwin and David Foster Wallace became cultural touchstones, icons, and memes over the last twenty-five years. She is also the author of an open-source textbook, Introduction to Cultural Analytics & Python, which introduces programming to humanities and social science audiences.

Welcoming Our New Co-Deputy Secretaries: Jajwalya Karajgikar and Emily McGinn

ACH Executive Council — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is thrilled to announce that Jajwalya Karajgikar and Emily McGinn have joined the ACH Officers as co-Deputy Secretaries. Their appointment brings fresh energy, extensive experience, and deep commitment to the digital humanities community.

Jajwalya Karajgikar

Jaj Karajgikar is an Applied Data Science Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, where she works at the intersection of data science, digital humanities, and AI literacy. Her portfolio includes supporting researchers across disciplines, developing educational programs, and fostering critical engagement with emerging technologies.

Jaj's commitment to the digital humanities community is evident through her extensive service work. She has served as ACH 25 Program Chair and DH24 Committee Co-Chair, demonstrating her skill in managing complex conference logistics and bringing together diverse scholarly voices. She has also led professional development initiatives, including International DH Student Perspectives, and has been instrumental in community-building efforts through ACH Town Hall and Care Fair events.

"I am enthusiastic about serving in the ACH Secretariat, where I can leverage my experience in managing conference logistics, professional development initiatives, and community engagement," Jaj says. "My goal is to ensure seamless operations and communications for ACH while supporting the organization's broader social justice solidarity goals."

You can learn more about Jaj's work at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries or connect with her on Bluesky at @jajrk.bsky.social.

Emily McGinn

Emily McGinn is the Digital Humanities Specialist at Johns Hopkins University, where she has been an active and influential member of the DH community for over a decade. Her work explores the critical conversations surrounding data and the humanities, with a particular focus on how digital methods can enhance scholarly inquiry while remaining attentive to ethical considerations.

Throughout her career, Emily has demonstrated a commitment to building and sustaining the infrastructure that supports digital humanities scholarship. Her experience spans pedagogy, research support, and community leadership, making her uniquely positioned to contribute to ACH's mission.

"I am deeply invested in the conversations surrounding data and the humanities, especially in our current moment," Emily reflects. "Becoming an officer with ACH would allow me to have a meaningful impact on DH and help support a vital nexus for our scholarly community."

Learn more about Emily's work at emilymcginn.com or find her on Bluesky at [@emmcg.bsky.social(https://bsky.app/profile/emmcg.bsky.social)].

Please join us in welcoming Jaj and Emily to the ACH Officers team. We look forward to the contributions they will make and the initiatives they will help advance.

Resources from the Information Exchange about the NEH Appeal Process

Lauren Tilton (ACH), Sarah Weicksel (AHA), and Jason Rhody (MLA) — Fri, 02 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities, American Historical Association, and Modern Language Association hosted an Information Exchange about the NEH Appeal Process. Below is a summary of the conversation and resources. ACH, AHA, and MLA are not providing legal advice. Below represents aggregated information from all who attended the event.

Consider filing an appeal. An appeal to terminated grants demonstrates the importance of humanities grants as well as following processes outlined by the NEH. Appeals must be made within 30 days and submitted through eGMS: https://reach.neh.gov/Login.

Review your specific contract for appeal details. All grant documents should be in eGMS, including grant agreements.

Composing an appeal. The MLA has been aggregating Appeal Strategies here. There is also additional information about NEH processes here (for organization grants) and here (for individual grants). A document with aggregated appeal language from participants is here. (Please email us with your appeal language if you are willing to share.)

Increase impact. To increase the impact of the appeal, consider sending a copy of the appeal to your congressional representatives: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

Frequently Asked Questions:

How do I know if my grant was canceled?
- There has been confusion due to the notices coming through email accounts such as Grant_Notifications@nehemail.onmicrosoft.com. One way to find out is to log into eGMS. Another is to check impact.ach.org which is keeping an up-to-date list of terminated grants.
How do you know if you have an individual or institutional award?
- Usually, an award for a fellowship or summer stipend is an individual grant. If awarded to your institution and you’re the PI, it may be an organizational award. One can determine by going into the NEH Award Search and it will indicate which type. Another way is to log into eGMS and look at the grant agreement.
Where should I submit my appeal?
- To follow the NEH’s outlined appeal process, it must go through eGMS. Other participants recommended also emailing the following accounts: chairsoffice@neh.gov, grantmanagement@neh.gov, mmcdonald@neh.gov, and/or gencounsel@neh.gov
- See screenshot below for Messages tab in eGMS Reach. Click on New Message to send your appeal. Note that you can add an Attachment. You can address to the “Senior Deputy Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities” in the body of the message and/or in an attached letter.

ACH, AHA, and MLA are committed to advocating for our communities. Along with being a member, there are additional ways to stay up-to-date.

You can find ACH on Bluesky @ach.bsky.social, LinkedIn, through our public listserv here.

You can find the AHA on Bluesky @historians.org, LinkedIn, and at our website.

You can find MLA on Bluesky @modernlanguage.bsky.social, LinkedIn, and at our website, which includes a Resources page on Legislative Threats to Higher Education.

Finally, we want to extend our appreciation to the great people who have worked tirelessly to support the humanities at the NEH. They are our friends, colleagues, and mentors. They are digital humanists, historians, literature scholars, and humanists. And, they have been committed to the humanities and the public good.

Event: Information Exchange about the NEH Appeal Process

ACH Executive — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Join us at 11am est on April 30, 2025 for an Information Exchange about the NEH Appeal Process on zoom. This event is hosted by the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Languages Association.

Description: Has your NEH grant been terminated? Join for a conversation to share information about the NEH appeal process. We also have provided information below about the process. It is a summary of the NEH appeal process based on the documents includes below; this is not legal advice.

According to the Terms and Conditions documents below, NEH grantees have a right to request to request the NEH’s review of the termination action. The appeal must be submitted in eGMS within 30 days of termination notice by the institutional grant administrator. The Terms and Conditions outline the appeal process. For awards to organizations, see the General Terms and Conditions for Awards to Organizations (for grants and cooperative agreements issued between January 1, 2022, and September 30, 2024). For awards to individuals, see the General Terms and Conditions for Awards to Individuals (for awards with start dates January 1, 2025, or later).

Use this form to register for the event. A zoom link will be emailed ahead of the event.

ACH Advocacy for NEH Awardees

ACH Executive — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

ACH continues its advocacy work in response to DOGE’s cancellation of the vast majority of digital humanities and other grants awarded by the National Endowment of the Humanities. Our next two events:

Wednesday, April 9th at 8 AM PT / 11 AM ET, join us for an action-oriented workshop to contact your elected officials to advocate for the NEH and IMLS. We will provide links, talking points, messages, and scripts, including resources from colleagues such as the National Humanities Alliance. Register here.

Friday, April 11 at 9:30 AM PT / 12:30 PM ET, join us for a rapid-response workshop, designed to give you the tools you need to write and pitch an op-ed. All are welcome. Register here.

When contacting your representatives or writing op-eds, you may want to reference the NEH grants that have been canceled. ACH has compiled data from numerous sources to develop a database of NEH grants that we understand have received cancellation notices from DOGE. The database continues to be under development as we receive more information.

ACH Town Hall

ACH Executive — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Join us for one or both ACH Town Halls to discuss recent events affecting Digital Humanities. They are designed to hear your experiences regarding how the recent government actions are affecting your ability to pursue digital humanities, and the steps that ACH can take to support you and your communities.

Wednesday, March 19th from noon to 1pm ET. Register here.
Friday, Friday March 21st from noon to 1pm ET. Register here.

Guiding Questions:

How has government interference affected your ability to conduct research, engage in scholarship and praxis, or work with community partners?
Are (and how are) changes on the federal, state, and institutional levels affecting your place of work or engagement?
What responses are possible, knowing these responses are dependent on positionality, precarity, and placement in the institution?

We also invite you to participate in our survey on NEH Funding Impacts We are collecting information about impacts on research. If your NEH work has been impacted, let us know. This form is anonymous, though you can share your contact info if you like.

ACH 2025 Election Slate

Pam Lach — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

ACH Executive Council

1. Maira E. Álvarez

Bio: Dr. Maira E. Álvarez is the Jackman Humanities Institute and Critical Digital Humanities Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Toronto for the 2025-2026 academic year. Her interdisciplinary research connects Border Studies, Women’s Studies, Latinx and Latin American Studies, Digital Humanities, public humanities, archives, and heritage language. Previously, she served as the Early Career Provost Postdoctoral Fellow in Borderlands History (2022-2024) at the University of Texas at Austin and was an American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellow (2021-2022) at Arizona State University. Maira is a co-founder of Borderlands Archives Cartography and a team member of the projects United Fronteras, Torn Apart / Separados, and Houston’s Latino Visual Art Registry.

Candidate Statement: I am honored to have been nominated for the ACH Executive Council. As the Program Co-Chair for the 2024 ACH virtual conference, I understand the responsibility we have as representatives of ACH, both within our community and beyond. It was a privilege to work with the conference committee to help shape the virtual conference and create a space for meaningful and transformative dialogue. Over the past eight years, I have collaborated on various digital public initiatives focused on social transformation and served as a consultant for several projects supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation. These experiences have not only enriched my expertise but have also deepened my commitment to community building and advancing social change. If elected, I aim to leverage my experience in fostering compassionate workflows and leadership to support ongoing efforts. Additionally, I hope to build connections with both digital humanities practitioners and non-practitioners across diverse linguistic and geographical boundaries, using technology as a tool to advocate for social transformation.

2. Connie Dowell

Bio: Connie Dowell is pursuing her M.S. in analytics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has a background in libraries and university writing center work, where she enjoyed making both educational technology and academic spaces as a whole feel welcoming and approachable to a wide variety of students. Connie is interested in the power of technology to create inclusive learning and research spaces. Her research interests include text mining and the intersection of digital humanities and advocacy.

Candidate Statement: As a newer member of ACH, I have found this community welcoming and encouraging, and I am eager to give back. As a writing center coordinator, I worked with many non-traditional and part-time students and strove to meet their unique needs and make the center a space where all students could feel comfortable and seen. Now, I am a nontraditional student myself and understand those needs and challenges first-hand. If elected, I would be honored to continue the wonderful work that has gone on in this organization while striving to make the ACH accessible to those who have taken the scenic route on their path toward this field.

3. Emily Esten

Bio: In Emily Esten’s (they/them) varied work experience - from project lead to curator, educator to site developer - their primary focus has been shaping collaborations, training, and programming of digital tools for scholarly communication. They are Customer Success Manager at Knowledge Futures, in charge of technical client support for full-stack knowledge infrastructure. Previously, Esten worked as project manager and curator at Penn Libraries, where they spearheaded projects that facilitated access to and use of Penn’s Judaica digital collections. In addition to their day-to-day work, Esten is an instructor at DREAM Lab and a freelance developer for Contingent Magazine and Mark Twain House & Museum. Esten holds a BA in history and digital humanities from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a MA in public humanities from Brown University.

Candidate Statement: My career has prioritized scholarly collaboration and the importance of engaging diverse and dispersed communities. Re-joining ACH excites me for its deep connection to my roots in digital humanities, and the organization’s consistent commitment to these values. At this critical juncture in our social, political, and academic environments, it is alarming to see the decline of conversation on online platforms that have fueled so much research energy. I’m heartened by ACH’s advocacy interests, andI want to play a role in looking at the future of communication for computing in the humanities. I am also interested in expanding professional development opportunities for early-career researchers and independent scholars. As a member of the ACH Executive Council, I will support our community’s research efforts, encourage new membership, and encourage collaboration both within traditional academia and in independent organizations.

4. Amy Gay

Bio: Amy lives in Upstate New York, where she resides with her furry four-legged friends. She currently works at ITHAKA (a nonprofit with a mission to improve access to knowledge and education) as a digital humanities specialist, offering opportunities to interact with the global DH community and explore ways JSTOR tools can be integrated into teaching and research. Before pivoting her career path to ITHAKA, she was a Digital Scholarship Librarian at Binghamton University for 6 years, and she also developed and taught two courses on coding for humanities and social science undergraduate students as part of the Binghamton Codes! program. Amy also spent a year and a half in the D.C. area as a National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) fellow, where she worked on developing a science data catalog at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and supported additional steps for helping scientists and engineers making their data publicly available, such as writing data management plans, data visualization for storytelling, and ways for writing about scientific research in plain language. Amy holds both a Master’s in Library and Information Science and a Master’s in teaching. Her research areas focused on book banning / burning; culturally relevant pedagogy; and cultural heritage preservation during wartime conflict. Her current research passions are in the areas of literacy education (digital, computational, and data) and interactive storytelling. Outside of her work-life, Amy enjoys the local arts and music scene in Binghamton, cooking (and always looking for new recipes to try), and reading and writing fiction.

Candidate Statement: My initial draw to serve on the ACH executive committee is how valuable I have found being part of the ACH conference to be. I attended my first ACH conference in 2019, where I got to present with my Digital Humanities Research Institute (DHRI) cohort on our experiences implementing the DHRI model at our own institutions. The conference sessions have so much breadth across digital humanities areas, which I have learned through both attending the conference and as a past session reviewer. I also just love the community ACH bridges across students, librarians, faculty, researchers, and others. All this to say that being part of the ACH executive committee would be a way for me to give back to this wonderful community that has helped me along my own digital scholarship journey. I enjoy planning events and workshops, so helping with the conference and other professional development events would be a lot of fun. It also provides an opportunity to integrate more into the advocacy side of digital humanities, especially during times like these when DH advocacy is crucial. Thank you for your time reading this and the opportunity to apply. Either way, I am excited to see what lies ahead for digital humanities and ACH.

5. Oriane Guiziou-Lamour

Bio: Oriane Guiziou-Lamour (she/her/hers) is a doctoral candidate from the Department of French Language & Literature at the University of Virginia, and a Praxis Fellow (Scholars’ Lab, UVA’s DH Center). She earned her BA in Foreign Literatures, Languages and Civilizations from the Université de Bretagne Occidentale (Brittany, France), and her MA in General and Comparative Literature from the Université Rennes 2 (Brittany, France). She is interested in the relationship between gender, sexuality and violence, and works on reparative (queer) archives, digital decay, internet ephemerality and sustainability. Her dissertation focuses on late-eighteenth century French women authors of erotic fiction, which allows her to explore subjects such as female expression of desire, sexual violence, lesbian representation, and the active efforts of nineteenth-century politics in erasing women from the literary canon. In her published creative writing, she explores topics such as lesbian cannibalism, violence towards women farmers, and agricultural gore.

Statement: I am honoured to accept the nomination for Executive Council Representative. As a representative, I aim to continue ACH’s mission of diversity and inclusion, of an ethical DH practice, and of decentering DH practices from an Anglophone perspective towards a more global dialogue. As a Praxis Fellow in UVA’s Scholars’ Lab, I have learnt to work on collaborative DH projects, expanding collaboration by working with graduate students, librarians, and staff. My contribution to ACH would encompass making sure that people from different backgrounds are actively included in the discussion: I’m especially interested in the ways the organization could better include and promote the work of first-generation, low-income digital humanists, as well as better visibilize the variety of DH practitioners (alt-ac; librarians; staff…).

6. Abigail Mann

Bio: Abigail Mann is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University. Prior to receiving her MSLS, she was a tenured English professor, and has taught a broad variety of courses in diverse formats. As a Digital Scholarship librarian, a significant research focus has been on creating digital scholarship partnerships between teaching faculty and librarians to support innovative research and pedagogy, particularly at less resourced institutions. She has presented this work in multiple national forums, co-authored, with Micah Vandergrift, Immersive Scholars: A Guidebook for Documenting and Publishing Experiential Scholarship Works, and has forthcoming relevant publications in the The AI and Library Instruction Cookbook and Cultures of Scale: Disciplines, Data, and Labor, part of the Debates in the Digital Humanities series. She has also built a Digital Humanities program at her University: after receiving an ALA/NEH Rescue Grant in 2022, she created a summer research fellow experience, which has offered 10-12 students/ year the opportunity to develop and execute a DH project. She has obtained $60,000+ in funding, internal and external, to support this program and, due to student demand, proposed a standing DH course as part of the core curriculum: she is teaching that course for the first time this semester, and it is scheduled to be a yearly offering. She also provides pedagogical support for digital projects across the curriculum, ranging from International Education to English to History.

Candidate Statement: Both my unique career path and my organizational and administrative abilities will allow me to contribute meaningfully to ACH. I began my career as faculty in an English department; I now support DH across campus as a Digital Scholarship librarian, focusing on best practices for helping bring more faculty, particularly those with no formal training and few institutional resources, into DS work, both pedagogical and scholarly. This awareness of paths into DH and resources along them would allow me to work, with the rest of the executive board, in providing guidance and support to those entering the field. My various experiences with DH also allow me to bring ideas and resources to ACH’s work of cultivating and strengthening the field. From a scholarly perspective, I have focused on identifying and making accessible, when appropriate, information about those who have traditionally been excluded or marginalized. This opening up of canons has been a major focus of my pedagogy: just as importantly, I push the use of DH as a way to sharpen critical thinking. Finally, I bring a commitment to serving meaningfully while maximizing others’ voices and contributions. As the twice appointed treasurer of Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies, I oversee finance and scholarships and help to organize an annual 200+ attendee international conference. That work includes thinking about how we continue to create a more welcoming conference environment in the face of shrinking resources and growing ways to engage in scholarship. Having spent two years as a faculty senate chair, I also pride myself of working with fellow executive board members to create and complete concrete goals aligned with our larger goals. In recent years, I have brought this emphasis on facilitation to various service opportunities, including developing professional development symposiums and conferences and creating or revising values statements and frameworks.

7. Stefano Morello

Bio: Stefano Morello is Assistant Director for Digital Projects at the CUNY Graduate Center’s American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, where he co-manages the New Media Lab and supports graduate students and faculty in developing interdisciplinary digital scholarship. His research combines digital and traditional methods to investigate the infrastructure and transnational reverberations of American popular and unpopular culture. In addition to authoring peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, he has developed public-facing digital projects such as the East Bay Punk Digital Archive and The Lung Block exhibit, which recover the histories of marginalized urban communities. Stefano has contributed to building DH capacity at public institutions in the U.S. and Italy, including designing curricula for the nascent Digital Humanities minor at the City College of New York and, while serving as a research fellow at the University of Eastern Piedmont, integrating for the first time DH into American Studies courses offered in Italy. His commitment to open digital pedagogy is reflected in projects developed collaboratively by students and faculty, such as the Italian American Studies Open Syllabus, Let My People Know, and The Beats in/and Italy, which also serve as teaching materials for underexplored subjects. He is a co-founding editor of JAm It! (Journal of American Studies in Italy), an open-access publication supported by the U.S. Mission to Italy that fosters dialogue between emerging and established scholars. He also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy.

Candidate Statement: I am excited to stand for election to the ACH Executive Council. I have spent nearly a decade at the intersection of DH and American Studies while building DH capacity and pedagogy at public universities. My experience in service began over a decade ago with the Graduate Student Forum of the Italian Association for American Studies (AISNA)—then a group of a dozen graduate students. In the following eight years (six of which as co-chair), I helped formalize the Forum in AISNA’s bylaws and grow it into a 100+ member network that now drives early-career membership in the organization. I have since served on various committees at the institutions where I have worked and for organizations in my fields of scholarly engagement. As I continue to deepen my engagement with the field of DH, I am especially eager to collaborate with fellow practitioners to give back to ACH and further its mission and initiatives. My experience in governance, project management, and community-building equips me to contribute meaningfully to ACH’s stewardship. As a first-generation college graduate who has struggled to make his way in underfunded educational systems, I have been consistently committed—in both institutional and non-institutional roles—to providing mentorship to underprivileged students and weaving formal and informal networks of support that address the questions I have had to grapple with throughout my career. As Executive Council Representative, in addition to fulfilling ongoing tasks and responsibilities, I am especially eager to explore ways to offer mentorship (particularly for first-gen and international scholars) and amplify the work of and opportunities for early career DH practitioners.

8. Kate Ozment

Bio: Kate Ozment, PhD, is Digital Scholarship Team Leader at Kelvin Smith Library, Case Western Reserve University. She was previously associate professor of English at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Her research focus on the digital turn in bibliographic studies and how data structures influence what we know, or believe we know, about women's involvement in the Early Modern British book trades.

Candidate Statement: I am interested in serving on the ACH executive committee to help support an organization that has meant a lot to me as a digital humanist moving through different academic spaces. ACH's commitment to social justice, access, equity, and labor rights are close to my heart, and I would do my best to uphold these values and be an active member of the community.

9. Rachel Starry

Bio: Rachel Starry (she/her) is the Head of Digital Scholarship Services at the University of Pittsburgh libraries where she leads a team of library staff in supporting digital humanities and data-intensive research, teaching, and publishing. She holds a PhD in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College; it was at Bryn Mawr that she identified a career interest in providing library-based support for under-resourced DH practitioners through her participation in an inaugural cohort of Digital Scholarship Graduate Assistants in the BMC library. Her work in digital humanities began in 2011 when she collaborated on a text mining project analyzing rhyme patterns in Latin and Greek poetry, and since then she has engaged in a wide range of digital projects as both a practitioner and educator. She is a dh+lib Review Editor, serves on the Keystone DH conference planning committee, and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship. Her research and professional contributions have focused on humanities data management, sustaining interdisciplinary communities of practice, and accessibility in data visualization and digital projects.

Candidate Statement: I have found ACH to be an incredibly vibrant and welcoming professional community since I attended the ACH conference in 2019, and I particularly love that this community includes and supports DH practitioners in a variety of roles, from students to researchers to library workers like myself. Since 2019 I have sought opportunities to contribute to this organization and its mission, including ACH initiatives in support of anti-racist practices in our field like the publication of "Towards Anti-Racist Technical Terminology" and the associated Inclusive Technology bibliography in 2020. I have greatly appreciated the opportunity to contribute to sustaining ACH through my past service on the ACH Nominations Committee and the Affiliates & Liaisons Committee (as Liaison to the Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship, ILiADS), and I would be grateful for the opportunity to continue contributing to the mission of ACH as a member of the Executive Council. If elected, I would bring to bear both my expertise in conducting and supporting digital humanities projects as well as a commitment to centering issues of justice and accessibility in the work of this organization.

10. Hazel Wilkinson

Bio: I am Associate Professor of English at the University of Birmingham, UK, where I am also Deputy Director of the Institute for Data and AI (IDAI). I am PI on the Compositor project, compositor.bham.ac.uk, a database of over a million eighteenth-century printers' ornaments. I have published in Digital Humanities Quarterly, presented at the annual ADHO conference, and I won the Göttingen Dialog in Digital Humanities in 2016.

Candidate Statement: I would like to join the Executive Committee of ACH to grow international collaboration between ACH's US members and stakeholders in Europe and beyond. I believe that international representation on the Committee would expand the horizons of ACH, as well as enabling the transfer of knowledge and experience from ACH to UK and European scholars who wish to promote the Digital Humanities, and upskill humanities researchers in the use of data and AI.

ACH Statement of Support for NEH

ACH Executive — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

ACH is committed to supporting and advocating for digital humanities (DH). While now retracted, the executive order to pause grants, loans, and other federal funding directly impacted DH and has lingering impacts on perceptions of funding stability, labor rights, and the professional risks of engaging in digital research. Our members have greatly benefited from the incredible work of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), particularly the Office of Digital Humanities (ODH). NEH ODH funds cutting-edge, globally-impactful research, and has been an essential force in supporting new and innovative methodologies that are transforming humanities research to meet the needs of the 21st Century. While the effort to freeze federal funding has been halted, we anticipate more actions that will directly adversely affect digital humanities.

We are working on efforts to advocate for our field, including a letter of support for the NEH and opportunities to augment initiatives from organizations like the National Humanities Alliance. We remain committed to a diverse, inclusive, and supportive DH community forged on our core values of equity and social justice, care and collaboration. Have ideas? Want to get more involved in our efforts to advocate for our field? Please email president@ach.org.

With care and in solidarity, ACH Executive

ACH Signs onto AHA-OAH Statement on the Executive Order "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling"

ACH Executive — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) have released a joint statement on the presidential executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling.” ACH has signed on in support of this statment which condemns the Executive Order's claims of "radical indoctrination" in history education.

We do note that this letter leaves out mention of a significant way history education is harmed: the Executive Order's explicit violence toward trans and queer history, and the rights of trans and queer students and educators. For more information on Executive Orders (EOs) and the harmful impact of anti-trans rhetoric about "radical indoctrination" on students and teachers see Courtnie Wolfgang's zine "Supporting and affirming queer and trans students and their teachers: WTF is the radical indoctrination EO?"

ACH Constitution & Bylaws Update

Amanda Wyatt Visconti — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH recently approved and implemented amendments to its constitution and bylaws, a process that required vote by the officers, the Executive Council, and the ACH membership. We know that sounds dry, but governing docs matter in how we do our work and how we hold ourselves accountable to our commitments and values. This post provides an overview of the main areas of the text we updated, and why.

Key changes

Quoted text uses bold italics to indicate new/edited text:

Social justice is core to ACH's work. "ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects."

This is language already used in our website and other text materials, but we wanted to enshrine it in our constitution. We'll be discussing the possibility of revising this part later, given "social change" does not necessarily mean the positive "social justice" I believe we intended (as multiple members have pointed out). Some of the other constitution text was outdated or unclear enough to need edits ASAP, so we stuck with that existing language for now, as the formal voting procedure required the whole process of officer, then Exec, then membership voting to restart if any text was changed and we'll want more input on this piece before we vote on it.

Membership depends on conduct; community protection. "Membership shall be open, through the processes established by ACH and published on its website, to all persons interested in furthering the purpose of ACH, as long as they abide by ACH's codes of conduct. ACH Officers further reserve the right to remove membership and its benefits temporarily or permanently from, and/or bar from attending ACH-(co)sponsored events, any member in violation of the letter or spirit of our codes of conduct. Disputes over presence or severity of codes of conduct violations will be ultimately decided by majority vote of the current ACH Officers, relying on the spirit rather than the letter of any codes. Final vote outcome (yea or nay; not individual votes) should be recorded privately for the understanding of future officers and prevention of removed members from rejoining."

Adds a clear process for protecting our community, preventing quibbles trying to privilege letter over spirit of community conduct. Refers abstractly to codes of conduct, allowing us to consider adding a general code where previously we've only had conference-specific ones.

Term limits "To spread professional opportunities and maintain a diverse Exec with fresh points of view, ACH council reps shall not be eligible for re-election to a council rep role that begins the year starting immediately after their council rep term ends; they must spend the length of one year not being a council rep before they may serve in that role again. No person shall be allowed to serve more than 2 total terms as a council rep (i.e. one 4-year term followed by at least the required 1-year break, followed by a second 4-year term at some point; after which they may not serve as a council rep again). The exception is people who fill the rest of the term for a vacated council rep role; that partial term shall not be counted toward the 2 total full terms of allowed council rep service."

Limits both consecutive and total council rep terms, with the goal of spreading professional opportunities around more equitably.

"Lazy consensus" voting
"The Exec may approve an amendment proposal by receiving positive votes equal to at least two-thirds of the total returned votes. When counting votes to determine if the two-thirds majority has been met, non-responses count as yeas; in other words, the default vote is yea and members must actively vote nay if they wish to oppose (i.e. “lazy consensus”). A member may also vote to abstain; an abstention reduces the total number of returned votes by 1 vote. Then a ballot shall be sent to the entire membership and at least 14 days allowed for return. The distribution, voting, and counting of the ballots shall be conducted via a platform private to the Exec (such as the Exec email listserv). Ratification shall require a two-thirds majority of the votes cast, following the same “lazy consensus” procedure described above."

We've long used "lazy consensus" for informal internal decisions when our rules have allowed it. This approach asks stakeholders to reply by x deadline with a yea or nay; any non-replies by the deadline are treated as approvals, for purposes of voting count/establishing if a majority of approvers is reached (i.e. if you approve or don't mind a proposal, you can just not reply). This clarifies we can use lazy consensus as part of our formal voting. This has the benefit of avoiding good proposals not moving forward because not enough people replied to a voting email. This also clarifies who abstention works, in terms of how a vote count is totaled, which was previously unclear.

Conditions for membership, Executive Council rep roles, and officer roles
"The privileges of ACH shall be withdrawn from any member:
whose membership has lapsed more than 1 month,
who has requested by email to membership@ach.org to have their membership ended,
Who is an officer or other Exec member and has not filled out the annual conflict of interest statement by two weeks after the deadline identified in an email requesting it, and/or
who is voted to be removed from membership due to codes of conduct violations (see ACH Constitution, Part III for details). For officers and other Exec members whose privileges of membership are withdrawn, their appointed or elected role’s term is simultaneously immediately ended. It is the responsibility of members, including officers and other Exec members, to remember to renew. ACH will send one automated reminder 2 weeks before a membership is due to expire..."

Sets some basic expectations for elected and appointed service on the council, as these are not empty/vanity roles but require attending a minimum number of meetings, vounteering for and completing a set of ACH tasks, and replying to council communications. Reduces officer work so it's clear we don't need to monitor and repeatedly ask for council reps and officers to fill out necessary forms or renew their membership, and you need to remain a paid member to serve. Makes explicit the code of conduct discussed earlier can result in removal from membership and/or Exec.

Explicit expectations for Exec members' contributions & remaining in elected/appointed roles
"Removal or resignation of Exec members Exec members may be unable to participate as planned for a number of reasons; when this occurs, a no-fault early term end is available; as well as an option for Officers to enact a no-fault early term end for Exec members not participating to an expected level, so that the position may be filled with an active participant. a. ACH strives to accommodate life needs, and appreciates that the Exec provides unpaid volunteer labor. The intent of these rules is to encourage Exec members to proactively contact the Officers group around anticipated or surprise challenges meeting participation expectations; and to also provide no-fault options freeing a role for someone with more time to meet ACH's needs, when the Officers determine that is in the ACH's best interests. Incumbents may be removed from roles if not meeting basic participation requirements, i.e. a. for Officers, not attending at least every other Officer meeting over the course of 4 months, without prior writing to officers@ach.org to identify a known and unavoidable schedule conflict; and/or b. for all Exec members, not attending 3 Exec meetings in a calendar year (including AGM and Annual Planning Meeting) without prior communication to officers@ach.org to identify a known and unavoidable schedule conflict; and/or c. not signing up for, and/or not performing, a reasonable minimum of ACH tasks as identified to the Exec by the Officers (such as through a shared task spreadsheet), without prior writing to officers@ach.org to request help in identifying tasks fitting ones skills and time For reps, all Officers should agree on the removal; for Officers, all other Officers should agree. a. The person in question should receive a friendly warning by email, cc'ing officers@ach.org, with a requirement to reply within 2 weeks identifying if they wish to continue in the role and confirm they can rectify participation within the next month following reply; or that they wish to take a no-fault exit. b. If the person does not reply within 2 weeks, or replies but does not rectify participation within the next month following the 2-week reply period, their term is ended (including removal from meetings, listservs, and from the current Exec people webpage)"

This text benefits our Exec members and officers: makes clear elected/appointed council members and officers can end their terms if life circumstances require, without fault. We wanted to explicitly recognize and plan for how these are unpaid volunteer roles, that personal health and wellness are priorities, and that it may feel difficult to notice and then communicate you can no longer keep up with expectations you'd committed to.

This text also benefits the ACH's needs: it allows the ACH to promptly refill roles with people able to do the needed work. Important in making the professional benefits of holding these roles fairly require the same contributed effort from all role-holders.

Respond to realities of past nomination processes
"II. Elections"

Removes the past stipulation that our council elections offer at least twice as many candidates as the roles available, so we only have as many people run as are actually willing to serve if elected (vs. past sometimes having to ask people to run just to fill in the double candidates requirement, even though they didn't want to and weren't able to actually serve if elected). This is also kinder, in not forcing at least half of all people who kindly volunteer to run to not ultimately be elected into a role that year.

Filling Exec roles if vacated "III. Vacancies"

Clarifies how we fill Exec roles that are vacated, or when someone elected ends up unable to take on the role: going through the list of people who ran in the most recent election but were not elected, starting with the person with the most votes then working downward until a willing person is found.

Remove bureaucratic cruft & update terminology "IV. Standing Committees"

What working groups are needed to run the ACH's recurring infrastructure and special projects changes by year. Whether these are handled as formal committees, or as lighter-weight groups of volunteers who each have a set task rather than just an asbtract membership on a committee, also fluctuates. We removed requirements to have any but one necessary committee ("Nominations", who manage publicizing our election nominations and encouraging applicants, and transmitting nominations to the secretariat to set up our formal elections, adding additional layer of fairness to who is solicited and forwarded).

"V. Special Interest Groups" Renames ACH Working Groups as SIGs, to make the formal nature of this work more legible for credit, tenure, and/or promotion.

Smaller changes

Many small changes were intended make the language more accessibly human-readable, such as establishing and use shorthand throughout (e.g. “Exec” instead of writing out “Association for Computers and the Humanities Executive Council” every time). We also removed outdated references (e.g. voting by fax), and references that bound us unnecessarily to one of many possible platforms or methods for doing non-voting tasks (e.g. how news of the annual general membership meeting is transmitted).

Read this far?

If you even skimmed this whole post, you might be someone who'd enjoy doing similar administrative and infrastructural leadership with us! Keep an eye on this blog for our next nominations/election cycle announcement (late fall 2025 or early 2026), which will include calls for new council reps, Vice President/President Elect (can be a pair of people working together as co-VPs, as we've done the last few years), and Deputy Secretary (to partner with our secretariat, when our current Deputy Secretary moves into the Secretary role Summer 2026).

ACH Nominations 2025

Pam Lach — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

ACH seeks three new Executive Council Representatives to serve a 4-year term beginning summer 2025 (2025-2029). Nominations are due January 31, 2025 via the brief nomination form.

What does an ACH Executive Council Representative do?

As an organization, ACH regularly runs a conference, a series of mentoring events, and distributes bursaries and other awards to the community. ACH has also been involved in advocacy work on behalf of the digital humanities community in the United States. This work is supported by infrastructure run and maintained by the ACH exec, and is informed by a series of liaison relationships with other organizations. Executive Council representatives shape and execute these threads of work on behalf of the organization (in accordance with the constitution and bylaws). Representatives are required to comply with ACH codes of conduct, such as our conference code of conduct.

What is the time commitment for an ACH Executive Council Representative?

The council meets once a month for an hour. Typically the beginnings of these meetings are spent on any business requiring council input. The remaining time is used for a working meeting to tackle ACH tasks.

The work of ACH is organized into tasks. These could be as small as “organize a professional development event” or as large as “chair the conference program committee.” Over the course of a year, we ask each council member to commit to 4-5 small tasks or 1 large (conference-related) task to ensure that the organization’s work is fairly distributed among council members. Council members also participate in the yearly ACH conference by serving as session moderators and tech support.

Who is eligible to be an ACH Executive Council Representative?

Who are we looking for?

We especially hope for a slate of candidates that is diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession, citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds.

How does nomination work?

You are encouraged to self-nominate, as well as nominate others, using the very brief nomination form. Nominations are due by January 31, 2025.

Sample candidate bios and statements from last year are available at https://ach.org/news/2024/02/ach-2024-election-slate/. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of Executive Council members, please see https://ach.org/about/constitution/.

For questions about nominations please contact ACH Co-Vice President Pam Lach (plach AT sdsu DOT edu).

We’ll be holding an informal info session on Wednesday, January 15 to answer questions about the process from 9am-10am Pacific / 10am-11am Mountain / 11am-12pm Central / 12pm-1pm Eastern. Register for the Zoom link.

About ACH

ACH is the US-based professional organization for digital humanities. ACH supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH advocates for and supports all of our members in their digital humanities work. Digital humanities is a broad term encompassing a wide range of subject domains, methods, and communities of practice, including (but not limited to) computer-assisted research, pedagogy, and software; resource creation, curation, and engagement; physical computing; the use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship; and humanistic research into and about digital objects and culture. ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects.

2025 ACH Start-Your Project Funds Application

ACH Awards Committee — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) Start-Your-Project award is specifically designed to support small digital projects at various stages of development. The primary goal of these awards is to provide critical support to individuals who might otherwise face barriers in initiating digital scholarship projects due to constraints such as limited financial resources and time commitments within their existing roles. We are particularly enthusiastic about supporting those who aspire to make a meaningful impact but require the necessary support to embark on their work.

This initiative is designed to be inclusive, recognizing the diverse backgrounds and circumstances of our potential applicants. Whether you are an undergraduate, graduate student, contingent faculty, or staff member, and particularly if at an institution with limited or low resources, these awards aim to help you transform your ideas into tangible projects. This award will offer financial resources of up to $1,000 per project together (with an additional $1,000 for 20 hours of mentorship/consultancy, if requested).

Proposals are due by January 27, 2025. Apply at: https://bit.ly/2025achawards

Please email awards@ach.org with any questions.

ACH@MLA25: Book History and the Digital Humanities

Brandon Walsh — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For our session at the 2025 MLA Convention, ACH will gather a group of scholars for a roundtable on the intersections of book history and digital humanities.

How have developments in digital humanities informed the study of the history of the book? How do digital humanities scholars draw upon book history methods, tools, and ways of thinking in their work to advance the study of technology? Presentation information follows.

Speakers

Ryan Cordell (U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Natalie McGartland (U of Maryland, College Park)
Élika Ortega (U of Colorado, Boulder)
Whitney Trettien (U of Pennsylvania)
Alexandra Wingate (Indiana U, Bloomington)

Session 119. Book History and Digital Humanities

Thursday, 9 January 5:15 PM-6:30 PM, Salon 19 (Hilton Riverside New Orleans)

More Information

Ryan Cordell

Ryan Cordell posted his talk here.

Bio: Ryan Cordell is Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences and Department of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Cordell collaborates with colleagues in English, History, and Computer Science on the Viral Texts project, which uses robust data mining tools to discover borrowed texts across large-scale archives of nineteenth-century periodicals. Cordell serves as a Senior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School and also directs UIUC’s Skeuomorph Press & BookLab.

Topic: My provocation, “Circuits & Stacks: the Infrastructures of Book History & Digital Humanities,” will collate the idea of the “communications circuit”—which arguably founded the field of book history—with the “full stack” of technical systems that Alan Liu has argued should be more central to digital humanities research, under the rubric of “critical infrastructure studies.” The goal of such collation is to demonstrate considerable overlap in the two fields’ concerns with the complex interplay of technology in cultural production. In the blurry areas of distinction, however, we can spot areas the two fields might learn from each other, as DH scholars seek to more consciously interrogate the social, political, and economic underpinnings of contemporary technical systems and BH scholars wrestle with the complex materiality of computational systems and cultures.

Natalie McGartland

Bio: Nat McGartland is a PhD candidate in English working in digital studies and the history of the book. She is particularly interested in the affordances of technology—both print and digital media—and our affective responses to its material and visual properties. As a BookLab Graduate Assistant, Nat works on critical making and craft activism. Her protest art has been featured in the New York Times, Reuters, Politico, and more. As an instructor, she teaches introductory writing, media studies, and digital humanities. Nat is also the chair of the Graduate English Organization (GEO).

Topic: For this panel, I’m thinking about making connections to the visibility theme through feminist historical recovery—like Daniela Rosner’s work on the Little Old Ladies of the Apollo mission. Women’s craftwork as material condition for technological development. I’ve also been interested in textiles specifically.

Text of McGartland's Talk:

Hi, I’m Nat and I’m working on my PhD in English at the University of Maryland. Part of what I do there is work at BookLab, which is our makerspace dedicated to book history and the book arts. So my angle on this question of crosspollination between DH and book history is really shaped by my makerspace experience, thinking about how we teach these skills through critical making and really valuing learning by doing.

I’m also interested in other material studies like textiles and fiber arts (so I’m kind of shoehorning that in too). Across these three fields, I view them as having really similar methodologies and ways of thinking. The two main approaches I want to talk about today are my pedagogy angle of experiential learning and my research angle of feminist historical recovery. That’s an oversimplification of course but you see where I’m heading.

To start with background, I view DH, book history, and textile studies as having a lot in common in the sense of being studies of material objects (obviously) and the material conditions of manufacture. In DH, I’m really interested in the physical makeup of technology, the hardware. In that same sense, book history is about the material text—the book is the hardware, and the same goes for textiles. The connection there is really apparent when you think about the Jacquard loom as the precursor for punchcard programming.

So with weaving and punchcards, you can automatically see the connection to so-called “women’s work,” and that’s where feminist historical recovery comes in. Women were the first programmers; women’s craftwork like woven textiles and bookbindings are overlooked in the world of fine art; and the histories of women in technology are ignored. The first example I want to bring up of that are the Little Old Ladies of NASA, who physically wove the core memory of the Guidance Computer for the Apollo mission. You can read more about this in Daniela Rosner’s book Critical Fabulations, by the way. But these women—they literally hired old ladies who could weave because they needed to understand and create this extremely detailed, intricate technology by inserting wires, threading them through or around these cores, these rings, to encode binary. These women were essential to the mission but their contributions and achievements are overlooked because it’s considered unskilled labor, despite the complexity. It’s one of infinite examples where women’s practical knowledge and skills are overlooked as not serious or important or academic or artistic or what have you. But women’s craftwork like this is the material condition required for technological development.

So this also goes for women’s labor in other industries, like women bookbinders, typewriters, punch card programmers, telephone switchboard operators. And much of the reason we ignore contributions is due to sexism, but I also think a lot of it is due to the fact that people truly do not understand how complicated some of these tasks are. And that’s where experiential learning also comes in.

So my first example there is, I’m a fiber artist myself so I know how to knit and crochet and sew and embroider. But I didn’t know how to weave, and it was really affecting my ability to understand how this process works. So I took a workshop. And I can describe all day long how it works to have the warp and the weft and move the heddle up and down to open the shed and send the shuttle back and forth. But actually understanding what I’m talking about and seeing how it becomes a binary pattern by going over or under with the movement of the heddle, that really requires seeing it, or better yet, doing it. And that’s just regular, very simple weaving—from there you need to look at pictures of the Apollo core memory to see the rings and wires, and how small it all was, and so on.

To sort of zoom out from the Little Old Ladies of NASA and wrap this up really quickly, I think you can see how important hands-on activities are to my research and teaching. In the makerspace and in the classroom, I think it’s really important to have students doing their own investigations of hardware. For me that means typesetting and papermaking and bookbinding and programming and circuitry and taking things apart and putting them back together.

Élika Ortega-Guzman

Slides from Ortega-Guzman's Talk

Bio: I’m an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Before that, I was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies and Core Faculty at the NULab for Texts, Maps and Networks at Northeastern University.

I write about digital literature and media, cultural hybridity, reading practices and books, digital humanities, and multilingualism in academia. My projects include A Handbook of E-Lit Reading, an archive of instructions to read electronic literature works; and Binding Media: Print-Digital Literature 1980s-2010s, my monograph investigating print-digital works of literature from a hemispheric perspective.

Topic: The description of Binding Media -

Far from causing the "death of the book," the publishing industry's adoption of digital technologies has generated a multitude of new works that push the boundaries of literature and its presentation. In this fascinating new work, Élika Ortega proposes the notion of "binding media" — a practice where authors and publishers "fasten together" a codex and electronic or digital media to create literary works in the form of hybrid print-digital objects. Examining more than a hundred literary works from across the Americas, Ortega argues that binding media are not simply experimentations but a unique contemporary form of the book that effectively challenges conventional regional and linguistic boundaries. Furthermore, the book demonstrates that binding media have remained marginal in the publishing industry due to technological imperatives like planned obsolescence and commercial ones like replicability and standardization that run counter to these bespoke literary projects. Although many binding media and other hybrid publishing initiatives have perished, they've left behind a wealth of material; collecting and tracing the residues of these foreshortened projects, Ortega builds a fascinating history of hybrid publishing. Ultimately, this essential account of contemporary book history highlights the way binding media help illuminate processes of cultural hybridization that have been instigated by the expediency of globalized digital technologies and transnational dynamics.

Whitney Trettien

Bio: Whitney Trettien is associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and faculty director of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities. Her first book, Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork (Manifold and University of Minnesota Press, 2021), uses digital methods to track the history of writing with scissors and paste in the seventeenth century.

Topic: For this MLA panel, I’ll be discussing recent work on Printing in Prisons, a digital project that investigates the complicated role of printing presses in prisons as a technology of both exploitation and creative expression. This collaborative research project is engaged in collective pedagogy through courses, hands-on assignments, and mentorship. We also thoughtfully curate historical data on our website. Finally, we tell the stories of these individuals through art and archival research that values their complexity, creativity, and humanity. In all our work, we collaborate across our differences to approach history not as a passive archive but as a dynamic and messy process that implicates us all.

Alex Wingate Alex Wingate posted her talk here.

Bio: Alex Wingate is a PhD candidate in Information Science at Indiana University. Her dissertation titled, "Los libros contenciosos: provision and use of books in Navarre, 1558-1700," examines the practices of circulation and use of books in early modern Navarre, Spain by combining book history, information science, and digital humanities. She is also the bibliography editor for the Chymistry of Isaac Newton project and SHARP News.

Topic: My research generally fits into one or more of three categories: the application of quantitative and digital methods to book history, the intersection of information science and book history, and best practices for book historical data. Digital humanities and book history intersect in the first and third. For this MLA panel, I'll discuss how these two areas of my research support each other in my dissertation work on early modern Navarre and projects like the Chymistry of Isaac Newton as well as how each relies on the confluence of book history and DH.

Virtual Workshop: AI and Labor

Jewon Woo — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Tuesday, April 2, 2024, 3:30-4:30pm EDT

As scholars, practitioners, and activists have widely discussed, AI and other generative technologies require a rethinking of how workers can be protected. These technologies gather and use data generated by workers, generating issues such as wage discrimination and, in the long run, replacement of labor. In this virtual panel, Enongo Lumba-Kasongo, rapper (a.k.a. Sammus) and the David S. Josephson Assistant Professor of Music at Brown; and John Lopez, producer and member of the AI working group in the Writer's Guild of America, will discuss diverse ways in which AI and other generative systems have affected workers in general and creative workers in particular. They will also discuss their personal perspective and some options they see we have as a society going forward.

New ACH Deputy Secretary

Jewon Woo — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome our new Deputy Secretary/Secretary, Claudia Berger!

Claudia Berger (they/she) is the Digital Humanities Librarian at Sarah Lawrence College and Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute teaching digital humanities in the School of Information. Their research centers around critical making in digital humanities research and digital environmental humanities. They also serve as an editor of dh+lib. When not doing DH things, they like to randomly send people postcards and volunteer at their community garden.

For the next two years, Claudia will serve as Deputy Secretary in partnership with the current Secretary, Amanda Visconti. And then, in the following two years, she will be the full Secretary of ACH and partner with a new Deputy Secretary. The ACH community is looking forward to working with Claudia!

2024 ACH Election Results

Roopika Risam — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We're please to announce the results of the 2024 ACH elections. We had many excellent candidates who ran for office this year, and we're grateful to have such an engaged community!

Our Vice President(s)/President(s) Elect will be Liz Grumbach and Pamella Lach. They will serve as co-VP from 2024-2026 and co-presidents from 2026-2028.

Our newly elected ACH Council representatives are Christina Boyles, Alex Wermer-Colan, and Jajwalya Karajgikar. They will serve on the council from 2024-2028.

The terms for our newly elected officers and representatives will begin after our Summer 2024 Executive Council meeting.

ACH 2024 Election Slate

Roopika Risam — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Vice President/President Elect

1. Liz Grumbach and Pamella Lach (co-Vice President/President Elect team)

Bios: Liz Grumbach (she/her/hers) is the Director of Digital Humanities and Research in the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University, occupying the ancestral territories of the O’Odham and Piipaash peoples. At ASU Lincoln, an organization committed to exploring participatory strategies for ethical technological innovation, she develops collaborative initiatives, projects, and programs at the intersection of DH and Critical Technology Studies. She has been an alt-ac laborer since 2012. As a member of the ACH Executive Council, she is currently ACH2024 Technical Chair, served as the ACH2023 Program Chair, and contributes to ACH professional development initiatives.

Pamella Lach (she/her/hers) is the Digital Humanities Librarian at San Diego State University, occupying unceded Kumeyaay land. She directs the Library’s DH Center and co-directs SDSU’s DH Initiative, a values-oriented network of scholars, teachers, and learners focused on critical digital inquiry. Pam’s work is grounded in care and community, ethical applications of technology, and process-oriented experimentation and pedagogy. Pam leads a weeklong podcasting institute with the National Humanities Center, training 550+ participants in digital storytelling since 2019. As a member of the ACH Executive Council, she served as the ACH2023 Conference Chair and is currently Co-Chair for ACH2024.

Statement: As ACH Co-Presidents, we would continue the intentional work of making ACH an ever-more welcoming and inclusive professional space for all members. We seek to build on current efforts to organize our work equitably around critical issues, including accessibility, anti-oppressive praxis, and labor activism. We are committed to ensuring a space where all members can be seen and feel heard, especially contingent scholars, alt-ac workers, graduate students, and those who are precariously and/or under-employed. We would bring our collective experiences and strengths in ethical project management and community nurturing to our work, seeking to model a trust-based, compassionate, generative, relational partnership in our approach to co-leading ACH. We believe ACH is poised to make transformative change in higher education, and we seek to continue ACH’s current visionary trajectory by committing to justice-oriented, care-based futures for digital humanities.

2. Richa Mishra

Bio: I am a university professor of a private premier university situated at the western region of India. I am currently serving as the Head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and Chairperson of the Board of Studies, Humanities and Social Sciences, at the Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmadabad, Gujarat, India. I was always at the cusp of humanities and technology. As a chairperson of humanities board I will be offering Minor in DH for Engineers as course of 24 credits to my engineering students from July 2024 onwards. As a Project Director and Principal Investigator, I have led significant research projects, including a major Digital Humanities research grant funded by the ICSSR. These projects not only highlight my leadership skills but also my ability to foster interdisciplinary research that spans regions, cultures, languages, and technologies. My work was recognized by the DHoX 22 at Oxford University (second prixe), focused on the study of gendered language in digital political reporting in India.

Statement: As a council member I aim to: 1. Foster Interdisciplinary Collaboration, 2. Promote Diversity and Inclusion, 3. Visibility, and Presence of Digital Humanities in India, 4. Accelerate Digital Humanities Education in India. I bring to ACH a wealth of experience from my involvement with various professional bodies, and a proven track record of leadership in academic and research settings in an engineering school. My contributions to international conferences, workshops, and publications reflect my dedication to the field and my ability to engage with a global audience. I believe that together, we can navigate the evolving landscape of digital humanities to create a more inclusive, innovative, and interdisciplinary future.

ACH Executive Council

1. Christina Boyles

Bio: I am an Assistant Professor of Culturally Engaged Digital Humanities at Michigan State University and the Director of the Archivo de Respuestas Emergencias de Puerto Rico, or the Emergency Response Archive of Puerto Rico, a digital humanities project that works with community organizations to collect and preserve oral histories and artifacts pertaining to disaster. The project contains over 300 items, including oral histories, custom art, photos, and more. Each item is represented bilingually using the Omeka S theme Multilingual, and the corresponding software extensions—Page Blocks, Transcript, and SimplePDF. AREPR developed these free and open source DH resources to simplify the process of displaying archival and cultural heritage materials across languages. AREPR is available at arepr.org.

Statement: I am honored to have been nominated for the executive council, and, if elected, I would like to continue efforts to build and sustain community throughout the ACH. As the director of a community archiving DH project, I am aware of how community can help us learn, grow, and develop into better scholars and people. I hope to apply my experience building and sustaining meaningful collaborative relationships to my role with the ACH. As a former member of ACH’s Infrastructure Committee and as someone working with AREPR’s technical team to develop software for community organizing, I also am interested in exploring how we can use and build tools for social good.

2. Lawrence Evalyn

Bio: Lawrence Evalyn (he/him) is a Text Mining Specialist at Northeastern University Library in Boston. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Toronto. Previously, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Northeastern and a Teaching Postdoctoral Fellow at Toronto. His daily work supports computational textual research across domains; his scholarship focuses on women’s writing, queer game studies, technological infrastructure, and the material histories of digital objects.

Statement: As a student, I benefited enormously from DH organizations to provide community for my work. Now that I have moved to the U.S. and joined ACH, I am eager to contribute back. I am particularly motivated by inclusive pedagogy and sustainable infrastructure. My service record includes serving as the Co-Director of the Digital Integration Teaching Initiative at Northeastern, and supporting the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Toronto. In both positions, my specialty has been the unglamorous work of administration: making agendas, taking actionable minutes, and following up on minutiae. Equity and justice so often boil down to the day to day investment of care work; I would be honoured to join in that care for the Digital Humanities community.

3. Rebecca Foote

Bio: Rebecca Foote is an Assistant Professor of English and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia in 2023 where she was a Praxis Fellow (2020-2021) with the Scholars’ Lab, the university’s center for digital humanities. Her research focuses on contemporary Latinx poetry and poetics, performance studies, and digital humanities. She is currently working on a book project tentatively titled “Lyric Crossings: Decoloniality in Contemporary Latinx Poetry.” Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Small Axe Archipelagos and MELUS: Multiethnic Literature of the United States.

Statement: My introduction to digital humanities came in the form of advice from my undergraduate thesis advisor: “if you’re not collaborating, you’re not doing DH.” Throughout my continued interest in DH, I’ve kept these words at the forefront of my process and thinking, and I hope to continue collaborating nationally and internationally through ACH. Since my introduction to DH, I’ve completed collaborative projects focused on the impacts of Covid-19 on pedagogy and educational spaces and the importance of creating art after the 2017 hurricane season in the Caribbean. Currently, I am working on a project that uses Python to identify the poetic device chiasmus in contemporary Latinx poetry, and I find the range of possibilities in DH scholarship endlessly fascinating. I remain committed to social justice in both my own digital projects and in supporting the work of others, which I would be thrilled to continue on the ACH Executive Council.

4. Jajwalya Karajgikar

Bio: Jajwalya “Jaj” Karajgikar (M.S.) is the Applied Data Science Librarian at University of Pennsylvania.She helps researchers with their multidisciplinary & multilingual data projects in the form of consultations, collaborations, & conceptual ethical considerations. Her current focus is computational community building efforts on Critical AI Literacy. She makes the most of the tuition benefits at Penn by taking transdisciplinary courses every semester where she manages to weasel in a Digital Humanities project each time. She is currently the co-chair for DH24 conference in the service of the DH community that has given her her life’s calling and sense of belonging.

Statement: The ACH walks the talk on striving for labour advocacy, true inclusivity, and a strong commitment to a diverse community of intentional care. This is an organization that inspires deeper dedication in service of humanistic & computational community building. ACH members and thus the DH community already offer thought-provoking perspectives on creative, anti-colonial, and feminist technoscience possibilities to a global audience. As a beneficiary of the ACH Grad Student Mentorship cohort program, I believe it would be incredibly valuable for the organization to create a more visible space for international scholars, immigrant scholars, and intersections of queer scholars of color. It is my belief that it is in the specificity that we can feel truly represented. I am also excited to contribute to the longer-term sustainable vision for ACH conference organization & planning in an humane, fun, and collaborative environment, regardless of being selected for this role. Thank you.

5. Manika Lamba

Bio: I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My research interests are in the intersection of information organization, HCI, and health & social informatics using computational techniques like topic modeling, NLP, and machine learning. I have been awarded grants from esteemed institutions such as Princeton University, National Science Foundation, Association for Information Science & Technology, and Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science. Furthermore, I have had the privilege of being invited to deliver guest lectures and workshops on various text-mining techniques by University of Delhi, University of Hawaii, RLadies Urmia, and RLadies Gaborone.

Statement: I have been researching and teaching in the field of Library and Information Science since 2017. As a new member of ACH community, I am thrilled to share my skills and experience and advancing the field of digital humanities. If elected, I will prioritize initiatives that promote diversity, equity, and accessibility in digital humanities scholarship and practice. I will also advocate for initiatives that support early-career scholars and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration. I believe I can contribute valuable perspectives to the Executive Council and help shape the future direction of ACH. I am committed to advancing these values and the other ongoing ACH initiatives. Thank you for considering my candidacy. I am excited about the opportunity to serve the ACH community and contribute to its continued success.

6. Houda Lamqaddam

Bio: Houda Lamqaddam is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Data Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Computer Science and Art History from the KU Leuven (Belgium), where she researched the usability and perception of data visualisation techniques as methods in art history research. Currently, Lamqaddam’s research interests revolve around the use of data science and AI in the humanities, and the epistemic boundaries and parallels between the computational and humanistic disciplines. Lamqaddam co-organises the annual workshop on Visualization in the Digital Humanities (VIS4DH), and is an associate editor of the Journal of Visualization and Interaction (JoVI).

Statement: I am honored to be considered for the ACH Executive Council. If elected, my focus would be on community development across backgrounds and disciplines. The epistemic interactions between computational and humanistic research are a central theme in my research. I strongly believe in the transformative power of such collaborations in building stronger communities and producing novel and compelling scholarship. In this role, I commit to leveraging this interest to build stronger bridges across disciplines and workforms. Another aspect that I aim to contribute is promoting inclusivity within ACH. My own academic trajectory has been shaped by my intersecting identities at the crossroads of race, gender, and queerness. This has led me to develop a sharp awareness of the dynamics faced by minoritized groups in academia and a keenness to develop safe welcoming research communities. In a climate where DEI initiatives are under persistent attack, my commitment is unwavering to fairness and justice in the ACH research community.

7. Richa Mishra (running for Exec in addition to Vice President/President-Elect) – Please see bio and statement above

8. Beth Mitchell

Bio: Beth Mitchell is the Data Scientist for Equitable Analysis at the University of Virginia’s Equity Center. She received her PhD in the Constructed Environment, with an emphasis on History and Theory, from the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture, where she also completed her MA in Architectural History. Her research focused on early modern synagogues, database development and network analysis. Beth has previously held positions at the UVA Library’s Scholars’ Lab as Community Project Manager and Community Advocate.

Statement: Digital humanities offer a perspective on interdisciplinary and experimental scholarship that I believe is critical to work in higher education. I would be honored to serve as a member of the Executive Council and support ACH’s efforts to shape an inclusive, equitable and justice-oriented vision for the DH community. My own work engages in accessibility, data communication, and ethics around data collection and sharing. If elected, I will bring this expertise, as well as my experience in community-engaged research, teaching, and project management to the ACH Executive Council.

9. Jessica Parr

Bio: Jessica Parr (she/they) is Professor of Practice in History and Digital Humanities and NU Lab Affiliate Faculty at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Parr is Co-Director of Northeastern’s HASTAC Scholars program. They received their PhD in Atlantic History from the University of New Hampshire at Durham and have an MA in History and MS in Archives Management from Simmons University. Parr has been a member of prize-winning Programming Historian project team since 2017 (and on its Board of Trustees since 2022), a member and past president of the New England Historical Association board, and a member of the Executive Council of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. They are a member of The Reckonings Project Team and a Co-PI for the African Building Heritage Project, which is building a georeferenced database of 3D/LiDAR models of at-risk sub-Saharan African building heritage sites in collaboration with community partners. Parr has been a mentor for the Digital Ethnic Futures program and has fellowships by the John Hope Franklin Institute at Duke, the Gilder-Lehrman Institute, the Congregational Library, the Boston Athenaeum, the Schomberg Center, the Royal Historical Society, and the Bright Institute, among others. They are currently completing their second monograph, Entangled Places, Entangled Spaces: The Geographical Imaginaries of Black Antislavery Activism in the Atlantic World, 1730-1860 (under contract with UNC Press). Digital Humanities teaching and research interests include geospatial analysis, photogrammetry, multilingual DH, digital archives, and critical data studies.

10. Winnie Pérez Martínez

Bio: Winnie E. Pérez Martínez is a PhD candidate and digital humanist in the Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese Department at the University of Virginia. She is also an alumna of the Scholar’s Lab Praxis Program Fellowship and the current managing editor for archipelagos journal, an open access, peer-reviewed publication of Caribbean digital scholarship. Her dissertation work looks at creative adaptations of modern technologies within Caribbean science-fiction literature to identify their affordances for addressing local geopolitical issues. As part of the DH Certificate at UVA, Winnie has worked in several collaborative digital projects, like Multepal and Coasts in Crisis: Caribbean Arts and Cultures after Hurricanes.

Statement: I am honored to accept the nomination for Executive Council Representative, recognizing ACH’s pivotal role as a central hub for information and community-building within digital humanities across multiple geographies. As a member of this esteemed body, my focus would be on enhancing access and accessibility for diverse audiences. I am deeply committed to ACH’s mission of extending its reach beyond traditional academic spheres, fostering connections with DH practitioners across diverse linguistic and geographical landscapes. Personally, DH has become my disciplinary home due to its exploration of vital topics such as the relationship between technological infrastructures and economic and environmental conditions. In both academic and non-academic contexts, I engage in discussions surrounding models for knowledge democratization, open access initiatives, and the advancements of subfields like minimal computing. These interests inform my efforts to understand the technological needs of local communities and sustainable projects. I view this nomination as an opportunity to bridge conversations on matters relevant to students and DH newcomers, drawing from my experiences working with geographical contexts which share a historically contested relationship to science and technology. By joining the ACH’s Executive Council, I aim to contribute to the association’s commitment to support open-access and open-source pursuits and learn alongside talented members.

11. Amanda Regan

Bio: Amanda (Mandy) Regan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Geography at Clemson University. She is a historian and specializes in women and gender as well as digital history. At Clemson, she teaches in the department’s new Digital History Ph.D. program and leads research projects related to LGBTQ history and women’s history. She is the co-director of the digital history project Mapping the Gay Guides and her book, Shaping Up: Physical Fitness Initiatives for Women, 1880-1965, is under contract with UVA press. She received her Ph.D. in 2019 from George Mason University.

Statement: I am honored to be nominated to the ACH Executive Council. I have more than 10 years of expertise and experience in digital humanities. I’ve worked at institutions with well-funded DH centers as well as smaller institutions where scholars are exploring the potential of DH for their work. If elected, I would look forward to continuing the work of current and past council members as well as expanding into new initiatives. At the current moment higher education, and the world more broadly, is grappling with long standing issues of inequality in technology and is engaged in a public discourse about the impact of Artificial Intelligence. While these issues are not new, the expertise of ACH and its members can be incredibly valuable to these conversations. If elected, I would work with the executive council to find ways that the ACH can support other scholarly organizations in thinking critically about these issues.

12. Maggie Ryan

Bio: Maggie Ryan is a Technical Librarian at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Her work involves textual analysis as it intersects with librarianship and intellectual freedom, data visualization and data storytelling specifically to inform and work with leadership and stakeholders and has researched how to leverage language-based models to identify duplications in large scale digital libraries. She also is the primary cataloger and interlibrary loan librarian, as well as a reference librarian for all employees of the lab. Lastly, Maggie is an adjunct professor at the University of Denver, teaching required courses in the Library and Information Science program.

Statement: Maggie hopes to take on several projects if selected as member of the executive council, and her major goal is to connect ACH with more participants in the library community as she believes that computing and the humanities will only become further intertwined as we move into the age of AI.

13. Wenyi Shang

Bio: Wenyi Shang is an incoming assistant professor (starting Fall 2024) at the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies, University of Missouri. He is currently completing his Ph.D. at the School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he serves as a lecturer for the “Computing in the Humanities” course. He completed his bachelor’s degree in information management at Peking University, China. His research employs computational methods to investigate the transformation of premodern Chinese societies, how literary texts reveal cultural changes, and the usage of bibliographic metadata in understanding book history. His articles on these subjects have been featured in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, Journal of Historical Network Research, International Journal of Digital Humanities, among others.

Statement: Being a digital humanist has consistently been at the core of my scholarly identity, and I have long regarded ACH as my primary professional affiliation. As an enthusiastic peer reviewer, I consider writing constructive reviews among my most meaningful contributions to the DH community. This commitment was recognized at the DH2023 conference, where I was honored to be selected as one of the two recipients of the “Best Reviewer Award.” As a member of the ACH Executive Council, I am eager to uphold this dedication and advance productive, fair, and inclusive peer review at DH venues. As a US-based scholar of Asian origin, I also aim to integrate into ACH my experience conducting multilingual DH research and collaborating with international scholars. By fostering connections between ACH and the academic community of East Asian studies, I seek to diversify DH perspectives in non-Western contexts. I envision contributing to initiatives such as teaching workshops to enhance accessibility for scholars from underrepresented fields in DH, like East Asian studies, to engage with digital tools and methods.

14. Paul Vierthaler

Bio: Dr. Paul Vierthaler is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at William & Mary where he also oversees an undergraduate digital humanities research lab. His research focuses on the utilization of natural language processing tools to study late imperial Chinese literature, with specific emphasis on forgery detection, genre analysis, and book history. Previously, he held the position of Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at Leiden University, where he helped found the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities and initiated a bachelor of arts minor program in digital humanities.

Statement: Digital humanities and data science have been at the core of my research for over a decade. I am excited for the opportunity to contribute to the community as a member of the executive council of the Association for Computers and the Humanities. I am particularly interested in furthering ACH’s efforts to expand the multi-lingual and international aspects of the digital humanities and to further engage scholars working on Asia Studies in the broader digital humanities community. I am particularly keen on fostering connections between scholars working in the West and those based in Asia, as communication and collaboration between scholars in different parts of the world remain relatively uncommon.

15. Alex Wermer-Colan

Bio: Alex Wermer-Colan, Ph.D. is the Interim Academic Director and Digital Scholarship Coordinator of Temple University Libraries’ Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio, where he directs and advises digital research and pedagogical projects across the curriculum. Alex is the Managing Editor of the Programming Historian in English, and he also works as the Executive Director of Philly Community Wireless, a local organization building community internet networks in North Philadelphia. Alex has served as conference organizer and planning committee member for Keystone DH 2021, ACH 2023, and now ADHO 2024. His service to the profession also includes facilitator roles on multiple Digital Library Federation Working Groups for Digital Pedagogy and Digital Accessibility, and he has published in a wide array of venues for digital humanities research, including dh+lib, The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, Debates in Digital Humanities, and more. Alex’s work on expanding access to copyrighted collections as data has led to multiple ongoing grant-funded projects from the Mellon Foundation and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

Statement: As an ACH Executive Council member, I hope to contribute to ACH programming and procedures to ensure the organization can uplift and support scholars and teachers in the digital humanities working to expand knowledge, address inequity, and foster collaboration. When I attended the inaugural ACH conference in 2019, it was clear to me that ACH was the welcoming and vibrant community sorely needed in the digital humanities in the United State. Ever since, I’ve sought to contribute to the growth of relevant communities of practice, including by serving as Chair on the organizing committee for Keystone DH 2021, and Co-Platform Lead for the organizing committee for ACH 2023. My work at the intersections of libraries and digital humanities research, both at Temple University Libraries and as Managing Editor of the Programming Historian, has positioned me well to support emerging research in the field, and I would be excited to contribute to ACH’s efforts to expand the range of methodologies, critical perspectives, and scholarly practitioners represented by the organization and related conferences and publications. In particular, I hope to work at ACH to foster new collaborations between organizations at the national and local level, especially to leverage ACH’s breadth to support thriving regional collectives like Keystone DH with a focus on empowering local communities to develop technology and information commons.

ACH Nominations 2024

Jewon Woo — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

ACH seeks three new Executive Council Representatives to serve a 4-year term (2024-2028) and a (co)Vice President(s)/President(s) Elect. Nominations are due February 1, 2024 via the brief nomination form.

What does an ACH Executive Council Representative do?

What do ACH (co)Vice Presidents/President(s) Elect do?

The (co)Vice President(s)/President(s) Elect serves as an officer for two years then as President for two years. In the first two years they work with the current (co)President(s) to facilitate the business of ACH, helping lead collaborative labor priority and financial priority setting for the organization and participating in the tasks set by the officers and the Executive Council.

What are “co-Vice Presidents/co-Presidents Elect”?

Current presidents Roopika Risam and Quinn Dombrowski piloted the idea of sharing the Vice President/President Elect roles and Lauren Tilton and Andy Janco continued the tradition. The rationale is that digital humanities includes lots of disciplines, methods, and professional roles, so a pair, rather than a single individual, would be well-suited to running ACH. Plus, people with the experience to be successful in the role are often very busy, and sharing the labor makes life easier! As a result, we welcome nominations/self-nominations for co-Vice Presidents/co-Presidents Elect.

What is the time commitment for an ACH Executive Council Representative?

The work of ACH is organized into tasks. These could be as small as “organize a professional development event” or as large as “chair the conference program committee.” Over the course of a year, we ask each council member to commit to 4-5 small tasks or 1 large (conference-related) task to ensure that the organization’s work is fairly distributed among council members.

What is the time commitment for an ACH (co)Vice President(s)/President(s) Elect?

In addition to the time requirement of an Executive Council Member (see above), the (co)Vice President/President Elect will attend a monthly officers meeting.

Who is eligible to be an ACH Executive Council Representative?

Who is eligible to be an ACH (co)Vice President/President Elect?

Anyone who is a current ACH member (or who is willing to join ACH if elected) and is willing to perform the work of the organization and advocate for our membership and other digital humanists is eligible. Prior participation in an ACH leadership role, such as member of the Executive Council, conference lead, or officer, is highly desirable to be able to hit the ground running.

Who are we looking for?

We especially hope for a slate of candidates that is diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession, citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds.

How does nomination work?

You are encouraged to self-nominate, as well as nominate others, using the very brief nomination form. Nominations are due by February 1, 2024.

The Nominations committee will follow up with nominees to request brief candidate materials – a short candidate bio and summary of their interest in serving ACH.

Sample candidate bios and statements from last year are available at https://ach.org/blog/2023/02/16/ach-2023-elections-slate/. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of Executive Council members and Vice Presidents/Presidents Elect, please see http://www.ach.org/constitution#Bylaws.

For questions about nominations please contact ACH presidents, Roopika Risam (roopika [doc] risam [at] dartmouth [doc] edu) and Quinn Dombrowski (qad [at] stanford [doc] edu)

About ACH

ACH is the US-based professional organization for digital humanities. ACH supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH advocates for and supports all of our members in their digital humanities work. Digital humanities is a broad term encompassing a wide range of subject domains, methods, and communities of practice, including (but not limited to) computer-assisted research, pedagogy, and software; resource creation, curation, and engagement; physical computing; the use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship; and humanistic research into and about digital objects and culture. ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects.

ACH leaves Twitter, commits to contributing to better DH social media elsewhere

Amanda Visconti — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH is leaving Twitter: we're locking our Twitter account, and will no longer post, read, nor reply there. ACH members and the broader digital humanities community can find us on Bluesky (bsky.app/profile/ach.bsky.social), Mastodon (hcommons.social/@ach), our website (ach.org); and for ACH members, our newsletter (members.ach.org/join).

Why we're leaving Twitter

We leave Twitter because of its rapidly increasing harms—both policies that are explicitly racist, sexist, transphobic, and harmful in many additional ways; and policy (non)implementation and culture that make the space harmful or impossible for many to use. This is in keeping with the ACH's mission, which states:

"ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects."

We recognize this is not a decision everyone can make—for example, unemployed and precarious community members can't afford to miss anywhere jobs might be posted. If we don't put opportunities and other info on Twitter, people don't have to expose themselves to the most blatant harms to get that info. We leave Twitter to contribute toward ending that lock-in. Please let the organizations you're part of know, if their moving off Twitter would help you be able to leave too. If you're an organization or individual who can safely do so, we encourage you to help everyone leave Twitter by leaving yourself.

A proactive approach

The ACH is delighted to announce our support of a newly convened ACH Working Group: (Re)connecting DH on Social Media! Watch this blog for a future post on its plans for proactively improving and (re)connecting DH social media community. (You can also read more about, and consider proposing, ACH Working Groups on other topics yourself.)

We want to not only help folks get off Twitter—we're planning to actively support other platforms becoming safer and better, and support DH community in participating and finding community there. See below for info on how to move off Twitter, and options for where you can go.

How do I use other platforms & rebuild my networks?

Choosing a platform
1. ACH is active on both Mastodon and Bluesky. There are other options we're not currently active on, including Meta's Instagram and Threads; see the "Where can I find DH community online?" section below for a list of platforms as well as ways to find DH within platforms (e.g. servers, feeds, hashtags).
2. Bluesky is closest to the Twitter experience, so may be an easier switch. You currently need an invite code, but luckily there's a quick way for DHers to receive one.
3. Mastodon has some differences from Twitter that give it a learning curve, but it also gives you more control over your content ownership and the politics/policies impacting what you post. You do not need an invite code to get started.
Moving to Bluesky
1. Fill out Quinn Dombrowski and Brandon Walsh's quick form to get a Bluesky invite code sooner than through the official waitlist. Thanks to Quinn and Brandon for running this effort, and to all the folks who have contributed invite codes to help colleagues make the move to Bluesky!
2. See Amanda Visconti's DH Bluesky Guide to quickly get started, followed by friendly in-depth discussion of more advanced Bluesky use (when/if you're ready for it)..
3. Follow Mark Sample's DH Community Feed.
Moving to Mastodon
1. See Quinn Dombrowski and David Weisley’s Notes on Switching to Mastodon to learn how to start. Many communities are listed here. You can interact across communities unless the community of users decides not to connect.
2. As ACH joined hcommons.social, we recommend you become part of the community to be connected to other humanities scholars and DH practitioners.
3. To learn more about Mastodon, Quinn Dombrowski’s essays are useful: “A Week with Mastodon” and “A Second Week with Mastodon.” You can find additional guides here.
4. More easy steps to getting started on Mastodon
Ping the ACH to say you've made the move to Mastodon and/or Bluesky, and we'll follow you there!

Where can I find DH community online?

If you know of a platform, hashtag, feed, or other place DHy folks are gathering online (or using to find one another on large platforms), please let us know so we can add it to our list by visiting this quick form (or resharing the link with others: https://forms.gle/yxa9W1cmdPezXc7x7). Below are communities we're aware of, and we'll be adding more as we hear suggestions.

Bluesky
1. Mark Sample's DH Community Feed
2. the "For You" feed (algorithm that will expose you to new folks/posts that are similar to the communities you interact with on Bluesky)
3. Feed: Lit/Culture Studies
4. Feed: Skybrarians (librarians)
5. Feed: GLAMS (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums)
6. Feed: Academic Sky
7. Feed: Team Rhetoric (rhet/comp folks)
8. Feed: medievalists
9. #DHmakes (DHy folks doing crafting and makerspace projects, DH-related or not)
  1. Feed: #DHmakes posts containing media
  2. Feed: All #DHmakes posts
Mastodon
1. Hcommons.social server (HT @gonzalo@hcommons.social!)
2. #DHmakes (DHy folks doing crafting and makerspace projects, DH-related or not)
3. List of accounts at frederik-elwert.github.io/Mastodon-Digital-Humanists
4. #digitalhumanities hashtag
5. fedihum.org
6. The glammr.us server (HT @sbecker@glammr.us!)
One digital humanist suggested the platform Threads: "interaction not too lively—but a decent alternative for the tech news that is still better-represented on X than bsky"
Discord

Latent Reading Discord Server (comp lit studies centered discord community): HT Artjoms Šeļa on Bluesky (who might be able to point you how to join?)

[We'll add other places here, as we hear of them! Last updated 2/12/2024.]

In Memoriam: Angel David Nieves

Roopika Risam — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is sad to share the news of Angel David Nieves’ passing on December 5, 2023. Angel served on the ACH Executive Council from 2019-2021. While on the exec, Angel was involved with the mentoring program. Most recently, Angel was Dean’s Professor of Public and Digital Humanities and Professor of Africana Studies and History and Director of Public Humanities at Northeastern University. For many years prior, he co-directed the Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi) at Hamilton College, where his beloved husband, Richard Foote, an architect who passed earlier this year, designed the space for the DHi Collaboratory.

Angel was a defining thinker and maker in digital humanities. He is known best for his innovative work on 3D spatial histories and models of sites in apartheid South Africa, recovering stories, including those of queer histories, erased by the apartheid-era regime. Angel was especially proud of his first book, An Architecture of Education: African American Women Design the New South, which Richard edited.

Angel’s contributions to African diaspora digital humanities were formative in moving the broader field of digital humanities forwards to create space for voices and stories that have gone unheard. His commitment to challenging hierarchical power dynamics and to supporting opportunities in digital humanities for others is evident in his vast body of work, including the edited collection People, Practice, Power: Institutions and Infrastructures at the Interstices for the Debates in the Digital Humanities series at the University of Minnesota Press and, most recently, Reckonings, a Boston public history platform for community archivists, supported by the Mellon Foundation. Angel was also one of the creators of DHQuest, which modeled the creation of digital humanities centers in a playful, creative way.

Aside from his substantial academic achievements, Angel was a kind person whose emails always began with an enthusiastic “Howz’it?” — and he really wanted to know how you were. He was quick to offer support, wisdom, and encouragement to his colleagues. Angel brought an open mind and an open heart to his interactions with the digital humanities community. While he was not afraid to fiercely advocate for his beliefs in the transformative possibilities of digital humanities, he modeled how to do that with collegiality and professionalism.

ACH sends its condolences to all who knew and loved Angel. We invite colleagues who wish to share a few words about Angel to be added to this post to send them to president@ach.org.

—Roopika Risam and Quinn Dombrowski, on behalf of the ACH Executive Council

Tributes from the ACH Community

I will remember Angel for many reasons, not the least of which was his ebullient presence in a room. But my most striking memory of him is this: Angel was the first man I ever heard describe himself as a practitioner of Black feminist scholarship. Maybe he is the only one to date. It was 2013 or 14 and I was a junior scholar co-leading a Digital Humanities Summer Institute class on Intersectional Feminist DH with Liz Losh. I knew about Angel’s work at Hamilton - his work exemplified successful innovative and community responsive research in the SLAC context - and I was a little star struck. I was also profoundly impacted by his model of scholarship and being in the world. We played, we explored, we got angry and refused to back down when people wanted a field statement on ethics and inclusion watered down, and we shared notes about white supremacist patriarchal institutions that wanted to take credit for success but also blocked opportunity and failed to come through on promises. As both of our careers progressed we supported one another with back channels and letters. Angel was sometimes battered by the world - in love with a new gayborhood but profoundly disillusioned with an institution that didn’t make good on its promises, or shot while in the city he loved so much. He didn’t shy away from expressing the hurts, sorrows, and angers - which I think spoke to the degree to which he was open to the world and to sharing its realities. He brought his full, spectacular, brilliant self to everything he did and in so doing modeled for all of us that intersectional harms are viscerally real while also showing us how to connect, love, and be loved in the midst of so much bullshit. The academy didn’t deserve Angel, but the people he worked with, taught, and loved were his real focus and we are all better for his presence in our lives. —Jacqueline Wernimont, Dartmouth College

ACH@MLA2024: Digitally Mapping Literary Space and Place (Updated)

Jewon Winter — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For our session at the 2024 MLA Convention, ACH featured presentations related to the use of spatial technologies as they broadly pertain to research and teaching related to language, literature, and related fields. At their most basic, spatial technologies offer a way to bring in useful context when researching or teaching literature. But to what end? What does it mean to digitally map a text? How might the map–a fiction itself–intersect with the study of fictional worlds? How might we countermap, using digital methods to contest dominant narratives, structures, or politics? Is the digital map a tool? A metaphor? Both? Presentation information follows.

Digitally Mapping Literary Space and Place

From Charlotte Smith to Chloramphenicol: Antibiotic Origins and Digital Mapping Across Disciplines, Gillian Andrews (Lehigh U)

Antibiotic resistance is a growing public health crisis, with some reports predicting that by 2050, “today’s already large 700,000 deaths every year would become an extremely disturbing 10 million every year, more people than currently die from cancer” (O’Neill et al 1). To tackle this, we need widespread change in attitudes towards antibiotics and increased antibiotic conservation. This presentation showcases an in-progress ArcGIS digital mapping project that traces origins of antibiotics, many of which originate from soil samples gathered from around the world. Framing this project as a descendant of my previous collaborative work on The Charlotte Smith Story Map, I argue that in combination with creative efforts like literature that imagine the future, mapping the past can be a tool to challenge temporal blindness around antibiotics which can incorrectly seem as if they have ‘always’ been here, causing us to take for granted that they always will be. Literature such as the Nesta- commissioned 2015 sci-fi anthology Infectious Futures has challenged this temporal blindness by confronting readers with stories of what a post-antibiotic society could look like in the near future. Building on this work, I suggest that public-facing digital mapping can also contribute to fighting antibiotic resistance by visualizing the past instead of the future; showcasing the surprisingly recent material and geographical history of antibiotic discovery helps us to see that they are not an immutable part of medicine but a dwindling resource that was first used less than a century ago. I ultimately suggest that literature and mapping can work together to explore the temporality of antibiotics and enhance public engagement with healthcare ethics, promoting antibiotic stewardship and informed patient decision-making about antibiotic use. Mapping antibiotic history can allow us to look to the past to illuminate the precariousness of the present; and consequently, to ethically consider the future.

Works Cited
O’Neill, Jim et al. Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally: Final Report and Recommendations. Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. 2016.

Ryan-Saha, Joshua, and Lydia Nicholas, eds. Infectious Futures: Stories of the Post- Antibiotic Apocalypse. Nesta, 2015.

Place, Memory, Poetry, and the James A. Emanuel Papers at the Library of Congress, Tyechia Thompson (Virginia Tech)

My presentation focuses on mapping the materials of author/scholar James A. Emanuel that are archived in the Library of Congress. Emanuel was an innovator of the jazz haiku, author of over ten books of poetry, and trendsetter of African American Literature. Central to my project is Emanuel's system of documentation, which is a record of the date, place, and time that Emanuel drafts his manuscripts. I will explain my digital publication design highlighting my mapping decisions that will emphasize a cultural matrix of Emanuel’s life, creative process, and creative work.

Place-Memory-Poetry-and-the-James-Emanuel-Papers-at-the-Library-of-Congress-MLA-2 Download

An Exploratory Data Analysis of Space in Spanish-Language Literature, Jennifer Isasi (Penn State U, University Park) and Joshua Ortiz Baco (U of Tennessee, Knoxville)

The use of Spanish-language data in digital humanities research presents practical and epistemological complications, ranging from the erasure of languages other than English in the digital cultural record (Whose Knowledge?) to canonical literary and spatial work. This project presents our approaches to a bibliographic dataset of travel literature, which we constructed from metadata of over 350 texts cataloged by the Tübingen University Library (Germany). Using named-entity recognition, we identified real, historical, and fictional locales within this corpus to explore narratological and print history theories in Spanish-language literary studies. Our work builds on a growing body of projects focused on spatial data from English and Spanish- language sources, such as Global Du Bois (Risam), “The Emotions of London” (Heuser et al.), and the Historical Gazetteer for Latin America and the Caribbean (Pelagios Commons). Our goal is to introduce novel ways of interrogating the construction of narratives through representations of place and space, using exploratory data analysis. We discuss the challenges we encountered in performing research on Spanish-language sources with spatial technologies and offer possible interventions that modern languages offer in the broader fields of digital humanities and humanidades digitales. By presenting our work in progress, we hope to contribute to ongoing efforts addressing complexities of Spanish-language data in digital humanities research.

MLA-2024-Novela-de-viaje Download

Works Cited

Heuser, Ryan, et al. The Emotions of London. Pamphlet 13, 2016.

Lehmann, Jörg, and Konstantin Krechting. Bibliography of electronically available Spanish-language travel literature. Accessed 19 Nov. 2020.

Pelagios. “Final Report on LatAm: A Historical Gazetteer of Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean.” Pelagios, 14 June 2019.

Risam, Roopika. Global-Du-Bois. 2019. 9 Mar. 2023. GitHub, Z, X.

"Whose Knowledge?" State of the Internet’s Languages Report. 2022, pp. 1–42.

[Closed] Participate in the direction of DH: apply for our open ACH Officer role!

Amanda Wyatt Visconti — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This call is now closed, but we're leaving the post up for archival purposes.

The ACH seeks someone to participate in ACH's leadership and the broader work of the ACH Executive Council, while serving as a key contributor to keeping the ACH running as ACH Deputy Secretary/Secretary.

You are very likely eligible! Our key needs are willingness to contribute effort, and enthusiasm for involvement with DH and the ACH—whether or not you've been involved in the past, or are keen to get started. We benefit from the perspective of folks new to DH or academia, just as much as folks who can bring past DH experience to the role. We hope for a set of applicants diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession (including students, folks in non-academic jobs), citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds. You're encouraged to apply yourself, or to nominate folks you'd like to see involved in shaping the ACH.

The role. This role is a good fit for someone who enjoys organizing information, writing documentation, looking for and initiating new ways to make communities and infrastructures become better, or is comfortable acting on opportunities for improving social justice and care through administrative, infrastructural, and community design work.

Benefits. In addition to recognition as an appointed officer of the U.S.-based DH scholarly/professional organization, you'll participate in leadership work guiding a large, international membership of digital humanists and influencing the field; get to regularly collaborate with a diverse array of fantastic DH colleagues; and gain further experience with DH and administrative leadership skills. If you're interested in running for the ACH Council elected roles in the future, this could be a good way to get to know the org.

You will receive free registration for our annual conference, but this is a volunteer role, without pay. We know that limits who can take it on, and strive to keep this work scoped and flexible in consequence.

The work:

You'll need to either be a current ACH member, or willing to join if appointed
During 9 months/year, attend most of our monthly Zooms (1.5hrs/month)
A couple hours of work each of those months (some of which can happen during our monthly meetings, which scope discussions to prioritize coworking time)

You'll work with the Secretary to divide a short list of the functions your roles must cover for the ACH to work (e.g. scheduling, note-taking, sharing info, answering member emails). Beyond those, you'll be welcome to initiate or join other Exec projects matching your interests, skills, and availability.

This role has a 4-year term. The first two years, you'll serve as Deputy Secretary in partnership with the current Secretary (Amanda Visconti); the second two years, you'd become the full Secretary and partner with a new Deputy Secretary.

Apply or learn more To apply yourself or nominate someone else, please email the following to secretary@ach.org by January 15th, 2024: 1. Full name of applicant or nominee 2. Their email address 3. Is this a self-nomination, or are you nominating someone else? We will be considering applications starting 1/15, and will be back in touch then regarding your application and to answer any questions you might have.
Applications/nominations will be accepted on a rolling basis until a good match of candidate and ACH needs is found. To ask questions, please contact ACH Secretary Amanda Wyatt Visconti (secretary@ach.org).

ACH seeks working group proposals

Quinn Dombrowski — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As announced at the ACH 2023 conference, ACH is soliciting working group proposals for the upcoming academic year. We’ve posted guidelines for proposals here, along with more information about the benefits of forming a working group. Each working group must have co-chairs who are ACH members.

We hope that the ACH working group framework will provide an avenue for institutional recognition for the work that many people in our community are already doing. Working groups will be featured on the ACH website, will have the opportunity to share updates through the newsletter, and will have a dedicated spot on the ACH conference program.

Have questions about working groups? Drop the ACH co-presidents a note at president@ach.org.

In memoriam David L. Hoover

Quinn Dombrowski — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is sad to share the news of David L. Hoover’s passing on May 25, 2023. David served on the ACH Executive Board from 2005 to 2008, and as Vice-President in 2006-2007. For decades, he was among the most faithful presences at the annual DH conference (remarkably, he presented a paper at every DH conference from 2001 through 2020). David has also long been an instructor at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, and a productive contributor to our community’s scholarly journals, edited collections, and monographs. David is survived by his wife, Danise, and their three children, Rachel, Peter, and Mary Kate.

Below we are honored to share reminiscences of David by Dr. Barbara Bordalejo, one of his PhD students and now herself a leader in the DH field, currently serving as President of ACH’s Canadian sibling organization, CSDH/SCHN.

David Hoover was a professor at NYU’s English Department, where he had worked since 1981. He was a linguist and a digital humanist working on computational stylistics and text analysis. David received his B.A. from Manchester College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana University. He published widely on authorship attribution, stylometry, and stylistic evolution.

His latest book, Modes of Composition and the Durability of Style in Literature (Routledge, 2020), explores the relationship between style changes and mode of composition, and was the result of years of enquiry on the impact of authorial compositional practices on literary style.

David was a generous teacher, scholar, and friend to many in the academic community. His collaborations with Jan Rybicki and Maciej Eder were as much the result of intellectual exchange as they were about amicable affection. His long involvement in DHSI was also a testament to David’s commitment to the community and his personal relationship with Ray Siemens and his team.

I first met David as an incoming Ph.D. student in 1997. He was my academic advisor and later became my thesis supervisor. Almost immediately, I realized that he was a curious and keen observer of others, as well as of himself. Perhaps his powers of observation arose from his linguistics training, or (and this might be closer to the truth) he became a linguist because he was so observant. In his classes, David would ask students to pronounce “cot” and “caught,” he would ask them whether they were “bringers” or “takers,” and what they called fizzy sweet drinks (soda, pop, cola) or supermarket wheeled carriers (cart, trolley, buggy). With that information, David was able to tell where students came from.

For me, it was different. As a non-native speaker of English, I couldn’t even tell that the then-president of the United States had a strong Arkansas accent. David had to teach me that “cran” was not originally a morpheme in English, but that it was becoming one thanks to Cran-Apple and Cran-Raspberry juice. Unsurprisingly, he was delighted when I presented him with the history of the word “lox” and why it was prevalent in NYC but not in Boston. He was a memorable professor, the kind of person who teaches you things you never forget, a master of the art of linguistic artifice, always keen on improvising limericks or finding ingenious wordplay: at the Tübingen ALLC/ACH conference (2002) he stopped by a cannon read the inscription next to it and promptly informed everyone he had found “the canonical text.”

David often treated himself as an object of study. One day he would demonstrate how he could put on a glove single-handedly, another he would explain how he had discovered he was ambidextrous (because when he cleaned strawberries, the piths would end up in his left hand). In doing that, he inspired others to try to be observant as well, which was useful when he assigned an exercise to produce phonetic transcription of one’s speech. It was then I learned that David pronounced “of” and “off” differently.

David’s voice was very expressive. He was a marvelous reader of fairy tales. In 2002, inspired by “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut,” he wrote “Tree Bellicose Graph, A Wrenched Fairy Tale,” which he described as an extended philological pun. To this day, I love to hear the mp3 recording of his reading, and I used it to put my child to sleep when she was a baby.

His stories were always funny or exciting or both. David could outwit the smartest person around. With me, he was always patient, kind, and understanding. I will miss him dearly.

Webinar (5/15): Overcoming Legal Barriers to Text and Data Mining

Jewon Woo — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Computational research techniques such as text and data mining (TDM) hold tremendous opportunities for researchers across the disciplines, with the digital humanities at the forefront of work to build large corpora of creative works to gain better understandings into concepts such as how gender, race, and identity are shared over time. Unfortunately, legal uncertainty associated with text and data mining can stifle this research. Check this webinar on overcoming legal barriers to text and data mining, scheduled on May 15, 2023, at 1 p.m. (EST).

This webinar is meant to help researchers understand how existing law can help them move forward on text and data mining projects using modern, copyrighted materials. In particular we will focus on fair use and TDM-specific exemptions that allow researchers to break digital locks such as DRM. The workshop is offered with Authors Alliance, a nonprofit that exists to support authors who research and write for the public benefit, and will be led by Dave Hansen, Executive Director, and Rachel Brooke, Senior Staff Attorney, both of Authors Alliance, Both are copyright experts who have worked extensively on legal barriers to research, and both are PIs for the Authors Alliance Text and Data Mining: Demonstrating Fair Use Project, which is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation.

You can register via the ACH members portal.

ACH2023 Registration Open!

Jewon Woo — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Acceptance decisions for ACH 2023 are now available. We received so many wonderful proposals—more than we could accept for our three-day virtual conference. The program committee is deeply appreciative of our community of reviewers for their careful consideration and feedback.

Registration for the conference is now open. ACH has a limited number of bursaries to cover registration costs for graduate students and contingent/un-/underemployed professionals. In order to be eligible, you must be a member of ACH (if you’re not yet a member, you can join ACH now). Bursary applications are due by May 5, 2023.

We’ll be sharing program details, including our keynote speakers, in the coming weeks. Questions can be directed to the conference committee at conference@ach.org.

ACH Executive Council 2023 Elections Results

Jewon Woo — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is pleased to announce the results of our 2023 elections. We had a slate of nineteen stellar candidates, and we are grateful to all the digital humanities practitioners for rising to the occasion of being nominees and willing to work at this organizational level.

The 2023-27 ACH Executive Council members are, in alphabetical order: Dorothy Berry, Sylvia Fernández, and Lauren Klein.

The terms of our newly elected Executive Council members will start at the close of the annual summer Executive Council meeting in July 2023. We are excited about the incoming class of Executive Council members and the ideas and experiences they will bring to ACH!

ACH 2023 Elections Slate

Jewon Woo — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH Nominations Committee is pleased to share the slate of nineteen nominees for the 2023 elections.

The voting period will begin on February 27 at 12:00 am (GMT-5) and continue until March 12 at 11:59 pm (GMT-5). In order to vote, you need to go to members.ach.org, click on “membership,” then on login. You’ll be prompted to log in to your WordPress account for ACH. You then need to visit members.ach.org, click on “membership” then click on “ACH Elections,” and click again on the link to the ballot. An announcement of election results will follow.

Thank you for your nomination and consideration.

Call for Participation: ACH @ MLA 2024 Panel on Digital Mapping

Jewon Woo — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

At their most basic, spatial technologies offer a way to bring in useful context when researching or teaching literature. But to what end? What does it mean to digitally map a text? How might the map–a fiction itself–intersect with the study of fictional worlds? How might we countermap, using digital methods to contest dominant narratives, structures, or politics? Is the digital map a tool? A metaphor? Both?

For our session at the 2024 MLA Convention (January 4-7 in Philadelphia, PA), ACH invites proposals related to the use of spatial technologies as they broadly pertain to research and teaching related to language, literature, and related fields. Proposals should be no more than 250 words. Please also include a short one-paragraph biographical statement and confirmation of your MLA membership status. Proposals can be emailed to Brandon Walsh at bmw9t@virginia.edu by March 1st. Since the ACH is an allied organization of the MLA, this session is guaranteed to be accepted for the 2024 MLA convention. All accepted panelists will need to be current MLA members—or have their membership waived by April 7, 2023.

ACH 2023 CFP

Jewon Woo — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities seeks proposals for ACH 2023, our virtual conference, to be held June 29-July 1, 2023. We welcome a broad range of topics, with a particular emphasis on social justice in multiple contexts: anti-racist work, Indigenous studies, cultural and critical ethnic studies, intersectional feminism, postcolonial and decolonial studies, disability studies, and queer studies. We also prioritize proposals that explicitly address multilingualism in digital humanities, which is itself a matter of social justice.

Areas of digital humanities scholarship that are relevant to the conference include but are not limited to:

Digital and computational approaches to humanistic research and pedagogy
Digital cultural heritage
Digital surveillance
Environmental humanities & climate justice
Digital humanities tools and infrastructures
Digital librarianship
Digital media, art, literature, history, music, film, and games
Digital public humanities
Humanistic and ethical approaches to data science and data visualization
Humanistic research on digital objects and cultures
Humanities knowledge infrastructures
Labor and organization in digital humanities
Physical computing
Resource creation, curation, and engagement
Use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship

Submission types include: papers (12-15 minutes), lightning talks (5 minutes), posters, panels (1 hour and 15 minutes), roundtables (1 hour and 15 minutes), installations and performances, and alternate formats (variable length).

Proposals are due February 15, 2023. The full CFP is available in English, Spanish, and French on the conference website. Submit via Conftool. Questions can be directed to the conference committee at conference@ach.org.

Program Committee

Conference Chair: Pamella Lach (she/her/hers), San Diego State University
Program Committee Lead: Liz Grumbach (she/her/hers), Arizona State University
Platform Committee Co-Leads: Alex Wermer-Colan, Temple University & Andy Janco, University of Pennsylvania
Conference Committee Members: Caitlin Pollock (University of Michigan), Eduard Arriga (Clark University), Sarah Potvin (Texas A&M University)

Additional Program Committee members will be announced shortly.

Call for New Executive Council Representatives

Jewon Woo — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

ACH seeks three new Executive Council Representatives to serve a 4-year term (2023-2027).

Nominations are due January 15, 2023 via the very brief nomination form.

What does an ACH Executive Council Representative do?

What is the time commitment for an ACH Executive Council Representative?

The work of ACH is organized into tasks. These could be as small as “organize a professional development event” or as large as “chair the conference program committee.” Over the course of a year, we ask each council member to commit to 4-5 small tasks or 1 large (conference-related) task to ensure that the organization’s work is fairly distributed among council members.

Who is eligible to be an ACH Executive Council Representative?

Who are we looking for?

We especially hope for a slate of candidates that is diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession, citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds.

Demonstrated commitment to digital humanities is more important to our work than professional affiliation, academic/professional status, or job title. We welcome participants not just from universities and colleges, but also galleries, libraries, museums, community groups, and other organizations engaged with the digital humanities, as well as independent scholars. We seek individuals with and without academic or professional degrees, including current students.

How does nomination work?

You are encouraged to self-nominate, as well as nominate others, using the very brief nomination form.

The Nominations committee will follow up with nominees later in January to request brief candidate materials – a short candidate bio and summary of their interest in serving ACH.

Sample candidate bios and statements from last year’s election are available. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of Executive Council members, please see our Bylaws.

For questions about nominations please contact ACH presidents, Roopika Risam (rrisam@salemstate.edu) and Quinn Dombrowski (qad@stanford.edu).

About ACH

ACH is the US-based professional organization for digital humanities. ACH supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH advocates for and supports all of our members in their digital humanities work. Digital humanities is a broad term encompassing a wide range of subject domains, methods, and communities of practice, including (but not limited to) computer-assisted research, pedagogy, and software; resource creation, curation, and engagement; physical computing; the use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship; and humanistic research into and about digital objects and culture. ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects.

ACH @ MLA 2023: Extended Reality for the Study of Language and Literature (Updated!)

Jewon Woo — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

For our session at the 2023 MLA Convention, ACH featured presentations related to the use of extended reality technologies as they pertain to research and teaching related to language, literature, and related fields. Speakers gave short presentations describing their work with XR methods. Presentation information follows.

The Eyes of the Machine Are Everywhere: Surveillance Technologies and Speculative Fiction, Amanda Licastro (Swarthmore College)

In “Virtual Bodies, Virtual Worlds,” an upper-level English course cross-listed with the Digital Humanities (DH) minor and graduate certificate, students explore near-future science fiction such as E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops,” Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Jennifer Haley’s The Nether, and Blake Hausman’s Riding the Trail of Tears. These literary texts raise urgent questions about our current surveillance culture and how we accept ever more intrusive technologies for the promise of personal health and security. Using the work of theorists including Simone Browe, Lisa Nakamura, Wendy Chun, and David Lyon, as a framework, we consider how speculative fiction can help us critique the current trajectory of emerging technologies, particularly the growing cultural and economic emphasis on virtual and augmented reality (XR) across all industries. Together, we experience a range of XR applications, and assess them in terms of equity, inclusion, and democratization. We then research the implementation of motion capture, eye-tracking capabilities, social media integration, and other pervasive developments in the XR space in order to create collaborative prototypes that expose the benefits and drawbacks of these technologies. Students utilize the makerspace and media lab to experiment with 3D modeling, 360-video capture, and animation software to reimagine concepts from one of the literary works read in the class as an XR application, combining skills cultivated in close reading with digital literacy. The presentation file is available via Google Slides.

Amanda Licastro (she/her) is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at Swarthmore College, the pedagogical director of the Book Traces project, and serves on the editorial collective of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. Her research explores the intersection of technology and writing, including book history, dystopian literature, and digital humanities. Her collection, Composition and Big Data, co-edited with Ben Miller, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in September 2021.

Lifting the Veil: Using AR to Recover Past Reading Practices, Andrea R. Harbin (State U of New York, Cortland)

How might new technologies help us recover reading practices in the past? Our presentation will explore this question in relation to augmented reality (AR) and the reading of medieval literature – namely, how AR can help “recapture” the medieval reading experience and reveal differences between the reading practices of the Middle Ages and today.

Although the reading experience seems largely stable, past reading practices varied considerably from our own. Today’s readers conceive of the text as something read in quiet solitude, very much in contrast to the noisier medium of television and the hypermedia environment of the Internet. This understanding of the nature and history of texts and of reading, while not new, is nevertheless a norm of reading established well after the medieval period.^[1] AR, when incorporated into a digital edition of a medieval text, pushes against this view of reading as an inherently solitary and silent experience tied to a stable text. The technology readily influences the reading experience and even demands different “reading” skills. Extended realities such as AR may be new, but their greatest appeal may be their ability to bring students back to a reading experience that has been largely lost. The presentation file is available via Google Slides.

^[1] Carruthers argues that the shift from valuing orality to valuing the written text happened gradually over time, with the written text solidifying its dominance with the advent of bulk printing [Carruthers, Mary. “The Sociable Text of the ‘Troilus Frontispiece’: A Different Mode of Textuality.” ELH 81 (2014): 427-8.]

Andrea R. Harbin is Professor and Chair of English at the State University of New York, Cortland where she has taught medieval literature (Old and Middle English), the history of English, Shakespeare, and drama since 2008. Her research has a two-fold focus: medieval drama and digital humanities pedagogy. She has worked as a digital humanist since 1998 as curator/editor of NetSERF: an Internet Database of Medieval Studies and has published articles on digital pedagogy in medieval studies and on medieval drama. She is the co-director of The Augmented Palimpsest, a digital humanities tool that explores how augmented reality can be used in teaching medieval literature. This project has been funded by an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant.

Tamara F. O’Callaghan is Professor of English, Northern Kentucky University, where she teaches medieval literature, historical linguistics, and the digital humanities. She is the co-author of the textbook Introducing English Studies (Bloomsbury, 2020) and has published on medieval literature (English, French, and Anglo-Latin), manuscript studies, and the digital humanities. She is the co-director of The Augmented Palimpsest, a digital humanities tool that explores how augmented reality can be used in teaching medieval literature. This project has been funded by an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant.

Visualizing Lovecraft’s Providence: Historical Reconstruction of an Imagined World, Victoria E. Szabo (Duke U)

The imagined urban landscapes, structures, and environments of writer H.P. Lovecraft’s Providence play a central role in the development of his tales of horror, abomination, and wonder. This project repurposes the tools of digital art history and urbanism to create spatialized imaginative reconstructions of some of these locales. Drawing upon Lovecraft’s words, imagination, and demonstrated passion for art, architecture and urban development, as well as our own archival research, we are working at the scales of individual structures, the city (Providence) and the area (New England) with 3D models, layered and annotated 2D maps, and immersive and interactive XR experiences. By re-examining the building blocks of Lovecraft’s meticulously-researched tales, we gain deeper insight into recurring tropes in his writing, revealing the architecture of his mind and early 20th century world view. We hope to capture glimpses of his city as he saw then, and conjure the lifeworld he creates across the individual tales. Key locations in “Charles Dexter Ward,” our first project focus, include: the library with the portrait; the basement chambers; the cemetery and its environs; the urban city blocks of the historic quarter; the riverside; and the asylum. Each of these locales offers us a window in the psyche of the character of CDW as limned by Lovecraft; their re-imagined designs in turn offers us insight into Lovecraft’s positionality as a writer, thinker, and figure of his time, and the associative and affective power of layered cityscapes as an expressive interactive media mode in its own right. The presentation file is available via Google Slides.

Victoria E Szabo is Research Professor of Visual and Media Studies at Duke University. Her work explores spatial, immersive, and interactive archives and exhibitions for research and creative expression. At Duke she is the Director of Graduate Studies for the PhD in Computational Media, Arts & Cultures, leads the Information Science + Studies program, and is a member of the Digital Art History & Visual Culture Research Lab. She is also a co-principal in Psychasthenia Studio, an artist’s games collaborative, and Chair of the Arts Advisory Group for ACM SIGGRAPH, the international Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

ACH Professional Development Series 22-23

Jewon Woo — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Making DH Work for Us: Labor, Care, and Careers

How do your digital humanities interests, experiences, and aspirations connect to careers within and beyond higher ed? The answer to that question will vary, depending on who you are and what you’d like to do with your DH knowledge. Join ACH Council representatives with a range of professional backgrounds and career paths to talk about labor, ethics, care, and other factors that influence our careers as well as the lives we live off the clock. Designed primarily for graduate students, early career scholars, and other folks in and around ACH who are thinking about new horizons, these sessions are meant to generate ongoing dialogue, connect you to things you can do in the short-term, and inspire you to connect with peers who want to improve the professional futures of digital humanities for everyone.

Session #1: Discerning the Kind of Work You Want To Do

Nov 17, 12-1 pm EST, Jim McGrath and Katina Rogers

Professional development is great, but how do you even know what kind of work you want to do in the future? In this first session of Making DH Work for Us, Jim McGrath and Katina Rogers will discuss the complexities of discerning where you want your future to take you. We will make space for exploration and talk about how you might do the same in your work. We’ll also delve into concrete advice to help you survive and thrive—such as dimensions of cultural and political capital, navigating institutional expectations, useful resources, and more. To register, visit here. If you have any questions about the session, contact Katina at katina@katinarogers.com.

Session #2: Professional Development Beyond Academia: Engaging Diverse Communities in the Digital Humanities

March 1, 2-3 pm EST, Eduard Arriaga, Katina Rogers, Hannah Alpert-Abrams, and Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla

Join us Wednesday, March 1 from 2-3pm EST for the second discussion in the ACH Mentorship and Professional Development series, “Making DH Work for Us: Labor, Care, and Careers.” For this special session, Eduard Arriaga and Katina Rogers will be joined by co-facilitators Hannah Alpert-Abrams and Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla. The landscape of DH is rapidly transforming not only because of the professional pressures of academia but also because of the numerous technological developments. If ten years ago we thought the DH center and the university were the main sources of knowledge and experience for DH practitioners, we may need to rethink those assumptions today. This session will question the basic conception of professional development against the backdrop of a changing professional landscape. For the event details and registration, visit here.

Greetings from the New Presidents

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The 2022 summer ACH Executive Council meeting is always a time of transition, but the current of change was more visible this year than usual, with multiple members of the Exec changing jobs and institutional roles, and the shift from a single president to two.

A year ago, ACH members agreed to a change in bylaws that would allow us (Quinn and Roopsi) to take on the position of ACH president, together. In addition to being the first co-presidents, this is the first time ACH has been led by someone who isn’t white (Roopsi) and someone who is non-binary (Quinn). After a long-run of presidents who were faculty, we now have a staff/faculty duo. In many ways, our leadership is a reflection of the diverse constituency of ACH. We promised to write up our experience as co-VPs when we were elected, and now seems like the moment to reflect on our last two years.

From running an acclaimed conference, to reimagining the mentorship program, to building a new membership management system, to rethinking how we organize our activism work, to representing the organization at ADHO, there is too much going on in ACH for a single person to keep track of everything. While we may be the first formal ACH co-presidents, at the summer Exec meeting our predecessor, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, acknowledged outgoing secretary Vika Zafrin as having served a role similar to co-President during her time in office.

During our two years as co-VP, we have each focused on different areas of work within ACH: Roopsi has led two successful online conferences, while Quinn has helped organize mentoring events and supported activism around DMCA exemptions for data mining. Last year, we ran the nominations committee together. Knowing another VP is paying attention to other areas of the organization has made it easier for us each to focus on the work we’ve identified as our priorities. The organization has been better served with both of us than it would have been with just one of us. In fact, we have trouble imagining how one person could actually do the job.

We share a single ACH Exec vote as co-VPs but, to be honest, Exec votes beyond procedural matters like approving meeting minutes are rare. We don’t always agree —in fact, the two of us have sometimes been among the most outspoken voices on opposite sides of an issue! Because we are both engaged in myriad projects and collaborations, we also encounter ACH decisions that raise conflicts of interest for one of us. In these cases, it’s helpful that the other has a vote on behalf of our office. And we haven’t had trouble reaching consensus in cases where one or the other of us hasn’t needed to recuse ourselves from voting due to a conflict of interest.

Having collaborated together on The Data-Sitters Club before serving together as co-VPs has made this easier. We came into the shared role with a good sense of our compatibility in working styles, communication, and capacity to pick our battles. And we knew where we were different — but complementary — in job experience, digital humanities interests, risk tolerance, and relationship to ADHO. ACH’s new co-VPs, Lauren Tilton and Andrew Janco, don’t have the benefit of having worked closely together before, but we’re grateful for their willingness to serve together nonetheless.

Beyond this momentous shift in expanding the presidency, ACH also has an all-new group of officers. After 10 years of dedicated service to the organization as secretary, Vika Zafrin has moved into the role of secretary emerita, with Amanda Visconti stepping into the role of secretary. Sarah Potvin will be serving as treasurer, responsible for strategic financial decision-making, while Tanya Clement moves into a role of primarily supporting financial logistics. Jewon Woo, who has been deeply involved with ACH communications for the last year, will be succeeding Paige Morgan in the role of Communications Officer.

In addition to the new officers team, we have five new members of the Exec joining us: Eduard Arriaga, Elizabeth Grumbach, Pamella Lach, Jim McGrath, and Katina Rogers.

We’re excited about working with the whole ACH team, as we spend the next year defining a set of cornerstone ACH events and activities that members can come to rely on for our organization. We also plan to put into place some changes to our membership fee structure to better support independent and contingent scholars, in response to input from this summer’s ACH members meeting at DH Unbound. We welcome thoughts and feedback from the entire community; all are welcome to reach out to us both at president@ach.org.

We look forward to seeing you virtually or in person around the DH community, be it at a future ACH-run conference or the hybrid DH 2024 event hosted in Washington, DC by George Mason University.

More Incoming Executive Council Members

Jewon Woo — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is pleased to announce two more incoming Executive Council members. They will be taking over the remaining terms of two representatives who had to step down! They are Pamella Lach and Jim McGrath. Their term will begin at the annual Executive Council meeting on July 27th, 2022. We are excited about the incoming class of Executive Council members, as they will bring the ideas and experiences that enrich ACH activities for our commitment as an organization.

Copyright Advocacy

Quinn Dombrowski — Thu, 12 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

From the Google Books case to exemptions to the DMCA, ACH has been active in advocating for the interests of the digital humanities community with regard to copyright law, especially as it intersects with computational analysis.

If you’re interested in helping contribute to this advocacy work, we’ve set up a mailing list where we’ll be following up with opportunities for you to get involved. If copyright law and access to digital materials impacts your scholarship, please join us!

Day of DH 2022

Jewon Woo — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

During this year’s Day of Digital Humanities, ACH volunteer Matthew Hannah @tinkeringhuman will be organizing a Twitter conversation about labor within and around digital humanities/digital scholarship. After two years of COVID and now increasing inflation amid economic stagnation, questions of academic labor are more significant and precarious than ever before. Please join us on Day of DH 2022 to discuss the future of academic labor in digital scholarship, share your own labor experiences, generate ideas for more involvement from professional organizations, and share resources for supporting colleagues and comrades in their own labor. We will be tweeting using the following hashtags: #DayofDH2022 and #ACHLaborCaucus. Folks who are interested in continuing the conversation beyond the Day of DH can join the public forum on Humanities Commons, where I will be sharing any resources or materials we may generate.

About me: Matthew Hannah began his working career as a grocery worker and member of the United Food and Commercial Workers labor union. During graduate school, he served as shop steward for the English Department and served as Vice President of Organizing for the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation local 3544. His current research focuses on a political economy of the digital humanities, forthcoming in Debates in the Digital Humanities.

Discussion topics to be raised throughout the day:

Tell us about your work as a laborer.
Has your sense of your labor changed over the years?
What are some ways you think DH as a discipline could better support labor?
How might the ACH mentorship committee support your labor? Are there workshops/resources/organizing we could do?
Tell us about any labor issues you’ve experienced.
How can ACH engage labor issues more directly?
What are some intersections between labor and forms of oppression or marginalization within the academy?
What support have you found, professional or otherwise?
What kinds of support do you think academic laborers need today?
What resources are available to support labor?
How can we build solidarity among various ranks/positions/forms of labor in the academy?
Who is currently doing the work of building labor consciousness? Shout outs!

ACH Executive Council 2022 Elections Results

Jewon Woo — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is pleased to announce the results of our 2022 elections. We had a slate of stellar candidates, and we are grateful to all the digital humanities practitioners for rising to the occasion of being nominees and willing to work at this organizational level.

The 2022-26 ACH Executive Council members are, in alphabetical order: Eduard Arriaga, Elizabeth Grumbach, and Katina Rogers. And, Andrew Janco and Lauren Tilton will serve together as Vice Presidents/Presidents-Elect.

The terms of our newly elected Executive Council members will start at the close of the annual summer Executive Council meeting in July 2022.

In the coming days, we’ll be publishing a reflection on this year’s elections and framing choices for future elections.

We are excited about the incoming class of Executive Council members and the ideas and experiences they will bring to ACH! As before, we will seek out opportunities for involvement by our members beyond serving on the Executive Council, and offer them up to those interested. Be sure to follow ACH on Twitter (@achdotorg), or email us at officers@ach.org.

Request for Proposals – ach.org Refresh

Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is planning a significant website overhaul in 2022. This project will involve a thorough review and reconceptualization of the site architecture, including archiving outdated content and creating clear and coherent navigation. It will also require the selection, customization, and implementation of a new WordPress theme built with accessibility and responsiveness as primary values.

For this project, we would like to hire a member of the DH community experienced with designing thoughtful information architectures, implementing modern web design, and legacy content wrangling. This will be paid, contract work. The timeline is flexible, but we would ideally like to relaunch the site during August 2022.

Interested candidates should put together a proposal of no more than 3 pages that includes:

A plan of work and timeline.
An estimated budget for the project.
A plan for the sustainability of this redesign.
A description of your experience in WordPress development and design.
Examples of your previous work.
Any other information that you think will be helpful to the ACH Infrastructure and Communications committees that will help in the decision making process.

Committed to activating the ACH’s statement on Black Lives Matter, structural racism, and our organization, we particularly want to encourage proposals from Black, Indigenous and People of Color web designers.

Please email your proposal to infra@ach.org by 1 April 2022. We expect to make a selection by 15 April. If you have any questions, please email officers@ach.org.

The ACH Infrastructure committee will evaluate these proposals with reference to the following criteria:

Is the budget reasonable?
Is the plan of work reasonable?
Is the timeline in keeping with our goals?
Is the plan for sustainability solid?
Does the proposal take accessibility into consideration?
Does the previous work give us confidence in the work ahead?

ACH Statement on the Invasion of Ukraine

Quinn Dombrowski — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities joins our colleagues in the European Association for Digital Humanities in condemning the Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine, and expressing our solidarity with the Ukrainian nation and its people, as well as those in Russia who oppose the actions of their government.

We second EADH’s call to extend any possible help to our Ukrainian colleagues and the Ukrainian society, and we stand with our colleagues, with Ukrainian-Americans, and with Ukrainians in our own country in readiness to provide any support we can.

We encourage our members, if they are in the position to do so at their institutions, to reach out to their international education offices to enquire how they might support Ukrainian students and visiting scholars, as well as any colleagues with family and friends in Ukraine.

ACH 2022 Elections Slate

Jewon Woo — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH Nominations Committee is pleased to share the slate of nominees for the 2022 elections.

The voting period will begin March 1, 2022 and continue to March 15, 2022. An announcement of election results will follow.

Executive Council

Vice President/President Elect

Andrew Janco

Bio

Andy Janco is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at Haverford College. His work focuses on new methods for research in digital archives using natural language processing and computer vision. He is the co-director of an NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities at Princeton University in partnership with the Library of Congress Labs and the European Union’s Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH). Andy received his PhD in Russian history from the University of Chicago and a master’s in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the ACH liaison to the Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) and serves on the organizing committee of KeystoneDH.

Statement

As Vice President, Andy would represent the views of contingent faculty, librarians, and graduate students. He would work to promote collaborative scholarship, digital research methods, and open knowledge among the ACH membership.

As vice president, I would promote three main ideas:

Promoting engagement with digital humanists both inside and outside academia.
Fostering conversations on ways that digital humanists can contribute to diverse open source communities.
Build on existing initiatives for diversity and multilingualism among the ACH membership.

Lauren Tilton

Bio

Lauren Tilton is Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Richmond. She has served on ACH since 2018 as a Council Representative, including roles on the Affiliates & Liaisons, Communications, Conference Coordinating, and Publications committees. She also leads ADHO’s Audiovisual in DH (AVinDH) Special Interesting Group (SIG). Her research focuses on visual culture and computer vision, receiving support from ACLS and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Along with directing the Distant Viewing Lab and Photogrammar, she has published in journals such as Digital Humanities Quarterly, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, and the Journal of Cultural Analytics. In addition to creating software such as the Distant Viewing Toolkit, she is the co-author of Humanities Data in R (Springer) and the forthcoming Debates in the Digital Humanities: Computational Humanities (Minnesota), Writing Their Voices (Stanford University Press), and Distant Viewing: Visual Culture at Scale (The MIT Press).

Statement

Shaped by the challenges and possibilities of the last years, a focus will be developing opportunities that support and amplify the capacious configuration of DH in the US. Several areas include:

Continuing to experiment with online/hybrid conferences as a more affordable and accessible space for communities to share work and connect.
Developing publication opportunities (broadly defined) attuned to the specific and expanding characteristics of DH scholarship such as form, topics, and time-to-publication.
Building connections with colleagues and organizations in areas such as galleries, libraries, archives, and museums to better understand how ACH can support their work and develop more avenues for all members to be involved in shaping the organization.

My work is guided by a praxis that centers collaboration, openness, and experimentation as well as a desire to further ACH’s commitment to being an inclusive and anti-racist organization.

Amanda Visconti, Deputy Secretary

Vika Zafrin — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

ACH is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Amanda Visconti to the position of Deputy Secretary. Amanda will work with Vika Zafrin and the other ACH Officers to run the organization, help organize the Executive Council to do work on behalf of our members, and ensure that our institutional history records are robust.

Amanda is no stranger to the ACH Exec, having served on it 2016-20. Their other gig is at the University of Virginia Scholars’ Lab. Welcome back, Amanda! We’re so excited to have you!

ACH Programming Historian Workshop on Twine in the Classroom

Jewon Woo — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH mentoring group is sponsoring a yearlong, public book club based on the English-language version of Programming Historian. Open to all (including non-members of ACH), newcomers to the topic and to digital humanities work through a Programming Historian lesson together in a supportive environment with one or two more experienced participants able to help and answer questions. The workshop this semester will take place on April 13th from 3:00-4:30, featuring one of the most recent articles in the journal “Interactive Fiction in the Humanities Classroom: How to Create Interactive Text Games Using Twine” presented by its author Dr. Gabi Kirilloff. Registration is required to receive the Zoom link. Please join us!

Portraits in DH: DISCO Network

Jewon Woo — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Creating Equitable and Just Futures in the Digital

About the interviewer, Dr. Kevin C. Winstead

As a Council of Library and Information Research (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellow for African American and African Studies Data Curation with the Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State University, my work has closely followed the evolution of Black Digital Studies as it has solidified in the era of networked media. My own research agenda examines online activism and its resistance to networked disinformation. Much of the theoretical background and professional affordances are due to the scholars who have come together to form the DISCO Network.

About the DISCO Network

In 2021 the Andrew Mellon Foundation funded a nearly $4.8 million grant to start the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism (DISCO) Network, a collective made up of six scholars located across the nation focused on digital inequality, race, and ability. “The DISCO Network integrates critical humanistic, social science, and artistic approaches to digital studies and foregrounds questions about the cultural implications of technology to envision a new anti-racist and anti-ableist digital future.” While the network’s administrative home is housed at the University of Michigan with Lisa Nakamura, the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor of American Culture and professor of Asian and Pacific Islander studies, and director of the Digital Studies Institute, there are 5 labs at several host institutions including the Humanities and Technoscience (HAT) Lab at Purdue University; Black Communication & Technology Lab (BCaT) Lab at The University of Maryland; Digital Accessible Futures (Digital AF) Lab at the University of Michigan; Project on Rhetorics of Equity, Access, Computation, and Humanities (PREACH) Lab at Georgia Tech; and the Future Histories Studio at Stony Brook. We have the privilege of interviewing two of the DISCO Network lab directors: Catherine Knight Steele of the University of Maryland and André L. Brock of Georgia Tech.

How was DISCO Networked initiated? What part of the journey did you enter the program?

Steele: Yeah, so thanks for having me. The first way that this started for us was the Mellon Foundation put out a call in 2021 as the pandemic was kind of raging on and there was such a turn toward digital in terms of thinking about what our future would look like in ways that could be more just and equitable. And they put out a call, called “Just Futures,” where folks were invited from across the nation to submit proposals to the Mellon Foundation for this program. Lisa Nakamura reached out to myself, to Ray Fouchet, to André Brock, and Stephanie Dinkins asking us if we would like to collaborate with her on this “Just Futures” project and we were really happy to do. Unfortunately, we were not selected for the “Just Futures” program, but the Mellon Foundation was so impressed with the proposal that we put together that they reached out to us after the announcement and asked if we’d be interested in submitting a separate grant package. A larger one, in fact, that would actually get to the heart of all the things that we proposed to do in that initial “Just Futures” material. What was exciting about that is submitting in that way really opened up possibilities outside of that specified project proposal where we could really think creatively and inventively about how to best make this network a reality, and to draw in as many participants as possible to kind of think toward what it would mean to think about the digital in ways that were creative that were equity-focused and that really didn’t have any limitations on our possibilities. So I got pulled in, that way.

Brock: It was an opportunity to do a couple of things: 1) was to build out a cohort of junior scholars and early career researchers who are doing the kind of work that we wanted to see, critical digital studies that has an attention to both the technology and the meeting making strategies and the people that use them: and 2) to build out Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) workshops to introduce people to it as a methodology technique of looking at technologies practices, users/communities, and to understand what’s going on behind the scenes and in the interfaces of these technologies that we use everyday.

How does DISCO work situate itself with the digital studies/media studies community?

Brock: So the digital studies community is a really interesting space as of the last few years what with spaces jumping up between digital sociology of VCU, C2I2 at UCLA, Sarah Jackson is doing something at Penn as well… so all of these institutes are popping up where people are intentionally focusing on digital studies as an expansion of what media studies was originally – that is we’re paying much more attention to the media technological and computational artifacts, as opposed to what I believe that media studies really was more worried about the content. We are also seeing these spaces which don’t necessarily have audiences, like algorithms and big data. We are also interested in doing that kind of work. This particular configuration of researchers draws upon multiple strengths so Ray Fouche as an STS scholar, Stephanie Dinkins is an artist doing AI art and Black womanhood, Catherine Knight Steele’s strengths of communication researcher; Lisa, as you know, one of the canonical figures in this movement; and then there’s little me to tag along in the back like, Hey I wanna play too! So yeah, I think we have a unique perspective in part because of the bodies we were able to pull together — oh can’t forget Remi (Yergeau) who’s doing disability studies … right … and so it’s a unique perspective on what the future of digital studies could be because of all of our varied perspectives.

Steele: “I think all — and both and you know we are scholars that come from very different disciplinary backgrounds: Information studies, communication, media studies, art design, justice and disability studies, you know and English and rhetoric. So there’s all of these kinds of different approaches to thinking about digital tools, digital technology and it’s an interpolation between people and digital tools, and I think that’s what really makes the network stronger, is that we’re not coming out of one specific tradition, disciplinary home, or even out of behavioral science versus humanities. There’s not that kind of either/or to the work that we’re trying to accomplish. I think this can best be seen in the inclusion of Stony Brook University’s Stephanie Dinkins, and her design work. Having an artist as a part of our core principal investigators team really challenges us to think about our projects in broader ways that are not always about even just writing… the natural kind of thing that may come out of a collaboration like this is a book project, or set a set of journal articles — but making sure that we are incorporating thoughts and ideas from folks in the humanities and the social sciences and the arts all at the same time.

What groups of audiences and communities do DISCO target?

Steele: My lab, the BCAT lab at the University of Maryland (the Black Communication and Technology Lab), is really looking inside the academy in a lot of ways. We’re talking to undergraduates and graduate students. We’re going to be working with high school students as well, ensuring that folks have access to supports to kind of make it through the traditional mechanisms for getting through their studies, but also moving on to the next stage of their academic career. You also have folks who will work on white paper documents in order to present to legislatures to think about how digital tools impact the day-to-day lives of marginalized communities; and what ways we can really think and reimagine equity at the center of those places. Then you have people who are writing in creative ways, who are doing more “public-facing,” writing for audiences who are just casual users of social media tools and how might we make sure that the kind of work we’re doing really speaks and resonates. So there’s really this multifaceted approach that we’re able to take on because the network is so expansive.

I think one of the beauties of this lab and of Lisa Nakamura’s vision here is to really let folks work within their capacities. All the lab leaders are really, you know, passionate about different kinds of things that are related to each other, and we’re really giving each other the space and the freedom to explore those things and to see where there are connections and overlaps and where there are divergences.

What does an “alternative and inclusive digital future” look like for you? How does your initiative work towards that?

Steele: So what I’ve enjoyed about working on with this go so far — and I’ll mention one of our collaborators, Remi Yergeau, who’s at the University of Michigan and her Digital Futures Lab, where she’s thinking about equity and justice as it relates to disability. It really challenges each of us to think about design and access in all of the settings where we usually are doing our research. So when DISCO talks about accessible futures, we are thinking about how everyone comes to these spaces that we take for granted as being accessible already. The ways that that design already exists, but also the way that we can remix and change and challenge what exists already, to use Ray Fouche’s kind of notion here. To create the different types of futures that I’m imagining at BCAT is one, where the kinds of supports that are built in for some folks within our field are actually accessible to the Black students that are interested in these areas as well… that we might see from the high school level and interest. From students to understand that they can do critical essential work in technology that isn’t necessarily in the STEM fields that might allow them to still do a kind of critical studies in the humanities or social sciences. In areas where they already have strengths, they don’t necessarily have to go and get a computer science degree in order to be really impactful in changing technology for the better in their own communities. In order to study things like activism online, that’s the kind of accessible future that I imagine is where people have access. And people have the supports necessary to actually make their way through and navigate their academic careers and beyond putting folks in touch with industry leaders with nonprofits with governmental leaders when they leave their undergraduate education.

Brock: It’s a really awkward question. I’m not really concerned with inclusivity in part, and this is something I recently said in an interview — I want us as Black folk to be able to talk about what we do in a space that’s not necessarily centered on resistance and oppression. So that’s not necessarily inclusive if you think about the work that Catherine Squires has done with counterpublics. We’re talking about counterpublics that only occasionally engage with the wider mainstream or political goals because we have our own stuff to deal with. I’m writing about Black respectability which the wider mainstream could care less about but which deserves that same kind of care, nuanced, and detailed inquiry that should be targeted towards something that deeply affects how Black people get along in this country. I try to expand upon the work that canonical respectability scholars have done like Kevin Gaines, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Darlene Clark Hine, and even Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberlé Crenshaw with intersectionality. That’s not an inclusive future, it’s not even an alternative one but what it is is a Black focus and Black centered one. I think for many of my colleagues in this initiative we’re all doing similar things. Maybe it is an alternative, but it’s not necessarily an alternative that we want white folk to engage in. It’s an alternative by saying these histories – these agencies are just as worthy of scholastic inquiry and investment as any random misinformation campaign – or yet another corpus of Shakespeare work to determine who authored those particular plays: Francis Bacon or William Shakespeare. So in that regard I think our initiative is kind of unique because we have this focus on what does it mean to do work for us by us.

Other than the DISCO project, what are some other things you both are working on?

Steele: One is a book project, Black Digital Studies; A Practical Guide under contract with Routledge that I’m really excited about with some of my collaborators from the AADHUm initiative, and you’re one of them, Kevin. We’re really excited and hoping to have that out for folks to read by the end of the year, which is about doing Black Digital Humanities in ethical and intentional ways. I think as the digital humanities expands, and specifically as Black, digital humanities becomes even more expansive, it’s important that we have a certain intentionality. Without the ability to historicize and to think about ways that we can be successful here and the kind of structures that are in place that actually work as an impediment to that success, then getting access to all that money doesn’t really push us forward in the ways that we hope that it will.

Brock: I am really taking a step back to reflect on my book Distributed Blackness and working through how CTDA has been taken up so far.”

Call for Participation: ACH @ MLA 2023 Panel on Extended Reality

Jewon Woo — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

How can Extended Reality (XR) technologies (Virtual, Augmented, Mixed) be applied to the teaching and study of language and literature? What new questions do these technologies enable us to ask? How might they extend or intersect with other areas of digital humanities work? For our session at the 2023 MLA Convention (January 5-8 in San Francisco CA), ACH invites proposals related to the use of extended reality technologies as they pertain to research and teaching related to language, literature, and related fields. Speakers will give short presentations (4-6 minutes depending on the number of participants) describing their work with XR methods.

Proposals should be no more than 250 words. Please also include a short one-paragraph biographical statement. Proposals can be emailed to Brandon Walsh at bmw9t@virginia.edu by March 1st. Since the ACH is an allied organization of the MLA, this session is guaranteed to be accepted for the 2023 MLA convention. All accepted panelists will need to be current MLA members—or have their membership waived by April 7, 2022.

ACH @ MLA: Teaching with Data Feminism

Paige Morgan — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Session 11; Thursday, January 6th, 12:00-1:15pm; virtual session.

#mla22 #s11

Data Feminism, a 2020 release from MIT Press by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, has been instrumental in showing scholars, teachers, and practitioners how data science and data ethics can be transformed by the principles of intersectional feminism. In this session sponsored by the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), presenters share how they are using Data Feminism in the undergraduate and graduate classroom. Short presentations are followed by a response by one of the authors and a substantial open discussion with attendees.

The description of Data Feminism from the MIT Press site, where you can also find an open-access copy of the book:

Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought.

Illustrating data feminism in action, D’Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever “speak for themselves.”

Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But Data Feminism is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn’t, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.

Respondents

Lauren Klein (Emory U)

Lauren Klein is Winship Distinguished Research Professor and Associate Professor in the departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods at Emory University, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab. She is the author of An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) and, with Catherine D’Ignazio, Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020). With Matthew K. Gold, she edits Debates in the Digital Humanities, a hybrid print-digital publication stream that explores debates in the field as they emerge.

Speakers

Lauren Gilmore (Lehigh U)

Lauren Gilmore is an MA student in English at Lehigh University. She is interested in critical approaches to American speculative literature, digital scholarship modalities, and writing pedagogy. Additionally, her creative and reported work has appeared in various journals and public-facing venues including Hayden’s Ferry Review, Horror Homeroom, and Collider.

Marisa Parham (U of Maryland, College Park)

Marisa Parham is Professor of English and Digital Studies at the University of Maryland, where she serves as director for the African American Digital Humanities initiative (AADHUM), and is the associate director for the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). She also co-directs the Immersive Realities Lab for the Humanities, which is an independent workgroup for digital and experimental humanities (irLhumanities). At Maryland, Parham also holds faculty-affiliation with the departments of African and African American Studies, American Studies, and the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Mark Sample (Davidson C)

Mark Sample is an Associate Professor and Chair of Digital Studies at Davidson College. His teaching and research focuses on digital culture, electronic literature, creative coding, and videogames. Sample’s most recent work uses the procedural rhetoric of videogames to sardonically comment on the slag heap that is 21st century America. There’s his RPG character generator 10 Lost Boys. His workplace horror game about content moderation. And Babyface, a southern gothic take on 2020. Sample is also co-author of 10 PRINTCHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, a collaboratively written exploration of the Commodore 64 and creative computing in the 1980s.

Edward Whitley (Lehigh U)

Edward Whitley is professor and chair of English at Lehigh University. He recently published Walt Whitman in Context, co-edited with Joanna Levin for Cambridge University Press, and is currently working with colleagues at Lehigh and elsewhere to develop A Humanities Toolkit for Data Science.

Presiding

Lisa Marie Rhody (Graduate Center, City U of New York)

Lisa Rhody is deputy director of Digital Initiatives and director of digital fellowship programs at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is on faculty in the MA in Liberal Studies, MA in Digital Humanities, MS in Data Analysis and Visualization, and Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate programs and directs the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded Digital Humanities Research Institute. Her work has appeared in PMLA, differences: A Journal of Feminist Thought, Journal of Digital Humanities, and Debates in Digital Humanities. Together with Susan Schreibman she is co-editor of the forthcoming Feminist Digital Humanities, an edited collection from the University of Illinois Press.

ACH Advocacy Leads to New Opportunities for Text and Video Analysis

Quinn Dombrowski — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In late October 2021, the Librarian of Congress granted a new exemption to section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that supports the computational analysis of multimedia, including texts (in the form of encrypted ebooks) and video (in the form of encrypted DVDs). The new ruling opens up exciting new opportunities for digital humanities research in text and data mining which, absent the exemption, would fall under section 1201’s prohibition on circumventing “digital locks” to access copyrighted content. The Samuelson Law Clinic at UC Berkeley Law School put together the petition on behalf of its client Authors Alliance, an organization that advocates primarily on behalf of academic authors. This petition drew upon the expertise of the digital humanities community, and included letters of support from ACH itself, and from numerous of our members. Thank you to all who contributed to this important effort.

These exemptions are an important step towards enabling more scholars to pursue computational research on in-copyright text and video. However, even as we celebrate this decision, we acknowledge it comes with far more restrictions than we would like to see. Circumventing technical protection measures on this data has to be done by a researcher affiliated with an institution of higher education, on materials owned by the institution. We recognize that the security requirements around how the resulting text or video data can be stored and analyzed are onerous, even for scholars at well-resourced research institutions.

The letter of support from ACH helped get us to this point, but this decision is only the beginning of our advocacy and education work in this space. We look forward to partnering with the Authors Alliance and the organizers of last year’s NEH-funded Legal Literacies for Text and Data Mining workshop on future events to raise awareness of what is (and still isn’t) possible with this new exemption, how to navigate using this exemption at your local institution, and how to collaborate with your librarians to advocate for better terms for licensed content.

The scope of this exemption still excludes many researchers, and the security requirements pose an onerous barrier to entry. If you have questions about the new DMCA exemption, would like to get involved, or would like to share your experiences trying to use it for your research, please reach out to ACH exec members Lauren Tilton (ltilton@richmond.edu) and Quinn Dombrowski (qad@stanford.edu), who can connect you with the community of people currently engaged with these issues.

Call for Nominations: ACH Executive Council (Q&A Event 12/15)

Quinn Dombrowski — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

ACH seeks three new Executive Council Representatives to serve a 4-year term (2022-2026) as well as one or more Vice-President/President Elect(s). The current co-VPs will be available to answer questions via email, or at a Zoom event on December 15th at 4 PM Eastern / 1 PM Pacific.

Nominations are due January 15, 2022 via the very brief nomination form.

What does an ACH Executive Council Representative do?

As an organization, ACH regularly runs a conference, a series of mentoring events, and distributes bursaries and other awards to the community. ACH has also been involved in advocacy work on behalf of the DH community in the United States. This work is supported by infrastructure run and maintained by the ACH exec, and is informed by a series of liaison relationships with other organizations. Executive Council representatives shape and execute these threads of work on behalf of the organization.

What does a Vice-President/President-Elect do?

The Vice President/President-Elect serves as VP for two years, followed by a term as President for another two years. The VP is an Officer position and plays a more active role in taking leadership on shaping major initiatives and the direction of the organization as a whole. We encourage candidates to run jointly as co-VPs with a candidate from a different professional background.

Who are we looking for?

We especially hope for a slate of candidates that is diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession, citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds.

Demonstrated commitment to the ACH and/or to DH is more important to our work than professional affiliation, academic/professional status, or job title. We welcome participants not just from universities and colleges, but also galleries, libraries, museums, community groups, and other organizations engaged with the digital humanities. We seek individuals with and without academic or professional degrees, including current students. Serving on the ACH Exec involves attending quarterly meetings of the Exec, where you will report on the status of the tasks you have taken on (e.g. organizing events, taking on Twitter responsibilities, awarding bursaries) on behalf of the organization. The work expectation is around an hour per week, though this may be concentrated at particular times (e.g. if you are part of the conference committee) depending on what you decide to focus on.

How does nomination work?*

You are encouraged to self-nominate, as well as nominate others, using the very brief nomination form.

All are welcome to attend the Q&A event for running for ACH Exec or (co-VP) on December 15 at 4 PM Eastern.

The Nominations committee will follow up with nominees later in January to request brief candidate materials – a short candidate bio and summary of your interest in serving ACH.

Sample candidate statements from past elections are available, though please note we’ve changed the questions and added a maximum word cap this year. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of Executive Council members, please see our Bylaws.

For questions about nominations please contact co-VPs, Roopika Risam (rrisam@salemstate.edu) and Quinn Dombrowski (qad@stanford.edu).

About ACH

ACH is the US-based professional organization for digital humanities. ACH supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH advocates for and supports all of our members in their digital humanities work. Digital humanities is a broad term encompassing a wide range of subject domains, methods, and communities of practice, including (but not limited to) computer-assisted research, pedagogy, and software; resource creation, curation, and engagement; physical computing; the use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship; and humanistic research into and about digital objects and culture. ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects.

Call for Papers: DH Unbound 2022 (May 17-19, 2022)

Fri, 03 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

ACH and CSDH/SCHN are the U.S.-based and Canada-based constituent organizations in the Alliance for Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), respectively. Together, we are hosting a virtual conference, DH Unbound 2022, from May 17-19, 2022.

Check out our call for papers in English, Spanish, and French, and submit your proposal by January 15, 2022!

Reviving a collaboration that began with the Joint CSDH/SCHN and ACH Conference in 2015, DH Unbound facilitates collaboration between ACH, CSDH/SCHN, and other organizations sharing our commitment to creating virtual and hybrid spaces that showcase the diverse practices within digital humanities.

DH Unbound 2022 provides a forum for conversations about digital humanities in a broad range of subject areas, methods, languages, and communities of practice.

Tuesday, May 17th and Wednesday, May 18th will feature an array of synchronous presentations on a variety of topics in digital humanities drawn from the submission pool to DH Unbound 2022.
Thursday, May 19th will feature a hybrid crossover between DH Unbound 2022 and the Humanistica 2022 Conference (taking place in Montreal from May 19th-21st) with synchronous presentations drawn from submissions to both the virtual DH Unbound 2022 and the Humanistica 2022 conferences.

Please contact DH Unbound 2022 co-chairs Roopika Risam, Barbara Bordalejo, and Emmanuel Château-Dutier at dhunbound2022@ach.org with questions or concerns.

Event: Decoding DH job ads

Paige Morgan — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re thinking of applying for DH jobs in faculty or alt-ac roles, join ACH Mentoring for a “Decoding DH Job Ads” event on November 5th at 12 PM Eastern / 9 AM Pacific! Amanda Henrichs, Zoe LeBlanc, and Katie MacDonough will walk through real DH job ads to explain what they’re actually asking for. We’ll also cover how job ads and the application process work differently in the UK and Australia.

This event will be held November 5th at 12 PM Eastern / 9 AM Pacific, and will last until 10:30 AM Pacific.

Registration link

Portraits in DH: Dr. Sonya Donaldson

Anna E. Kijas — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Sonya Donaldson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English at New Jersey City University. She is the developer of a Black digital humanities project, Singing the Nation into Being. Donaldson was the 2016 recipient of a Mellon Career Enhancement Junior Faculty Fellowship, a 2019 Virginia Humanities Fellowship, and was recently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Virginia’s Scholars Lab. She is completing work on a book manuscript, Memory, History, and the Echoes of Diaspora and is a member of the Visionary Futures Collective.

Donaldson’s interest in digital humanities stems from her work in journalism. She pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Virginia—while working as a technology editor (2000-04/2006-10) and writer (2004-2006) for Black Enterprise Magazine—moving from writing and editing pieces about technology to thinking about it pedagogically. While at UVA, Donaldson taught a technology and identities course as part of an effort to teach students about tech literacy and the ethical implications of how we use and engage with technology. This course evolved into a new one that is also the namesake of her blog, Tech & Sensibility.

The idea for her current project, Singing the Nation into Being, was inspired by a response from African-American poet and writer, Amiri Baraka, who visited UVA in 2011 as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Black History Month celebrations. After hearing a performance by the group Black Voices of the first verse of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” Baraka responded that there was a lot more to that song. Donaldson started thinking about that “more.” As a Jamaican immigrant, she loves this song and how “singing this song was a way of participating in Black American life and being welcomed into a community.” She sang and heard the song at Black cultural events during her childhood, but wondered why it seemed to no longer be part of Black culture and social life, at least in her own experience. Baraka’s words and her own curiosity led her to internet searches for video performances and setting up Google alerts for new videos or mentions of this song. Donaldson soon realized that there were many recorded performances by Black people who were keeping this song alive.

One aspect that drew her in was the use of mashups, which gave people the ability to create a visual narrative while performing the song. Donaldson noted that people—complete strangers—were using similar images in their videos, including images of or related to Africa, Middle Passage, Slavery, and Barack Obama. She wondered how people were telling and making sense of the history of Africans in the Americas through this song. At this time, the project includes a sampling of about 75 videos, which Donaldson has analyzed, created brief narratives and minimal metadata about each recording. In addition, she reviewed the comments associated with the videos and thinks of “these videos as sites of memory,” and “the ephemeral archive.” Donaldson says that, “Thinking about ephemera collectively can tell us something about Black experiences, how people are articulating and understanding their relationship to Blackness, to culture, to the nation itself.” She goes on to say that “When we think about the archive and memory, I think there are ways in which the archives are constructed in a particular way that doesn’t allow for the kind of knowledge that gets circulated aurally and in an embodied form.” She believes that “A project like, Singing the Nation into Being, forces us to contend with how we formalize knowledge and value archive[s] as a particular construct. . . there’s a lot that gets left out in terms of Black histories and Black cultures.” Although ephemera may be seen as not having value beyond a specific moment in time, Donaldson sees the digital as enabling the ephemeral object, in this case the video, “to become part of a communal site of memory” that is accessible to anyone.

Working independently on this project, while teaching a full course load, as well as, at the time, directing a center and coordinating an academic program, brought to light a number of challenges of developing a digital humanities project. Donaldson looked to the minimal computing philosophy partly due to her frustration with the lack of support for Black DH scholars and digital humanities work in the academy. She chose to focus on the accessibility of the project and the people and groups she would be in conversation with—the students, community groups, cultural centers, and people who sing the song or want to teach the meaning of the song. Minimal computing was a way to bring clarity to what this project is about and encourage other people to remix the content.

When considering the historical reception of this song and how it has and continues to circulate, she points out that the composers, James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, wished for the song to circulate and be passed down aurally, so in this sense, the ephemerality of these internet videos fulfills their wish. One of her biggest desires is for students to engage with this collection. Additionally, she would love to see this project at a national museum, such as the Smithsonian and thinks that it could help us get to some important conversations in the U.S.

Fall 2021 Programming Historian Book Club

Paige Morgan — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH mentoring group is sponsoring a yearlong, public book club based on the English-language version of Programming Historian. These sessions are open to all (including non-members of ACH), and will offer a space for newcomers to the topic and to digital humanities to work through a Programming Historian lesson together in a supportive environment with one or two more experienced participants able to help and answer questions. Each session will be limited to approximately 20 participants. Each meeting is independent – they will each deal with different topics. No experience is required to attend. Before your chosen session please take a look at the linked materials and install the required software on your machine.

October 21st 3:30-5PM EST: Basic Text Processing in R
- Zoom registration
- R installation instructions
November 18th 3:30-5PM EST: Introduction to Python Sequence
- Zoom registration
- Python installation instructions

Stay tuned for news about the spring!

Call for Nominations and Applications: DHQ General Editor

Paige Morgan — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Originally posted at Digital Humanities Quarterly.

Digital Humanities Quarterly invites nominations and applications for a new General Editor to join the journal’s senior editorial team. This call is the first step in a longer process of updating DHQ’s editorial structure and practices, and the incoming editor will play a key role in helping us to reshape the journal’s larger editorial team, review and update editorial workflows, and put the journal on a secure footing for its next 15 years of operation. In particular we are seeking to diversify the journal’s staffing and bring in new voices. Scholars of color, underrepresented minorities, and people from the global South are strongly encouraged to apply. The new editor would join the team in early 2022 for a five-year term (renewable). The deadline for nominations is September 1, 2021, and the deadline for applications is October 1, 2021.

Founded in 2005, DHQ is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of digital humanities, published by the Association of Computers and the Humanities and the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations. Editorial operations are currently hosted at Northeastern University and Indiana University. DHQ publishes articles, case studies, field reports, and reviews across the range of digital humanities domains.

We seek someone who will contribute vision and energy to the journal’s long-term planning. Candidates should have a strong background in digital humanities, whether as a practitioner, faculty member, public servant, researcher, or other role. No specific experience is required, but applicants and nominees should have a commitment to and interest in open-access publishing and digital modes of publication, as well as to open-source development practices and open data. Experience with managing complex collaborative projects, developing funding proposals, or navigating the evolving waters of the digital humanities field would all be valuable.

The time commitment is roughly one to three hours per week on average, but more at some times than others, and likely quite a bit more at the start. The position’s responsibilities and activities include:

Meeting monthly as part of the general editor team
Contributing to the management of the journal’s operations. Possibilities include helping to coordinate the effort of the editorial board, contributing to or coordinating work on large-scale projects, maintaining connections with other journals and relevant institutions
Contributing to a specific aspect of the journal’s leadership, depending on expertise and interests
Contributing to the development and oversight of funding proposals

To nominate someone, submit a short nomination statement and contact information for the nominee via the nomination form. The deadline for nominations is September 1.

To apply, complete the application form which requests:

Your contact information
A short statement of interest (1-2 pages), including thoughts about your vision for the journal and how you would contribute
A CV or resumé

The deadline for applications is October 1.

For questions and information, contact Julia Flanders at j.flanders@northeastern.edu.

Report on ACH Racial Justice Project

Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As a key step toward meeting the goals described in our Statement on Black LIves Matter, Structural Racism, and Our Organization, the officers and members of the ACH Executive Council have worked during the first half of 2021 with consultants from DeEtta Jones and Associates on a review of the organization’s policies, procedures, and governance structures. We are happy today to share DJA’s report with the ACH community.

This report includes a wide range of possibilities for the officers and the council, as well as for the organization at large. It will be a major area of discussion at this summer’s Council meeting, as well as at the ACH General Meeting (AGM) to be held in conjunction with the ACH 2021 conference in July. Based on those conversations, we’ll then create a set of priorities and next steps, including a short-term timeline, which we’ll publish here for your feedback and further input by the end of September.

In the meantime, if you have responses to this report you’d like to share with us before the AGM, please feel free to email us at president@ach.org. We very much look forward to hearing from you.

Portraits in DH: Dr. Sylvia Fernández

Jewon Woo — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Interviewed on March 9, 2021 by Anna E. Kijas

Sylvia A. Fernández, Ph.D is currently a Public and Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hall Center for the Humanities, University of Kansas. She is a co-founder of Borderlands Archives Cartography, a member of Torn Apart / Separados, and team member and coordinator of the ongoing initiative of United Fronteras, as well as other collaborative projects. Fernández is working on a monograph and building a public and digital humanities project based on her dissertation titled, “Genealogía Transfronteriza: (Re)interpretaciones literarias de identidades femeninas en Cd. Juárez-El Paso”.

Fernández’s engagement with digital humanities (DH) began while she was a graduate student at the University of Houston. As she and her project co-founder Maira E. Álvarez worked on U.S.-Mexico border literature, they realized the limited perspective of the border through archives and literature, and decided that it was necessary to expand their scope by putting together primary sources, in this case newspapers, produced on both sides of the border include border in order to tell the many narratives of this binational region. Additionally, they were looking for a way to address the attacks on the border occurring during the Trump administration, and understand how people saw the border. Their conversations led to the development of Borderlands Archives Cartography, “a project to visualize the richness of transnational periodical archives located along the U.S.-Mexico border region since 1808 to 1930.” Although Fernández and Álvarez did not set out specifically to create a digital humanities project, they realized that conversations about access to archives or creating digital archives, in addition to use of technology and methods (e.g. geospatial visualization) were more often present in the work of practitioners in the digital humanities community than in their own disciplinary fields.

When asked about mentorship and community in digital humanities, Fernandez notes that several scholars, in particular, Élika Ortega, Alex Gil, and Roopika Risam, as well as the HASTAC Scholars made an important impact on her, encouraging her to apply for seed grants and scholarships, as well as to become more deeply involved in the digital humanities community. For example, Fernández received valuable feedback and considerations about sustainability and ownership which led her to make a conscious decision to keep this an independent project, especially as graduate students, so that it could move with them and evolve. She points out that she “felt that the community was welcoming to support scholars of color into DH.” Another observation Fernández makes is that she views the digital humanities community as more welcoming of works in progress and as an opportunity to help shape the development of the project through feedback. Working on Torn Apart / Separados with Risam, Gil, Moacir P. de Sá Pereira, Merisa Martínez, Manan Ahmed and others, Fernández points out that they gave her a different understanding of doing DH, considering approaches to project management, assigning project responsibilities and bringing everyone’s expertise into the project. Fernández also credits Brian Rosenbloom, Co-founder and co-director of the Institute of Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas, with providing her with insight into the DH side of libraries, which has been helpful to her understanding of DH more broadly. Similarly, she is very grateful to have the opportunity to have the best teammates and be able to work and learn from Maira Alvarez, Carolina Alonso, Verónica Romero, Laura Gonzales, Annette Zapata, Ivonne Ramírez, Rubria Rocha, Rosario Rogel, Verónica Benítez-Pérez, Abraham Monroy and Alan Colín.

Fernández hopes that Borderlands Archives Cartography, United Fronteras, among other projects in the line of Borderlands Digital Humanities will continue to grow in the future in order to continue doing social justice work by building bridges between communities in the Global North and South. She is interested in future collaborations, the possibility of creating partnerships with community members and organizations, and presenting these projects in museums and as public exhibitions. Fernández is currently working with Gris Muñoz, an artist (poet from El Paso), to collect testimonials or short stories about women in the border region. In 2020, they were awarded a Transborder Arts Fund from the Rubin Center for Visual Arts at UTEP to support this project titled, GeoTestimonios Transfronterizxs. The intention is “to create a digital cartography artifact that can tell particular stories from particular places on the border from women. How memory and literature recreates the places that have disappeared, etc.” They plan to make the first part available publicly in July 2021 and will continue with their workshop series with the hope that it will motivate other women to share their stories. Fernández believes that DH is also art and a space for community building and not just an academic pursuit. There is the potential to influence people through visual images, working in collaboration, rebuilding and creating new analog and digital tools. She has seen and participated in a DH community/field, set of practices and values that can have a personal and community impact in and out of academia and across borders. Fernandez mentions that DH has allow her to explore transborder identities and historical-feminists views through languages, literature, archives, and the digital record, foregrounding a deep exploration of (re)building models of transborder-transnational data, network analysis, visualizations, maps, and DH projects.

ACH Executive Council 2021 Elections Results and Bylaws Updates

Paige Morgan — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is pleased to announce the results of our 2021 elections. We had a slate of stellar candidates, and we are grateful to all the digital humanities practitioners for rising to the occasion of being nominees and willing to work at this organizational level.

The 2021-25 ACH Executive Council members are, in alphabetical order: Kim Gallon, Lorena Gauthereau, and Jennifer Isasi.

The terms of our newly elected Executive Council members will start at the close of the annual summer Executive Council meeting, which is intended to take place in connection with the 2021 ACH Conference, July 21-23.

An additional note: The proposed changes to the bylaws for ACH under “Management of the Association” have now been approved. Because of these approved changes, the bylaws will use gender-neutral pronouns, as well as allow for the possibility of a co-leadership model for a number of roles, such as those of the President, Vice-President, Executive Secretary, and Treasurer.

Portraits in DH: Marisa Parham and AADHum

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This past summer, in the wake of nationwide protests against police brutality and the murder of George Floyd, the ACH Executive Council published a statement expressing our solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. We are committed to strengthening our anti-racist practices in Association governance, in the activities that we sponsor—such as the ACH Conference—and through the ways in which we engage with ACH membership, such as this newsletter. Thus, with this February 2021 issue, we continue the “Portraits in DH” to feature emerging and established figures in digital humanities who are POC, or involved in DH efforts that focus on areas such as ethnic studies and postcolonial studies.

For this issue, we interviewed the Director Marisa Parham and her team of African American History, Culture and Digital Humanities (AADHum) at the University of Maryland. Read about Parham and AADHum here.

Interview questions for African American History, Culture and Digital Humanities (AADHum)

Andrew W. Smith – Research Fellow, AADHum, & graduate student in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Christin Washington – Graduate Assistant, AADHum, & graduate student in American Studies
Francena Turner – Postdoctoral Associate for Data Curation, AADHum/MITH
Kola Heyward-Rotimi – Faculty Assistant, AADHum
Marisa Parham, Director, AADHum, Associate Director, MITH, and Visiting Professor of English
Trevor Muñoz, Director, MITH and co-pi, AADHum
Aleia Brown, Assistant Director, AADHum
Purdom Lindblad, Assistant Director of Innovation and Learning, MITH
Grace Babukiika, Business Manager

1. How was African American History, Culture and Digital Humanities (AADHum) initiated?

Marisa: AADHum originated as a Mellon grant housed in the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) at the University of Maryland. Work that centers the study of Black life is embedded across the university, with people working from so many different disciplinary perspectives, from art and literary and cultural study through data science and public health. So from its inception AADHum has been uniquely positioned to thematize and amplify the study of Black life by being a center for experimental and intentionally digital research that can help scholars and artists connect their work about Black people to larger Black intellectual traditions.

2. How does AADHum work with other Black DH programs and projects, while differentiating it from them?

Marisa: At AADHum we focus both on critical digital humanities– producing scholarship that evaluates and extends the histories and impacts of digital technologies on Black lifeworlds– and also on the ideation and production of projects that highlight how Black life bears on the production and implementation of digital technologies.

Aleia: Imagining and producing digital projects brings unique opportunities to work with content experts and artists to think about their work in digital contexts. We love the challenges these collaborations bring. In addition to being a site for training scholars in Black DH, we also find our joy in experimenting and tinkering. Someone is always bringing a new tool or app to the group to play with and remix. Working in such a robust Black DH ecosystem means that we have endless ways to collaborate, support, and learn with other scholars, both at UMD and beyond.

Marisa: In AADHum’s first permutation, its director Catherine Knight Steele and her team did an amazing job establishing AADHum as a special kind of space, one in which Black digital studies concerns could be pursued in an intellectually robust and ethically caring and careful environment. You could really see this at the 2018 AADHum conference, during which hundreds of people experienced the exciting possibilities of pursuing Black Studies scholarship through the many new and emergent frames made possible by digital studies and digital humanities. This is a framework we have continued, particularly as we build an inclusive Black DH community of practitioners from across fields, disciplines, and institutions.

Aleia: An important element of our community building work has been the AADHum Scholars Program. For the last three years the AADHum Scholars Program has been a critical hub for training scholars in Black digital humanities. Throughout the year, the scholars participate in workshops that combine theory, skillbuilding, and project management. Each year, AADHum has worked with scholars at different institutions, as well as independent scholars and creators. They are in various stages of their career and work with the AADHum team to explore new ways of thinking about their work.

Marisa: When I joined AADHum this past semester, I was able to bring my experience with 5CollDH, as well as also a few team members from irLhumanities, all of whom have significant experience developing digital projects, ideation and prototyping. It’s also super exciting to see where we head in terms of public humanities, material culture studies, and curation, which are strong skills and connections that Aleia brings as AADHum’s assistant director. Once we began putting this all into practice with what was already built when we arrived, we could see how such a multifaceted approach to all things digital is much of what makes AADHum so distinctive.

Andrew: Many of the scholars we worked with last semester in the AADHum Scholars program are early-career researchers and we are deeply excited about their work and where they will take their projects next. And even as we work with more advanced scholars, we find that working with digital methods helps them to bring provocative new ideas to their fields, even while rooting them in Black DH theories and methods.

Aleia: You can really see all of this in our collaborations too. Just this past semester Marisa worked with AADHum and irLhumanities to offer a two part interactive writing workshop with Electric Marronage, and that same team worked with me when I offered a digital ideation and collage workshop, and also a conversation about Black fugitivity in library and curational spaces. I also lead the University of Maryland Restorative Justice Project, which is a project that uses a variety of digital technologies to develop speculative monuments based in Black campus experiences, with a focus on histories and futures of resistance.

3. How has the year of 2020, in particular the Black Lives Matter movements, shaped and/or reinforced the direction and purpose of AADHum?

Francena: The digital sped up our global and transnational conversations and collaborations. From my perspective as a CLIR fellow, it’s important that AADHum has ways to think about how Black people document contemporary acts of digital resistance and joy, as well as uncovering and finding innovative ways to share historical acts of resistance and joy.

Aleia: Yes! What the resurgence of the Movement for Black Lives this past spring has taught us is the value of setting the boldest and most capacious visions for Black life. The spirit that carries the movement is one that is useful for AADHum to capture in how we approach our work. Especially as we were incubating projects with the latest AADHum scholars cohort, we often followed lines of inquiry on how we can think dynamically about Black life in the digital, resisting flattened computational outputs.

Purdom: I think, too, the care practices, which have always been at the center of AADHum, were called into deeper practice with the Movement for Black Lives and the pandemic. Making space for the joy, visioning, grief, anger, frustration, inspiration… I love AADHum’s emphasis and intentional work of remixing what has been done with new scholarship as a way to balance nurturing our intellectual energies while marking (and protecting) spaces of rest.

4. What groups of audience and communities does AADHum target?

Andrew: One of AADHum’s strengths is its intentionality in engaging a broad set of African diasporic communities. The ways in which Black people are shaping and being shaped by digital technologies is influenced by the geographies in which our communities are built. Black cultures are bringing so much to the table as new digital forms emerge and AADHum is actively working to ensure there’s a seat for everyone. This means thinking beyond the United States, beyond the academy, and building relationships with intellectual and archival traditions which challenge and expand our approach to knowledge production and present exciting opportunities for understanding digital technologies.

Kola: I’ve been fortunate to have traveled to Nairobi and Johannesburg to learn about new forms of interaction that are developing around emergent technologies. Understanding how communities outside of our country are working with digital environments and tech allows us to develop an interconnected perspective on the birth of global computation– which is especially important as new systems of computation and digital representation grow more complex.

Purdom: AADHum team members have also been actively engaging with UMD’s Environmental Humanities Working Group, including leading discussions on environmental justice and digital humanities. AADHum’s investments in environmental justice work extends our thinking about reuse and repair, minimal technical stacks, modes of scholarly communication, visions for archives, community mobilization and care, and so on.

Andrew: We’re also excited about the ways artists, developers, creators, and their communities are entering into Black DH from outside strictly academic spaces. At AADHum we have convergence of a variety of skills and ways of thinking that has provided opportunities for us to push the field to its boundaries and expand into what lies beyond. These expansions become the foundation for innovative research practices that produce the tools and spaces needed to critically engage with digital technologies, and to help all kinds of communities do it too.

Christin: Our ongoing year-long symposium, Black as X has been doing exactly this — platforming experimental scholarship that is critically engaged with the digital as a form and tool of knowledge production that can open new ways of thinking about archival practices, storytelling histories, and the geographies of Black communities.

Purdom: Likewise, we’re also inspired by the work our colleagues in MITH have been doing with co-developing community-based digital archival research in Lakeland, which is an historically Black community adjacent to UMD. The Lakeland project is a great model because it centers project co-development, so what people can make once they are introduced to tools and recipes.

Trevor: In general,we know that working with communities in a deeply-partnered way transforms what we think we know. Our work with Lakelanders and with Dr. Mary Sies of UMD’s Department of American Studies challenges us to bring all of our creativity and knowledge to re-imagining what a digital community archive is and what kind of research it enables.We’re excited to continue this type of work with Black communities in the DMV.

Interview questions for Marisa Parham

1. How and when did you join AADHum?

I joined as director of AADHum in fall 2020! Prior to that I was a Professor of English at Amherst College (2001-2020), and also the former director of Five College Digital Humanities. AADHum had been on my radar for a while, and I was just so overwhelmingly impressed with what its former director, my now-colleague Dr. Catherine Knight Steele and her team had built. So this seemed like a great opportunity to continue with that work, while also trying out some new things.

2. What change of AADHum do you plan to make under your leadership?

I have been fortunate over the years to have been able to center Black DH across projects and across institutions. I think there are a fair number of people who have also been doing this work for a while, prior to this current moment. So I’m really interested in taking this as an opportunity to work through AADHum to explore the boundaries of digital humanities and digital studies. Because we have such strong roots in Black and feminist digital studies, digital and experimental publishing, and also work alongside MITH, AADHum is especially well-situated to broaden the Black digital humanities landscape in new and unexpected ways.

3. What challenges and promises do you think that Black DH has at this moment?

The distribution of Black Studies scholarship across disciplines constantly produces so many different kinds of intellectual opportunities, as has always been the case. It is also a real challenge, because thinking about Black DH from a big tent perspective means honoring the inherent interdisciplinarity at the core of Black Studies. As I’ve noted in other conversations, there are far more people engaging in varieties of digital humanities than there are people who refer to themselves as digital humanists. Who are they, and what are they working on? I’m thinking of the visual and sound artists, the game developers, material culture scholars, authors working in electronic literature… How do we more intentionally connect digital inquiry to these various threads, both from a genealogical perspective and in ways that offer accessible pathways, so that more people can center this work in their own careers? So supporting the work of critics, historians, and other humanists, but also actively empowering people to choose to work in other less-traditional modalities. Finding ways to move, mix, and remix ideas across genre and medium is central to the Black intellectual tradition in the Americas. At AADHum we are looking to honor and to amplify that legacy, while holding our feminist and decolonial lessons close. The ability to oscillate between making and thinking– critical making as a praxis, hand, heart, and mind– is a synergy at the center of both Black digital humanities and at the center of Black intellectual traditions more generally.

4. It has been four years since Dr. Kim Gallon’s essay, “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities” and Black DH, as a field, has grown exponentially since then. What impact on Black Studies has AADHum made so far? What do you see is next for Black DH?

In terms of what is next, I think it’s important to articulate how and why Black DH helps thinkers move intentionally across modalities. Creative coding, scholarly publishing, investigating connections between digital experience and histories of Black material culture–these are examples of how Black DH might move between scholarship and creative practice. And this is a dimensionally-complex space that absolutely belongs to Black DH, because it is the space in which Black Studies flourished long before it was ever institutionally acceptable to do so. The work of Black digital humanities is to continue the methodologically diverse pursuits that already characterize Black Studies, while also offering new pathways and opportunities for assuring that we can continue with the hybrid work of insight, hindsight, and foresight that has always characterized Black intellectual thought.

I’m also thinking of what Aleia is saying when she talks about the capaciousness of Blackness. At AADHum, for example, we’ve been thinking a lot about the critical and technical connections between Black diasporic lifeworlds and digital production tools, for instance virtual, augmented, and mixed realities. This kind of work has moved our scholarship from DuBois, to game studies, to landing on a new set of tools and pathways for both making and theorization. Taken together, Black digital studies and Black critical making offer us new ways to learn from, capture, and amplify the living legacies of Black experience.

5. I consider you to be one of the foundational scholars of Black DH. Who are some of the early-career researchers who you think should have more recognition and make you excited for what is to come in the field?

First, thank you! At risk of repeating myself, I’m particularly invested in makers who work outside of very specific library or history-based paradigms for what DH looks like. Such work is critically important, but we must also be careful that our focus on institutional configurations of scholarship don’t hamper us in our ability to fold in people and projects working in other ways. So with that in mind, right now I’m really excited by scholars who for some reason fall outside the bounds of whatever we decide to call “DH.” This upcoming year we’ll be featuring work in computational poetry from Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and we’re greatly inspired by Fox Harrell’s ICE lab, as well as the work Tahir Hemphill does with the Rap Research Lab. I’m also thinking about the arts and installation work, and how so much of the digital resonated with those traditions, for instance artists like Mendi + Keith Obadike and DJ Spooky as Black DH forbearers, as well as more recent work by scholars like Mimi Onuoha and Nontsikelelo Mutiti. On the Black digital studies side, I’m super interested in scholars working at the intersections of academic scholarship and popular media, for instance King Avril, and also people working to deepen the reach of digital scholarship across the diaspora, for instance Schuyler Esprit’s work with Create Caribbean. On the DH project side, we’ve been following Christy Hyman’s work on the Great Dismal Swamp and, yes, we could do this all day long!

6. In addition to directing AADHum, what other DH project(s) do you currently work on?

Right now I’m building a hybrid physical computing and augmented reality project that helps us think about moving between physical objects and the obdurately ephemeral feeling of digital experience. On the critical side I’m trying my hand at more baseline work around field contours and definition, because I am genuinely interested in finding better ways to articulate Black Studies genealogies in relation to digital humanities and technology studies. So right now I’m contracted for a few pieces that situate Black digital humanities concerns in larger DH or American literary and cultural contexts. I’ve also just completed a section intro on digital humanities for a forthcoming volume from the African American Intellectual History Society. Even though they’re quite different from the kind of work I usually do now, I like each of these because they’re pushing me to think about DH in relation to other scholarly traditions. I’m also, finally, working toward releasing a book-length interactive project that focuses on memory, haunting, digitality, and Black environmental experience, Black Haunts in the Anthropocene.

MLA 2021: ACH Digital Project Showcase

Paige Morgan — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This year’s virtual MLA Convention featured a Digital Project Showcase, where several scholars presented work that is ongoing or just getting started. We’re very pleased to share the slides that were shown in that panel, introducing the projects in question.

The showcase featured projects from Kendra Leonard (SHEAF: Shakespeare in Early Film), Grant Glass (An Adaptive Methodology: Using Machine Learning to Identify Adaptations), Benoit Berthelier (Detecting clichés and stock characters in North Korean fiction), Illya Nokhrin (eREED: Records of Early English Drama), Lorena Gauthereau (US Latino Digital Humanities), John Misak (Perchance to Learn: leveraging video games and mixed reality to teach literature), Lisa Rhody (Digital Humanities Research Institute), Annie Galvin (Public Books 101), and Graham Jensen (Canadian Modernist Magazines Project). Many thanks to all of them for joining us to discuss their work!

Convocatoria: Association for Computers and the Humanities 2021

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Francés | Inglés

Fecha límite: 28 de febrero de 2021

Entregar propuesta

El segundo congreso de la Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) se llevará a cabo de forma virtual del 22-23 de julio de 2021. (Esperamos celebrar la ACH 2022 en Houston,Texas, en persona y con un componente virtual ).

Descripción del congreso

ACH es la organización constituyente de Estados Unidos que forma parte de la Alianza de Organizaciones de Humanidades Digitales (ADHO). El congreso de ACH 2021 asociado con el programa de US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH) de la Universidad de Houston y University Libraries, Texas Southern University, Rice University, Texas A&M College Station, Texas A&M Prairie View, UH Clear Lake, UH Downtown y Houston Community College, abre este espacio para ampliar la definición de las humanidades digitales a través de una extensa gama de temas, métodos y comunidades de práctica.

ACH reconoce que este trabajo está inherente e inextricablemente vinculado a la sociopolítica y, especialmente (aunque no exclusivamente) agradece las propuestas que enfatizan la justicia social dentro en el trabajo antiracista, los estudios afro (Black), latinx, indígenas, culturales y étnicos críticos, poscolonialies y decoloniales, feminismo interseccional e intervenciones cuir en estudios digitales.

Las áreas de trabajo incluyen (pero no se limitan) a lo siguiente:

justicia social;
vigilancia digital;
humanidades ambientales y justicia climática;
acercamientos computacionales y digitales a la investigación humanística y pedagógica;
pedagogía, investigación y activismo digital durante el COVID-19;
medios digitales, arte, literatura, historia, música, cinematografía y juegos;
bibliotecología digital;
herramientas e infraestructuras de humanidades digitales;
investigación humanística sobre objetos digitales y culturas;
infraestructuras del conocimiento;
física de la computación;
creación de recursos, preservación y participación;
uso de la tecnología para escribir, publicar y evaluar trabajo académico,

como entidad comprometida con la investigación interdisciplinaria, ACH acepta propuestas con estos temas. También estamos sumamente interesados en recibir propuestas de participantes de distintos rangos y campos de experticia, incluyendo personas en puestos alt-ac, empleos fuera de la universidad y estudiantes graduados. Además, hacemos un llamado especial a aquellos participantes que recién se incorporan a las humanidades digitales.

Propuestas para el congreso

Las propuestas deberán entregarse utilizando Conftool. Favor de crear una nueva cuenta para someter su propuesta.

Dado que ACH2021 es una conferencia virtual, les alentamos a que consideren presentar en formatos que vayan más allá de la ponencia tradicional de 20 minutos, como las mesas redondas, paneles de múltiples presentadores, pósters, presentaciones relámpago, exhibiciones o puestas en escena. Al proponer una sesión, pedimos que por favor la describa (según su tipo) y seleccione el tiempo específico de duración. Debajo encontrará algunas sugerencias, pero invitamos a los presentadores a pensar de manera creativa y proponer otras posibilidades. Finalmente, para permitir la máxima diversidad de participantes, sólo se les permitirá presentar en dos eventos (paneles/mesas redondas/talleres).

Las propuestas deberán incluir:

Abstracto: 250 palabras, pósters, charlas relámpago, instalaciones/performances y propuestas de 500 palabras para paneles, mesas redondas y talleres.
indicar el tiempo de duración
lista de participantes [en ConfTool]
público
formato de la sesión
3-5 palabras clave en inglés [en ConfTool]

Aunque las propuestas deben estar claramente vinculadas a los debates académicos existentes, no se requieren referencias formales, excepto a citas directas. Las propuestas serán evaluadas a través del proceso de arbitraje anónimo, así que, por favor elimine de su propuesta toda información que indique autoría, tales como nombre y afiliación de la narrativa en la propuesta cuando la suba a ConfTool.

Nuestra convocatoria está disponible en inglés, español y francés, sin embargo, propuestas en otros idiomas también son bienvenidas. Todas las propuestas serán evaluadas en el mismo idioma en el que fueron entregadas, pero independientemente de ello, pedimos que las 5 palabras claves sean en inglés con el fin de facilitar la organización del programa.

Es importante mencionar que por razones de tiempo en la organización del programa es posible que se recomiende una duración alternativa o la colaboración entre propuestas que se relacionen. Aunque no existe un número límite para la entrega de propuestas, el comité se limitará a incluir un máximo de dos presentaciones del autor principal.

Tipos de propuestas sugeridas y duración

A continuación encontrará sugerencias para los tipos de propuestas y su tiempo estimado de duración. Estamos abiertos a otras alternativas.

Talleres (1-2 horas): sesiones de práctica dirigida por presentadores con experiencia (técnica o de otro tipo) en un tema emergente o una metodología de gran interés para la comunidad de ACH.
Paneles (1 hora): sesiones de interacción para facilitar el diálogo entre los panelistas y la audiencia en aras de resaltar las conexiones entre proyectos, métodos o temas.
Presentaciones individuales (10-15 minutos): Presentaciones dinámicas en las que se comparte el proceso de experimentación, los trabajos en proceso, las reflexiones concretas y los resultados de proyectos más completos para involucrar a los participantes y fomentar conexiones y diálogo.
Mesas redondas (1 hora): sesiones en las que los presentadores proporcionan breves intervenciones o puntualizan sobre diferentes asuntos, palabras clave, métodos y/o temas. Lo sigue una discusión pública entre los presentadores y la audiencia.
Presentaciones relámpago (5 minutos): exposiciones sumamente breves para introducir un tema, método, herramienta, proyecto o trabajo en proceso con el fin de concretar ideas y dar seguimiento a un diálogo.
Pósters (sesión de pósters): esta propuesta puede tratar el trabajo de cualquier tema relevante u ofrecer demostraciones de herramientas, softwares o proyectos en cualquiera de sus etapas de desarrollo.
Instalaciones y performances (grabadas con anticipación): exhibición de arte, visualización creativa de data, performances, demostraciones y otras intervenciones críticas que aborden cuestiones, métodos y temas del congreso.

Proceso de revisión y notificación

Las propuestas enviadas al ACH 2021 pasarán por un arbitraje anónimo. Para facilitar este proceso, por favor elimine toda información que identifique la autoría, incluyendo nombre y afiliación, de su propuesta.

Código de conducta

ACH está dedicada a crear un entorno seguro, respetuoso y profesional durante el congreso para el beneficio de todos los asistentes y en pro del avance de la investigación y el trabajo académico en los campos que abarcan ACH. ACH 2021 se regirá por el código de conducta del congreso de ADHO: ADHO Conference Code of Conduct. Por favor revise el código de conducta e indique su compromiso de cumplirlo al momento de registrar su cuenta en ConfTool.

Accesibilidad

ACH trabaja para asegurar que el congreso sea accesible para todos los participantes. Con este fin, se proporcionarán las pautas necesarias para que los aceptados tengan toda forma de acceso a las sesiones. A principios del 2021 compartiremos más información y le pediremos que nos notifique si tiene necesidades especiales durante el evento.

Viaje y alojamiento

ACH 2021 se llevará a cabo de manera virtual en el horario Central.

Contactos

Si tiene preguntas e inquietudes en relación a la convocatoria, el itinerario del congreso, la entrega de propuestas, el código de conducta, por favor contacte al comité del programa: ach2021@ach.org.

También puede contactarlos si le interesa traducir esta convocatoria al portugués, alemán, italiano o algún otro idioma.

Comité del programa

Co-vicepresidenta: Lorena Gauthereau, University of Houston
Co-vicepresidenta: Tanya Clement, University of Texas at Austin
Taylor Arnold, University of Richmond
Mackenzie Brooks, Washington and Lee University
Arun Jacob, University of Toronto
Lisa Spiro, Rice University
Toniesha Taylor, Texas Southern University
Vika Zafrin, ACH / Akamai Technologies

Comité directivo

Gabriela Baeza Ventura, University of Houston
Tanya Clement, University of Texas at Austin
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Michigan State University
Lorena Gauthereau, University of Houston
Jennifer Guiliano, Indiana University Purdue University
Roopika Risam, Salem State University
Santi Thompson, University of Houston

Call for Proposals: Association for Computers and the Humanities 2021

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

French | Spanish

Deadline: February 28, 2021

Submit a proposal

The second annual Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) conference will take place virtually on July 22-23, 2021. (ACH plans to host an in-person conference with a virtual component in 2022 in Houston, Texas.)

Conference Description

ACH is the United States-based constituent organization in the Alliance for Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). The ACH 2021 conference, in partnership with the University of Houston’s US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH) program and University Libraries, Texas Southern University, Rice University, Texas A&M College Station, Texas A&M Prairie View, UH Clear Lake, UH Downtown, and Houston Community College, provides a forum for conversations on an expansive definition of digital humanities in a broad array of subject areas, methods, and communities of practice.

ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus especially welcomes proposals that emphasize social justice in the context of anti-racist work, Black studies, Latinx studies, Indigenous studies, cultural and critical ethnic studies, intersectional feminism, postcolonial and decolonial studies, and queer interventions in digital studies.

Areas of engagement include but are not limited to:

Social justice
Digital surveillance
Environmental humanities & climate justice
Computational and digital approaches to humanistic research and pedagogy
Digital pedagogy, research, and activism during COVID-19
Digital media, art, literature, history, music, film, and games
Digital librarianship
Digital humanities tools and infrastructures
Humanistic research on digital objects and cultures
Knowledge infrastructures
Physical computing
Resource creation, curation, and engagement
Use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship

As an organization committed to cross-disciplinary engagement, we welcome interdisciplinary proposals. We also are especially interested in receiving proposals from participants with a range of expertise and from a variety of roles, including alt-ac positions, employment outside of higher education, and graduate students. We further invite proposals from participants who are newcomers to digital humanities.

Conference Proposals

Proposals will be submitted using ConfTool. Please create a new account to submit your proposal.

Given that ACH2021 is a virtual conference, we especially encourage those proposing sessions to consider formats beyond the traditional 20-minute paper panels, such as roundtables, multi-speaker panels, digital posters, lightning talks, installations, and performances. When proposing a session, we ask that you describe your session type and indicate a preferred time length for the session. Suggestions are below, but we encourage proposers to move beyond them and to think creatively about other possibilities. Finally, in an effort to maximize a diverse set of participants, we will limit presenters to two events (panels/roundtables/workshops).

Proposals should include:

Abstract: Abstract: 250-word abstract for papers, posters, lightning talks, installations/performances and 500-word proposals for panels, roundtables, and workshops.
Requested time length
List of participants [entered into ConfTool]
Audience
Format for the session
3-5 keywords [entered into ConfTool]

While proposals should be clearly linked to existing scholarly debates, formal citations are not required except for direct quotation. Submissions will be evaluated using fully anonymous peer review, so please omit identifying information, including author name and affiliation, in the narrative of the proposal when you upload to ConfTool.

While our CFP has been released in English, Spanish, and French, we welcome proposals for contributions in other languages. Proposals will be reviewed in the language of submission. Regardless of the language of your proposal, please ensure that your five keywords are in English to facilitate program scheduling.

Please note that for the purposes of scheduling, we may suggest an alternative length or collaboration between related proposals. While there is no limit on the number of submissions, the committee will not normally schedule more than two presentations from one primary author.

Suggested Proposal Types and Duration

The proposal types and durations below are suggestions. We eagerly welcome alternatives.

Workshops (1-2 hours): In-depth hands-on sessions led by presenters with expertise, technical or otherwise, in an emerging topic or methodology of broad interest to the ACH community.
Panels (1 hour): Engaging sessions that facilitate dialogue between presentations that are largely independent, highlighting connections between projects, methods, or themes.
Papers (10-15 minutes): Dynamic presentations that share experiments, works in progress, or sustained reflections and outcomes of more complete projects while engaging a range of participants and fostering connections and dialogue.
Roundtables (1 hour): Sessions for which speakers provide brief interventions or framing on a cohesive set of issues, keywords, methods, and/or themes, followed by open discussion among speakers and the audience.
Lightning Talks (5 minutes): Highly-focused presentations that succinctly introduce a topic, method, tool, project, or work-in-progress to catalyze ideas and foster follow-up discussion.
Posters (poster session): Poster proposals present work on any relevant topic or offer project tool, and software demonstrations in any stage of development.
Installations and Performances (prerecorded): Art work, creative data visualizations, performances, demonstrations, and other critical interventions that engage conference issues, methods and themes.

Proposal Review and Notification

ACH 2021 submissions will undergo an anonymous peer review. Please remove all identifying information from your proposal submission including author name and affiliation.

Code of Conduct

ACH is dedicated to creating a safe, respectful, and collegial conference environment for the benefit of everyone who attends and for the advancement of research and scholarship in fields supported by ACH. The ACH 2021 conference will be governed by the ADHO Conference Code of Conduct. Please review the Code of Conduct and indicate your willingness to observe it when signing up for your ConfTool account.

Accessibility

ACH strives to ensure that the conference is accessible for all participants. We will provide guidelines for accessibility of sessions to all accepted participants. More information, along with a request for information about participant needs, will be circulated in early 2021.

Travel and Accommodations

ACH 2021 will take place online and be scheduled in Central Time.

Contact Information

For questions and concerns about the CFP, conference program, submissions, Code of Conduct, or accessibility, please contact the program committee at ach2021[at]ach.org.

If you are interested in translating this call for proposals into Portuguese, German, Italian, or another language, please contact the co-chairs.

Program Committee

Co-chair: Lorena Gauthereau, University of Houston
Co-chair: Tanya Clement, University of Texas at Austin
Taylor Arnold, University of Richmond
Mackenzie Brooks, Washington and Lee University
Arun Jacob, University of Toronto
Lisa Spiro, Rice University
Toniesha Taylor, Texas Southern University
Vika Zafrin, ACH / Akamai Technologies

Steering Committee

Gabriela Baeza Ventura, University of Houston
Tanya Clement, University of Texas at Austin
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Michigan State University
Lorena Gauthereau, University of Houston
Jennifer Guiliano, Indiana University Purdue University
Roopika Risam, Salem State University
Santi Thompson, University of Houston

Appel à Propositions: Association for Computers and the Humanities 2021

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Anglais | Espagnol

Date limite: 28 février 2021

Soumission de propositions

Le deuxième colloque de l*’Association for Computers and Humanities* (ACH) aura lieu en ligne en raison de la crise sanitaire.

Informations générales

L’ACH est la société savante qui représente principalement les États-Unis au sein de l’Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). Le colloque ACH 2021, avec le programme US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH) d’université d’Houston, Houston University Libraries, Texas Southern University, Rice University, Texas A&M College Station, Texas A&M Prairie View, UH Clear Lake, UH Downtown, et Houston Community College, fournit un forum de discussion pour une définition étendue des humanités numériques dans un large éventail de domaines, de méthodes et de communautés de pratique.

L’ACH reconnaît que ce travail est intrinsèquement et inextricablement sociopolitique et, par conséquent, se réjouit des études qui mettent l’accent sur la justice sociale grâce au contexte d’antiracisme, le « Black studies », le « Latinx studies », l’« Indigenous studies », les études ethniques culturelles et critiques, de féminisme intersectionnel, les études postcoloniales et décolonisées, et les interventions queers dans les humanités numériques.

Les sujets incluent, mais ne sont pas limités :

à la justice sociale ;
à la surveillance numérique ;
aux humanités d’environnement et justice du climat ;
aux approches numériques à la recherche et à la pédagogie ;
à pédagogie numérique, recherche et activisme pendant la COVID-19 ;
aux médias, arts, littérature, historique, musique, films et jouets numériques ;
à la bibliothéconomie numérique ;
aux outils et infrastructures numériques pour les sciences humaines ;
à la recherche humanistique sur les objets et les cultures numériques ;
à l’informatique physique ;
à la création de ressources, curation et engagement ;
à l’utilisation des technologies numériques pour écrire, publier et réviser de la recherche.

En tant qu’organisation engagée dans un espace interdisciplinaire, nous accueillons favorablement les propositions interdisciplinaires. Nous souhaitons recevoir des propositions de participants ayant des compétences et des rôles variés, y compris des postes dits alternatifs dans l’académie, des emplois en dehors de l’enseignement supérieur et des étudiants diplômés. Nous invitons en outre les propositions de participants nouveaux venus dans le domaine des humanités numériques.

Soumissions au colloque

Les propositions doivent être soumises en utilisant ConfTool. Veuillez créer un nouveau compte pour soumettre votre proposition.

Nous encourageons ceux qui proposent des sessions à envisager des formats autres que les panneaux de papier traditionnels de 20 minutes, tels que les tables rondes, les panels multiconférenciers, les affiches numériques, les conférences-éclair, les installations et les performances. Lorsque vous proposez une session, nous vous demandons de décrire votre type de session et de sélectionner une durée préférée pour cette session. Nous offrons quelques suggestions ci-dessus, mais nous encourageons les proposant à les dépasser et à réfléchir de manière créative aux autres possibilités. Enfin, dans un effort pour maximiser un ensemble diversifié de participants, nous limiterons les présentateurs à deux événements (panels / tables rondes / ateliers).

Les propositions doivent inclure :

un résumé de 250 mots pour les soumissions individuelles et des propositions de 500 mots pour les présentations multi-intervenants ;
la durée requise ;
les participants ;
le public ciblé de la session ;
le format ;
trois à cinq mots-clés (en anglais).

Bien que les propositions soient clairement liées aux débats universitaires existants, les citations formelles ne sont pas obligatoires, sauf pour les citations directes. Les soumissions seront évaluées par les pairs à double insu. Veuillez donc omettre les informations d’identification, y compris le nom et l’affiliation de l’auteur, dans la proposition.

Bien que notre appel de propositions ait été publié en anglais, espagnol et en français, nous accueillons favorablement les propositions de contributions dans d’autres langues. Les propositions seront examinées dans la langue de soumission. Quelle que soit la langue de votre proposition, veuillez vous assurer que vos cinq mots-clés soient en anglais pour faciliter la planification du programme.

Veuillez noter que pour les besoins de la planification, nous pouvons suggérer une autre longueur ou une collaboration entre les propositions connexes. Bien que le nombre de soumissions ne soit pas limité, le comité ne prévoit normalement pas plus de deux présentations d’un même auteur principal.

Suggestions pour les types de propositions et leur durée

Les types de propositions et les durées ci-dessous sont des suggestions ; nous accueillerons avec enthousiasme des variantes.

Ateliers (1-2 heures) : Sessions pratiques approfondies animées par des présentateurs ayant une expertise, technique ou autre, sur un sujet ou une méthodologie émergente présentant un grand intérêt pour la communauté ACH.
Panneaux (1 heure) : Sessions engageantes qui facilitent le dialogue entre les panélistes et les membres du panel et l’auditoire et mettent en évidence les liens entre les projets, les méthodes ou les thèmes.
Articles (10-15 minutes) : Présentations dynamiques qui partagent des expériences, des travaux en cours et des réflexions et des résultats soutenus de projets plus complets, tout en engageant un éventail de participants et en favorisant les connexions et le dialogue.
Tables rondes (1 heure) : Séances pour lesquelles les conférenciers fournissent de brèves interventions ou encadrent un ensemble de questions, de mots-clés, de méthodes et/ou de thèmes, suivis d’une discussion ouverte entre les intervenants et le public.
« Lightning Talks » (5 minutes) : Présentations hautement ciblées qui présentent succinctement un sujet, une méthode, un outil, un projet ou un travail en cours pour catalyser des idées et favoriser une discussion après la présentation.
Installations et performances (préenregistrés) : travaux d’art, visualisations de données créatives, performances, démonstrations et autres interventions critiques qui impliquent des problèmes, des méthodes et des thèmes de conférence.

Évaluation de la proposition et notification

Les soumissions à ACH 2021 feront l’objet d’une évaluation anonyme. Veuillez supprimer toute information pouvant mener à l’identification de votre proposition, y compris le nom de l’auteur et l’affiliation dans les fichiers.

Code de conduite

L’ACH se consacre à la création d’un environnement de conférence sûr, respectueux et collégial au bénéfice de tous ceux qui y participent et pour l’avancement de la recherche dans des domaines soutenus par L’ACH. La conférence ACH 2021 sera régie par le code de conduite de la conférence ADHO. Veuillez consulter le code de conduite et indiquer votre volonté de l’observer lors de votre inscription à votre compte ConfTool.

Accessibilité

L’ACH s’efforce de faire en sorte que la conférence soit accessible à tous les participants. Nous fournirons des lignes directrices sur l’accessibilité des sessions à tous les participants acceptés. De plus amples informations, ainsi qu’une demande d’informations sur les besoins des participants, seront diffusées au début de 2021.

Voyage et hébergement

ACH 202 aura en ligne. Les événements seront programmés pour le fuseau horaire de Houston au Texas.

Contact

Si vous avez besoin de conseils au sujet de l’appel, le programme, les soumissions, le code de conduite, l’accessibilité ou tout autre sujet, veuillez contacter le Comité de programme ach2021@ach.org. Veuillez contacter les co-présidents pour l’appel à communications en portugais, allemand, italien ou autre langue.

Comité de programme

Co-chair: Lorena Gauthereau, University of Houston
Co-chair: Tanya Clement, University of Texas at Austin
Taylor Arnold, University of Richmond
Mackenzie Brooks, Washington and Lee University
Arun Jacob, University of Toronto
Lisa Spiro, Rice University
Toniesha Taylor, Texas Southern University
Vika Zafrin, ACH / Akamai Technologies

Comité d’organisation

Gabriela Baeza Ventura, University of Houston
Tanya Clement, University of Texas at Austin
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Michigan State University
Lorena Gauthereau, University of Houston
Jennifer Guiliano, Indiana University Purdue University
Roopika Risam, Salem State University
Santi Thompson, University of Houston

DeEtta Jones & Associates to Work with ACH on Racial Justice Review

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In June, The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) released our Statement on Black Lives Matter, Structural Racism, and Our Organization. In keeping with our commitments to action, we are proud to announce DeEtta Jones & Associates (DJA) as our external partner in conducting a systematic review of ACH policies and organizational culture as it relates to issues of structural racism, particularly in connection with the ACH conference, publications, governance, and leadership.

DJA is a minority- and woman-owned management consulting and training firm. Since 2005, they have been a key partner in the library and information arenas on taking action toward anti-racism and equity. DJA guides leaders and organizations on a journey that builds capacity, strengthens innovation, and increases organizational performance by creating a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive environment. Their expertise in guiding structural change will be invaluable to ACH as we move ahead in this crucial work.

From now through March 2021, DJA will be engaging in an organizational analysis to develop initial recommendations. Lead Consultant Tyler Dzuba and a team of DJA colleagues will review organizational practices and interview groups of members, past members, and collaborators to inform their analysis. Throughout, they will work closely with the ACH Officers and Council to develop a full picture of the Association’s context and path forward. In the following year, ACH and DJA plan to continue their collaboration in order to systematize and strategize about ongoing changes and anti-racist actions.

We, the Officers, plan to keep the membership updated here and in other venues throughout the coming months as this work progresses. Thank you for your commitment to building a better ACH; we look forward to continually doing that work alongside you.

Call for Nominations: ACH Executive Council

Thomas Padilla — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Due date for nominations: December 15, 2020

ACH seeks three new Executive Council Representatives to serve a 4-year term (2021-2025).

What does an ACH Executive Council Representative do?

In your role as an elected Executive Council Representative you have opportunities to form and serve on committees that promote the interests of the membership. Committees include but are not limited to Advocacy, Membership, and Infrastructure. In concert with ACH officers, Executive Council Representatives participate in quarterly calls, develop and uphold ACH policies, determine and distribute funding, and oversee all organizational activities. Major activities include building toward the ACH 2021 conference and delivering on the set of initial actions described in the ACH Statement on Black Lives Matter, Structural Racism, and Our Organization.

Anyone who is a current ACH member (or who is willing to join ACH if elected) and is willing to represent and advocate for our membership and other digital humanists is eligible. Folks who are new to DH and/or to the ACH are encouraged to bring their viewpoint to our organization’s governance as Executive Council Representatives.

Who are we looking for?

We especially hope for a slate of candidates that is diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession, citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds.

How does nomination work?*

You are encouraged to self-nominate, as well as nominate others, using the nomination form.

The Nominations committee will follow up with nominees in January to request brief candidate materials – a short candidate bio and summary of your interest in serving ACH.

For questions about nominations please contact Nominations Chair, Thomas Padilla, thomas.padilla@unlv.edu.

About ACH

The ACH supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH advocates for and supports all of our members in their digital humanities work. Digital humanities is a broad term encompassing a wide range of subject domains, methods, and communities of practice, including (but not limited to) computer-assisted research, pedagogy, and software; resource creation, curation, and engagement; physical computing; the use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship; and humanistic research into and about digital objects and culture. ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects.

Introducing “Portraits in DH”

Patricia Hswe — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Thus, with this fall 2020 issue, we launch a new section called “Portraits in DH.” It will feature emerging and established figures in digital humanities who are BIPOC, or involved in DH efforts that are focused on areas such as ethnic studies and postcolonial studies. The inaugural portraits below highlight two scholars, Hadassah St. Hubert and Kenton Rambsy, each of whom has had compelling trajectories in the field and is rapidly making their mark in the humanities. These glimpses into their careers also touch on how the pandemic has affected each of them and how they work.

Hadassah St. Hubert – Promoting Primary Sources about Haiti and the Caribbean

Serendipity in the archives

Hadassah St. Hubert is currently the CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Florida International University (FIU).^[1] Ask her about how she got interested in the topic of her dissertation (the role that the cultural phenomenon of world’s fairs played in Haiti’s history), and she talks authoritatively about the evidence that primary sources held—and still hold—for her research. “I was studying women’s roles in dictatorship and came across records about the 1949-1950 World’s Fair in Haiti by accident.” As St. Hubert learned, the planning and development of the infrastructure for such a large-scale exposition gave Haiti the international recognition it had been lacking up to that point, drawing the attendance of 250,000 people during the seven months that the Fair was active. The event essentially put Port-au-Prince on the map as a tourist capital.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean

Some of the archival materials that St. Hubert consulted, such as old sketches of the exposition area in Haiti, may be found in the Digital Library of the Caribbean, also known as dLOC. dLOC is also the effort that St. Hubert has been helping to oversee as a CLIR postdoc. In this role, she has gained administrative and project management experience and notes the close and welcome involvement of the Executive Committee and Scholarly Advisory Board. St. Hubert has also been a prolific grant collaborator. One of the achievements of St. Hubert’s tenure at dLOC has been engaging the Institut de Sauvegarde de Patrimoine National, or ISPAN, which is an organization devoted to the preservation of national historic sites and monuments in Haiti, as a partner in dLOC. A related effort—which St. Hubert also worked to secure dLOC and ISPAN—is the grant awarded by the University of California, Los Angeles, under its Modern Endangered Archives grant program (funded by the Arcadia Foundation), to support dLOC’s digitization of the ISPAN archive. Finally, St. Hubert is also the Scholarly Lead on a dLOC project funded through the Collections as Data program, in which dLOC is enhancing access to existing Caribbean newspaper collections by making texts available for bulk download to users. This effort will facilitate modes of scholarship that depend on image and textual data at scale and enable a new level of access to titles not yet included in newspaper data resources such as Chronicling America.

Pandemic thoughts

St. Hubert notes that while the pandemic persists, all digitization projects for dLOC have been put on hold, and schedules for library staff have been staggered to protect people as much as possible. dLOC staff are currently working remotely and focusing on grant projects such as those mentioned above.

^[1] Full disclosure: The author of this blog post is the program officer for Public Knowledge at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which funds this CLIR postdoctoral fellowship program and the Collections as Data grant mentioned at the end of the second paragraph of the profile about St.

Kenton Rambsy – An Advocate for Domain Knowledge

Data as a key access point

Kenton Rambsy is an assistant professor of African American literature and digital humanities (DH) at the University of Texas at Arlington (UT Arlington) and the author of #TheJayZMixTape. His digital monograph, #TheJayZMixTape, takes rich computational and analytical advantage of the extensive “Jay-Z Dataset,” created by Rambsy and his brother, Howard Rambsy (himself a professor of African American literature at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and author of Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of African American Writers). They have also partnered on a rich dataset about African American texts. To hear Rambsy talk about his research is to acquire more appreciation for humanities data, especially since his datasets have had more reach than most of his other outputs. Through this collaborative data-intensive work, Rambsy is arguably helping to change what the academy considers tenure-worthy.

It’s about domain knowledge

Rambsy received his PhD at the University of Kansas, where he became active in the Project on the History of Black Writing. It’s a background that has impacted his teaching in positive ways. Rambsy believes that an effective approach for getting students interested in literature is to offer them ways to connect their own likes and preferences to literary study. It’s a key reason why he teaches courses like “The Jay Z Class” and “Storytelling with Data: The Beyoncé Edition.” As Rambsy puts it:

In my class on Beyonce, we use a Black Feminsit Framework to explore Beyonce’s artistry. Here is an example where a student created an essay that compares Beyonce’s Grammy wins to BET wins. Ultimately, the student surmised that Beyonce is type-cast as an urban artist at the Grammy awards. [...] At the BET Awards, however, she wins most in the “General” category and not R&B or Urban awards. In short, students have to have domain knowledge to even understand how to derive insight from data and highlight significant findings.

Pandemic thoughts

A key takeaway has been a new understanding of what research and learning basics should be for faculty and students as they face a different kind of normal because of the disruption caused by the pandemic. For students, this means reliable wifi network access while confined to their homes, and for faculty like Rambsy, it means access to books and to digitized primary sources.

CFP: ACH Mentorship Working Group

Quinn Dombrowski — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Description

The ACH invites applications to participate in a one-year mentorship program for graduate students interested in digital humanities work in and around the academy, including libraries, archives, museums, teaching, and research.

This program will bring together a cohort of 5-10 Masters and PhD students interested in the digital humanities for a one-year mentorship program that will provide participants with community building, professional development, and opportunities to help envision the future of mentorship at the ACH.

This program is only open to current students. Early career scholars who have earned their PhDs are encouraged to participate in other ACH mentorship initiatives, including the new mentorship channel on the DH Slack.

To apply: email a one-page cover letter and a two-page resume to halperta@gmail.com, subject: ACH Mentorship Working Group Application. Deadline: October 26, 2020. Details below.

Goals

This working group will bring together a cohort of 5-10 graduate students interested in the digital humanities for a one-year mentorship program. The program has two goals.

Goal 1

First, working group participants will become part of a cohort of DH practitioners interested in horizontal mentorship – that is, in building community and supporting one another across various programmatic and professional challenges. The cohort will also have the opportunity to build relationships with DH professionals from across the field. We envision this as a program that will empower students to build their own futures, particularly where institutional structures have failed to provide support.

Goal 2

Second, the group will work together to propose a comprehensive mentorship program for the Association for Computers in the Humanities. During a time of crisis, we are looking for students on the front lines of the profession to lead us in developing an approach to mentorship that is responsive to the inequities of our disciplines, the inadequacies of our training programs, and the crisis in our economy. Students will work closely with the ACH mentorship subcommittee to develop a plan that will help ACH support students in response to the changing educational and work environment.

Outcomes

Participation in this program is unpaid. Outcomes of this program that we expect will directly benefit participants include:

relationship-building with mid-career DH professionals
byline credit for a mentorship proposal that will be published by the ACH,
the chance to participate in a special panel on mentorship at the ACH biannual conference
CV credit for participating in a working group formally endorsed by the ACH.

Commitment

Participants in the ACH mentorship working group will be expected to commit to the following:

Be an active member in the group for nine months (November 2020 – July 2021)
Participate in 6-8 virtual workshops focused on professional development and community building.
Collaborate to author a mentorship plan for the Association for Computers in the Humanities.
Maintain communication through online conversation channels such as Slack.
Adhere to a collectively-developed code of conduct.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

Mentorship programs, even with the best intentions, often uphold whiteness and fail to provide lasting pathways to careers for BIPOC, LGBTQ, women, and people with disabilities. One of the goals of the ACH mentorship program is to create an anti-racist agenda that takes into consideration how race is formed and constructed, and the ways that professionalization engages in racecraft and expects white middle-class conformity.

With a focus on marginalized and minoritized identities in the cohort of mentees and mentors in our cohort, we expect this program to confront implicit biases in workplaces and in the field of digital humanities, with every participant trained in the ethics of care and active listening. Rather than re-establishing the traditional hierarchical structure of mentorship programs, with mentors placed in a higher position than mentees, this program recognizes that the cohort of mentees also has expertise and knowledge to contribute and purposely designs structures to support and develop this knowledge and expertise through processes and tangible products.

Even with these intentions, we expect missteps and ignorances will happen and one of the first steps of the cohort will be to develop a code of conduct, safe and anonymous methods of reporting, and a workflow for mediation when appropriate.

How to apply

To apply: email a one-page cover letter and a two-page resume to halperta@gmail.com, subject: ACH Mentorship Working Group Application. Deadline: October 26, 2020.

Cover letters should be addressed to Hannah Alpert-Abrams and Caitlin Pollock.

In your cover letter, please provide the following information:

Your current institution & position (i.e. phd candidate in Spanish at UNT; first-year MLIS student at Simmons University)
A brief description of how you hope this program will help you pursue your career goals (or figure out what those are)
A brief description of your background in digital humanities
A brief explanation of what you hope to contribute to the ACH’s mission to develop better professionalization and mentorship services for digital humanists

In your resume, we will be looking for information about your experience with or interest in digital humanities, as well as your interest in working collaboratively. Note that we are looking for participants at all stages of their education, so a lack of experience will not be disqualifying.

Here are some things you might include:

Where you have studied and what degrees you have earned or are earning.
The title of your dissertation or thesis (if you have one).
Any digital humanities projects you have worked on or participated in.
Any digital humanities conferences you have attended or talks you have given.
Any digital humanities training you have received, including coursework, summer programs, etc.
Any experience you have doing service work for your institution or a scholarly society, such as serving on a graduate student committee, participating in your union, or taking part in a working group.
Any past work experience, including work outside of or pre-dating your current degree program, that is relevant to digital and public humanities.

Toward anti-racist technical terminology

Rebecca Koeser — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In the ACH statement on Black Lives Matter, the Association for Computers and the Humanities affirmed our commitment “to our DH being a force for racial and other social justice both within and beyond academia.” As one of many specific actions, we offer this guide to help DH centers, labs, developers, and other technologists be mindful of racially-charged technical terminology embedded in the tools they use, and provide specific resources for using different terms.

For years, scholars have pointed out problems in our approach to the study of race and technology. In 2011, Moya Bailey challenged us “to address the complexities of globalization, colonization, and the alienated labor of people of color in the production of technology that advances digital scholarship practices” that does not benefit them. In 2012 Tara McPherson critiqued “covert racism and its rhetoric of color blindness” systemic in technology and asserted that “work in the digital humanities also proceeded as if technologies from XML to databases were neutral tools.” More recent work from Safiya Noble, Ruha Benjamin, and others call our attention to the glaring inequalities and oppression in our technologies. We know that language matters, and we choose to use equitable, anti-racist terms in our work, whether we are scholars writing about the technologies and tools used for digital scholarship, or developers using the command line to save and share code.

As a collaborative living document, ACH will continue to update the terms over time. We encourage readers to reach out with terms to add to the document, give us feedback, or contribute to our open bibliography. Please reach out to Rebecca Sutton Koeser (rebecca.s.koeser@princeton.edu or @suttonkoeser on Twitter) or secretary@ach.org with your suggestions and contributions.

Slave/Master

“Master” is used widely in current academic and technological language — from attaining a set of technical skills (“mastery”), to pursuing post-baccalaureate education (master’s degree), to differentiating between canonical data and copies, or piece of original code and its derivations in the version control systems, or for coordinating processes or devices where one system manages the others. The racially charged language of “master/slave” is based on the history of enslavement, and using this terminology is hurtful and exclusionary.

Practical steps

Git

The recently released version 2.28 of the git distributed control system makes the default branch configurable, instead of hard-coding to master when creating new repositories. You can set a new default name for future repositories like this:

Upgrade git to version 2.28
Configure your preferred default branch name, e.g.: git config --global init.defaultBranch main

GitHub

The popular platform for collaboration and sharing software followed the git default naming conventions for branches until recently. They have a renaming guide documenting the challenges and support for people who want to switch now, noting that “main” is the most popular alternative. If you have projects with a large number of open pull requests, draft releases, or branch protection policies you may want to wait until Github implements changes to make the transition much more seamless later this year. If you don’t want to wait, here are some options:

Follow the steps in this how-to for replacing master with main on GitHub by Alexis Moody (command line + GitHub settings configuration)
If you have a lot of repositories to update, we recommend github-default-branch. Follow the directions for installation, creating an access token, and running the script on all repositories in an organization or individual repositories.

GitLab, BitBucket, etc

Practical steps

Language

Since the distinguishing factor in these terms is the presence or absence of ethics and legality, it is clearer to use expressions like “ethical hacker” and “unethical hacker,” or perhaps “legal hacker” and “illegal hacker.”

Want to learn more?

For a discussion about black hats and white hats in cinema, see Sarah Laskow’s 2017 Atlas Obscura post, “The Counterintuitive History of Black Hats, White Hats, and Villains.” This excerpt from Ninja Hacking offers an extended explanation of the difference between these terms. A more recent piece describes the information security community’s attempt to untangle these expressions. These adjectives also distinguish between ethical and unethical Search Engine Optimization.

The resources cited here and many more are included in our open bibliography. If you know of relevant content we are missing, we encourage you to tell us or contribute it yourself.

This document was created by ACH Executive Council members and liaison volunteers.

Contributors

Patricia Hswe
Pamella Lach
Rebecca Sutton Koeser
Caitlin Pollock
Rachel Starry
Lauren Tilton
Amanda Visconti
Brandon Walsh

Now available: a guide towards anti-racist technical terminology

Rebecca Koeser — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This summer, ACH issued a statement on Black Lives Matter, structural racism and the measures the organization intends to take in order to further its anti-racist goals. Among other actions, we committed ourselves to developing a guide to help DH centers, labs, developers, and other technologists be mindful of racially-charged technical terminology (slave/master, whitelist/blacklist, etc.) with practical steps for moving away from these terms.

We now share with you our guide towards anti-racist technical terminology, a living document which we will update over time as things change or new insights come to light, and a corresponding open bibliography. For each of the problematic terms we included, we provide a brief overview of what the term means and why it’s a problem, practical steps for replacing the terminology, and links to learn more.

We encourage you to reach out with additional terms to add to the document, give us feedback, or contribute to our open bibliography. Please reach out to Rebecca Sutton Koeser (rebecca.s.koeser@princeton.edu or @suttonkoeser on Twitter) or secretary@ach.org with your suggestions and contributions.

ACH and Humanist

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Humanist has long been an important resource for members of the ACH community. Willard McCarty has recently made the decision to end its relationship with ACH. We regret that this relationship has come to an end, and we wish the Humanist community well in the future.

ACH Discussion: DH Mentoring

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Join ACH Exec Council members for the first in a discussion series on mentoring and professional development in digital humanities. This session, from 4-5 PM Eastern / 3-4 PM Central / 1-2 PM Pacific on September 22nd, will feature short statements from Quinn Dombrowski (Stanford University), Angel David Nieves (Northeastern University), and Brandon Walsh (University of Virginia) before a larger conversation with the group.

Zoom registration form

RFP, Racial Justice Consultant

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is an international scholarly society in operation since 1978 (more info and history). ACH recently issued a statement on Black Lives Matter, structural racism, and the measures the organization intends to take in order to further its anti-racist goals. Chief among those goals is engaging a paid external consultant to conduct a systematic review of ACH policies and procedures and to guide us toward a more just future for the ACH conference, publications, governance, and leadership.

We now seek proposals from qualified consultants interested in undertaking this project. In such proposals, we ask you to address:

Your vision for racial justice within academic organizations.
Your experience in conducting consultations such as this one, including examples of resulting outcomes.
Your plan for reviewing our policies and procedures.
Your proposed structure and timeline for the consultation process. (Please note that our own timeline for this project is flexible, though we do hope to move forward with implementation of your recommendations by Spring 2021.)
Your budget for this engagement, including a brief narrative justification of that budget.

Please submit proposals of no more than five pages to secretary@ach.org by September 25, 2020. The ACH officers and executive committee will review these proposals based on the compelling nature of the vision, the feasibility and thoroughness of the plan, the actionable nature of the outcomes proposed, and the cost expectations involved. We will respond to submissions by October 2, 2020. We hope to begin working with a consultant in earnest by October 15th, but can accommodate other timelines.

We very much look forward to working with you to build the future of our organization.

New ACH Liaison Volunteers

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to our newest group of ACH liaison volunteers from regional digital humanities groups! These folks will work with the Affiliation & Liaisons Committee to advance the mission of ACH through communication, outreach, and partnerships with digital humanities-centric communities, groups, and organizations.

Hélène Huet is the European Studies Librarian at the University of Florida (UF) and the Chair of the Florida Digital Humanities Consortium (FLDH). She is particularly interested in studying how digital tools can help facilitate student and faculty research. At UF, she is the co-convener of the DH Working Group and has been involved with the DH Graduate Certificate (committee member and co-teacher of a course). As the former Chair of the Collection Development Working Group of the Collaborative Initiative for French Language Collections (CIFNAL), she oversaw the creation of a list of French and Francophone Digital Humanities projects. This list showcases the various French and Francophone-focused digital projects that scholars are working on worldwide. She has published in Digital Humanities Quarterly and has created two DH projects: Mapping Decadence and the WWI Diary of Albert Huet. She holds a Ph.D in French and Francophone Studies from the Pennsylvania State University. Hélène will serve as the ACH liaison to the FLDH.

Nabil Kashyap is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at Swarthmore College. As developer, designer, and project manager, his work has ranged from radical digital archives to participatory computational linguistics. He is increasingly involved in student programs and projects that bridge critical and technical pedagogy. He holds an MSI from the University of Michigan and an MFA from the University of Montana. Nabil will serve as the ACH liaison to Keystone DH.

Kimon Keramides is a Clinical Associate Professor of Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement and Affiliated Faculty in International Relations at NYU. Kimon holds additional positions as an adjunct faculty member of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Certificate Program in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, co-director of the queer public history site OutHistory, and co-director of the Digital Humanities Research Center at ITMO University in St. Petersburg, Russia. His research and pedagogy take place at the intersection of media and technology studies, sociology and political economy of culture, cultural history, and public and digital humanities. Kimon works in transmedia or digital publication with recent work including his exhibition/book/digital application project The Interface Experience (2015) and co-curation of the digital exhibition The Sogdians: Influencers on the Silk Roads (2019). Kimon is involved in national and international collaborations with the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum and Freer|Sackler Asian Art Galleries of the Smithsonian, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and NYU Abu Dhabi and Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. Kimon is also co-founder of both New York City Digital Humanities (NYCDH) and The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. Kimon will serve as the ACH liaison to the NYC Digital Humanities.

John Knox is the Digital Projects Specialist at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Randall Library where he works with librarians, faculty, and students on digitization and digital humanities projects. John is also one of the leaders of UNCW’s Digital Humanities Initiative. Prior to working at UNCW, John served as Assistant Director of the Center for Digital Humanities at the University of South Carolina. John’s research interests include text mining, digital publishing and exhibits, DH pedagogy, British Romanticism and Scottish philosophy. John serves on the Executive Board of the Digital Humanities Collaborative of North Carolina (DHC-NC) and will serve as the ACH liaison to the DHC-NC.

Pamella Lach is the Digital Humanities Librarian at San Diego State University. She is Director of the Library’s Digital Humanities Center and Co-Director of SDSU’s Digital Humanities Initiative. Pam’s work explores how new and emerging technologies transform humanistic scholarship and pedagogy. Her areas of interest include data visualization, information retrieval, user experience design, and digital pedagogy. She has a PhD in U.S. Cultural History with an emphasis on gender and film history from UNC, and an MS in Information Science from UNC’s School of Information and Library Science. Pam will serve as the ACH liaison to West Coast DH.

Alexandra Sarkozy is a science and digital scholarship librarian at Wayne State University. She works with faculty, students, and staff to incorporate digital methods and tools into the undergraduate and graduate curriculum, and consults on projects in humanities and the social sciences that seek to incorporate digital methods and approaches. Alexandra was a member of the first cohort of community leaders at the NEH-funded Digital Humanities Research Institute at the CUNY Grad Center. Alexandra is on the advisory board for the Master’s in Public History program at Wayne State University, and works closely with the Reuther Library at Wayne State to explore new ways to collect, collaborate, and teach with primary sources. Alexandra will serve as the ACH liaison to the Network Detroit/Wayne State University DH community.

Rachel Starry (PhD, Bryn Mawr College) is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of California, Riverside Library. Previously she was a CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Social Science Data Curation at the University at Buffalo Libraries (SUNY). Her current professional activities include serving on the steering committee for the Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship (ILiADS) and co-organizing the Ancient MakerSpaces 2021 session at the AIA-SCS Annual Meeting. Rachel will serve as the ACH liaison to the Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship (ILiADS).

ACH Statement on Black Lives Matter, Structural Racism, and Our Organization

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest movement. As members of an organization based in a country with a long history of systematic racialized violence, we are outraged by continued state-sanctioned violence against Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color (BIPOC), among whose most recent victims are George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and so many others. We are distraught by the tactics that militarized police forces have brought to bear upon protestors standing up for the rights of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color, and we join nationwide and worldwide calls for justice for the perpetrators of these violent acts.

We recognize that anti-Blackness operates through institutions and organizational structures, and that the fight for Black Lives Matters must extend to praxis in the academic sphere and to our scholarly organizations. As noted on its website, ACH “recognizes that the digital humanities is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects.” We commit to our DH being a force for racial and other social justice both within and beyond academia.

ACH has in the past committed itself to concrete steps in support of anti-racist practice, including:

Establishing an ACH conference that has a strong emphasis on creating real opportunities for community knowledge exchange, solidarity, and diversity of representation;
Ensuring that there is racial and gender diversity among nominees to the ACH Executive Council;
Creating a registration fee structure for all ACH events that is maximally inclusive across the economic spectrum;
Supporting the open-access Digital Humanities Quarterly journal, which publishes on issues related to structural racism such as the upcoming special issue on “Between DH and Me: Black DH in/for the Rising DH Generation”;
Advocating at the international level of ADHO for diversity of representation and real inclusion, particularly at the annual conference.

The ACH Executive Committee is now adopting a set of actions that will deepen the organization’s commitment to anti-racist principles and that will help us understand and undo ACH’s role in anti-Blackness. We aim to push against systemic racism to concretely improve the experience that scholars of color have in our community by amplifying and supporting the voices of our Black, Indigenous and People of Color colleagues, centering BIPOC experiences in discussions of digital humanities, and reviewing our internal organizational culture to ensure the full and welcome participation of BIPOC voices.

The ACH Executive Officers and Executive Council will begin work now on the following set of initial actions and will provide updates in early August following our annual Executive Council and general membership meetings, at which we hope to gather additional feedback:

Engaging a paid external consultant to conduct a systematic review of ACH policies and organizational culture as it relates to issues of structural racism, particularly in connection with the ACH conference, publications, governance, and leadership. ACH will make the results of this review public and will commit to taking action based on the review;
Creating a mentorship program that provides venues and opportunities for a more diverse scholarly community to emerge — from undergrad, to grad, and into the professions in and beyond the academy;
Committing to amplifying and celebrating DH scholarship by scholars of color in our newsletters and other publications, centering such work in the larger field of digital humanities;
Foregrounding issues of diversity and racial justice, in all of their dimensions, into the ACH Guidelines for Assessment of Digital Scholarship in Tenure and Promotion such that they become critical parts of what is expected in digital scholarship and are valued equally for career advancement;
Correcting the historical racial imbalance of keynote speakers at ACH/ADHO conferences by inviting BIPOC DH scholars to keynote ACH events until an overall balance is achieved;
Establishing an appeals process for the review phase of the ACH conference that will provide an institutionalized process for proposers, reviewers, and Program Committee members to dispute reviews that evince racism and xenophobia towards proposals. This process will include a plan for resolution of such cases that will involve the removal of reviewers from the reviewer pool for violations;
Developing a Code of Conduct for the ACH conference that responds to the external review of ACH policies mentioned above;
Reporting regularly on the current and past demographics of ACH leadership to increase transparency and ensure that the organization makes progress on creating a diverse organizational leadership team;
Publishing at least one special issue in Digital Humanities Quarterly every two years on a topic explicitly related to race and its relationship to additional axes of oppression, including gender, sexuality, disability, nationality, and language;
Writing a values statement and a DEI/anti-racism statement for ACH that formalizes the values to which ACH commits itself;
Developing a guide to help DH centers, labs, developers, and other technologists be mindful of racially-charged technical terminology (slave/master, whitelist/blacklist, etc.) with practical steps for moving away from these terms; and
Reporting back to the ACH community at its annual general meeting on our progress on all of the above.

Black Lives Matter is a call to organizations not just to improve the world, but to improve themselves. We commit ourselves to that work and hope that we will earn your trust and your participation in building a more just organizational culture.

DH Q&A: What’s New?

Tanya Clement — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Digital Humanities Questions & Answers site, a scholarly forum that was active from 2010 to 2018 and was lost due to server problems, is now available as a static archive, thanks to work by Infrastructure Committee members Rebecca Sutton Koeser, Amanda Visconti, and Zoe LeBlanc. All original URLs under digitalhumanities.org/answers/ now resolve to equivalent content on the archive site; this means that existing links and citations to DH Q&A content will work again without modification. Although the archive site does not accept new content, it continues to be a useful resource for historical answers to typical questions, especially for those new to DH (e.g. has anyone created a map or directory of DH?); perspectives from a variety of practitioners on advanced topics (e.g. which novels to assign for seminar in algorithmic criticism / distant reading?); and a snapshot of DH interests and concerns during the site’s active years.

If you’re interested in DH Q&A as a dataset, you can read about the preliminary dataset and view some initial data analysis about activity on DH Q&A. Please participate in the conversation by opening new issues on the ACH GitHub repository for the archive or commenting on the work on missing dates. Anyone is welcome to use the dataset; we would love to hear about your project if you do!

For questions and answers about DH, the ACH Executive Council recommends asking on the DH Slack’s #dhanswers channel; anyone curious about DH can join the DH Slack by visiting the sign-up link.

Interested in a new DH Q&A? We’re considering options for launching a new DH Q&A and would love to have your input.

The ACH Co-Vice President Experiment

Vika Zafrin — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Following the announcement of the 2020 ACH elections results, we are publishing a post that explains how we arrived at the experiment in co-vice presidency on which ACH will embark this summer.

When Quinn Dombrowski and Roopika Risam discovered they were running against each other for ACH Vice President/President Elect, it could have been awkward because they’re collaborators and friends. But they emailed each other, decided it wouldn’t be awkward, and Quinn proposed to make ACH election voting ads that they’d both retweet, based on their collaboration on The Data-Sitters Club. Throughout the election period, jokes about being co-VPs ensued, until one night, Quinn emailed Roopsi and wondered if Roopsi maybe wasn’t joking about the prospect of being co-VPs. Indeed, she was not – the two had similar goals for ACH, had successful experience working together, and have complementary skillsets.

Quinn and Roopsi’s proposal to the ACH Executive came together quickly. They reasoned that those elected to ACH are often overcommitted and involved people, so if they didn’t care about having a title to themselves (they didn’t), why not share the position and thus bring both of their talents to ACH? With all of the upheaval in the world right now due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the potential impacts on professional organizations, why not use this moment of disruption to imagine a new possibility to ensure that ACH is well-supported and served by two deeply committed digital humanists? Perhaps this could be the opportunity to bring the collaborative spirit that animates digital humanities practices to organizational leadership?

Quinn and Roopsi checked the bylaws to see whether co-VP would be possible and proposed two scenarios – 1) a co-VP, where the co-VPs share a single vote and are responsible for working out agreements about courses of action among themselves and 2) an appointed affiliate VP, based on the current liaison model, where the runner up would be appointed to work with the VP, without a vote.

The ACH leadership was supportive of the proposal and suggested that the current ACH Executive Council could vote to make the co-VP proposal a reality. They further asked about the ramifications for a potential co-Presidency, which may necessitate ratification of a bylaws change about collaborative holding of officer positions by the ACH membership. At present Quinn and Roopsi are interested in co-Presidency but would welcome the opportunity to re-evaluate before the time comes for that transition.

The ACH Executive offered their support for the proposal. President Matthew K. Gold and Vice President Kathleen Fitzpatrick both expressed how important collaboration has been for them during their terms as officers, and both welcomed the combined enthusiasm and energy that Quinn and Roopsi together will bring. The Executive Council was likewise excited about the opportunity and voted in favor of the co-VPs.

Quinn and Roopsi are excited for this new experiment in collaborative leadership and look forward to working with ACH when their term starts this summer.

ACH 2020 Elections Results

Vika Zafrin — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is pleased to announce the results of our 2020 elections. As in previous years, the candidate slate was exceptional, and we are grateful to so many digital humanities practitioners for stepping up and being willing to work at the organizational level.

The 2020-24 ACH Executive Council members are, in alphabetical order: Caitlin Pollock, Brandon Walsh, and Jewon Woo.

In the Vice President/President-Elect race, an unprecedented and exciting opportunity arose during the course of the election. We are publishing details in a companion post to this one, but to summarize: at the candidates’ initiative and following discussion, the ACH Executive Council has approved the appointment of two co-Vice Presidents in Quinn Dombrowski and Roopika Risam. They will make decisions by consensus, carry a single vote that must also be reached by consensus, and document both their decisions and the decision making process both for transparency and as a possible model for organizational co-leadership of a major digital humanities organization.

The terms of all our newly elected Executive Council members and officers will start at the close of the annual summer Executive Council meeting, which is intended to take place in connection with the DH2020 conference in Ottawa, Canada. Of course, given the current state of world affairs, we will be flexible about the timing and shape of the meeting.

We are excited about the incoming class of Executive Council members and about the organizational experiment on which we are embarking. As before, we will seek out opportunities for involvement by our members beyond serving on the Executive Council, and offer them up to those interested. Please read on for more details; we welcome comments on this post, on Twitter (@achdotorg), or by email to officers@ach.org.

ACH 2020 Elections: Candidate Statements

Amanda Visconti — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Below are the statements from our candidates for the ACH 2020 election. This year, we will elect three Executive Council representatives and a Vice President/President Elect.

Elections will begin at midday GMT on March 9, 2020 and end at midnight GMT on March 23, 2020.

Biography

My experience in DH extends across university libraries, archives, and museums. My work has a social justice bent, and I am keen to help ACH reach out and grow membership. I have organized DH communities in the Midwest (Network Detroit) and the South (Triangle Digital Humanities Network), and I want to serve ACH by increasing career counseling and opportunities for recent humanities graduates who are struggling to find positions both inside and outside academia.

Statement

I am most interested in ACH’s mentoring and job support programs (http://ach.org/activities/mentoring/). The mentoring work I have done as a professor and a librarian has been the most rewarding experience of my career. The most significant question for me is: How can we grow the digital humanities community and help people find jobs they love?

Vice President/President-Elect

The Vice President/President-Elect will serve two two-year terms. The first term, as Vice President, will begin at the close of the 2020 annual summer Executive Council meeting. The second term, as President, will begin at the close of the 2022 annual summer Executive Council meeting. TWO candidates have been nominated to fill this position. You will be entitled to vote for ONE candidate for the position of Vice President/President-Elect.

Candidates were asked to provide short answers to two prompts:

Biographical Statement: Tell us about who you are and what experiences prepare you for this role? (200 words maximum) E.g. What interests or experiences would you bring to the ACH? What excites you about doing more for our community?

Candidacy Statement: What kinds of work would be your highest priority if elected? (150 words maximum) E.g. What kinds of things might you want to work on? What do you like that ACH is already doing, or want to change about ACH?

Roopika Risam

Biography

I am an Associate Professor of Secondary and Higher Education and English at Salem State University. My research, teaching, and service address the need for greater equity and justice in the digital cultural record. I take up this issue in my first book New Digital Worlds, where I address, among other things, how organizational structures and mainstream practices of digital humanities contribute to inequalities. Through my service to digital humanities communities, which include serving on the founding executive board of Global Outlook::Digital Humanities, executive council of ACH, and on the program committee for the DH 2016 conference, I have pushed for inclusion of voices of community members who, based on rank, job role, institutional affiliation, language, and geographical location, have been historically excluded. Most recently, I put these commitments into practice as program committee co-chair and conference co-chair for the ACH 2019 conference in Pittsburgh. Based on these experiences, I would welcome the opportunity to serve as vice president/president-elect, to help ACH build on the significant momentum and work undertaken during the last decade to ensure that ACH continues its work towards equity and justice in digital humanities professional organizations and, in turn, digital humanities practices writ large.

Statement

Over the last five years, I have watched and participated as ACH has defined itself as the premier digital humanities professional organization in the United States. It is a testament to the hard work, thoughtfulness, and care of ACH leadership and executive council members that the organization has successfully brought together a community as diverse—in disciplines, identities, job functions, methodologies, and more—as the ACH membership. My priority as vice president/president elect is to continue building on this work, focusing on several areas: 1) ensuring the long-term sustainability and financial viability of the ACH conference; 2) creating opportunities for ACH-sponsored working groups that would allow members to work more closely with each other on matters of specific professional concern (e.g. job roles, research methods, pedagogies); 3) facilitating a membership drive to continue increasing the multi-faceted diversity of the ACH community. Thank you for considering me for the role.

Quinn Dombrowski

Biography

Over the last 15 years, I’ve collaborated on DH projects spanning a wide range of disciplines, media, methodologies, and languages. Working on the Project Bamboo DH infrastructure initiative (2008-2012) gave me a sense of the challenges humanists at diverse institutions face in doing DH work — most of which are still pressing issues today. Currently, at Stanford University, I work with non-English DH projects. In this role and previous ones at UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago, I have worked towards building community in order to support people on the margins of their local environment, be it a lone DH-er at a small liberal arts college, a grad student with an unsupportive advisor, a librarian constrained by policy or infrastructure, or DH alt-acs in research computing centers. From 2014-2018, I served on the ACH exec, and I am currently finishing a term on the Global Outlook::DH exec. I founded DH-WoGeM (Women and Gender Minorities in DH) and Multilingual DH, both now applying to be ADHO Special Interest Groups. I am comfortable wrangling infrastructure and bureaucracy to reduce frustration and create opportunities for collaboration and engagement, and it would be an honor to bring my experience and enthusiasm to leading ACH.

Statement

Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s vision for growing the membership of ACH through greater outreach to people in a wide range of roles, organizations, and institutions strikes me as the right direction for ACH at this time. I would be excited to support this work as the Vice-President, and sustain and expand it as President of ACH. In considering the value that ACH can offer its members, I am particularly interested in exploring options for centering ACH as the hub of a US-based DH community that transcends regional boundaries. Building on the success of ACH 2019, I’d like to organize additional virtual events that can bring people together across the country without concern for travel costs or environmental impact. I’d also like to reinvigorate ACH’s long-running mentorship program, looking at successful recent models from other professional organizations, and adapting them to suit our particular community, which features many distinct roles and career paths.

Queries should be addressed to the Chair of the Nominations Committee, Amanda Visconti, at elections@ach.org.

Welcome New Liaisons (2020-21)

Anna Kijas — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Affiliation and Liaisons Committee issued a call for liaison volunteers in November 2019 and we received a number of expressions of interest from members of our community! In this informal, but important role, the liaison volunteers will work with this Committee to advance the mission of ACH through communication, outreach, and partnerships with digital humanities-centric communities, groups, and organizations. The new liaisons include:

Alyssa Alabassi is a medical doctor in London, England who works at an advanced computation laboratory devising digital integrated care pathways and solutions for the purposes of reducing medical errors and improving information flow. She also has a background in Big Data and data science applications and discussions with particular interest in Population Based Solutions and Disease Prevention. Alyssa’s interest in the humanities stems from the need for the practice of medicine to engage with social sciences, culture, philosophy, ethics and forms of expression including the arts to facilitate optimal care, since they reflect societal heterogeneity, the understanding of which is vital for the personalisation of medicine to fulfill the needs of the respective populations and communities. As an ACH liaison, Alyssa will work to promote a convergence between the digitalisation of medicine and the humanities by raising awareness and encouraging conversation and information sharing.

Tara Carlisle is head of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Oklahoma Libraries where she works with faculty, students, and technologists to explore new avenues in humanities computing research. Throughout the year, the Lab offers software and data carpentry workshops and a brown bag series focusing on digital humanities topics and projects. Previously, Tara was project development coordinator for the statewide repository The Portal to Texas History and was the lead administrator for up to 30 digitization grants annually that included teaching digitization and metadata standards. Tara serves on the curriculum committee for OU’s Digital Humanities Graduate Certification and is Vice Chair for the Digital Public Library of America’s (DPLA) Advisory Council. She will serve as the ACH liaison to the DPLA.

Andrew Janco is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at Haverford College and is the ACH liaison to the Association for Slavic Eastern European and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). Andy has worked with the ASEEES SlavicDH group since its founding and helps to organize annual pre-conference workshops. Last year’s workshop engaged scholars with data from a crowd-sourced corpus of more than 3,000 Russian-language diaries. At Haverford, Andy is the lead developer of a digital archive and research applications for the Groupo de Apoyo Mutuo, Guatemala’s oldest human rights organization. Andy regularly teaches workshops on natural language processing and the spaCy library. When not working, he enjoys spending time with his family in the woods or by the water, brews beer, and translates poetry from Russian.

Corinne Kennedy serves as Humanities Librarian at Mississippi State University (MSU) located in Starkville, MS. Her research and teaching interests incorporate the use of images. In addition, she works with faculty to incorporate digital humanities tools in the undergraduate classroom. She recently published an Open Access project through the NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities using Knight Lab’s story map using images for art history, literature, and religion classes. Corinne will serve as the ACH liaison to the Mississippi Library Association.

Rikk Mulligan is the Digital Scholarship Strategist in the University Libraries of Carnegie Mellon University. He consults on digital research and publishing, and tracks library support for digital scholarship infrastructure, digital publishing platforms, and digital humanities project and tool development. Prior to CMU, as an A.W. Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow, he was Program Officer for Scholarly Publishing at the Association of Research Libraries, researching sustainable forms of digital scholarship, tracking digital publishing within ARL member libraries, and analyzing library-based centers supporting digital scholarship. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Michigan State University and an MA in History with a focus in Digital Humanities from George Mason University. He has extensive experience in online history pedagogy, user interface design, usability, and customizing content management systems (WordPress, Drupal, and Omeka). Rikk will serve as the ACH liaison to the Popular Culture Association.

2021 ACH Conference in Houston, TX

Tanya Clement — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) is pleased to announce that the location of its next conference, scheduled for the summer of 2021, will be Houston, Texas!

In the last decade or so, as many in the digital humanities (DH) community are aware, Texas has emerged as a productive hub of DH activities, with programs, projects, centers, and initiatives in progress at institutions such as the University of Houston, Prairie View A&M, Rice University, and Texas A&M. The selection of Houston as the next venue is in recognition of these flourishing endeavors and the competitive application from the local bidding committee. ACH also made it a priority to locate the conference in a region different from the last gathering, which took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“Ten Houston-area institutions came together to offer a powerful vision for a 2021 conference,” says ACH Conference Coordinating Committee Chair Scott B. Weingart, “and in a trove of compelling bids, Houston’s stood out as an exemplar of collaborative effort. The ACH is excited to work with them to build bridges within and beyond Houston’s diverse communities.”

The Local Committee for organizing and planning the conference for ACH 2021 in Houston will be co-chaired by Gabriela Baeza Ventura, Associate Professor of US Latino Literature, University of Houston—who is also Executive Editor, Arte Público Press and a co-founder of US Latino Digital Humanities—and by Santi Thompson, Head of Digital Research Services at the University of Houston Libraries. Members of the committee include:

Taylor Davis-Van Atta (University of Houston)
Ruben Duran (Houston Community College)
Lorena Gauthereau (University of Houston)
Bonnie Lucero (University of Houston – Downtown)
Laura Mandell (Texas A&M)
Sarah Potvin (Texas A&M)
Christal Rene Seahorn (University of Houston – Clear Lake)
Marco Robinson (Prairie View A&M)
Lisa Spiro (Rice University)
Toniesha Taylor (Texas Southern University)
Carolina Villarroel (University of Houston)
Claude Willan (University of Houston)

Local Committee co-chairs Baeza Ventura and Thompson note that hosting ACH 2021 in Houston will contribute to, and broaden, the ongoing conversations that have developed at UH and the bidding institutions, as well as in the larger Texas Digital Humanities Consortium. “We look forward to hosting a conference that will celebrate, interrogate, and expand upon topics driving DH conversations, including: histories of underrepresented communities, preservation of cultural heritage, DH for social justice, community archiving, disaster response preservation, personal digital archiving, DH pedagogy, multilingual DH and critical DH.”

The University of Houston is one of only three R1 Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the nation, and its 45,000 students reflect the multicultural community of metropolitan Houston and the nation. As an institution, UH has been active in promoting the development of digital humanities programming and education by supporting DH projects and enterprises in various departments and through the creation of the Digital Research Commons (DRC) at UH Librariesand the US Latino Digital Humanities program at Arte Público Press.

ACH revived its conference format to provide the DH community with a North American biennial alternative during the years when the Digital Humanities Conference is held abroad. In July 2019, the Association held the conference in Pittsburgh, an occasion that drew more than 425 registrants for participation in workshops and concurrent session tracks, including panels, short and long papers, and a digital art performance. In place of a closing keynote, ACH 2019 offered a set of lightning presentations reflecting the community’s dynamic engagement with DH tools and methods.

“ACH2019 was a watershed moment for the Association for Computers and the Humanities, instantiating a vibrant new conference that foregrounded issues of justice and equity in digital humanities work,” says ACH President Matthew K. Gold. “We could not be more delighted that ACH2021 will carry on that project and look forward to joining with our Houston hosts for what promises to be another amazing conference.”

Call for Liaison Volunteers

Anna Kijas — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH Affiliation and Liaisons Committee is seeking liaison volunteers! As a liaison volunteer, you would work with this committee’s members to advance the mission of the ACH and its membership through communication and partnerships with communities engaged in digital humanities. Communities might include professional organizations, regional digital humanities group or networks, and other local organizations.

Role of a Liaison

Identify affiliating conferences, meetings or organizations to connect with and/or attend;
Communicate the goals and values of ACH to affiliating members and organizations;
Propose content for affiliating conferences or meetings that can advance digital humanities research and practice (see recent panel presentation at 2019 Modern Language Association);
Document connections and partnerships with affiliated organizations (e.g. follow-up report about sponsored conference presentation)
Term length is one year, renewable

If you would like to represent the ACH as a liaison, please submit the following details by December 20, 2019 using this form.

Full name;
Institutional affiliation and current position (if any);
Name of professional or scholarly organization, regional digital humanities group/network, or other community you would like to represent as an ACH Liaison;
- What is your affiliation with the group(s) you identified above?
Please provide a short statement regarding your interest in representing the ACH as a liaison, including the particular area(s) of digital humanities with which you engage.

If you have any questions, please contact Anna Kijas, Chair of Affiliation and Liaisons Committee anna.kijas@tufts.edu.

ACH-Supported Student Experiences at ACH 2019 in Pittsburgh

Tanya Clement — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities was delighted to support the participation of early career scholars in the ACH2019 conference held in Pittsburgh, PA. We thank these students for their participation in the conference and for reflecting upon their experiences in the posts below:

Kyle Bickoff (U.S.)

’Not Exceeding Ten Miles Square’: A History of Washington DC’s Document Boxes

The ACH Bursary Award helped to make my trip possible—as a PhD candidate supported by a stipend, these funds are incredibly meaningful, and allowed me to support a significant amount of my travel to ACH, which is the first DH-specific conference I have had the opportunity to attend. I presented my poster “’Not Exceeding Ten Miles Square’: A History of Washington DC’s Document Boxes” used in the storage of physical and digital files at libraries, archives, and museums. The poster session was a productive opportunity to present current research to scholars, while simultaneously receiving constructive feedback from field experts who have worked with a selection of these materials. The archival work I presented (on historic Woodruff files) was the topic that I received the most helpful feedback on—this was incredibly fruitful, as it a now defunct file box that has at times proved difficult to find credible sources discussing their practical use. The ACH not only provided an intellectually stimulating scholarly meeting, but also fostered a safe, understanding, supportive environment for young scholars throughout its duration. Each panel I attended was memorable in its own way, and I hope to remain a part of ACH and the larger DH conferences in the future. I also want to add that I appreciate the ACH’s location within the continental US—young scholars find it incredibly difficult to travel abroad, so an accessible city like Pittsburgh additionally helped to make this travel possible. Thank you for this excellent experience.

Kathleen P.J. Brennan (U.S.)

What’s in a face? Examining historical trends through the faces of a mass media publication”

I was incredibly thankful to receive the ACH bursary award to attend my first DH-specific conference, and to present a poster from an on-going, group research project. As an early career scholar with an interest in interdisciplinary research I cannot overstate the importance of experiencing a meeting like ACH in which the conference organizers were able to curate such a diverse program. I learned so much about not only the tools that people are using and developing, but also about how people approach DH projects through attending many panels and roundtables. I was also very impressed with the poster session. I was at ACH as a representative of a larger research group to present our work, “What’s in a face? Examining historical trends through the faces of a mass media publication.” I had the opportunity to discuss this research with a number of the other conference attendees, and received important feedback, which I was able to share with the rest of the group working on the project that were not able to attend the conference. Thank you to the conference organizers for enabling my participation in this fantastic conference.

Tatiana Bryant (U.S.)

Centering Black dh pedagogy in a first year seminar course

As an early-career scholar I was thrilled to receive a bursary to present my work on integrating Black digital humanities pedagogy with first-year students twice at ACH Pittsburgh. I was pleased with the response to the topic and the discussion I had with session attendees. Networking with attendees at the prec-onference workshop “Inclusive Digital Pedagogy: Theory and Praxis” remains a highlight. Looking ahead I will continue to pay it forward and remain engaged with the community by seeking collaborators for new projects and more.

Corey D. Clawson (U.S.)

Mapping an Archipelago of Influence: An Introduction to Archivepelago

Thanks to an ACH Bursary Award, I was able to present my project “Mapping an Archipelago of Influence: an Introduction to Archivepelago” in the poster session, which resulted in a series of brief but rich conversations. With a background in literature, I found myself extremely grateful for the insightful questions and comments from rhetoricians, librarians, historians, and developers. The diversity of these conversations turned out to reflect the conference and its organization more broadly. I was able to attend sessions discussing network applications in digital humanities, projects examining race and gender, and inclusive pedagogical practices. The organizing committees also implemented policies and events that ensured everyone felt welcome, such as the dinner that grouped first-time attendees to the conference with folks with more experience in the organization. ACH2019 turned out to be the best conference experience I’d ever had.

Heidi Dodson (U.S.)

Overcoming Challenges and Breaking down Barriers: Digital Scholarship Support within and beyond the University

If it had not been for the ACH Bursary Award, it would have been a challenge for me to present in Pittsburgh given that I was in between postdoctoral positions. With ACH assistance, I participated in a roundtable, “Overcoming Challenges and Breaking Down Barriers: Digital Scholarship Support Within and Beyond the University.” organized by Rachel Starry. Each of the participants, including myself, were CLIR postdoctoral fellows, and we had a generative discussion about our widely divergent experiences at different institutions. An important discussion about postdoctoral labor emerged from the presenters and from audience questions, a conversation that I hope will continue at future conferences and forums. While postdoctoral positions can be beneficial for all parties, they remain contingent, precarious positions and are vulnerable to the structures and cultures of particular institutions. I spoke about my CLIR postdoc and my previous position as a digital project manager at a community non-profit. I see public digital humanities as a vital part of my work as a historian, and I was very inspired by the presentations in “The South”and the “Space and Place” session 2. I hope to see many more sessions at future conferences that are focused on opening up spaces for marginalized voices, foregrounding social justice, and engaging local communities.

Meredith Graham (U.S.)

Revealing Voices: Establishing Meaningful Outreach Strategies for Project Vox

I was delighted to receive the ACH Bursary Award to attend the Pittsburgh conference to talk about my work forProject Vox, a digital project dedicated to introducing early modern women to the philosophical canon. My work as the Outreach & Assessment Coordinator for Project Vox lies outside of my dissertation research area and is a passion of mine, so I appreciate the financial support. At the conference, I was able to talk about my collaborative work in my paper, “Revealing Voices: Establishing Meaningful Outreach Strategies for Project Vox” about outreach strategies for digital projects. The enthusiastic response and thoughtful responses to the paper allowed me to understand the next steps that I should take with my project team as we move into another academic year. I was also able to attend the Music Encoding course—a fantastic way to learn about digital humanities projects in my own discipline of musicology. Thank you for making my travel possible to experience this inclusive and enriching conference.

Arun Jacob (Canada)

Geocoding Gringolandia: Interrogating How Geo-Data Analytics Squelch Mobilities Justice

I felt the ACH conference was the most thoughtfully organized conference that I have ever attended. The attention and care that went into how the conference was organized in and of itself such an astute exemplar to take back, on how DH scholars create safe and inclusive scholarly communities. I got to meet so many amazing scholars who were presenting their brilliant work at panels, and several others in between panels where they were kind and generous with their time and advice. I would describe the conference experience as seeing my DH bibliography come to life before me, and it was the ACH travel bursary that made it possible. I got to present my paper “Geocoding Gringolandia: Interrogating how geo-data analytics squelch mobilities justice” which was still pretty rough around the edges when I shared it with this generous community of scholars who were so receptive and helpful in pointing me towards other academics, topics and ideas that I ought to be in conversation with. The scholars, thinkers and kinship networks that makeup ACH embody a politic and ethic of care which I was extremely grateful to have been able to part of thanks to the support I received from the ACH.

Zoe LeBlanc

With the generous support from the ACH Bursary Award, I was able to travel and present in one of the first roundtables on software development and digital humanities. In the roundtable, I shared my experiences as DH developer at the Scholars’ Lab at UVA. In particular, I discussed the potentials and pitfalls of being a more junior developer, and avenues for creating a distributed DH developer community to help mitigate some of these issues. Without the funding from ACH, I would not have been able to participate in this much needed conversation about the future of DH software development that will hopefully lead to more transparency and collaboration across DH centers and between DH developers. Many thanks to ACH for the support and creating such an inclusive conference.

Slavna Martinovic (Germany)

Making up – the ‘post-human’ bodies and gender disobeying at the turn of the millenium

My name is Slavna Martinovic, I am a visual artist and a Ph.D. candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. The trip to Pittsburgh was a wonderful opportunity to be a part of the ACH conference where I have presented my paper Making up – the “post-human” bodies and gender disobeying at the turn of the millennium`. As an early-career scholar, it was an honor to share my ideas and be welcomed to the conference in such an extraordinary spirit of inclusiveness, community building, and diversity. The conference was outstandingly organized, nurturing a safe yet progressive environment for the exchange of ideas for an array of distinguished scholars of the Digital Humanities. The possibility to present, be a part of the audience of exciting panels and workshops, take part in simulating exchanges with fellow scholars greatly motivated my further quest towards being a part of the DH scholarly community.

Last, but not least, all of this would not be possible without the great generosity of the ACH Bursary Award. As a Ph.D. Student coming from Europe, this award helped towards my travel and stay expenses, extending an opportunity to be a part of this amazing interchange of ideas, excellently hosted by the ACH Conference 2019.

Andrea Medina (U.S.)

Octodad: Dadliest Catch and Cultural Impairment Through Game Spaces

As a PhD scholar in visual rhetoric and digital humanities, I was incredibly honored that my paper was selected for the Travel Bursary Award. The funding was instrumental to my participation in the conference, considering that graduate assistants in the humanities are not paid their worth within the academy. ACH was an incredibly empowering experience for me,s a scholar and activist in the humanities. I received very positive and productive feedback on my paper, “Octodad: Dadliest Catch and Cultural Impairment Through Game Spaces.” The conference organizers cultivated a safe environment for learning and networking, and I could not be more grateful.

Jeffrey Moro (U.S.)

Breath Control: 3D Printing and Environmental Media” and “Environmental Justice in the Digital Humanities

I am not hyperbolizing when I say that I have yet to encounter a conference setting more attentively designed and curated as ACH. I had the pleasure of presenting both a poster, “Breath Control: 3D Printing and Environmental Media” and chairing a roundtable, “Environmental Justice and the Digital Humanities.” In both settings, I found the conference community extraordinarily stimulating and engaged, and the comments I received on both contributions have been integral in shaping them for future work. In particular, I want to highlight how wonderful I found the poster session—a first for me, but which enabled a level of conversation and networking we usually only imagine possible at conferences but too rarely achieve. I thank the ACH for their bursary and commitment to the work of supporting emerging scholars. In an industry often marked by austerity, it’s good to see an organization committed to both intellectual and financial generosity.

Katharina Tiwald (Austria)

Using Smartphones as Narrative Structure. Franz Friedrich’s ‘Zeitreiseführer’

Working as both a writer and a teacher, I try to combine my love of literature with the search for possibilities to make reading more accessible for a new generation. From this point of view, it is particularly interesting for me to notice that apps begin to be used not only as a vessel for e-books, but rather as a medium in its own right. Having just started work on a Ph.D. project at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, I was excited to be able to present a lightning talk on a particularly interesting example of an app-as-novel, Franz Friedrich’s “Zeitreiseführer” (“time travel guide”) which makes good use of app architecture as narrative structure. Giving a lightning talk was an ideal opportunity for me to get back in touch with my scientific self – I left university life several years ago and am just getting started on my way back into academia. I was very happy about the warm welcome and the bursary that eased my travel expenses, and I would like to thank the organizers for this wonderful experience.

Jewon Woo (U.S.)

The Risky Mediation of Archives: Teaching DH on Digitized Archives

Without the ACH Bursary Award, I would not have made the presentation because my two-year institution has not been able to offer enough faculty development funds for scholarly purpose since its fiscal crisis five years ago. The conference participants’ responses to my presentation, “The Risky Mediation of Archives: Teaching DH on Digitized Archives,” helped me redesign the course I presented on. In addition, I could continue the critical conversations with them beyond the conference site, which allowed me to build a network among DH scholars. Furthermore, the poster session offered significant ideas and methods for my research on the Black press in 19th-century Ohio, as the session introduced a variety of DH tools and practices in both teaching and research. ACH 2019 is the most productive and vibrant conference I have ever attended, and I am grateful for the award that made my trip possible.

Setsuko Yokoyama (U.S.)

Between Advocacy, Research, and Praxis: A Critical Reassessment of the Open Access Discourse and Minimal Computing: On the Borders of Speculative Archives

At ACH2019, I witnessed what it means to put care for inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility into practice and in front and center of digital humanities scholarship. The ACH Travel Bursary was but one such instance, and I was a fortunate recipient of such an award. It was not only a means to mitigate the cost of summer travel but also an invitation to play a part in the projection of a 21st-century ACH regional conference model alongside with scholars whose works have been formative to my own. During the conference, I presented my poster “Between Advocacy, Research, and Praxis: A Critical Reassessment of the Open Access Discourse” and participated in the roundtable “Minimal Computing: On the Borders of Speculative Archives.” As a part of the roundtable discussion, I shared my critical design solutions to alleviate historically repressive understanding of the English language seen in the reception history of Robert Frost’s sound of poetry. Using the Digital Frost Project as a case study, I further speculated what it means to develop an online corpus of someone who is perceived as a white, male, canonical author in today’s political climate and advocated for an anti-racist methodology for a public-facing project. The roundtable as a whole proved to be one of the many generative sources of further discussions throughout and beyond ACH2019, and I am grateful for the opportunity the ACH Travel Bursary granted for me to be a part of such conversations.

Joel Zapata

As a historian, I was impressed by the many avenues of humanizing the past that diverse digital scholars displayed at the ACH2019 Conference. Moreover, those that came together in Pittsburg formed a welcoming community that was open to collaboration, which I have rarely seen in other spaces. I am sure the 2019 meeting will only be the first of many more successful ACH Conferences to come.

ACH Guidelines for Assessment of Digital Scholarship in Tenure and Promotion

Tanya Clement — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This document was prepared by the Executive Board of the ACH during the Fall and Spring of 2015-16. Feedback from the community was solicited in the summer of 2016, and incorporated over the following months.

Introduction

Following the lead of scholarly societies in some of the disciplines most actively represented in digital humanities work, the Association for Computers and the Humanities is putting forth some draft guidelines for the evaluation of digital scholarship in tenure and promotion processes. We are grateful to the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association, Emory University, University of Southern California, Texas A&M, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the NINES Institute on Evaluating Digital Scholarship, and our many colleagues for doing the work on which we base our guidelines.

General

Expectations about any individual scholar’s tenure and promotion criteria should, as much as possible, be made clear at the time of hiring, reviewed at intermediate stages, and reflect a sincere commitment on the part of both the scholar and the institution to assess the scholarly contribution fairly.
Scholarship should be considered for its contribution to the scholar’s discipline, and, where relevant, additional fields including the field of digital humanities.
In addition to traditional scholarly work, digital platforms, tools, and other resources may be considered scholarly products with potential to contribute to the field of inquiry. They should be reviewed on the basis of their originality, use value, sustainability, and other contextual aspects of quality outlined below.
Digital contributions might constitute all or part of a project (e.g. metadata might make a scholarly contribution) if it adds to knowledge in the discipline.

Assessment process

Materials must be reviewed in their native format and medium so that the contribution is assessed for its merits as a digital project. Explanations of the technical or design features can accompany the project to assist reviewers unfamiliar with digital work, but these should not substitute for the project in its native format.
The following aspects of digital scholarly products should be reviewed independently of each other by knowledgeable parties:
- technical implementation details
- design
- content
- data (content and design)
- sustainability/projected lifespan
- intellectual argument and impact to the home discipline or the field of digital humanities

Some metrics for assessing tools, projects, and platforms

Digital projects take a variety of forms. These include the production and/or publication of data sets, results of analysis, inquiry into existing corpora through digital means, archives, metadata, as well as the creation of tools and platforms.

Overall evaluation

Intellectual contribution and substantive research contribution in the humanities
User experience as purposeful in ways that add value to the profession
Evidence of platform/tool use by communities of practice

Impact and dissemination

Peer-Review of the project including internal or external funding, pre-publication review, and post-publication review
Links to the project from other projects
Citation in other projects, blogs, tweets, social media, reports, media coverage
Presentation and/or discussion in conference presentations, published articles, and other vehicles of scholarly communication

Candidate responsibilities

Ask for clarification of assessment criteria at the time of hiring
Negotiate roles/responsibilities to distinguish research from service
Make the scholarly contribution clear
- When multi-authored works are presented for review (most digital tools, platforms, and other projects fall under this category), make the individual scholarly contribution clear
Make the teaching contribution clear
- Demonstrate clear goals and learning objectives for incorporating digital media, tools, activities into classroom use;
- Demonstrate the value of courses focused on learning digital methods.
Document the prestige rankings of online publication sites, in particular, the use of peer review and acceptance rates; distinguish self-published and/or repository publication from peer-reviewed publication;
The relationship of design, content, and medium should be documented
- The intellectual contribution of each work should be explicitly presented
- Authors of digital tools, platforms, and other projects should subject their work to peer review prior to tenure and promotion review, where possible
- Long term viability of the project should be considered
- Provide explanatory narratives of project development and value
- Document technical competence as applicable:
  - Knowledge and use of technical standards (TEI, XML, GIS, statistical standards, etc.)
  - Solidity of database design (metadata standards, fields etc.)
  - Interoperability with existing resources (as appropriate)
  - Show how the project fulfills its goals by using the digital media
  - State where the project lives and who is responsible for its maintenance
- Document collaboration: roles, responsibilities, and contributions for collaborative work
- Document and explain the contribution of the work
- Document grant successes, network building
- Bring colleagues into the work early on
- Document prizes and other recognition
- Document user assessment and testing
- Make target audience clear and demonstrate connections
- Demonstrate long-term sustainability

Departmental responsibilities

The expectation that digital tools, platforms, and other projects of sufficient depth are considered scholarship should be built into the hiring process as appropriate, but also, the recognition that digital projects can be constituted as data, metadata, archives, repositories, and scholarly materials in digital format;
The relationship of design, content, and medium should be documented
- Request assessment letters from experts who have knowledge of digital projects as part of the dossier
- Make the criteria for assessment explicit at hiring
- Recognize the often on-going, iterative, or open-ended nature of digital projects and establish criteria for assessing work in progress
- Consider relationship of design, content, and medium (why is this digital?)
- Assess digital editions and some projects as “curation” (selection, organization, editing, and critique)
- Consider how digital format contributes to the scholarship
- Consider conference presentations on the project
- Consider print publications about the project

As in all tenure and promotion reviews, candidates’ work should be assessed by scholars in relevant fields of study, not only in digital humanities.

Professional association responsibilities

Create working groups for digital scholarship to keep current trends in tenure and promotion, peer review, and assessment up to date
Foster conversations about digital scholarship
Sustain a curated gallery of projects with assessment criteria
Promote reviews of digital scholarship
Sustain a curated list of digital scholars willing to serve as external evaluators

Call for Nominations: ACH Executive Council Representatives & Vice-President/President-Elect

Amanda Visconti — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Due date for nominations: December 1st, 2019

Due date for candidate materials: December 15, 2019

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) is a major U.S.-based professional society for the digital humanities. The ACH seeks nominations for three new Executive Council representatives and for the position of Vice-President/President Elect.

What is the ACH?

Seeking a diverse slate of nominees

We are committed to offering our membership a diverse slate of candidates. We especially hope for a slate of candidates that is diverse as to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, profession, citizenship, nationality, and other identities and backgrounds.

Council activities

ACH officers and other Executive Council representatives develop and uphold ACH policies, determine and distribute funding, and oversee all organizational activities. Planned activities for the next year include following up on the energy of the inaugural ACH 2019 conference and building toward ACH 2021; a membership drive; exploring mentorship and job search resources; advocacy work; publications including the HUMANIST listserv, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and DH Slack activity; collaborations with ADHO partners in the annual DH conference and other professional activities; co-administration of a number of prestigious DH awards; distribution of student bursaries for DH training and education; as well as other priorities as set by the ACH membership.

Nominations

You are welcome to self-nominate, as well as nominate others, using the nomination form.

Names and email addresses are due by 12/1/2019, and candidate materials (written answers to two questions) are due by 12/15/2019. You may fill out all your information now, or just fill out name and email address (by 12/1/2019) and provide candidate materials at a later date (by 12/15/2019), either via the form or by emailing Nominations@ach.org with updated text.

Sample candidate statements from past elections are available at http://ach.org/news/2018/03/ach2018-elections-candidate-statements/, though please note we’ve changed the questions and added a maximum word cap this year. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of Executive Council members, please see http://www.ach.org/about/constitution, though please note we’ve changed the questions and added a maximum word cap this year. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of Executive Council members, please see http://www.ach.org/about/constitution. Please email Nominations@ach.org if you’re curious about serving on the Executive Council, but have questions or are uncertain whether you’re eligible.

ACH Executive Council Representative

The Executive Council is the basic policy making organ of ACH. Its representatives serve the organization by forming and serving on committees such as Advocacy, Membership, and Infrastructure, and by actively working together to support the organization.

Anyone who is a current ACH member (or who is willing to join ACH if elected) and wants to help us do our best at representing and advocating for our membership and other digital humanists is eligible. Folks who are new to DH and/or to the ACH are encouraged to bring their viewpoint to our organization’s governing body as Executive Council representatives.

Candidates running for this position are expected to serve on multiple committees and devote time and volunteer effort to the sustenance of the organization. Executive Council representatives participate in a quarterly call in which the Council discusses ACH business and officers and committee chairs provide updates on ongoing ACH efforts; representatives also participate in monthly committee work that may involve additional calls. The term length is four years.

Vice President/President-Elect

The Vice President/President-Elect serves as VP for two years, followed by a term as President for another two years. The VP is an Officer position and contributes to the organization by forming and serving on committees, participating in a monthly Officer’s call, and taking leadership on important initiatives as designated by the EC and President.

Many thanks,

ACH Nominations Committee 2019-2020

Amanda Visconti, University of Virginia (Chair, ACH Executive Council Representative)
Thomas Padilla, OCLC Research and University of Nevada Las Vegas (ACH Executive Council Representative)
Matt Gold, City University of New York (ACH President)
Tanya Clement (ex officio, ACH Treasurer)
Seth Denbo, AHA (ACH member volunteer)
Andie Silva, CUNY (ACH member volunteer)

ACH2019 AGM Meeting Notes

Tanya Clement — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

July 26, 2019 — ACH2019 conference in Pittsburgh, PA.

ADHO governance updates

ADHO has been undergoing major structural change in the last 5 years
ACH is a Constituent Organization of ADHO — other COs are regional, linguistically based (Humanistica), and/or other (CenterNet)
ADHO is growing; mutliple organizations have expressed interest; these discussions are ongoing
Over the past year, the ADHO Steering Committee comprised with representatives from every CO plus officers, underwent significant change. Thanks to the Implementation Committee (Geoffrey Rockwell, Chair; Melissa Terras; Christian-Emil Smith Ore; Jennifer Guiliano) for thinking through three different options for reorganization. Voted to go with the One CO – One Vote scenario, which ACH had been very much in support of. In geopolitical power terms: in the past, ACH and EADH had more votes than anyone else. In the new scenario, every CO no matter the size has one vote on the CO Board (COB). The COB will be complemented by a separate Executive Board, leading the implementation of the decisions COB makes.
This is an important change for ADHO and ACH. We attempt to represent our membership and work towards a more equitable mission of ADHO as it moves across the globe.
Numerous issues, tensions, problems to work through over the next year. MG has agreed to lead COB for the next year, acting in a nonpartisan capacity. Thoughts on strategic directions?
- Connecting dh communities not currently part of ADHO? Thinking of one non-US cluster in particular, but also in general. What would the process be? MG: we encourage communities of all kinds to participate as ADHO Special Interest Groups. There are other ways to get involved: propose sessions for the conference; join Program Committees for annual conferences.
- One element of peer review system: ConfTool seems to have been written for scientists. Any thoughts on making it more hospitable in terms of rankings? Groundbreaking research doesn’t happen in the humanities on a regular basis. Worth a look. Jen Guiliano: yes, ConfTool has been re-engineered a bit for 2020, groundbreaking review criterion is gone. On the CFPs are the actual criteria that will be used for review! We’ve gone toward a more amenable system: are you making clear claims? Not, is your claim revolutionary? Check out the CFP and see what you like.
- Talk about the open review process at ADHO? Will ACH be looking at it for future meetings as well? MG: Jen will be talking about that later. When it was proposed at ADHO, it was as part of a long line of continuing peer review experiments. Recent changes introduced are, frex, rebuttal opportunity. Experiments in peer review continue. Within ACH, we want to see how that goes and think it through.

ACH2019 and Bursary Awards

Élika Ortega Presents bursaries awarded to:
- Kyle Bikoff
- Kathleen Brennan
- Tatiana Bryant
- Corey D Clawson
- Heidi Dodson
- Meredith Graham
- Arun Jacob
- Zoe LeBlanc
- Andrea Medina
- Jeffrey Moro
- Katharina Tiwald
- Jewon Woo
- Setsuko Yokoyama
- Joel Zapata

DH2020

Jennifer Guiliano presents, representing a team of people. DH2020 will take place July 20-25, 2020 in Ottawa, Canada. There will be a workshop day on the Saturday of the conference in addition to the usual two pre-conference workshop days. Eight parallel workshop sessions will run each day, and ten parallel presentation sessions during the conference itself.
New formats! Lightning talks, forums requiring audience participation.
New subthemes!
- Digital First Nations, American Indian, and Indigenous Studies
- Public Digital Humanities
- Open Data
- 10% of the review criteria will reward you for submitting in one of the subthemes
ADHO has been experimenting with peer review. CDMX was double blind; Utrecht was single blind; Ottawa will be open. Not openly accessible abstracts; reviewer identity and author identity are disclosed to one another at the outset. There will be guides to encourage people to behave courteously.
A new installation of Conftool has been made available where we’ll be able to pull a review before the author sees is. Hope not to have to, but won’t hesitate.
Co-organizers are in favor of access to childcare, lactation, accessibility companion support. All of this will be hard baked in from the beginning. Can’t promise perfection, but we are aware of all of these things, and are even asking for your food preferences right from the beginning.
For the first time in the history of DH for people to nominate or self-nominate for Keynote/Plenary.
Questions?
- Will there be an indication when a review has been pulled? Yes, to the reviewer with a warning (which will be a Code of Conduct violation). Authors won’t know that a review of their work has been pulled.
- Transparency: wouldn’t it be nice if there was a room for nimble tents activities should the need arise? We’ll be tight on space, but will forward request to set aside a room. Should be able to get one at U Ottawa; Carlton might be a little harder.
- Concern re open review process: can I recuse myself as reviewer of a particular proposal without the reviewee knowing? Yes; only PC co-chairs will know, will reassign. Also, as we assign reviewers, we’ll be conscious of disparities in rank (very junior scholars reviewing very senior ones). We’re looking at a lot of needed reviews; will be reaching out to you asking you of review. We’ll need your help enlarging pool of reviewers, in part to address rank disparity concerns. If there’s targeting in that way, JG has no problem with triggering the CoC process to protect marginalized scholars.

ACH2021 Call for Bids Announcement — Scott Weingart

ACH’s next conference! The second or the 27th, going back to 1973. We’d love to support emerging and regional communities and help them strengthen by co-hosting the 2021 conference. [put link in]
Looking to move the conference around as much as possible for accessibility purposes
This could be an opportunity for an established or emerging community

Jobs Slam

Vika Zafrin hosted. Six job offerers, six job seekers participated

Q&A

To start which: ACH remains a mystery in its workings to many of its members. What information can we make available for you to help you understand us, participate, and steer?

Feel tension between haves and have-nots. Does the ACH have any mechanism for those of us with resources to reach out to those without, for collaboration? Not at the moment, but have been thinking about with the renewal of the conference is a chance to build out these kinds of connections, including across regional organizations. We’d need hands to help build this. Please contact us, and feel free to propose specific things you could do to further the ends you’d like furthered. If you email and don’t hear back, please email again — and know we very much appreciate the offers, we’re just often going in twelve different directions.
Knowing that conversations are happening in the Exec about how to open things up, and coming from the library world which is full of committees, I don’t even know what the working groups are. What’s the mechanism for sharing out what the working groups are, what happens at the quarterly meetings, etc? And also: re trying to match people up with needs, what is your preferred method of communications?
- Definitely opportunities for us to communicate out more. Maybe we can have an open webinar/community meeting online. Re interacting: Twitter and maybe continued Facebook (is FB useful? considering dropping it); the DH Slack; email.
How do we get on your email list? Email us secretary@ach.org.

ACH 2019 Elections: Results

Alyssa Collins — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The results of the ACH elections are in!

Anna Kijas, Zoe LeBlanc, and Rebecca Sutton-Koeser were elected to serve in the Executive Council for the 2019-2023 term. Their terms will start at the close of the annual summer Executive Council meeting, which will take place at the ACH 2019 conference in Pittsburgh, PA.

As always, many thanks to all of the candidates. It is because of our members willingness to serve that ACH continues to flourish.

ACH 2019 Elections: Candidate Statements

Amanda Visconti — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Below are the statements from our candidates for the ACH 2019 election. We are happy to offer our members a diverse slate of 14 potential candidates for the 3 new regular member spots on the ACH Executive Council (current members here). This year, we do not have any openings for new officers (e.g. President, Secretary).

The election will run from February 20th through March 6th, 2019. Voting is limited to current ACH members; you will vote for 3 people.

Candidates are listed alphabetically by last name:

Alyssa Alabassi
Gabriela Baeza
Tara Carlisle
Will Fenton
Sylvia Fernández
Tassie Gniady
Matthew Hannah
Christy Hyman
Nathan Kelber
Anna E. Kijas
Rebecca Sutton Koeser
Zoe LeBlanc
Brad Rittenhouse
Andie Silva

Alyssa Alabassi

Biography

As a medical doctor, I have a long standing interest in the influence of philosophy, ethics, psychology, law, art, social care, history, culture and health geography on medical education, communication, decision making, practice and safety; not to mention the provision of an additional perspective to the science. Although Medicine is classified as a scientific field, historically and practically it has always been an interdisciplinary endeavour, and continuing the link with the humanities paves the way for progress and innovation. Over a decade ago, I had the opportunity to work at the Advanced Computation Laboratory at Cancer Research UK devising computerised solutions using virtual reality and artificial intelligence to create an integrated and connected patient-care pathway with the prime objective of improving communication and reducing errors. This has piqued my interest in what digital technology can offer. I have since been involved in the emerging field of data science and Big Data together with its use in predictive analysis with particular reference to disease prevention.

Candidate Statement

An area I’d like to work on with ACH is the development of the field of digital medical humanities as an invaluable resource for innovation and research in the medical field and an integral part of medical training. Society is constantly evolving and in this digital age, the rate of change is particularly rapid. The humanities provide insights into basic and universal human concerns. Knowledge of disease and its treatment, alone, are not sufficient since decisions on treatment and prevention continue to have a base in ethics and continue to be affected by economic and cultural landscapes. The use of population-based solutions utilizing information technology interdigitates all of the above optimising the provision of care by the application of an interdisciplinary approach.

Gabriela Baeza

During my doctoral study, I was privileged to conduct research at numerous research libraries and cultural institutions. As important as the historical records I explored was the institutional support I received: working with reference librarians compelled me to think carefully about my methodology and records; sharing my work at brown bags challenged me to scale back my disciplinary jargon; and meeting with curators and technical staff helped me critically evaluate tools and platforms through which I might translate work for researchers outside of my field.

My primary DH project, Digital Paxton, began as a companion to my dissertation research, a repository of printed materials from Pennsylvania’s first major pamphlet war. Thanks to the support of more than a dozen cultural institutions, the project has blossomed into a scholarly edition, teaching platform, and the basis of an educational graphic novel. I couldn’t have developed this project at my home institution, which has limited DH resources; and I couldn’t have realized it without the support of regional consortia (e.g. NYCDH) and research fellowships (e.g. an Omohundro digital collections fellowship). Subsequent projects dedicated to diaries and early-20th century immigration also emerged through my work at GLAM institutions.

Now I work at one of those organizations, where I help researchers translate their work into public-facing projects. Unencumbered with incentive structures associated with tenure review, institutions like the Library Company of Philadelphia are uniquely equipped to recognize, authorize, and support civic-minded digital scholarship that universities might not incentivize, especially for early-career scholars. I would be honored to extend that commitment through the ACH Executive Council. Thank you for considering my application.

Sylvia Fernández

Christy Hyman

Biography

I am a fourth year doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and a Digital Collections Associate for the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. My research interests are concerned with the historical and spatial dimensions of movement across sites of trauma. I use GIS and other digital tools to observe to what extent data science and visualization can inform us of the human experience while acknowledging how those phenomena derive from oppressive systems in society.

I am also a current member of the People Not Property Slave Deeds Advisory Group a collaborative endeavor between the UNCG University Libraries, North Carolina Division of Archives and Records, and North Carolina Registers of Deeds. Our group oversees and provides recommendations for the digitization of property deeds in North Carolina referencing enslaved people. I also am the creator of a digital narrative/model of enslaved movement, The Oak of Jerusalem Flight Refuge and Reconnaissance in the Great Dismal Swamp Region.

As a digital scholarship librarian and musicologist, I collaborate on interdisciplinary and multi-modal projects with faculty, undergraduate and graduate students as well as cross-departmental staff in libraries and archives at Boston College. If elected to the ACH Executive Council, I would bring a unique perspective based on my experiences as both a scholar and librarian who is interested in pushing the boundaries of musicology (and humanities, in general) not only through the application of computational methods, but also by considering issues around diversity, accessibility, and sustainability in the data we create or curate, the research we do, and the projects we develop. In addition, I would be interested in facilitating ways in which the ACH can support a diverse membership, potentially focused on early-career or new-to-DH members, who may be looking for resources, guidance, and support.

Rebecca Sutton Koeser

Biography

Rebecca Sutton Koeser is the Lead Developer at the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University, where she leads the Development and Design Team in creating custom software for collaborative research projects with faculty. She and her team create innovative projects such as Derrida’s Margins and Princeton Prosody Archive, publish open source software packages, and leverage software industry best practices to develop rigorous, sustainable code. She is interested in the design and software development process in DH research, ethics and feminist perspectives on technical processes and data, and experimental humanities work, particularly data physicalization. Prior to her current position, she was a senior software engineer at Emory University Libraries for ten years. She also completed a PhD in English Literature from Emory with a dissertation reading modernist and experimental, contemporary feminist poetry as proto-hypertexts. Rebecca regularly presents at national and international Digital Humanities. Her recent article—Trusting Others to ‘Do the Math’—appeared in a special issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews dedicated to the subject of software and scholarship and meditates on what level of technical knowledge is sufficient for non-technical researchers using software and how to properly credit technical contributors to software-based research projects.

Candidate Statement

I will continue the tradition of “alt-ac” representation on the ACH Executive Council, providing a specifically software developer’s perspective on DH. I will provide technical consulting and oversight to ACH websites, projects, and publications. By representing ACH interests within the larger Research Software Engineer (RSE) community, I will ensure that the concerns and successes of DH software development are represented in the nascent U.S. RSE community as they are in the UK. I am excited about the new ACH conference, with its openness to experimental and creative approaches from a wide range of practitioners, and I look forward to carrying that forward to subsequent conferences and other activities sponsored by ACH.

Zoe LeBlanc

Biography

Zoe LeBlanc is currently a PhD Candidate in History at Vanderbilt University and a digital humanities developer at the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia. At Vanderbilt, Zoe is completing a digital history dissertation that leverages computational and statistical methods to explore the meaning and scale of anti-colonialism in Egyptian news media in the 1950s and 60s. At the Scholars’ Lab, Zoe helps build digital humanities tools and teaches humanities graduate students the foundations of programming and data analysis. Prior to graduate school, Zoe had no experience with programming or statistics, but a chance to become a HASTAC scholar at Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching and Learning changed the course of her career. After attending HILT and DHSI and getting hooked on coding, Zoe completed a part-time coding bootcamp in Nashville to learn how to build the research tools she wished existed. Zoe has also been a graduate fellow at the Vanderbilt Institute of Digital Learning and the Vanderbilt Center for Digital Humanities. Currently, she is part of the editorial board of the Programming Historian and serves on committees for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

Candidate Statement

In July 2017, I posted a twitter thread about my struggle to learn the skills necessary for digital humanities research. I remember feeling so discouraged at that point because I had done multiple DH summer institutes and digital humanities fellowships, and still I felt so far from being able to do the research I saw other DH scholars producing. The response to my tweets was overwhelming and incredibly supportive, even as my phone was crashing I finally realized the problem wasn’t mine alone but rather a problem that the entire field was struggling to answer. At the Scholars’ Lab, I’ve tried to create some solutions, piloting more intensive training in coding for graduate fellows. But still I worry about this problem, especially for scholars like me, at universities with less established DH infrastructure where funding is limited and expert guidance even more so. How can we democratize access to the skills needed to do more ambitious and experimental digital humanities? How can we support researchers at all stages of their careers and in all sorts of institutional contexts to undertake the DH research they envision? How can we make the labor involved in both this teaching and learning more visible and valued across the humanities?

If elected to the ACH executive, my goal would be to try and start building solutions to these problems. I realize these are big questions, but I strongly believe that ACH is one of the few professional societies that can actually produce meaningful change in these areas. In particular, I believe the ACH is more than a professional society, it is a community committed to distributive justice, inclusivity, and experimentation in the humanities, and I would be honored to serve this community and mission. Some concrete initiatives I would hope to pilot include trying to develop more opportunities for advanced training in computational and experimental digital humanities. I would also like to explore possibilities for connecting researchers at different stages and institutions so that DH expertise is shared beyond particular campuses. As a DH developer, I believe ACH could provide a much needed venue for discussions about software development in our field, and also help encourage collaboration between developers. Finally, I would like to harness some of the energy of the now classic DH twitter threads (like the one I posted) to craft ACH white papers and blog posts, whether on topics like DH labor practices or sustainability, so that we as field can start tackling these problems and building solutions.

Brad Rittenhouse

Biography

I am currently the Lab Coordinator of the DILAC Lab at Georgia Tech, and received my degree in C19 American Literature. I work on both the qualitative and quantitative ends, but most of it hews toward the idea of information management logics at work in literary aesthetics. My most recent article, entitled “TMI: The Data Management Aesthetics of Melville and Whitman,” appears in ESQ, and I’m presently working on several quantitative projects as well. Most of my administrative work aims at building DH at the local, state, and regional level through the creation of collaborations, projects, and formal organizations. I am also involved at the foundational level with several Southeast and Atlanta-based DH initiatives, and am excited to use a position on the ACH Executive Council to pursue these efforts at an even larger scale.

Candidate Statement

In my present position, I have had the opportunity to facilitate a wide variety of projects that fall outside what I have come to call the “traditional digital humanities.” While many in ACH come from traditional humanities disciplines, my lab and other emerging spaces evidence a growing interest across the university in humanistic analyses and applications of technology. As a humanities makerspace at a technical institution, my lab and I collaborate broadly with colleagues and students in engineering, computer science, high-powered computing, digital civics and public policy, HCI and design, and other disciplines often kept at arm’s length in the digital humanities community. As a part of the Council I would promote this “even bigger tent” approach to DH, bringing in colleagues and collaborators to participate in humanistic research who might otherwise be skeptical of our work, or of whom we ourselves might be suspicious.

Primarily teaching first-year undergraduates and curious but uninitiated faculty, I’m very invested in creating low/no tech approaches to that provide an unintimidating introduction to digital work for novices, and also help them to build technical and critical thinking skills applicable in a wide range of disciplines and career paths. I believe DH is best when it involves the widest variety of people, and I want to prioritize approaches that engage with people of all levels of technical skill and disciplinary commitment.

While my qualitative work focuses on Melville and Whitman as a case study, my digital work looks to sidestep critical biases that lionize these and other white male writers by quantifying the style of encyclopedic writing in a way that includes non-white, non-masculinist themes and aesthetics. I’m perhaps most excited about the possibilities DH presents for designing research that moves beyond the canon and facilitates an inclusive ethic at scale. As a member of the ACH Executive Council, I would promote critical work that uses digital systems to promote social justice and inclusion.

Andie Silva

Biography

Andie Silva is Assistant Professor of English at York College (CUNY). At York, she started a new interdisciplinary minor in Digital Studies and designed the minor’s foundational course, “Technologies of Reading.” She has recently been appointed as a faculty member in the CUNY Graduate Center’s Master in Digital Humanities program. She is currently co-editing (with Scott Schofield, Huron College, UWestern Ontario) a collection on digital pedagogy in early modern studies, forthcoming with Iter Press and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS). Her forthcoming monograph, The Brand of Print: Marketing Paratexts in the Early English Book Trade (Brill) and its companion database, Printed Paratexts Online, will be published in 2019. She has published her research in the History of European Ideas, the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and Changing English, and also has a co-authored article in Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge, 2017). She is also a member of the NYC Digital Humanities Steering Committee.

Candidate Statement

I’m honored to be considered for a position in the ACH Executive Council. While debates surrounding diversity, inclusivity, and citizenship are crucial and increasingly urgent, they must be followed by concrete action. The field of digital humanities in particular must make conscious efforts toward fostering inclusive and representative spaces if it is to avoid replicating the colonialist structures that underpin so much of academia. It is the responsibility of executive councils to lead by example, ensuring that we remain mindful of inclusivity and strive to make the organization’s members and their work visible. In addition to reaching across ranks and institutions, this also means inviting and supporting scholars across communities and at the various intersections of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability, and neurodiversity. I would like to help the ACH promote the increased visibility of minoritized voices and of those in marginalized or contingent positions by ensuring representation in our conferences, journal publications, and awards. Furthermore, as someone who is deeply committed to pedagogy and public scholarship, I’m interested in making student work counted and valued. This includes, for instance, encouraging and supporting conference proposals that credit and ideally invite graduate and undergraduate student contributions and collaborations. I would like to help strengthen DH community ties across under-funded and under-represented institutions, helping build workshops and offer mentoring and funding opportunities to better train faculty and students interested in digital scholarship.

Questions about the ACH, the 2019 election, or our nominations process may be sent to secretary@ach.org.

ACH @ MLA: Transacting DH: Roles, Rights, and Responsibilities of Collaboration

Lisa Marie Rhody — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Session 487
Saturday, January 5 at 12:00 PM
Acapulco Room, Hyatt Regency
Chicago, IL
#mla19 #s487

In 2011, Tanya Clement and Dave Lester convened an NEH-supported conversation titled Off the Tracks, which led to the eventual publication of the Collaborators’ Bill of Rights. Prompted by this year’s presidential theme–Textual Transactions–this guaranteed panel supported by the Association for Computer in the Humanities (ACH) will address questions of “transaction” as a combination of form and function. Since 2011, what models of collaboration have evolved? How have advisors and students negotiated their roles in digital humanities research projects? What are the rights and responsibilities of mentoring, supervising, directing, or staffing a digital humanities research project? What are the boundaries of these transactions? How can digital humanities transactions challenge our ideas of collaboration?

This session will consider what the rights, roles and responsibilities associated with forms of DH research and pedagogical transaction. What models are there? What are the pitfalls? What honest conversation can we have about them? We would like to hear models from those working in a variety of situations: faculty, altac, library, student, advisory board, volunteer, or administrator. The session will begin with short reflections by panelists with plans to open up conversation

Presenter Information

Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Carrie Johnston

Rikk Mulligan

Lisa Rhody

Dhanashree Thorat

Abstracts

Generosity, Solidarity, and Sustainability

Kathleen Fitzpatrick

It goes without saying that collaboration is challenging, and perhaps especially within fields that have long privileged the work of the individual author; participants in collaborative projects find themselves not just having to demonstrate the significance of the projects but also having to account for their precise contributions to them, in order that they might be accorded the proper level of credit in a system whose reward structures remain predicated on individual merit. This system, as I argue throughout Generous Thinking, is part and parcel of the academy’s relentless drive toward privatization, toward individualization, which has serious ramifications both for higher education’s funding model and for the public conception of the benefits that it provides. If we are to find our way out of the impasse in which our colleges and universities and those who work within them today seem trapped, we must reorient our thinking about our work from individual achievement to focus instead on more collective forms of accomplishment.

Such a reorientation has to take place not just at the individual level, however, but at the institutional level as well. A significant number of major digital infrastructure projects currently underway — academy-owned, not-for-profit projects that bear the potential for freeing the university from the stranglehold inflicted by some corporate providers — require the active participation and investment of multiple institutions in order to make the projects and their benefits sustainable. And that participation and investment require the institutions, in many cases, to put the interests of the academy writ large ahead of their own local, competitive interests.

There is, in other words, an aspect of sustainability for major digital projects that I would argue precedes the financial, or the technical: the social. This social aspect points not just to the determination of a group of people to support a particular project, but to the determination of those people to support their groupness; not just to their commitment to the thing they’re doing together, but to their commitment to the concept of “together” in the first place. Sustainability in collaborative development has solidarity as a prerequisite, in other words, a recognition that the interests of the group require commitment from its members to that group, at times over and above their own individual interests. This presentation will open the question of how we foster that commitment: how, in fact, we understand that commitment itself as a crucial aspect of sustainability.

Language and Labor in the Digital Humanities

Carrie Johnston

This presentation will address the opportunities and challenges of transacting digital humanities collaborative projects from the perspective of a Digital Humanities Research Designer in an academic library. While collaboration is often celebrated as a central to the success of digital humanities projects, I argue that often the language of collaboration excludes those whose work is organized by reward systems that do not include long-term projects. In this presentation, I will discuss the language of digital humanities project management that, when put into practice, often replicates the academic hierarchies that DH prides itself on transcending or resisting.

As a digital humanities project manager, one of my responsibilities is to acknowledge that “collaborator” is a title or role that many do not have the option to take on. Additionally, I attend to the ways that words used to describe DH labor—“showcase” as a verb to describe digital exhibit building, for example—can rebrand the often-invisible labor of librarians, archivists, and museum professionals as a new endeavor taken on by a digital humanities project team.

Digital humanities transactions have challenged our ideas of collaboration in productive ways by facilitating interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, and public humanities projects. However, we must acknowledge the ways that these successes have largely ignored the material realities of many academic laborers. By drawing attention to the language we use in digital humanities outreach, planning, and staffing, this presentation will provoke honest conversation about the privileged assumptions that impede our efforts toward equitable labor practices.

Conflicted Collaboration: Creating Models for DH Service and Collaboration at CMU

Rikk Mulligan

The University Libraries and the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences of Carnegie Mellon University jointly sponsor our digital research and publishing center: dSHARP. Our core faculty include digital humanities specialists and consultants for research data management, digital publishing, and digital scholarship. As a library-hosted center we are a discipline-neutral research hub that partners with liaison librarians, CLIR postdoctoral fellows, HASTAC scholars (graduate students), and student interns. The University Archives, special collections, and digitization team help provide our research materials. We incubate DH as a community of practice at CMU by hosting events and open collaborative sessions, teaching workshops, seminars, and an interdisciplinary undergraduate DH course. We respond to inquiries involving methods and tools, consult on grants, and connect researchers with subject matter experts and collaborators–students, faculty, and staff including ourselves. Those of us who are faculty can also offer up to 20% of our time to collaborate on projects.

This combined service and research model creates several challenges including differentiating between faculty consultations and collaboration, tracking efforts and contributions at the project-level, and acknowledging the contributions made by other library personnel. We try to illuminate the entire DH research lifecycle, from planning to preservation. Unfortunately, some are only interested in a tool or method, while others find that their projects metastasize. Our intent is for everyone to understand the roles and contributions of everyone involved, and to acknowledge and credit them appropriately. Our pedagogic partnerships might include modules for Canvas, classroom instruction, or collaborating in designing a technology-enhanced course. However, some faculty view collaboration as service, so they avoid team-based project planning and fail to recognize the contributions of library personnel as research.

Collaborating with Graduate Students

Lisa Marie Rhody

Collaborations on scholarly, digital projects are shaped by the contexts in which they are created and the relationships between the partners involved. Collaborations with graduate students can represent tricky ethical terrain where the boundaries between professionalization and opportunity is vexed. On the one hand, collaborations between graduate students and faculty or administrators can lead to valuable opportunities to develop new skills and to connect with professional networks. However, collaboration can also become burdensome for students when the needs of the group encroach on individual boundaries.

This presentation considers the particular case of the Graduate Center’s Digital Fellows, specifically in relationship to the recently-funded GC Digital Humanities Research Institute, tracing the development of a collaboratively authored curriculum. Moving beyond codes of conduct, bills of rights, and project charters, this presentation considers the limits of collaboration when aspirational statements are challenged by the realities of project goals.

Post/Colonial Transactions in the Global Digital Humanities

Dr. Dhanashree Thorat

In the last several years, digital humanities has expanded its global imaginary outside the United States and Europe. This is indicated by the location of the annual DH conference in Mexico City in 2018, and the various digital projects (such as the Digital Library of the Caribbean) that envision Global North-South co-production. While these new developments are promising and frame Global South partners as collaborators, the field of digital humanities also has a troubling history of digital initiatives grounded in asymmetrical power relations.(For instance, digital archives built by outsourcing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) work to cheap and invisible labor in the Global South.)

This talk takes up the pitfalls and ethics of Global North-South collaborations given the existing asymmetries in power and knowledge production globally. Grounding myself in the specific context of Indian Digital Humanities, and my work as Executive Council member with the Center for Digital Humanities, Pune, I outline practices for North-South digital collaborations that we delineated during our engagements with scholars and institutions located in the U.S. These practices foreground local needs and local scholars, and are premised upon a critical awareness of colonial histories. This talk specifically focuses on our conversations about three critical areas: working with Indian cultural heritage material, defining the roles of Indian collaborators, and the platforms and forms through which knowledge created by the collaborative project would be disseminated locally.

Presenter Bios

Kathleen Fitzpatrick is Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English at Michigan State University. Prior to assuming this role in 2017, she served as Associate Executive Director and Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association, where she was Managing Editor of PMLA and other MLA publications, as well as overseeing the development of the MLA Handbook. During that time, she also held an appointment as Visiting Research Professor of English at NYU and Visiting Professor of Media Studies at Coventry University. Before joining the MLA staff in 2011, she was Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, where she had been a member of the faculty since 1998.

Fitzpatrick is author of Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy (NYU Press, 2011) and of The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television (Vanderbilt University Press, 2006). She is project director of Humanities Commons, an open-access, open-source network serving more than 15,000 scholars and practitioners in the humanities. She is also co-founder of the digital scholarly network MediaCommons, where she led a number of experiments in open peer review and other innovations in scholarly publishing. She serves on the editorial or advisory boards of publications and projects including the Open Library of the Humanities, Luminos, the Open Annotation Collaboration, PressForward, and thresholds. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Carrie Johnston is the Digital Humanities Research Designer in the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University. In her role of supporting digitally-inflected humanities research, she has become committed to addressing the precarious nature of digital humanities labor. She is a co-author of a forum piece addressing labor issues in the special issue of American Quarterly, “Towards a Critically Engaged Digital Practice: American Studies and the Digital Humanities.” Her research considers the ways that technology has historically informed women’s literary labor, and she co-edited the fall 2017 special issue of Studies in the Novel, “Gender and the Cultural Preoccupations of the American West.” In 2014, she earned her Ph.D. in English from Southern Methodist University, where she became interested in digital humanities through a partnership with the university libraries to create a digital collection of rare Santa Fe Railway advertisements and ephemera.

Rikk Mulligan is Digital Scholarship Strategist in the Hunt Libraries at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a PhD in American Studies from Michigan State University where he specialized in popular culture, particularly genre literature and media including science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His research focuses on social and political criticism in popular media. He has published on apocalyptic narratives including Battlestar Galactica and the zombie apocalypse, as well as critical studies of graphic novels and comic books. Current digital humanities research extends beyond these genres with collaborations on the Latin American Comics Archive and the digital publishing platform for the Encyclopedia of Science History at CMU, and the Frankenstein Variorum, a multi-institutional collaboration to create a digital scholarly edition and variorum of multiple editions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Lisa Marie Rhody (chair) is Deputy Director of Digital Initiatives at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is an administrator, teacher, and researcher whose work has considered the varied and often complicated ways in which emerging digital technologies change the ways we study, present, and teach the humanities and social sciences. Lisa directs the GC Digital Fellowship Programs, which include the GC Digital Fellows, the Program Social Media Fellows, and the Videography Fellows, coordinates the Provost’s Digital Innovation Grants, and holds a faculty appointment in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, Master of Arts in Digital Humanities, and Master of Science in Data Analytics and Visualization programs. She currently serves on the steering committee of NYC DH, a loosely-organized city-wide coalition of digital humanists. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Digital Humanities, differences, Debates in the Digital Humanities, and PMLA.

Dhanashree Thorat situates her research at the intersection of Digital Humanities, Postcolonial Studies, and Asian American Studies. Her work investigates the manner in which digital spaces, specifically digital archives and social media, codify hegemonic narratives of Muslims in the post-9/11 moment, and how Muslims use these same spaces to articulate political agency and intervene in mainstream conversations about their racialized bodies. Dhanashree is a founding Executive Council member of the Center for Digital Humanities, Pune in India. She serves as the lead organizer for a biennial winter school on Digital Humanities, and advises the center on digital archival projects and DH curriculum development. She has organized and led DH workshops on various topics including digital archiving, feminist digital humanities, and digital pedagogies.

ACH @ MLA: The Porous Scholarly Edition

Lisa Marie Rhody — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Co-sponsored with the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions

Co-organizers: Susan Brown (MLA Committee for Scholarly Editions) and Lisa Rhody (Association for Computers and the Humanities)

Date: Friday, January 4, 2019
Time: 10:15 – 11:30 AM
Room: Hyatt Regency, Gold Coast
Session: 245
Social Media: #MLA19 #s245

The following information is also available as a Google Doc, which will be used for public note taking and sharing during the session.

The Porous Scholarly Edition

Has the scholarly edition become more porous as a result of the digital turn? This panel offers reflections and provocations on the way that the boundaries of scholarly editions have changed or should change. Presentations and discussion will address such questions as:

In what ways can editions be dynamic, in terms of temporality, media, or delivery?
What are innovative ways of handling multiple versions of various kinds?
How do hyperlinking and other digital technologies affect the putative boundaries of the scholarly edition?
How is “external” content, whether manually or automatically harvested, related to scholarly editions?
How is the authority or singularity of the editor changing in the context of digital scholarly editions?
What role might citizen scholarship play in relation to scholarly editions?
How ought credit to be handled when digital editions involve collaboration with others, whether they are scholars, students, designers, or technical contributors?
How does annotation impact digital scholarly editions?
In what ways are editorial control and processes impacted?

The Committee on Scholarly Editions and the Association for Computers in the Humanities have selected for a collaborative session three presentations that focus on the ways in which scholarly editions have become more porous as a result of the digital turn. Porousness can pertain to the production of base texts, paratexts, an expansive array of contextual content, and intermedial relationships between primary and secondary materials. Presenters will consider how innovations in versioning, linking, community annotation, editorial authority, and ephemerality impact the extent to which digital editions can be porous—from production to delivery, through reception, iterative revision and instantiation, impacting modes of contribution, workflow, quality control, and authority.

Each presentation will advance debate and understanding of the digital scholarly edition through diverse perspectives covering manuscript, print, and digital textuality related to editing texts from the 19th to the 21st century, and minimal to extensive infrastructure. Presenters explore topics such as variation, collaboration, and ongoing revision, challenging the fixity of the text. Porous editions can reject the model of the comprehensive (and extensively funded) definitive scholarly edition in favour of more open, participatory, agile, or accessible editions. Conversely, authoritative base texts can become, with the affordances of ongoing versioning, a basis for textual play, interactive pedagogy, and public engagement.

All three panelists see the digital scholarly edition as porous, but they approach questions of participation and authority so variously that the boundaries of the “scholarly” as well as the edition are called into question, as well as positioning themselves very differently in relation to digital tools, infrastructure, funding models, and professional norms.

Presentations

Defiant Computing: Editing for Social Justice

Amanda Gailey, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

In “Defiant Computing: Editing for Social Justice,” Amanda Gailey will discuss a variant of minimal computing called “defiant computing”: doing digital humanities, particularly digital editing, in ways that defy the Marcusian efficiencies of corporate technology, the neoliberal university, and the racial, gender, and class structures they help perpetuate. In a minimal computing or defiant computing environment, traditional editing projects might be impossible, which in turn may prompt renewed attention on noncanonical, overlooked, radical histories and documents at a scale that individual scholars or small team could manage in their own research time, using methods that are not labor intensive, or at least that don’t direct the labor to marking up document features and metadata that are secondary to the social, political, scholarly or pedagogical interest in the document. “Defiant computing” prioritizes creating human and student readable texts rather than machine readable or machine aggregated. Labor would concentrate on annotation and explication rather than features of interest almost exclusively to specialists. Distribution would consider contexts beyond the web, considering PDFs and print copies as viable deliverables that emphasize the social justice of making the documents available for lay readers and students over labor-intensive textual apparatuses or digital markup. A sustainable, digital editing economy that would value smaller scale projects that can be managed by teachers and researchers defiant computing would avoid third-party oversight and entanglements except via peer review, would explore and preserve alternative humanistic communication and distribution modes with global teachers and scholars, especially those who even in our own communities have been historically shut out of the logic of efficiency of the academic-industrial complex.

Amanda Gailey: I am an associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where I teach American literature and digital humanities, specializing in digital editing and theory. I am also a political activist who focuses on social justice, gun control, and academic and intellectual freedom. My first book, Proofs of Genius: Collected Editions from the American Revolution to the Digital Age (Michigan 2015) was about how collected editions functioned politically in American literary history. I am currently working on a book about the history and future of academic freedom in the United States.

Inviting everyone: A spectrum of meaningful scholarship between academic rhetoric and tagging

Amanda Visconti, University of Virginia Library, Scholars’ Lab

“What if we build a digital edition and invite everyone? What if millions of scholars, first-time readers, book clubs, teachers and their students show up and annotate a text with their infinite interpretations, questions, and contextualizations?”. Approaching digital editions as Morris Eaves’ “problem-solving mechanism”s, during 2013-2015 I designed, built, and user-tested a digital edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, InfiniteUlysses.com (now archived as a static site), to address challenges in public humanities edition design and participatory, socially annotated digital editions in particular.

Infinite Ulysses tried to welcome everyone interested in participating in interpretation of Ulysses, whether inside or outside the academy. The edition drew over 13k visitors in its first month of open beta testing, over 24k unique visitors in its first year, and was cited in The New York Times Sunday Book Review. This publicity provided a wealth of insights into how a variety of people interact with digital editions. In particular, I analyzed the set of annotations created by the site’s hundreds of user accounts with the goal of better understanding what meaningful crowdsourcing looks like for literature.

“Critical public engagement” is often defined as public interaction with the scholarly community marked by the adoption and use of scholarly rhetoric and approaches by the public. I explored whether participatory digital editions should always aim for this level of critical public engagement, instead gathering a list of potential scholarly gains from non-critical public engagement, including gains from user testing and the application of scholarly textual analysis tools to user comments around the texts usually analyzed by such tools. Using Infinite Ulysses as a case study, this talk takes the spectrum of public humanities participation running from simply “adding a tag” through full critical discourse at the level of an advanced scholar, and argues that a rich and generative array of other kinds of meaningful participation with a text sit between those two extremes.

Dr. Amanda Visconti is the Managing Director of the Scholars’ Lab research center at the University of Virginia. Her 2015 dissertation from the University of Maryland fully acknowledges digital methods as scholarship by treating them as the dissertation instead of addenda to traditional written chapters. Her participatory digital edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, InfiniteUlysses.com, was cited in The New York Times and drew over 13k visitors in its first month of open beta and 24k in its first year.

Archive Edition Project: Digital Editing and Revision Annotation

John Bryant, Hofstra University

In the 1960s, at the height of US funding for the scholarly editing of American authors, the reigning assumption of editorial endeavor was that once the variants were recorded and the (mostly) eclectic reading texts produced, the edition was done; the work was over; critics could do what they wished. The unhappy consequence was that the profession increasingly marginalized “textual criticism.” Since the 1980s, with the theoretical work of Gabler, McGann, Shillingsburg, Tanselle, and others, the always-present notion that scholarly editing requires re-editing, that it involves different modes of editing, and that it has critical consequences gave renewed validity to editorial processes. In my own work on fluid texts, I have tried to adapt protocols on the editing of versions and of revision as a phenomenon—protocols first conceived when digital technology was more possibility than reality—into a digital environment. With the development of TextLab—now generalizable for any digital editorial project—we enable users (both editors and students) to transcribe written works in revision (in manuscript or print), to code the revision sites in TEI-xml, and to annotate revision sequences with revision narratives. This form of revision annotation has proven to be an engaging introduction to editorial process, critical thinking, and literary analysis for students, and our undergraduates in particular.

In a twelve-minute presentation (with slides), I would provide a brief overview of the Melville Electronic Library (MEL) and its fluid text editions, and then focus on how TextLab has been used to combine research and pedagogy in undergraduate classes. In doing so, I would also underscore MEL’s Archive Edition Projects structure, which in effect converts the traditional Textual Apparatus of conventional print editions into an intellectual playground that invites users to create Projects drawing upon the Edition’s texts and the Archive’s data. With this approach, I hope that digital editions, through interactions with users and interoperability with other editions, can give added critical pleasure to the notion of “textual criticism.”

Dr. John Bryant, Professor Emeritus of English at Hofstra University, is the author of A Companion to Melville Studies (Greenwood), Melville and Repose (Oxford), The Fluid Text (Michigan), Melville Unfolding (Michigan), and over 60 articles on Melville, related nineteenth-century writers, scholarly editing, and digital scholarship. He is the founding editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies and has published print editions of Typee (Penguin), The Confidence-Man (Random House), Melville’s Tales, Poems, and Other Writings (Modern Library), and the Longman Critical Edition of Moby-Dick. His electronic edition Herman Melville’s Typee (Rotunda, University of Virginia) received the MLA-CSE seal of approval in 2009. He is founder and director of the online critical archive and scholarly edition Melville Electronic Library (MEL) and of Hofstra University’s Digital Research Center. In 2015, he received the Distinguished Editor Award given by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ). Currently, he is working on a comprehensive biography titled Herman Melville: A Half Known Life (Wiley).

ACH 2019 Elections: Call for Nominations

Amanda Visconti — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Due date for nominations: December 15th, 2018

Due date for materials (bio and candidate statements): December 31, 2018

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) invites nominations for the 2019 elections, in which our members will elect three Executive Council members for four-year terms (2019-2023).

We seek candidates eager to support and advance the field of digital humanities (DH) by helping to lead the ACH.

Activities: ACH officers and Executive Council members develop and uphold ACH policies, determine and distribute funding, and oversee all organizational activities. Planned activities for 2019 include the inaugural ACH conference; a membership drive; various facets of our mentorship program and job slams; advocacy work; publications including the Humanistlistserv, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and DH Slack; collaborations with ADHO partners in the annual DH conference and other professional activities; co-administration of a number of prestigious DH awards, distribution of student bursaries for DH training and education, as well as other priorities as set by the ACH membership. You can be involved in helping ACH programs succeed by nominating either yourself or someone else to be an active participant in the leadership of the Association.

Eligibility and expectations: To stand for election as an Executive Council member or officer, candidates must be members in good standing of the ACH at the time of nomination, or be willing to become members post-election. They commit to being present at annual Council meetings at the Digital Humanities Conference, whether in person or virtually, and to participating in discussions during the rest of the year by email and audio/video conference. Council members are expected to be active in the digital humanities community.

Seeking a diverse slate of nominees: We welcome participants not just from universities and colleges, but also galleries, libraries, museums, community groups, and other organizations engaged with digital humanities. We also welcome nominations of people from all constituencies and humanities disciplines, and especially encourage the nomination of women, people of color, LGBTQ, or other underrepresented groups. Demonstrated commitment to the organization and/or to the field counts for more with our membership than professional affiliation, academic status, or job title.

By December 15th, 2018, please either

Email nominations@ach.org with any names and email addresses of nominees (including self-nominations), or
Proceed directly to filling out the nomination form at tinyurl.com/ACHnominations2019 (if you are self-nominating) or direct your nominee to fill out that form (if you’ve spoken with your nominee already and they’ve agreed to run). As long as you’ve submitted your nominee name by 12/15, the bio and candidate statements requested on that form are not due until 12/31.

Sample candidate statements from past elections are available. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of ACH council members, see the Bylaws. Current officers of the ACH are listed on our officers page .

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at nominations@ach.org. The three top vote-getters in the Executive Council race will be elected to four-year terms.

Many thanks,

ACH Nominations Committee

Amanda Visconti, University of Virginia (Chair)

Matt Gold, City University of New York (ACH President)

Quinn Dombrowski, University of California, Berkeley

Erin N. Bush, George Mason University

Eileen Clancy, City University of New York

A previous error causing messages to bounce has been fixed, but you may email abv6x@virginia.edu instead of nominations@ach.org, if you still run into any issues.

ACH-Supported Student Experiences at DH 2018

Matt Gold — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities was delighted to support the participation of ten early career scholars from across the globe in the DH2018 conference held in Mexico City. We thank these students for their participation in the conference and for reflecting upon their experiences in the posts below.

Conference Reflections

Melanie Walsh (US)

Tweets of a Native Son: James Baldwin, #BlackLivesMatter, and Networks of Textual Recirculation

Thanks to the generous support of the ACH, I was able to travel and present my work, “James Baldwin, #BlackLivesMatter, and Networks of Textual Recirculation,” at the first-ever Digital Humanities Conference held in the Global South. The ACH’s dedication to making sure that international graduate students and early career scholars could be in Mexico City aligned with the mission of the broader conference by helping to foster a more global, more inclusive, and more activist digital humanities community. To be at the DH Conference in Mexico City was to realize that the work of the digital humanities cannot be confined to the English language, the academy, or even the confines of a conference hotel. This was a realization that was sometimes metaphorical and sometimes strikingly literal, as when Mexico’s World Cup team advanced to the Round of 16, and day-long celebrations around El Ángel de la Independencia (a 100-foot tall victory column topped with the bronze and gold Greek goddess) could be heard from the hotel lobby across the street. During the panel “Maps, Networks, Archives,” I presented my paper alongside scholars from Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands, who presented in both the English and Spanish languages, and whose research productively challenged my ways of thinking and my bibliographies. Many DH2018 attendees also participated in hackathons for the activist intervention project, Torn Apart / Separados, which uses DH tools to map the infrastructure of immigration enforcement in the US, a direct response to “zero tolerance” immigration policies that were separating parents from their children. These efforts, all the more weighted for taking place in Mexico, toward which US immigration policies are often directed, embodied the spirit of activist collaboration that defined much of my DH2018 experience.

Sylvia Fernández (US)

De la teoría a la práctica: Visualización digital de las comunidades en la frontera México-Estados Unidos

During the fourth day of DH2018, in the panel titled, “Mapas y Territorios,” I presented about the present and the future of Borderlands Archives Cartography, a project founded by my colleague Maira Alvarez and I. After the presentation, librarians from Mexican institutions and scholars across the continent approached to us and proposed new collaborations that will contribute to the sustainability of the project, the inclusion of more newspapers and the integration of new interdisciplinary collaborators for the forthcoming project of the US-Mexico borderlands. These, among other great opportunities, came up during that week, leading me to be more involved with the DH community and move towards more transnational, inclusive and diverse practices within the field.

Gabrielle Vail (US)

Harnessing Emergent Digital Technologies to Facilitate North-South, Cross-Cultural, Interdisciplinary Conversations about Indigenous Community Identities and Cultural Heritage in Yucatán

I am extremely grateful to have received an ACH bursary for the DH2018 conference. This award helped pay for my registration, which allowed me to attend the conference, where I helped to organize a panel (see title above) and had the opportunity to discuss an online resource (the Maya Codices Database, available at mayacodices.org) that has been significant to a number of people in the Mexican state of Yucatán, as well as to students of Maya descent in western North Carolina. I felt that it was important to share this work at a conference of this nature based in Mexico, where it has had such a significant impact but still remains poorly known in the DH community. Participating in DH2018 also allowed me to make connections with a number of colleagues engaged in similar projects, and to meet the keynote speaker, Janet Sánchez Santiago, whose work is integral to indigenous communities in Mexico. In this way, it helped to broaden my understanding of the DH field and to provide points of contact for future DH projects.

Hannah Reardon (Canada)

Bridging Divides for Conservation in the Amazon: Digital Technologies & The Calha Norte Portal

DH2018 in Mexico City was an incredibly enriching opportunity for me as a young scholar and newcomer to the field of DH. During the workshops, presentations, and events I met amazing people from a variety of disciplines who demonstrated curiosity in my project and provided support in the form of resources, suggestions, publishing opportunities, and excellent feedback. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to ACH and ADHO for providing the generous funding which allowed me to attend this defining event in my young career!

Andres Lombana-Bermudez (Colombia/US)

Cultura participativa y archivos digitales: La catalogación colaborativa del Archivo Histórico Regional de Boyacá (Colombia)

DH2018 was inspiring, and empowering. It was a powerful learning and scholarly experience. I am grateful for the support that the ACH gave me so I could cover part of my trip to Ciudad de México. Although I have worked in the field of digital humanities for several years, this was the first time I attended its major international conference. Together with my colleague Maria Jose Afanador-Llach, I presented a case study of the Boyaca’s Regional Historic Archive in Colombia and how the process of collaborative cataloguing supported the development of new literacies and a participatory culture in a local context characterized by multiple digital divides. Through the conference panels, keynotes, and workshops, I was re-energized with the diversity of projects, methodologies, and themes that the organizers and participants put together. I learned a lot, and was able to connect with new colleagues and collaborators. Particularly, I was moved by the call of many scholars and activists for construir puentes, bridges across disciplines, countries, cultures, and knowledges. For me as a postdoctoral scholar originally from Colombia, now living in Boston, it was revealing to see the diverse initiatives and projects emerging from the Global South and from Latin America in Español and indigenous languages. I am looking forward to collaborating in several of this initiatives and helping to create new ones.

Cecile Armand (France)

Bridging Cultures Through Mapping Practices: Space and Power in Asia and America

What first struck me at DH2018 in Mexico City was the massive character of the conference. As a French young scholar, I was more familiar with workshop-style academic events with a limited number of participants. I was nevertheless impressed by the generally high quality of the papers and post-discussions and I was fortunate to receive constructive feedback on my own research. As I tried to make my way into the variety of parallel panels, I came to identify three types of papers that correspond to three main ways of practicing digital humanities (still such a vague umbrella term…): digital philosophers (people reflecting upon digital cultures, issues of gender, ethnic and ethical issues ranging from digital activism to more classic forms of cultural critics); digital managers (people involved in or concerned with the management of digital projects and labs, with a particular focus on organizational issues); digital practitioners or craftsmen/women (scholars who are strongly grounded in academic disciplines and who harness digital tools to enrich their research). Within the latter category, individual scholars cluster around different families of tools or methods (databases, SNA, spatial and textual analysis, machine learning, data-visualizations…). Although I do not deny the importance of digital culture and management, I will focus here on digital practitioners. What struck me the most among the digital practitioners present at DH2018 is the increasing emphasis they placed on data and data management. Data and data production/management (extraction, processing, cleaning) – steps that necessarily precede any analysis – are no longer viewed as “side operations”. That they play an important part in the research process and may have a profound impact on the final results is now widely recognized. Hence the need to better document the method we rely on and the choices we make at every step in the research process. I appreciate the general call for a greater transparency in historical investigation so that other scholars can replicate the method with their own data in a different context. This is extremely encouraging. Because it is primarily by strengthening the scientific value of our digital practices that we will gain greater legitimacy in the academe, at a time when digital practices are still often viewed as parallel activities.

Chelsea Miya (Canada)

The Two Moby Dicks: The Split Signatures of Melville’s Novel

I really appreciate the steps that the DH 2018 conference organizers took to to support graduate student work. The ACH travel bursary was obviously a big part of that. Without this funding myself and other students might not have had the chance to present our research at such a prestigious gathering. But it also goes beyond that… Little things, like the ACH newcomers dinner, go a long way in creating a supportive environment for junior scholars and helping us integrate ourselves into the academic community. I was also lucky enough to be accepted into the DH 2018 New Scholars unconference seminar, which for the past few years has been organized by Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell and Dr. Rachel Hendery. The program gives students a safe space to have frank discussions about our experiences as graduate students in DH, everything from doing digital dissertations to crafting DH CVs. The seminar also partners participants with mentors, and the advisor I was lucky enough to be paired with, Dr. Fotis Jannidis, went over and above to make me feel welcome and to introduce me to other experts in my field – thank you! I am incredibly grateful to the senior scholars like Dr. Jannidis, Dr. Maciej Eder, Dr. Alex Gil, Dr. Roopika Risam, and many others who took the time to discuss my research with me and offer their feedback and advice. I came away from the conference energized and inspired, and I know that I’ll produce stronger work because of it.

Student Bursaries

In addition, the following students also received ACH bursaries to the DH2018 conference:

Camilo Martínez (Colombia): “Milpaís: Una Wiki Semántica Para Recuperar, Compartir Y Construir Colaborativamente Las Relaciones Entre Plantas, Seres Humanos, Comunidades Y Entornos”
Talia Méndez Mahecha (Colombia): “Si Las Humanidades Digitales Fueran Un Círculo Estaríamos Hablando De La Circunferencia Digital”

ACH seeks volunteers for the DH2020 Program Committee

Matt Gold — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) is soliciting self-nominations for ACH members to serve on the Program Committee (PC) for the international ADHO DH2020 conference, to be held in Ottawa, Canada. The PC approves the structure and content of the entire academic program; serving on this committee offers ACH members an opportunity to help shape this large global DH conference.

Expectations:

It is expected that PC members will be active, engaged, and timely in their duties.
PC members should be willing and able to commit a minimum of 5 hours per month in the first year (2018-2019) with additional hours (10 or more) being needed in 2019-2020 as the Program Committee begins the bulk of its work.
PC members are expected to begin work in June 2018; work continues through the closing of the 2020 conference.
It is strongly recommended that PC members have attended recent international DH conferences in Montreal (2017) or Mexico City (2018), as well as the 2019 conference in Utrecht
Activities associated with the PC will be governed by the ADHO Conference Code of Conduct, the Conference Protocol, the Conference Annex, and all relevant ADHO policies.

Please review these documents prior to committing to this service.

Please self-nominate by 9am EST on Friday, July 6 if possible. Thank you and please email membership@ach.org with any questions you might have.

ACH 2019 Call for Reviewers

Jen Guiliano — Tue, 03 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

ACH 2019 is seeking reviewers to evaluate conference proposal submissions during December 2018 and January 2019. ACH wishes to establish a wide, and as varied as possible, pool of reviewers for this conference.

We welcome members of any academic affiliation or professional role who are interested in the digital humanities that would like to help shape the representation of our organization at its first national conference. Although we are a US-based organization, we encourage those who live in regions of the world that are not represented by existing professional organizations to review, recognizing that intellectual, cultural, institutional, and other forms of diversity make a vital contribution to scholarship and practice.

ACH 2019 is invested in being a multilingual event, and candidates should state all the languages in which they can review proposals.

Reviewer candidates must hold an affiliation or professional role currently or recently associated with a digital humanities (or digital humanities-related) program, project, or initiative. This includes professionals working in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums who are involved in digital cultural heritage, preservation, and other areas of information creation and sharing.

Nominees should submit an expression of interest via this form.

Deadline for nominations is September 1, 2018. If you have questions, please contact Roopika Risam (rrisam@salemstate.edu).

ACH2019 Program Committee Additions

Jen Guiliano — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

ACH and its 2019 Program Committee would like to welcome two new members to the group charged with developing the program:

Emily Esten, fellow at the Kennedy Institute, who serves as our Gallaries, Libraries, Archives and Museums representative.

Sylvia Fernández, PhD candidate at the University of Houston, co-founder of Borderlands Archives Cartography, and fellow at the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage project, as our graduate student representative.

DH2018 Please Ask/Do Tell Stickers

Purdom Lindblad — Sun, 24 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Please Ask/Do Tell stickers are back for DH2018! Much like at DH2016, the Please Ask/Do Tell stickers are designed to be invitations for conversation.

If you have insight into the conference, a particular community of practice within Digital Humanities, a job opportunity to share, mentoring advice, or other information you are willing to share, attach a “Please Ask” sticker to your name badge.

If you have questions about the conference, Digital Humanities, or are seeking information, claim a “Do Tell” sticker for your name badge.

As many of us hold a wide range of information and questions, feel free to grab both.

Finally, an additional gold star sticker is available for those with current job openings to share. All stickers will be available at the registration table and from ACH Exec Members.

The program is designed to create a welcoming atmosphere, allowing those new to the field and those who have something to share opportunities to interact and to share their experience.

Call for Graduate Student and GLAM Committee Members for ACH2019 Program Committee

Jen Guiliano — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Recognizing how the digital humanities bridge conventional academic distinctions, The Association of Computers and Humanities (ACH) seek two members to join the organizing committee for the 2019 program committee from across the field, including: those working in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums as well as early-career graduate students with interests in digital scholarship. We are ideally looking for one representative from the graduate student community and one representative from the cultural heritage community.

This is an excellent opportunity for cultural heritage professionals and graduate students to gain experience in conference organizing. Participation in this planning committee offers a unique CV line and potential mentorship opportunities in the field.

Expressions of interest should be sent via this form.

Feel free to contact Heather Froehlich and Nabil Kashyap with any questions.

ACH Job Slam at the Annual General Meeting at DH2018 in Mexico City on June 28th

Lisa Marie Rhody — Wed, 30 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH will host a Jobs Slam on Thursday, June 28, 2018 during the ACH’s General Meeting from 12:30 – 2 PM. The exact location of the meeting is still to be determined. Please stay tuned to @achdotorg on Twitter and the DH2018 conference website for information on locations.

The Jobs Slam is a lively event and a chance for employers to get the word out about upcoming jobs as well as for prospective employees to introduce themselves to everyone present.

If you have a current or upcoming job opening at your institution, please use the following Google Form to sign up. To fill out the form you will need information about:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about the job (title, affiliation, duration, etc.)
A link to other information, if available

If you are on the job market or anticipate being so in the next few months, you may also fill out the form. You will need the following information:

Your name and basic contact information
General information about your qualifications & area of expertise

Purveyors and seekers of jobs will each have up to 1 minute to present. The order of presentations will be posted at the beginning of the AGM meeting with job advertisers first and job seekers second. Please come join us at the for this exciting match-making event!

Any questions, problems with the form, or other concerns can be sent to Lisa Rhody (lrhody@gc.cuny.edu) or via Twitter to @lmrhody.

Sign up for the Newcomer’s Dinner at DH2018 – Wednesday, June 27th

Lisa Marie Rhody — Wed, 23 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Are you new to the DH community or to digital humanities conferences? Join a small group of newbies and ACH/DH old-timers at a local restaurant and make scholarly connections and new friendships.

Dinners will happen the evening of Wednesday, 27 June, with parties departing after the poster session. The poster session ends at 7pm. Group leaders should specify at least a day in advance from where the group will depart.

Please sign up online. For ease of conversation, groups are limited to six people. Please identify yourself with n for newbie (in your first or second year attending DH) or v for DH conference veteran (no more than 2 veterans per party, please!). We’ll need one veteran leader for each group, to make a reservation and walk the group over to the restaurant; long-term ACH members and other DH conference veterans are heartily encouraged to volunteer! Don’t forget to include contact information when you sign up so that members of your group can get in touch with you.

In addition to the groups below, feel free to create additional groups headed to other restaurants, but please try to choose something within walking distance of a conference hotel. Indicate cuisine and cost for an average meal, including drink, tax, and tip, according to Yelp (or equivalent estimation). Please let us know if there is interest in a non-alcohol group by emailing Purdom Lindblad at lindblad1@gmail.com.

Announcing DH2018 ACH Scholarships

Alex Gil — Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Seeking to foster stronger collaborations with colleagues in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, this year, ACH supported the participation of ten early career scholars at DH2018.

The following scholars will receive the award:

Melanie Walsh (US) “Tweets of a Native Son: James Baldwin, #BlackLivesMatter, and Networks of Textual Recirculation.”
Sandra Leticia Reyes Alvarez (Mexico) “Filosofar la tecnología: un camino educativo.”
Sylvia Fernández (US) “De la teoría a la práctica: Visualización digital de las comunidades en la frontera México-Estados Unidos.”
Gabrielle Vail (US) “Harnessing Emergent Digital Technologies to Facilitate North-South, Cross-Cultural, Interdisciplinary Conversations about Indigenous Community Identities and Cultural Heritage in Yucatán.”
Hannah Reardon (Canada) “Bridging Divides for Conservation in the Amazon: Digital Technologies & The Calha Norte Portal.”
Camilo Martínez (Colombia) “Milpaís: Una Wiki Semántica Para Recuperar, Compartir Y Construir Colaborativamente Las Relaciones Entre Plantas, Seres Humanos, Comunidades Y Entornos.”
Talia Méndez Mahecha (Colombia) “Si Las Humanidades Digitales Fueran Un Círculo Estaríamos Hablando De La Circunferencia Digital.”
Andres Lombana (Colombia) “Cultura participativa y archivos digitales: La catalogación colaborativa del Archivo Histórico Regional de Boyacá (Colombia).”
Cecile Armand (France) “Bridging Cultures Through Mapping Practices: Space and Power in Asia and America.”
Chelsea Miya (Canada) “The Two Moby Dicks: The Split Signatures of Melville’s Novel.”

Congratulations to the awardees and thank you to the DH2018 Local Organizing Committee for managing the competition!

ACH2019 Program Committee

Jen Guiliano — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities, in conjunction with our partners at Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University, and the University of Pittsburgh are delighted to announce the program committee for the ACH2019 conference:

Heather Froehlich, Digital Scholarship Fellow in Text Analysis and an Assistant Librarian at Penn State University.
Patrick Juola, Professor of Computer Science in the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University.
Anna Kijas, Senior Digital Scholarship Librarian at Boston College Libraries
Nabil Kushyap, Digital Scholarship Librarian at Swarthmore College.
Thomas Padilla, Visiting Digital Research Services Librarian at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Roopika Risam, Assistant Professor of English, Coordinator of the Secondary Education English Undergraduate Program, Coordinator of the Digital Studies Graduate Certificate Program, and Chair of the Program Area for Content Educators at Salem State University.

Additionally, we’d like to recognize Roopika and Patrick who will serve as co-chairs for the Program Committee.

We thank them, in advance, for their service.

ACH Paid Communications Internship

Jen Guiliano — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities seeks applicants for a paid Communications internship. The intern will work with the ACH Executive to write blog posts and announcements about ACH and the broader digital humanities community; monitor and update ACH’s social media presence; assist in maintenance of its website; and perform other communications-related responsibilities. The Intern should anticipate spending approximately 10 hours per month on the position. The internship comes with a small annual stipend of $2000. It is well-suited for advanced undergraduate or graduate students who seek to supplement their existing digital humanities coursework or projects.

Desired skills and qualifications include:

excellent written and visual communication skills
knowledge of digital humanities
expertise in social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook
comfort in using WordPress
experience in developing content management for public audiences
experience in graphic design and/or multimedia editing skills
ability to work with minimal supervision
attention to detail

To apply, submit a CV or résumé that includes links to your social media or public projects, and at least one current academic reference to Alex Gil, current ACH communications officer at colibri.alex@gmail.com with ACH Communications Internship in the subject line. The application deadline is May 15, 2018 with the position beginning June 1, 2018 and ending June 1, 2019. This position may be renewed.

2018 Election Results Announced

Vika Zafrin — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the 2018 ACH election, in which three new executive council members and a Vice President/President-Elect were elected.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick was elected to serve as our next Vice President in 2018-2020, followed by a term as President in 2020-2022. Paige Morgan, Angel David Nieves, and Lauren Tilton were elected to serve on the Executive Council for the 2018-2022 term. All new terms will begin at the close of the annual summer Executive Council meeting, to take place at the DH2018 conference in Mexico City.

Many congratulations to the elected candidates! We are thrilled to have you on board. Heartfelt thanks also to all of the candidates in this year’s strong slate for their willingness to serve on the ACH Executive Board.

ACH2018 Elections: Candidate Statements

Jen Guiliano — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Below are the statements from our candidates for the ACH2018 election.

Executive Candidates

interdisciplinary and collaborative models of teaching and research
engaging existing faculty, technologists, and scholar-librarians in research focused on intersectionality for a more transformed and inclusive digital humanities/digital scholarship
engaging in community based-research and more locally w/LatinX communities in the US

Results would include DH/DS at ACH that promotes teaching, research and community engagement, with a focus on global diversity. At ACH I would work to:

decenter the US, Canada and the UK as the focus of DH/DS intellectual production
maintain an explicit commitment to diversity and inclusion
address issues of access, power and privilege (how power has historically been overlooked in digital humanities/digital scholarship – until most recently)
move beyond the promotion of specific tools and platforms – working to create solutions specific to the sorts of teaching goals and research questions being asked by faculty, scholar-librarians, students, and community members
privilege those research questions on diversity and difference as a part of scholarly practice
relate issues of diversity and difference to broader global concerns/issues
envision DH as a means to address social justice

I am honored by a nomination to serve as a member of the ACH Executive Council. If elected, I would like to continue ACH’s advocacy work to further bring forth the field’s expertise to the public space. I trust our continuous investment in the constructive, cultural critique of digital technologies will be both beneficial to the ACH community and beyond. I look forward to receiving suggestions for how to best coordinate existing efforts and to realizing an apt institutional support for a kind of organizing scholars in the field of digital humanities are uniquely situated to undertake.

Vice-Presidential Candidates

Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Biography

I’m Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English at Michigan State University. Across my publications and projects, and in the positions I have held, I have focused on ways that the academy is transforming and should continue to transform in relation to the networked, collaborative technologies that increasingly support its work. Prior to joining the faculty at MSU, I spent six years working on these transformations as a member of the senior staff of the Modern Language Association, most recently as Associate Executive Director and Director of Scholarly Communication. In that role, I served as Managing Editor of MLA publications, and I chaired the Publications Committee and served as staff liaison to several other committees, including the Committee on Information Technology. During my time at the MLA, I led the planning and development of MLA Commons, as well as its later evolution into Humanities Commons, and I remain director of the project, which has received generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I’ve published two books — Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy (NYU Press, 2011) and of The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television (Vanderbilt University Press, 2006) — and will in spring 2018 launch an open review process for my third, Generous Thinking: The University and the Public Good, which is under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press. While I was at the MLA, I held an appointment as Visiting Research Professor of English at New York University, as well as Visiting Professor of Media at Coventry University. Between 1998 and 2013, I was a faculty member in English and media studies at Pomona College, where I led the development of a five-college media studies major and was founding chair of both Pomona’s Department of Media Studies and the Intercollegiate Department of Media Studies of the Claremont Colleges. I am currently Chair of the Board of Directors of the Council of Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and a member of a number of editorial and advisory boards, including of the Open Library of the Humanities, Open Book Publishers, and the University of California Press’s Luminos project.

Candidate Statement

Since my time on the ACH Executive Committee (2011-15), I have found myself consistently inspired by the dedication of the organization and its members not just to the intellectual work being done at the nexus of digital technologies and the humanities but to the work of community-building, both within the field and with a range of broader publics. Human connections, after all — messy and difficult though they can sometimes be — are ultimately more important to the development of engaged and engaging scholarly networks than are the technologies on which they rely. My goal if elected vice-president of ACH would be to work with its officers, the Executive Council and other committees, and the association’s many members to foster more opportunities for doing the important work of creating and fostering those human connections. What might this look like? First, we must continue to strategize opportunities for bringing underrepresented scholars and groups into the association, a process best begun not by telling scholars what the association and field have to offer, but instead by listening in ways that allow us collectively to discover mutual needs and opportunities. We should look for ways to reach out to our colleagues at secondary schools, at community colleges, at regional comprehensives, at HBCUs and tribal colleges, and at a wide range of cultural organizations, to find out how ACH can support their work. Such outreach initiatives might help expand the already strong efforts to promote diversity and inclusion within the organization, while also expanding our understanding of the kinds of work being done within the digital humanities. Second, as an organization, ACH has wrestled in recent years with the tension involved in having a partly international membership while largely being understood as a U.S.-based organization within a larger international alliance. Our sister organizations around the world — CSDH/SCHN, EADH, JADH, aaDH, and others — have long supported their members with local conferences in addition to the annual international DH gathering, but for many years, holding a separate ACH meeting felt to many like a kind of isolationist reaction, a withdrawal from our international relationships. However, U.S.-based members — especially those without access to institutional travel funds and those whose visas make international travel risky or indeed impossible in the current political environment — often literally found themselves isolated, unable to participate in the key conversations taking place within the field. I was thrilled to hear this year that ACH is moving forward with a plan to host regular meetings in the U.S., whether independently or in conjunction with existing regional conferences. I look forward to the opportunity to work on developing the organization’s presence at home while ensuring that our relationships with our sister organizations and scholars around the world remain collaborative and productive. ACH needs to strategize ways to provide low-cost opportunities for direct community engagement beyond in-person meetings, as well as better connecting the association to other organizations and networks. My experience with Humanities Commons might point toward one potential option. With more than 12,300 active members and a growing number of participating scholarly societies, HC is a vibrant and vital open-access, open-source, scholar-governed platform for research sharing, community building, and publishing. We are already in discussions about the possibility of hosting Digital Humanities Questions & Answers on HC, and involving more ACH members in the network — as well as opening space for the ACH to bring its expertise to bear in thinking about the improved accessibility, interoperability, and scalability necessary for the network’s future — would provide opportunities for new kinds of collaborations and projects. Such community-building initiatives might help build upon longstanding opportunities such as ACH’s mentoring and microgrants programs by highlighting and supporting work being done across the field and by grounding our programs in inclusivity and interconnection. In addition to continuing to expand these forms of community-building, ACH must in the coming years develop a communication and publishing strategy that can help get the many different kinds of work being done by members of the association out to the world. This strategy should take into consideration the ground-breaking work done by venues such as Digital Humanities Quarterly and Digital Humanities Questions & Answers, creating a sustainability plan for these key publications. But it might also encompass new opportunities for supporting and disseminating member work as well as means of creating new audiences for that work, perhaps through a venue that presents DH work to the broader publics that might find it of interest. A publication with the voice and presence of Public Books or the Los Angeles Review of Books but focused on issues in contemporary digital culture could do a great deal both to cultivate public interest in the work being done by association members and to afford the association a public platform from which to advocate for the fields that it represents and the public policies (such as net neutrality) that those fields require in order to thrive. At a moment such as we face today, both within the academy and within public life, organizations like ACH need to argue clearly and powerfully for the value of what we do, and they need to create spaces for scholars, students, practitioners, and advocates to come together in the process. My goal, if elected to serve the association, will be to continue to expand the ACH community in order to continue to amplify its voice within the field and around the world.

Vika Zafrin

Biography

I have served as Executive Secretary of the ACH for three and a half years. In that time, I have helped transition ACH to an elections process hosted for us by Oxford University Press; extensively documented Executive Council meetings and followed up on action items; contributed to one substantial and one smaller revision of the ACH Constitution and Bylaws; and acted as liaison for new Council members and outside entities when needed. My day job as Boston University’s Digital Scholarship Librarian and a member of its Digital Initiatives and Open Access team has informed my ACH work since 2010. I’ve worked extensively at the institutional administrative level in various advisory capacities, including on governance councils and a high-level search committee. I am an active open access advocate on campus, and am working with BU Libraries administration to institutionalize support for digital research in the humanities and social sciences. I started, and am continuing to manage, our Digital Scholarship Services department. I am BU’s primary link to the wider digital humanities community, and am working to get more of our community out into the larger conversation. I’ve been active in digital humanities since 1998, and hold a PhD in Special Graduate Studies (Humanities Computing) from Brown. My major projects include Brown’s The Decameron Web and Virtual Humanities Lab, as well as my dissertation, RolandHT. I’ve received federal digital humanities funding as a co-PI in one case and project director in another, and assisted others in writing grant applications. I’ve served as a grant application reviewer for the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities.

Candidate Statement

DH continues to expand with respect to the research areas, and also the geographic and cultural distribution of researchers involved. We face tremendous demands to ensure true inclusivity as we engage an ever more diverse community of practice. At the same time, the “digital” in “digital humanities” is continuing to permeate all humanities research in deep and not always obvious ways, requiring a vigilant and subtle critical approach to our methods. Digital humanities organizations within and outside ADHO have risen to these challenges, but we have a lot of work to do, and I’d like to focus on the following if elected. I would like to see ACH continue and expand activities that it does well around supporting young scholars, liaising with discipline-specific scholarly societies, and [digital] humanities and open access advocacy at governmental levels when needed. I’d like to work with our Executive Council to more effectively serve the larger multifaceted community of humanities researchers, especially researchers who do or want to do digital work but do not consider themselves DH scholars. To that end, I’d like to see us support more regional and national level U.S. conferences, helping to introduce or promote conversation based in digital research methods at events where they are not the focus. I would like us to continue our advocacy in the realm of DH labor. In addition to the recommendations for promotion and tenure related review of digital work we’ve released, I’d like us to write recommendations for best practices in resourcing DH and digital scholarship units within higher ed institutions. Finally, as ADHO cardinally restructures itself, I would like ACH to continue to advocate for what we perceive to be underserved and underrepresented constituencies within the larger ADHO structure, and for a lightweight inter-organizational approach that aims to be truly globally beneficial in scope.

Call for Participation: MLA Panel Transacting DH: Roles, Rights, and Responsibilities of Collaboration

Lisa Marie Rhody — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In 2011, Tanya Clement and Doug Reside convened an NEH-supported conversation titled Off the Tracks, which led to the eventual publication of the Collaborators’ Bill of Rights. Prompted by this year’s presidential theme–Textual Transactions–this guaranteed MLA 2019 panel supported by the Association for Computer in the Humanities (ACH) will address questions of “transaction” as a combination of form and function. What models of collaboration have evolved across DH projects over time? How have advisors and students negotiated their roles in digital humanities research projects? What are the rights and responsibilities of mentoring, supervising, directing, or staffing a digital humanities research project? What are the boundaries of these transactions? How can digital humanities transactions challenge our ideas of collaboration?

This session will consider what the rights, roles, and responsibilities associated with forms of DH research and pedagogical transaction. What models are there? What are the pitfalls? What honest conversation can we have about them? We would like to hear models from those working in a variety of situations: faculty, altac, library, student, advisory board, volunteer, or administrator. Proposals should include be no more than 250 words and describe both the opportunities and challenges of “transacting” digital humanities projects. Please also include a short one-paragraph biographical statement. Proposals can be emailed to Lisa Rhody at lrhody@gc.cuny.edu by March 26th.

Call for Participation: The Porous Scholarly Edition

Lisa Marie Rhody — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This is a joint session proposed by the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions; see the official CFP here.

Has the scholarly edition become more porous as a result of the digital turn? This panel seeks reflections and provocations on the way that the boundaries of scholarly editions have changed or should change. We solicit presentations that will address such questions as:

In what ways can editions be dynamic, in terms of temporality, media, or delivery?
What are innovative ways of handling versioning?
How do hyperlinking and other digital technologies affect the putative boundaries of the scholarly edition?
How is “external” content, whether manually or automatically harvested, related to scholarly editions?
How is the authority or singularity of the editor changing in the context of digital scholarly editions?
What role might citizen scholarship play in relation to scholarly editions?
How ought credit to be handled in when digital editions involve collaboration with others, whether they are scholars, students, designers, or technical contributors?
How does annotation impact digital scholarly editions?
In what ways are editorial control and processes impacted?

Presentations that take up specific projects are welcome but presentations should focus on one or more of the above questions rather than general demonstrations.

We welcome 12 minute papers. We also welcome proposals for non-traditional presentation that would fit within this time constraint. Please send 300-word abstracts plus bio(s) of the presenter(s) to sbrown@uoguelph.ca and lrhody@gc.cuny.edu by March 15th. For those interested in Textual Sustainability please see the complementary CFP.

Call for Program Committee Members: ACH2019

Jen Guiliano — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities, in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University, and the University of Pittsburgh issues a call for nominations and self-nominations to serve as a member of the 2019 Program Committee for its first-ever Digital Humanities conference. Held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in Summer 2019, the conference is convened by Association for Computers and the Humanities to encourage the development of the digital humanities from diverse perspectives, communities, and organizations. A six-person committee to manage the program is being convened to develop the conference program. To broaden participation from our membership and to respond to calls for greater diversity in leadership, ACH welcomes its membership to serve on this important committee.

The program committee approves the structure and content of the entire academic program . The conference theme (if any) is decided by the program committee in consultation with local organizers. The committee will also be charged with participating in the creation of special sessions to encourage involvement from diverse communities, students, contingent faculty, members of cultural heritage organizations, and others invested in the digital humanities. This will include the development of review criteria and submission protocols.

Potential nominees should be aware of the extended commitment of this position: it begins in March 2018 and lasts until Summer 2019. Nominees should be prepared to read conference submissions, solicit reviewers, assist in guiding the review process, be willing to develop panels and other presentation groupings, navigate multicultural digital humanities communities, and contribute to the development of a program development process.

Nominees must be current members of ACH. Self-nominations are welcome and encouraged. Send a statement of interest/nomination of no more than 250 words to jenguiliano@gmail.com with ACH2019 PC in the subject line along with a current c.v. or resume. The statement should speak not just to the nominee’s qualifications, but also to how they anticipate assisting in the duties of a program committee member as it relates to the ACH mission. If a third party is sending in a nomination, the nominee should also send in a brief statement of interest confirming willingness to participate fully. We encourage students, contingent faculty, members of cultural heritage organizations, and minority-serving institutions especially to apply.

Nominations must be received by February 15, 2018. Decisions will be made by the Executive Committee of ACH and Local Organizers no later than March 15, 2018.

Public Comment Open regarding Financial Scenarios for ADHO

Jen Guiliano — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

At its yearly meeting on July 10, 2016, the ADHO Steering Committee approved a new governance framework and a new financial model. An Implementation Committee (IC), comprised of Geoffrey Rockwell (Chair), Melissa Terras, Christian-Emil Smith Ore, and Jennifer Guiliano has started to work on a more detailed plan that will help to smooth the way for the official change to the new structure effective July 1, 2018.

The Implementation Committee suggested a draft roadmap, following the ADHO governance proposals and other related documents.

The first recommendations of the Implementation Committee, concerning the Proposed Financial Scenarios are now published for public comment.

Please take a moment to review and offer comment on the roadmap and/or the Financial Scenarios via the Change ADHO website. Comments can also be sent to any member of the ACH Executive Committee to be shared with ADHO.

ACH 2017 Elections: Call for Nominations

Alex Gil — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Due date for nominations: Monday, January 15, 2018

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) invites nominations for the 2017 elections, in which our members will elect:

A Vice President/President-Elect, for two consecutive two-year terms (2018-2020 and 2020-2022); and
Three Executive Council members for four-year terms (2018-2022).

We seek candidates eager to support and advance the field of digital humanities (DH) by helping to lead the ACH.

ACH officers and Executive Council members develop and uphold ACH policies, determine and distribute funding, and oversee all organizational activities. Planned activities for 2018 include preparing for a US-based conference, fostering regional events, developing a clearinghouse for documentation, and cultivating a space for newcomers to the field. You can be involved in helping ACH programs succeed by nominating either yourself or someone else to be an active participant in the leadership of the Association.

To stand for election as an Executive Council member or officer, candidates must be members in good standing of the ACH at the time of nomination or, alternately, be willing to become members post-election. They commit to being present at annual Council meetings at the Digital Humanities Conference, whether in person or virtually, and to participating in discussions during the rest of the year by email and audio/video conference. Council members are expected to be active in the digital humanities community.

We welcome participants not just from universities and colleges, but also galleries, libraries, museums, community groups, and other organizations engaged with digital humanities. We also welcome nominations of people from all constituencies and humanities disciplines, and especially encourage the nomination of women, people of color, LGBTQ, or other underrepresented groups. Demonstrated commitment to the organization and to the field counts for more with our membership than professional affiliation, academic status, or job title.

Send nominations to nominations@ach.org by January 15, 2018. Please confirm with your nominee that he or she is willing to serve, and provide a brief candidate statement and biography. Sample candidate statements from past elections are available. If your nominee cannot provide a biography and candidate statement at the time of nomination, they should email those to us before the close of nominations.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at nominations@ach.org. The three top vote-getters in the Executive Council race will be elected to four-year terms.

For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of ACH officers, see our constitution and bylaws. Current officers of the ACH are listed on our officers page.

ACH Nominations Committee

Quinn Dombrowski, UC Berkeley (Chair) Purdom Lindblad, University of Maryland Matthew K. Gold, CUNY Graduate Center Jennifer Guiliano, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Amanda Visconti, University of Virginia Scott B. Weingart, Carnegie Mellon University

Ex officio member

Tassie Gniady, Indiana University

Slide Show from the Job Slam at the ACH General Meeting

Lisa Marie Rhody — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Participants at the Job Slam during ACH’s Annual General Meeting requested that the slides be made available for later use. With apologies for the two week delay, the slides are now available. Many thanks for your patience. Thanks so much to all those who participated and for the enthusiasm and support shown by our membership. We look forward to running a similar event at DH 2018!

ACH Job Slam at the Annual General Meeting @ 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM

Lisa Marie Rhody — Sat, 05 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH will host a Jobs Slam on Thursday, August 10th, at the ACH Annual General Meeting during the DH 2017 Conference in Montréal. The exact location of the meeting is still to be determined. Please stay tuned to @achdotorg on Twitter and the DH2017 conference website for information on locations.

The Jobs Slam is a lively event and a chance for employers to get the word out about upcoming jobs as well as for prospective employees to introduce themselves to everyone present.

If you have a current or upcoming job opening at your institution, please use the following Google Form to sign up. To fill out the form you will need information about:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about the job (title, affiliation, duration, etc.)
A link to other information, if available

If you are on the job market or anticipate being so in the next few months, you may also fill out the form. You will need the following information:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about your qualifications & area of expertise

Purveyors and seekers of jobs will each have up to 30 seconds to present. The order of presentations will be posted at the beginning of the AGM meeting with job advertisers first and job seekers second. Please come join us at the for this exciting match-making event!

Any questions, problems with the form, or other concerns can be sent to Lisa Rhody (lrhody@gc.cuny.edu) or via Twitter to @lmrhody.

ACH’s Newcomers’ Dinner at the 2017 DH Conference in Montreal

Brian Croxall — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Is this your first or second time at the Digital Humanities conference? Are you new to the DH community? Join a small group of newbies and DH old-timers at a local Montreal restaurant and make scholarly connections and new friendships. It’s not only for members of the ACH!

The dinners will happen the evening of Wednesday, 9 August 2017, with parties departing after the poster session. For ease of conversation, groups will be limited to six people.

Registration is already open and places are limited! Sign up online.

On the sign-up form, we will want you to identify yourself with ‘n’ for newbie (in your first or second year attending DH) or ‘v’ for DH conference veteran (no more than 2 veterans per party, please!). We will also need one veteran leader for each group, to make a reservation and walk the group over to the restaurant; long-term ACH members and other DH conference veterans are heartily encouraged to volunteer!

We look forward to meeting you in Montreal!

Please note: attendees pay for their own costs. The ACH provides the organization and good cheer.

Call for Program Committee Members for Digital Humanities 2019

Jen Guiliano — Tue, 30 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities issues a call for nominations and self-nominations to serve as one of two representatives to the 2019 Program Committee for the Alliance for Digital Humanities Organizations’ annual Digital Humanities conference. Held in Utrecht, Netherlands in Summer 2019, the conference is convened by the global member organizations of ADHO. Annually, ACH is able to nominate two representatives to serve on the program committee. To broaden participation from our membership and to respond to calls for greater diversity in ADHO work groups, ACH welcomes its membership to serve on this important committee.

The program committee approves the structure and content of the entire academic program including a mix of papers, panels, posters, and plenary sessions, and works to identify keynote addresses, pre-conference workshops, and plenary events. The conference theme (if any) is decided by the program committee in consultation with local organizers.

Potential nominees should be aware of the extended commitment of this position: it begins in July 2017 and lasts until Summer 2019. Nominees should be prepared to read conference submissions, solicit reviewers, assist in guiding the review process, be willing to develop panels and other presentation groupings, navigate multicultural, multinational digital humanities communities, and provide regular informal reports to the ACH executive on the activities of the program committee .

Nominees must be current members of ACH and must have served as a reviewer for the Annual Conference prior to 2017. Self-nominations are welcome and encouraged. Send a statement of interest/nomination of no more than 500 words to secretary@ach.org with ACH PC2019 in the subject line. The statement should speak not just to the nominee’s qualifications, but also to how they anticipate assisting in the duties of a program committee member as it relates to the ACH mission. If a third party is sending in a nomination, the nominee should also send in a brief statement of interest confirming willingness to participate fully.

Nominations must be received by June 15, 2017. Decisions will be made by the Executive Committee of ACH no later than July 1, 2017.

All Our Ideas for DH

Amanda Visconti — Tue, 23 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

What can the ACH do for you this year?

Where can we focus our efforts to improve the digital humanities more broadly?

We’d love your input! Help us decide by visiting All Our Ideas to vote on existing ideas and add new ones. The ACH Executive Council will use your feedback to plan and prioritize what we do over the next year.

Working with Governmental and Endangered Data

Micki K — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The Digital Library Federation (DLF)’s new working group on Government Records Transparency and Accountability is bringing together a cross-disciplinary group of practitioners in collaborations designed to help effectively address the shifting landscape of preservation and access regarding government archives, records and data in the United States – and abroad. (An introduction to the group by its founder, Dr. Rachel Mattson, is available on DLF's website) If the subject matter is of particular interest to you, ACH encourages you to check out the Group’s wiki page – which includes links to meeting agendas, notes and resources.

Additionally, in mid-April the DLF, along with co-sponsors DataRefuge and CLIR, will host the first annual Endangered Data Week (EDW). The event (scheduled to take place from April 17-21) is spearheaded by Brandon Locke (Michigan State University) in collaboration with Jason A. Heppler (University of Nebraska-Omaha), Bethany Nowviskie (DLF), and Wayne Graham (Council on Library and Information Resources). Like Open Access Week or Banned Books Week, EDW is a distributed series of independently organized events–in this case focusing on threats to publicly available data across disciplines and domains. Local or virtual events hosted as part of EDW may offer training in data management, involve participants in “data rescue/data refuge” activities, illuminate ways to make data more secure and accessible, or engage with issues and power dynamics surrounding data creation, sharing, and retention. For more information about events happening in conjunction with EDW, or to participate by hosting a local event, please visit EDW's website.

CFP for MLA 2018: Printable Pedagogy and 3D Theses

Brian Croxall — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last decade, at roughly the same time that digital humanities methods and tools have appeared in language and literature classrooms and research, universities have made investments in 3D printing and makerspaces. And in a similar way to digital humanities, those working in modern languages might not immediately see how they could use fabrication technologies in their teaching and research.

For its session at the 2018 MLA Convention (4-7 January in New York City), ACH invites proposals that highlight how 3D printing, soft circuits, or other methods of physical fabrication are used to teach languages or literature or to conduct linguistic or literary research. Speakers will give brief talks (4-6 minutes, depending on number of participants) that address the praxis of printing and the metaphysics of physicalization. While a discussion of what you made and how you made it will naturally feature in these talks, it is more important to discuss how the act of making contributed to the understanding of languages and/or literatures. In this way, this session is cousin to the ACH’s 2014 session at the MLA.

Please send abstracts of 250 words (not including references) to brian.croxall@brown.edu. Abstracts should be received by 5pm EDT / GMT-5 on ~~15 March 2017~~ 25 March 2017. N.B. All accepted panelists will need to be current MLA members—or have their membership waived—by 7 April 2017.

Since the ACH is an allied organization of the MLA, this session is guaranteed to be accepted for the 2018 MLA.

ACH Statement on Digital Humanities Conferences and Events

Jen Guiliano — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

As advocates for social change through the use of computers and related technologies in the study of humanistic subjects, the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) notes that decisions regarding participation in conferences, co-sponsorships, and other in-person events should be made with careful attention to the safety of the most vulnerable members of our community. We are committed to providing venues for our members to build their scholarly reputations and networks, but we must balance those opportunities with concerns about the impact of local, state, national, and institutional policies on individual members and their safety.

While it is impossible in 2017 to know fully how current or forthcoming Executive Orders, legislation, or judicial rulings may impact the ability of US institutions to host an academic conference in 2020 that is welcoming, safe, and accessible for all scholars and students who wish to participate, ACH is fully committed to doing everything we can to live up to our statement of academic values and to supporting our diverse constituencies. In 2020, the annual ADHO conference for digital humanities is slated to be held in either the US or Canada. We urge careful consideration by potential hosts of a number of issues:

The impact of U.S. Presidential Executive Orders related to immigration and whether the lack of opportunity to participate by scholars affected by those orders contravenes one’s personal and institutional values;
Potential issues associated with securing visas by citizens of countries identified by the US Government as nations of concern;
The impact of US Immigration and Border Control procedures related to data privacy and data harvesting;
Access to local resources including health care, police assistance, and other state services by scholars of diverse backgrounds;
Issues of accessibility to both physical and virtual spaces.

ACH encourages potential hosts to provide itemized information related to these issues in any potential bids for the 2020 conference. ACH is unlikely to support potential hosts who cannot provide information on how these issues will shape potential conference going by its members. The ADHO steering committee will make all final decisions concerning bids, with ACH being one part of the steering committee along with other constituent organizations.

ACH recognizes that intellectual, cultural, institutional, and other forms of diversity are of paramount importance to the digital humanities. As a scholarly organization engaged in the global project of digital humanities research, teaching, service, and activism, ACH is open to all, regardless of geographic location, as non-U.S. members have important perspectives to offer to U.S.-based digital humanities practitioners.

ACH enriches the digital humanities as it contributes to an array of conferences via its members’ submissions; via participation in program, local host, and conference coordinating committees; and via its co-sponsorship of sessions at DH and other disciplinary conferences and events. We believe that these activities both enable our members to expand their scholarly networks and provide opportunities for personal, intellectual, and institutional development.

Please contact us at help@ach.org if you are considering hosting an ACH-sponsored event or considering a proposal for the ADHO Digital Humanities 2020 conference, as ACH may be able to provide assistance in developing your proposal in ways that take account of the issues outlined above.

ACH joins 50 other professional associations condemning the January 27 Executive Order on Immigration

Jen Guiliano — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In early February, the Association for Computers and the Humanities joined the American Historical Association and forty-nine other US professional associations in condemning the executive order issued by President Donald J. Trump on January 27 purportedly “protecting the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States.” You can read the full text by visiting the AHA website.

ACH Statement in Support of the National Endowment for the Humanities

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A strong democracy demands wisdom from its citizens. For over 50 years, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has supported public access to and civic engagement with our collective cultural heritage. By preserving and understanding the past, we cultivate the wisdom necessary to ensure a better future.

Funding for NEH represents a tiny sliver of the Federal budget—0.003%—but benefits Americans in myriad ways. NEH-funded projects have illuminated our shared humanity and history for millions of people. For digital humanists in particular, funding and other support from the National Endowment for the Humanities has been critical in advancing the field. With very modest amounts of funding from the NEH, digital humanists have shone new light on the Livingstone expedition, uncovered hidden heroes in the nation’s history of civil rights, and told the history of the National Mall, among many other projects. The NEH has funded projects that have preserved crucial historical documents in digital form, ranging from The King James Bible, to the Papers of George Washington, to the Papers of Mark Twain, to the Transatlantic Slave Trade, to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The National Endowment for the Humanities has repeatedly partnered with other organizations, such as the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany), the Arts & Humanities Research Council (UK), and the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologίa (Mexico), to foster international collaborations that increase the reach and impact of American scholarly work.

The Association for Computers and the Humanities urges lawmakers to reject efforts to withdraw funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and to reaffirm the vital role the NEH plays in telling our shared human story. We furthermore urge all of our members to reach out to their local representatives to explain how the NEH has provided crucial support for their work.

The ACH will be publishing members’ statements in support of the NEH on its website. We invite members of the ACH and anyone else who may be interested to contribute a statement using the form below. We particularly encourage those who have received NEH support in the past to tell us about your project and its importance.

2016 Election Results Announced

Mia Ridge — Sat, 28 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the 2016 ACH election in which three new executive council members were elected. Patricia Hswe, Purdom Lindblad and Thomas Padilla were elected to serve on the Executive Council for the 2017-2021 term. All new terms will begin at the close of the annual summer Executive Council meeting.

ACH members also had the option to vote on other proposals (see ACH elections cycle change 2016). Bylaws changes altering the elections cycle were ratified, which means that our next round of elections will take place in the spring of 2018. ACH Recommendations for Assessment of Digital Scholarship in Tenure and Promotion were endorsed and the ACH Identity Statement was endorsed.

Many congratulations to the elected candidates, we are thrilled to start (or continue) working with you! We also want to thank all of the candidates in this year’s fantastic slate for their willingness to serve on ACH!

ACH Newsletter, Winter 2016

Mia Ridge — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Dear ACH friends and colleagues,

A year ago, I wrote to our members as part of my presidential platform that “there is a stark need for ACH to step forward to take a proactive role in advocating for a diverse future that is built around the values of our membership.” I itemized three areas that I hoped my two years as ACH president might address: 1) developing a set of guidelines for the evaluation of digital humanities scholarship; 2) conducting an open discussion about whether ACH should continue to be a global digital humanities organization or whether we should limit our engagement to a particular set of geographical boundaries? and 3) seeking a deeper understanding of how to diversify our conferences and larger organizational structures.

I’m so pleased to report that the Executive Committee has made concrete progress on all three of these issues. At our general membership meeting in Kraków, Poland, the Executive Committee opened theACH Guidelines for Assessment of Digital Scholarship in Tenure and Promotion for comment by members. Begun under the leadership of Johanna Drucker with the assistance of Glen Worthey, our former president, Stéfan Sinclair, and others, these guidelines serve as an important resource for members to use to advocate for themselves. They can assist in guiding employers in recognizing the work our membership is doing in a variety of academic and public contexts. Thank you to those of you who submitted feedback. We hope the final version that you are being asked to endorse in the current election materials reflect all the hard work this document represents.

We’ve also made strides in answering the question I hear most frequently from new members: Is ACH a US-based digital humanities organization or is it a global organization? Our Executive Committee confidently answers that “The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) is a major professional and scholarly society focused on the digital humanities throughout the United States. While based in the U.S., ACH is open to all, regardless of geographic location, as non-U.S. members have important perspectives to offer to American digital humanities practitioners.” More simply, while most of our business takes place in the US, we are interested in members from throughout the world contributing to our organizational goals.

It is our hope that our 2017 membership drive sees tremendous success in outreach to new members of diverse backgrounds and far-flung locales. Importantly, note that we’ve got a great $26.00 rate for student members. Please make sure to ask your colleagues whether they are members of ACH and if they aren’t, encourage them to join us.

I wrote in my candidate statement that “repeatedly, our membership has expressed their frustration with the seeming lack of diversity in approaches, methods, and presenters [of the annual conference]…How might our activities better represent not just who we are now but the diverse future we hope to embody? Are there systemic issues that we should address to present not just linguistic diversity but diversity in its many manifestations?” Again, this summer, we heard these clarion calls in social media back-channels and via private correspondence to Executive Committee members.

I want to assure you that the Executive Committee hears these concerns and recognizes the importance of ACH representing its core values without compromise: inclusive, diverse, and accessible across the humanities disciplines as well as our own backgrounds. You’ll be pleased to see a revised statement of ACH identity in the current election materials for your endorsement that builds upon the brief statement quoted above. It not only clarifies our aims but also serves as a reminder that all our core activities (advocacy, professional development, grants & awards, and publications) should continually strive to be inclusive, diverse, and accessible.

A number of pivotal issues have confronted our organization in the last year or so in the form of discussions about our identity, our values, and our role as a professional organization. These conversations have only been heightened for us in these last few months following not only the US Presidential election but also episodes of hateful speech, harassment, and acts of violence against members of historically vulnerable communities. These attacks have occurred not just in physical environments on campuses and in Ferguson, Missouri and Cannon Ball, North Dakota, but also through social media and other digital platforms. As our organization is devoted to the exploration of intersectionality and critical exploration of technology and the humanities, it was important for ACH to address the membership at this fraught time in our collective history.

I encourage you, if you have not already, to review the Statement on the Aftermath of the 2016 Election published on the ACH website and included below. It provides a number of commitments from ACH to our membership. It signals our continuing history as an organization committed to critical thinking, professional development, and diverse, inclusive, and accessible communities. And, significantly, in the coming months you’ll receive information on specific initiatives and opportunities that will back up our words with directed action. We also welcome input from members to guide us as we move these initiatives forward.

We should also be proud of other accomplishments this year and soon to come that share these aims:

Led by Diane Jakacki, program chair of the 2017 annual conference, the pool of potential reviewers has been dramatically increased both in sheer quantity but also in variety of representational knowledge and diverse backgrounds. Johanna Drucker and Jeremy Boggs are working as our ACH representatives on the Program Committee. If you have a moment to thank them for their service, please do so.
Since July, the membership committee has secured purchasing discounts for ACH members with leading digital humanities presses to ensure that our members have access to recent scholarship at affordable rates.
The awards committee has distributed another year’s worth of funding to our microgrant winners. They have been working on evaluating the current guidelines to ensure a smooth application process and clear evaluation criteria.
Members of the communications committee are working to revamp our strategies for communicating with our members. They studied our existing social media platforms and have drafted recommendations to take our content to where our membership is virtually. In the coming months, you’ll see refreshed website content as well the growth of the DH slack channel.
Vika Zafrin, our invaluable secretary, supported by Glen Worthey, has completed documents associated with the revision to the election cycle so that it coincides with the calendar year. This will allow our members to more easily track and renew their membership. Vika also been behind the scenes ensuring that our internal documentation is up to par for future generations of ACHers interested in writing our own history.
As part of our internal refresh, Brian Croxall led the establishment of an ACH Conflict of Interest policy. All Executive Committee members now complete an annual accounting of any conflicts they might have so as to ensure a transparent operation of the association.
Tanya Clement, working in conjunction with former treasurer Jarom McDonald, is updating our accounting procedures to ensure ACH is compliant with all applicable financial laws. And, in conjunction with our committee chairs, she’s ensuring that our activities as an organization have sufficient financial resources. This year, the Executive Committee approved providing supplemental funding to Digital Humanities Quarterly to assist the journal in its duties in addition to our annual contribution to the DHQ operating budget.

These are just a few of the ongoing activities we’re completing or are currently working on. As we head into 2017, I thank you for your continued investment in ACH. Your efforts, voices, and brilliant minds are transformative for the academy, the public, and our future.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

ACH Statement in the Aftermath of the 2016 Election

The results of the recent presidential election in the United States have been accompanied by a troubling increase in cases of hateful speech, harassment, and acts of violence against members of historically vulnerable communities.

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), a scholarly organization for digital humanists based in the United States, condemns in the strongest possible terms state and federal proposals that would exacerbate this trend by targeting ethnic and religious groups, people of color, LGBTQIA communities, and others in ways that are antithetical to the principles of diversity, inclusion, access, liberty, free expression, and equal rights. The implementation of inhumane and divisive conditions for immigration, such as border walls; the elimination of healthcare and civil protections for LGBTQIA, the poor, and other underrepresented groups; and the exercise of political persecution, hate speech and/or curtailments of freedom of the press and the academy all contravene these principles and are worryingly reminiscent of policies from past fascist regimes. ACH opposes the resurgence of oppressive practices, the potential rollback of civil liberties, and all acts of hate against U.S. citizens, immigrants, or citizens of other nations.

ACH hereby advocates for a peaceful, caring, and non-violent resistance to discrimination and injustice and pledges to:

support our academic colleagues who may be at risk;
reaffirm the recognition that intellectual, cultural, institutional, and other forms of diversity make a vital contribution to scholarship, practice, and our daily lives;
commit our work towards a humanistic understanding of the impact technology is having in shaping and spreading fascist values, and support the creation of alternative and resistant infrastructures and platforms to promote communities of humanities scholars that are based on mutual respect for diversity and civil rights;
advocate for the importance of academic freedom and the creation and preservation of archives against cuts to funding, access, classification, and erasure; and
promote social change and contribute to a more socially and publicly engaged academia by dedicating awards funding to work in digital humanities that explicitly addresses current socio-political issues.

To accomplish this, we welcome ideas and points of action, especially as they may facilitate initiatives to protect our constituents against discrimination in all its forms, whether racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, or ableism. To our members in a position to do so, we further ask you to join in this effort and to help us reach out and support ACH colleagues. Finally, we encourage ACH members to contact any member of the Executive Council to ask for assistance as we move forward.

Microgrants Awarded 2016

We’re pleased to report that the proposals were very strong and we are able to support three excellent projects with microgrants. The winners are:

Nicole Keller Day and Elizabeth Polcha of Northeastern University for A Feminist Digital Commons. The microgrant is funding server hosting and hack-a-thons to create a digital feminist commons.
Alicia Peaker of Bryn Mawr College for Digital Exhibitions: An Open Source Scalar Template. The microgrant is funding travel costs for a Scalar consultant to visit Bryn Mawr and work with the recipient to develop a new Scalar template for digital exhibitions.
Christina Boyles and Andrew Petersen of the University of Iowa for Makers by Mail. The microgrant is funding supplies for Boyles and Petersen’s makerspace-by-mail kits.

Conflict of Interest Policy

At the annual ACH Executive Council meeting in Kraków during the Digital Humanities 2016 conference, the Council discussed a possible conflict of interest policy. The discussion was not motivated by any particular incident but instead by the desire to make explicit the expectations and behaviors that the Officers and members of the Council already believed in. The Council also desired to bring the ACH into line with similar scholarly organizations that had similar policies in place.

Following the meeting, members of the Council drafted a policy, based in part on a similar document shared by the Modern Language Association (MLA). The full ACH Executive Council adopted the policy on 25 September 2016. Each Officer and member of the Council has completed a Conflict of Interest Statement and will continue to do so on an annual basis.

You can read the full policy on our announcements page.

ACH Member Benefits: Publisher Discounts

In connection with the annual DH conference, we began approaching university presses to provide discounts for their catalogs. We are now working to partner with presses to offer discounts without expiration dates. To receive discounts, ACH members must order books through the individual Press websites.

This is just one of the many benefits we offer to ACH members! Please encourage your colleagues to visit our membership pageand join our organization.

ACH Membership

Encourage colleagues to Join ACH! We’ve recently revamped our membership page to make it easier than ever to join ACH — just visit our new membership page and click on your preferred membership type. Student memberships are just US $26, and like other membership levels, help fund student bursaries, open-access journal publication, mentoring services, development micro-grants, and other important DH initiatives. Please encourage DH practitioners in your community to join!

What’s new on Digital Humanities Questions & Answers?

DH Q&A is crowd-sourced digital humanities expertise! It’s a community-driven forum for questions pertaining to the digital humanities that may need a bit more than 140 character answers. If you have questions (or answers!) consider joining the conversation!

The ACH is also considering officially supporting the Digital Humanities Slack channel created by members of our community. Please let us know what you think if you decide to join by writing to secretary@ach.org.

Keep in touch

Keep in touch with the ACH online: Twitter, Facebook, or ACH.org. As always, the Humanist mailing list features job posts, calls for papers and discussion of a range of issues in the digital humanities. If you would like to send us a private message you can always write to secretary@ach.org.

ACH Adopts Conflict of Interest Statement

Brian Croxall — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

You can read the full policy below.

Policy Concerning Conflicts of Interest

Adopted by the Executive Council on 25 September 2016.

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (“the ACH”) has obligations and responsibilities to its membership and pursuant to various laws. Officers of the organization and members of its Executive Council are elected to ensure that these obligations are met and responsibilities fulfilled. In the course of their service they are called upon to make decisions and take actions which might benefit, or appear to benefit, themselves or other entities and organizations with which they are affiliated. In cases of potential conflict of interest, as in all matters coming before the Executive Council, it is important that unbiased decisions be made and actions taken. Accordingly, the Executive Council is hereby adopting this policy, including procedures to be followed in cases of potential conflict of interest. This policy is intended to ensure that the ACH maintains its legal and professional status and to allow Council members the fullest participation in both ACH affairs and their own professional activities.

Each Executive Council member has a duty to place the interest of the ACH foremost in any dealing with or on behalf of the ACH and has a continuing responsibility to comply with the requirements of this policy. No member of the Council shall use his or her position on the Council or a committee thereof, or the knowledge gained therefrom, in such a manner that a conflict might arise between the interest of the ACH and any opportunity for his or her professional or financial gain.

The conduct of personal business between any Council member or any related party^* and the ACH is prohibited unless ratified by the Council. If a Council member or any related party has a professional or financial interest in a proposed transaction with the ACH or in any organization involved in the transaction, or holds a position as trustee, director, or officer in any such organization, she or he must make a full disclosure of such interest before any discussion or negotiation of such transaction.

Any Council member, who is aware of his or her potential conflict of interest with the ACH pertaining to any matter coming before the Council or a committee thereof, shall not be present for any discussion of, or vote in connection with, the matter. Since ACH business largely takes place via email, this may entail individuals temporarily being unsubscribed from the ACH-Executive listserv or discussions and votes taking place off the listserv.

Council members will complete annually a Conflict of Interest Statement and, if not previously disclosed, will make disclosure before any relevant ACH action. The completed forms of these Statements will be reviewed by the President, Vice-President, and Secretary, who will attempt to resolve any actual or potential conflicts as they arise or are reported, on the Statements or by other means. In the absence of resolution, the council will consider the matter; its vote on the outcome will constitute a final decision.

^* “Related party” is defined as a member of the immediate family of a Council member, which includes his or her spouse or domestic partner, minor children, and all other dependents; estates, trusts, and partnerships in which such Council member or any member of his or her immediate family has a present or vested future beneficial interest; and a corporation or entity in which such Council member or any member of his or her immediate family is a beneficial owner of more than five percent of the voting interests.

Published Today: ACH Statement in the Aftermath of the 2016 Election

Vika Zafrin — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Today, ACH has published a Statement in the Aftermath of the 2016 Election. Please read it here. The Executive Council welcomes questions and comments.

ACH Statement in the Aftermath of the 2016 Election

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

ACH hereby advocates for a peaceful, caring, and non-violent resistance to discrimination and injustice and pledges to:

support our academic colleagues who may be at risk;
reaffirm the recognition that intellectual, cultural, institutional, and other forms of diversity make a vital contribution to scholarship, practice, and our daily lives;
commit our work towards a humanistic understanding of the impact technology is having in shaping and spreading fascist values, and support the creation of alternative and resistant infrastructures and platforms to promote communities of humanities scholars that are based on mutual respect for diversity and civil rights;
advocate for the importance of academic freedom and the creation and preservation of archives against cuts to funding, access, classification, and erasure; and
promote social change and contribute to a more socially and publicly engaged academia by dedicating awards funding to work in digital humanities that explicitly addresses current socio-political issues.

Association for Computers and the Humanities 2016 Election

Mia Ridge — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Current members of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) or joint members of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO) are entitled to take part in our annual election and voting activities. This year, we will elect three Executive Council members as well as address three procedural matters:

A bylaws change that is proposed for ratification
The Recommendations for Assessment of Digital Scholarship in Tenure and Promotion Cases, which are offered for member endorsement
The ACH Identity Statement, which is offered for member endorsement.

Executive Council Positions

The four-year terms for the Executive Council positions will begin at the close of the 2016 annual summer Executive Council meeting. TEN candidates have been nominated to fill three positions of Executive Council Member. You will be entitled to vote for up to THREE candidates for the position of Executive Council Member.

Bylaws Change and Ratification

The bylaws change shifts the election cycle to the spring of each year. This will align ACH more closely to other ADHO constituent organizations in terms of election cycles. It will also align more closely with the start of the ACH membership term at the beginning of the calendar year, addressing some members’ confusion regarding whether they are eligible to vote. Finally, it will bring elections closer to the rollover date of service periods for existing Executive Council members.

The bylaws change is an up-or-down vote; you will be asked whether you vote to ratify or not ratify it.

Endorsement of ACH Guidelines and Identity

Over the last year, and with ACH members’ participation, the Executive Council has drafted two documents we would like the membership to endorse publicly:

The Recommendations for Assessment of Digital scholarship in Tenure and Promotion Cases: This document was presented at our annual General Membership meeting in Krakow in Summer 2016. The Executive Council solicited feedback from the membership following that meeting and incorporated it into the version of the Guidelines you will be asked to endorse with your yea vote.
The ACH Identity Statement. This document was drafted by the Executive Council following discussions with the membership as well as at the Executive Council level. It seeks to clarify the scope and identity of our organization for both new and continuing members.

For each of the public documents, we will ask you to endorse or not endorse it. Endorsed documents will be made part of the ACH website and promoted via social media.

Elections will begin at midday on December 5, 2016 and end at midnight GMT on January 19, 2017. Details of all the candidates, and drafts of the bylaws change and public documents, can be found on the ACH website and at the links below. Queries should be addressed to the Chair of the Nominations Committee, Élika Ortega. Queries regarding the bylaws change or endorsement of documents should be addressed to the President of ACH, Jennifer Guiliano or the Vice-President of ACH, Matthew K. Gold.

To place your vote online, you will need your Subscription Number and your unique Voting Token. The token ensures that each member may vote only once and that the results are submitted anonymously.

ACH Elections 2016: Candidate statements

ACH has taken strides towards greater transparency in governance and in the articulation of core values, such as recent efforts towards more inclusive language in the ACH Mission Statement, recent work on the guidelines for tenure and promotion, and the increased liaisons to professional organizations. I will continue and expand support for these efforts through the Executive Council.

Matthew Lincoln

Biography

I am a Data Research Specialist at the Getty Research Institute, where I focus on data-driven research into the history of the art market. I earned my PhD in Art History at the University of Maryland, College Park in 2016, using computational analysis to study networks of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish printmaking. I’ve previously worked as a curatorial fellow with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and as a graduate assistant in the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture in the University of Maryland’s Department of Art History and Archaeology. I’ve been a recipient of Kress and Getty Foundation grants for their summer institutes in digital art history, and served on the steering committee for the Kress and Getty-funded symposium Art History in Digital Dimensions at the University of Maryland in October 2016. In addition to conference papers at ADHO’s annual meeting, the College Art Association, and the Renaissance Society of America, I’ve also published research in the International Journal for Digital Art History, British Art Studies, and Perspective: Actualité en histoire de l’art.

Candidate Statement

I am honored to be nominated to ACH’s Executive Council. As an emerging scholar working in a unique role in a non-traditional academic institution, I’m acutely aware of the often-contradictory pressures that early-career digital humanists face, whether defining dissertations and research agendas that push boundaries while also staying fully recognizable within traditional disciplinary boundaries, or building a diverse professional profile with technical and project management skills while also maintaining an active teaching and research load to “stay viable for the market”. My own best guides in my first forays into DH have been fellow early-career peers working through the very same challenges. If elected to the Executive Council, my biggest priority would be identifying ways to cultivate stronger peer-to-peer early-career support groups within and across disciplines engaged with the DH, and to ensure that early-career members of ACH are made to feel like crucial members of the organization with a valued voice.

Thomas Padilla

Biography

Thomas Padilla is Humanities Data Curator at the University of California Santa Barbara. He publishes, presents, and teaches widely on Humanities data, data curation, and data information literacy. Thomas is a member of the Global Outlook::Digital Humanities executive council, and an Editor for DHCommons Journal and dh + lib Data Praxis. Thomas was previously the Co-Convener of the Association of College and Research Libraries Digital Humanities Interest Group.

Prior to his move to California he was Digital Scholarship Librarian at Michigan State University. Prior to that he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign working at the Scholarly Commons and the Preservation Unit of the University Library. Prior to that he advanced digital preservation outreach and education at the Library of Congress. He has a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and a master’s degree in World History from San Francisco State University. More information including a current CV can be found on my website.

Candidate Statement

I have had the pleasure to contribute in a diverse number of ways to the ongoing development of the Digital Humanities community. I work to foster and accord credit to Digital Humanities research and practice through editorial roles at DHCommons Journal and dh +lib Data Praxis. I work to advance the inclusivity of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations through my seat on the executive council of the Global Outlook::Digital Humanities special interest group. I recently completed my tenure as the Co-Convener of the Association of College and Research Libraries Digital Humanities Interest Group which engaged in a systematic approach to harnessing and promoting allied areas of library work that serve to advance the Digital Humanities. Finally, with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services I will be working concretely with librarians, archivists, museum professionals, technologists, and researchers to create strategies and frameworks that support the development of cultural heritage data that are more readily amenable to computational analysis. I am very grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the Digital Humanities community and would look forward to further opportunities to advance our collective goals through a leadership position on the Executive Council.

Katina Rogers

Biography

Katina Rogers is Director of Administration and Programs at the Futures Initiative, a program at The Graduate Center, CUNY, dedicated to advancing equity and innovation in higher education. Her work focuses on higher education reform, including professionalization and career development, scholarly communication practices, public scholarship, and advocacy for fair labor policies. She is the editor of #Alt-Academy, a digital publication dedicated to exploring the career paths of humanities scholars in and around the academy, and holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Candidate Statement

I’m honored to be nominated to serve on the ACH Executive Council. Because my work focuses more on the systems and structures of higher education than on specific digital humanities projects, I believe that I could offer a perspective that contextualizes DH questions within broader issues of urgently-needed reform. Equity and inclusion, fair academic labor structures, robust career development, and engaged public scholarship are all areas of concern for both emerging and senior scholars in DH. Moreover, interest in digital pedagogy and digital literacies is growing across all levels of higher education at all kinds of institutions, from elite R1s to small liberal arts colleges to massive public systems like CUNY, eliciting both optimism and anxiety. The DH community stands in a powerful position to advance the field in a way that leverages the opportunities of digital methods and inquiry to support not only top-notch scholarship, but also to advance greater equity and democratic principles across the university landscape. If elected to serve, I will keep these core areas of education reform in the foreground so that we as a community may work toward the growth and health of the discipline.

Roger Whitson

Biography

I’m an Assistant Professor of English at Washington State University, where I also teach in the Digital Technology and Culture (DTC) undergraduate degree program. I’m the author (with Jason Whittaker) of William Blake and the Digital Humanities: Collaboration, Participation, and Social Media (Routledge 2013) as well as the sole author of Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Digital Humanities: Literary Retrofuturisms, Media Archaeologies, Alternate Histories (Routledge 2017). I’ve written widely on the digital humanities and digital pedagogy, often under the lens of nineteenth-century British Literature and its adaptations and appropriations — as well as hosted the Critical Making in Digital Humanities digital archive and webinar series. Previously, I worked at Emory University’s Center for Digital Scholarship and as a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I’ve been a member of the digital humanities community since 2009.

Candidate Statement

Given the many controversies surrounding the digital humanities and its relationship with other fields, we need to stop focusing on William Pannapacker’s well-intentioned definition of DH as a “big tent” and start to emphasize the many actual disciplinary and institutional localities where the digital humanities emerges. We need to stop being prescriptive (“who’s in? who’s out?”) and start being descriptive. There is no one digital humanities, there are assemblages of people and communities producing actual work that follows many different traditions. At its best, the digital humanities offers what Patrik Svensson has called a “trading zone” for collaboration between participants whose difference is celebrated, not erased under a tent of sameness. Given my work history at several different institutions with very different understandings of the digital humanities, I have experience bringing various traditions and people into conversation with one another. Further, my scholarship is dedicated to highlighting the publics whose work outside of academia should also be acknowledged as part of the digital humanities. To that end, if I am fortunate enough to be elected to the executive council, I would be interested in establishing a better grassroots effort at charting the actual institutions, non-academic hobbyist and maker groups, adjunct faculty and staff, and the other real spaces and people who participate in the work being accomplished in the digital humanities.

ACH 2016 Elections: Call for Nominations

Alex Gil — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Due date: Friday November 4th, 2016

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) invites nominations for the 2016 elections, in which our members will elect three Executive Council members for four-year terms (2017-2021).

We seek candidates eager to support and advance the field of digital humanities (DH) by helping to lead the ACH.

ACH officers and Executive Council members develop and uphold ACH policies, determine and distribute funding, and oversee all organizational activities. Planned activities for 2017 include a membership drive; various facets of our mentorship program and job slams; advocacy work; publications including the Humanist listserv, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and DH Stack; collaborations with ADHO partners in the annual DH conference and other professional activities; co-administration of a number of prestigious DH awards, distribution of student bursaries for DH training and education, as well as other priorities as set by the ACH membership. You can be involved in helping ACH programs succeed by nominating either yourself or someone else to be an active participant in the leadership of the Association.

Send nominations to nominations@ach.org by November 4th, 2016. Please confirm with your nominee that he or she is willing to serve, and provide a brief candidate statement and biography. Sample candidate statements from past elections are available. If your nominee cannot provide a biography and candidate statement at the time of nomination, they should email those to us before the close of nominations.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at nominations@ach.org. The three top vote-getters in the Executive Council race will be elected to four-year terms.

For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of ACH officers, see our constitution and bylaws. Current officers of the ACH are listed on our officers page.

Many thanks,

ACH Nominations Committee

Élika Ortega, Northeastern University (Chair)
Mia Ridge, British Library
Scott B. Weingart, Carnegie Mellon University
Jennifer Guiliano, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Kalani Craig, Indiana University, Bloomington (external committee member)

Ex officio member

Tanya Clement, University of Texas at Austin

CFP: ACH Microgrants 2016

Alex Gil — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The Executive Committee of the Association for Computers and the Humanities is delighted to announce its fifth round of Microgrants.

ACH Microgrants were established to reward enterprising ideas that serve the digital humanities community. We especially value proposals from emerging scholars and DH practitioners that promise to expand the community, create new content or analyses of existing content, or build links with other DH initiatives.

Examples of past projects, meant to inspire rather than limit:

The Pedagogy Toolkit
Developing an open-source curriculum for a workshop on closing the gender gap in coding
The Caroline Miniscule Mapping Project
Digital archive of the “Digital Diasporas” conference at the University of Maryland
Electronic Literature Timeline

Proposals may be for projects in a range of forms including, but not limited to, apps, plugins, and tools. All microgrant recipients will be required to write some kind of reflective output, typically a blog post, which will be published on the ACH website.

Graduate students and early stage researchers are encouraged to apply. Mentorship is available, either at the development stage of applications or during the projects themselves. Those interested in being paired with a mentor for the duration of the project should note in their application the area of skill or expertise in which they would benefit from mentoring.

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

excellence and innovation of the proposal;
contribution of the activity to development and promotion of the ACH mission;
deliverables can be accomplished within the proposed budget and time period.

Applicants must be members of the ACH at the time of application.

Grants will be up to $1000. These are intended to be small grants that enable innovative activities by community members, such as graduate students, alt-ac faculty and staff, and junior faculty, who don’t have access to the resources of senior researchers. Projects should begin no later than three months after receipt of notification of acceptance and should conclude by 1 July 2017.

Applicants will be expected to report back to ACH within three months after the conclusion of the project. Applicants will also be expected to provide ACH with an appropriate Creative Commons license to any content to be posted, and open source software license for any code.

Proposals should be no longer than three pages (ca. 750 words) and should contain the following information:

Name, background and full contact details of proposer (institutional affiliation, email address, etc).
Name of organization (if the proposal is being submitted on behalf of an organization).
Narrative addressing the criteria above, both conceptual and technical, with clear statement of deliverables, including the nature of the reflective output.
Describe support needed from ACH, if needed.
Budget justification that indicates clearly how the funds will be spent (no longer than ½ page). Projects must be feasible upon receipt of the microgrant. Any other resources needed to accomplish the project must be obtained in advance (though they may be contingent upon receipt of the ACH microgrant) and specified in the application. If the microgrant project is related to a larger project, explain the relationship.
Date for project start date, date of conclusion, and for reflective output.

Should an early career scholar be barred, due to institutional policies, from holding a grant directly, another member of an affiliated institution may undertake to serve as grantholder, provided that the prospective grantholder guarantees in writing that the entire grant will be dedicated to the project for which it is awarded and that the individual(s) responsible for that project can be listed publicly by the ACH as having won the award, with the official grantholder mentioned parenthetically along with the institution.

No indirect costs may be deducted from the value of the grant, which must go entirely to support the project for which it is awarded.

Please send proposals or queries to microgrants@ach.org by 15 November 2016. The Awards Committee will notify applicants of the status of their proposals by 1 December 2016.

Roopika Risam, for the Awards Committee: Brian Croxall, Élika Ortega, Micki Kaufman

Changing the Rules: TEI Customization at DHSI 2016

Maria Chappell — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This year during the second week of DHSI, I took “Advanced TEI Concepts / TEI Customization” with Syd Bauman and James Cummings. I had previously taken another course, XSLT for Digital Humanities, with Syd and Martin Holmes, during my very first DHSI. For that first DHSI, I wanted to learn something that would be useful but hard to learn on my own. XSLT certainly fit the bill, and after five brain-tiring days, I could manipulate code with XSLT and turn it into something that looks and reads very differently from the original (sometimes I like to call XSLT “black magic” because of its transformative potential).

For DHSI this year, I again wanted to push my limits, and I had a second motivation for picking out a class: my upcoming dissertation project. My project encodes marginalia from a book of Shakespeare’s plays owned by 19th-century actress Fanny Kemble. Looking over my material, I quickly found that the types of coding in the current version of the TEI Guidelines were not specific and flexible enough for encoding the features of the text that I wanted was interested in for my project. Trying to rewrite the guidelines on my own to fit my project’s needs seemed intimidating. From its name alone, TEI Customization, I knew this class would be perfect for teaching me how, why, and when to customize the TEI Guidelines.

“Everybody uses customized TEI.”

This statement sticks out for me as the most important phrase (or perhaps the thesis) of the class. When Syd said that, suddenly changing the TEI Guidelines to suit my project didn’t seem so impossible or unusual. Everyone has to customize, from the large, multi-year projects I use and admire, to the smaller-scale and/or growing projects, like mine, that are built by individual scholars. In a profession where “imposter syndrome” is just as constant a companion to our work as a cup of coffee, knowing that you are not alone and that you are on the right track is important; that one word, “everybody,” may seem small, but it establishes something we all have in common in our scholarly community.

After recognizing that “everybody” customizes TEI, it was time to actually learn how to customize it. I’ll spare you the details, but there were functions and regular expressions and modeling and schema trees and ODDs. But at the end of the week, I had a rough prototype for my project’s schema. It’s not pretty (and certainly not readable unless you like settling down with a nice bit of code in the evenings), but I left DHSI with a lot more knowledge and a little more of my dissertation. And that is what makes for a good DHSI–that and spending a week gorgeous Victoria with amazing and lovely people who are just as excited about digital humanities as you are.

Call for Reviewers and Reviewer Nominations for DH 2017

Jen Guiliano — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

ACH is delighted to release the 2017 call for reviewers and reviewer nominations to its members. In June, the ADHO Steering Committee unanimously approved the DH 2017/DH 2018 joint program committee proposal that we formally expand the pool of reviewers. As part of this proposal, each Constituent Organization has been invited to nominate members who meet the criteria established for reviewers. You may nominate yourself or (if you are already a reviewer) nominate others. If you reviewed in the last two years, you should already be on the reviewer list. If you haven’t ever reviewed or haven’t received a reviewer request since 2013, please consider self-nominating if you meet the criteria below.

Candidates must meet at least two of the following criteria:

Be currently associated directly with or have been associated professionally with an institutional DH program, project, or initiative within the last three years.
Hold at least a Master’s degree or equivalent in a relevant discipline (including but not limited to Humanities, Science(s), Library Science, Fine Arts).
Have presented at an ADHO-, CO- or SIG-organized conference, symposium, colloquium, or equivalent.
Have published a DH-specific article or essay in a scholarly journal or volume (either print or electronic).

Active reviewers should agree to review at least seven proposals during the scheduled review period.

The Steering Committee approved the following wording for consideration in terms of ADHO’s ongoing efforts to support diversity and inclusion within our discipline:

“Nominations should reflect ADHO’s mission and stated expectation that reviewers “be selected to represent a range of disciplines, interests, and geography.” We [the members of the PC for DH 2017 and DH 2018] would extend that to be more inclusive, using appropriately all criteria that seem relevant to improve the diversity and inclusivity of the conference in consideration of language and gender. In putting forward a candidate, the nominator should be cognizant of and attentive to their own organization’s statement of diversity.”

Please submit your self-nomination and/or nominations of others via email to Program Chair, Diane Jakacki at diane.jakacki@bucknell.edu by 30 September, 2016, including in your nomination the following information for each candidate:

Name of nominee
Nominee’s professional affiliation and job title
Active email for nominee
Brief identification of candidate’s meeting criteria (no more than 50 words)
Confirmation that candidate has expressed interest in serving as a reviewer and their willingness to review at least seven proposals for DH 2017 conference.

Diane will compile the full list of nominees and submit it to the ADHO Conference Coordinating Committee by 10 October. Approved reviewers will be contacted via ConfTool to confirm their willingness to participate and ask them to create or update their ConfTool user profile to include the language(s) in which they are proficient for evaluating professional work and their areas of expertise.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Diane. Thank you in advance for considering this opportunity. ACH hopes to see many of you in Montreal!

Sincerely,

The DH 2017 Program Committee

via ACH

DHSI 2016: a great community!

Andrea Penso — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The week I spent in Victoria for the DHSI has been an amazing experience. The Digital Humanities is a field of studies which is developing really fast, and I was curious to get closer to these innovative approaches to literary studies. The summer school has been a breath of fresh air for many reasons: I learned a lot about digital stylometric analysis of corpora, I developed new skills in text encoding, I got better in the planning and the development of digital projects. But beyond all these “technical” aspects (which gave me a lot to think about in order to develop my research), there are some other things that made that week in Victoria very special.

The feeling I had from the very beginning was to be part of a young and dynamic community. At the DHSI the possibilities to start each day discovering something new are endless. For me, as a young scholar in Italian studies, it has been very interesting to start conversations about the most different topics with people coming from all over the world and with different backgrounds. It is amazing to discover how close and similar each experience, both from a professional and human point of view, can be. And it is even more amazing to feel how many things you are actually learning by sharing your experiences, your impressions and your feelings with colleagues that you can meet only in events like the DHSI.

For me, “Sharing” has been the key word of the week. I have seen an aspect of the academic world that sometimes is not that evident, especially when you are caught in stressful teaching semesters or in the writing of papers and thesis. Or, even worse, when you are in the middle of your job hunting for the so called “next step.” Every person I met at the classes, at the canteens, at the parks was willing to share their experiences, their advices, their point of view on how to improve that one project which is still a work in progress, or even to begin a collaboration. In other words, it has been possible for me to see the potential a collaborative network can have. It has been an intercultural, multidiscplinary journey that allowed me to be in contact with international scholars every day.

Before the DHSI, I was convinced that the future of the humanities will have to pass trough the digital approach. After the DHSI, I am persuaded that the future of the humanities is in good hands. I came back home with a whole new baggage of knowledge and the awareness of having taken part to something really special. In conclusion, the most precious thing I got from DHSI is a renewed enthusiasm, which I will treasure to improve my ongoing projects and to enlarge my perspectives on my career, in order to be ready to face the new challenges research and teaching will bring. And this, in my opinion, is what being a scholar is all about: looking at the future by developing, and not forgetting, the past.

DHSI Musings

Sally Schutz — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I arrived at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute on a Sunday evening with the first session due to begin the next day. My luggage arrived five days later, but that is an Air Canada story involving heart break, tragedy, and the triumph of the human spirit. My Digital Humanities Summer Institute story is much more upbeat and utterly lacking in the trip through the seamy underbelly of airline policy.

I am at the end of my first year as a PhD student at Texas A&M University and this was my first time to attend DHSI. I walked in with truly no digital tools under my belt, but with a strong conviction that this is the direction I want my career to move toward and a willingness to learn anything that anyone would teach me. I already have a project conceptualized but lacked the tools to realize my ideas. I stated my intent to pursue the Digital Humanities Certificate and the incredibly supportive people that make up Texas A&M’s Initiative for Digital Humanities Media and Culture at Texas A&M strongly recommended DHSI at the University of Victoria.

After looking up the course list I had to agree that this was a great opportunity. I financed my trip with funding from various places including a scholarship from DHSI itself, a professionalization grant from the English Dept. at Texas A&M and of course the bursary from the wonderful people at the Association for Computers and Humanities (ACH). Through the generosity of all three of these organizations I was actually able to fund two weeks at DHSI.
My first week was spent in David Hoover’s “Out-of-the-Box Text Analysis” course. I was deeply intimidated, but Dr. Hoover was incredibly thorough (and patient!) with his explanations. We used Minitab and the Intelligent Archive to generate analysis of different texts. This can include using word frequency to compare authors, genres, texts, etc. The sight of the spreadsheets on the first day ratcheted my anxiety to worrisome levels, but this really is a course that a novice can enter and comprehend. Dr. Hoover will hold your hand and walk you through painstakingly if you need it—which I did at times.

Over the course of that first week I attended several of the lunch unconference talks which involved some pretty useful mini-workshops on introductory digital topics like command line. I also met some great people along the way and found a thriving and warm community. During the second week I attended the Sounds and Digital Humanities course with John Barber. This was a very different vibe from the week before as Dr. Barber allows his students to create the class they need. He gave us sound tools such as Garage Band and Audacity and allowed us to use them as we saw fit for our own projects. This actually resulted in my own project really getting a jump start that week.

At the end of each session at DHSI there is a class showcase. Our showcase for Sounds and Digital Humanities was actually incredibly cool. We created a loop of sound from each of our personal projects and piped it through Dr. Barber’s retro-chic egg chair to deliver a sound experience. What struck me was that as you are in the egg listening you become a visual display for everyone else. People unabashedly stare into you as you are immersed in something they cannot hear. Two experiences are created. You are isolated, yet on display.

My two weeks were incredibly interesting and really jump started my own research. On a final note—Victoria itself and the campus are breathtakingly beautiful. Every morning I got up to run and found myself in this strange little forest wonderland where the deer do not even run from you. Downtown Victoria is really easy to reach by bus and a lot of fun when you get there. Overall, it was just a thoroughly worthwhile experience and I fully intend to return next year, so thank you to ACH for the critical help I received financially through their support.

BIG DHSI

Grant Glass — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I had signed up for both weeks at DHSI with the hope of gaining enough DH knowledge to last me the year. Quickly I realized that I might have over-committed myself. I should have known better and asked a DHSI veteran if it was a good idea to take Cloud Computing and Topic Modeling in the same year, which I can tell you was not a great idea. What you realize is that there is so much more to DHSI than just taking a class.

When we adjourned for lunch, there were opportunities to attend quick one-hour unconference sessions, many of which looked appealing, such as a visualization workshop and intro to python. However, I ended up utilizing my lunch time to digest all the knowledge I had learned in the morning. In the first week, I spent most of my lunches deploying different types of servers and in the second week I spent those hours attempting to decipher some complex regular expressions for my topic modeling script. After dinner, I spent time on the previous week’s material in an attempt to keep it in my mind as I learned all the intricacies of topic modeling. I wish that I had taken more familiar topics so that I could attend those unconference sessions and maybe spend more time socializing. The people I met and my classmates became good points of contact and I still message many of them on twitter even after DHSI has ended.

After classes there was an opportunity to attend the DHSI colloquium, which, I was fortunate enough to both present and participate throughout the two weeks. It provided a great forum to hear from other scholars and to get feedback on my own work. This is where I made many new friends both in person and on twitter. It was extremely beneficial and I would recommend it as a worthwhile add-on to your DHSI experience. The INKE and ELO conferences provided a great “vacation” from the classwork between the two weeks, and even though I did not present, I learned tremendously from the conferences.

I hope that I have shown that when you sign up for DHSI, you are signing up for so much more than just learning a new DH skill or perspective. You have the opportunity to attend colloquium and conferences, learn skills in short workshops, make lifelong (hopefully) friends, and most importantly find some really interesting people to follow on twitter.

Long Live the Paper Book: A Motto of Digital Humanities

Anna Bighta — Tue, 19 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

One of the first lessons I learned while attending DHSI 2016 was that the paper-format book, more than likely, will not die because of the proliferation of digital technologies and the culture surrounding it. Nor should books die. This seemingly counterintuitive statement comes from the course I took during DHSI 2016 called “Understanding the PreDigital Book,” hosted by book historian and modernist scholar Matt Huculak.

Why does a course surveying bibliography, print illustration practices, the manuscript, and the graphic novel even belong at a Digital Humanities summer seminar? The loudest answers are tools and formatting. Adriaan van der Weel points out that “by dint of our long familiarity with it, text has become so transparent as to make it all but invisible a technology” (69). Even though computing was introduced to the general public a quarter of a century ago, humanist scholars still consider the platforms/programs/devices that go along with it as new, intellectually progressive, and threatening. Because these inventions are just as material as they are virtual, they dislodge long-held assumptions about writing, historicizing, and thinking that seemingly transcended print technology. What emerges is the scholar’s responsibility to reassess the degree to which any technology facilitates the transmission of knowledge and culture.

In order to understand the present and future relevance of digital technologies in the study of human cultures, we must turn to our past: the book. The print book appeared as a symbol of permanence and authority arguably since the mid-1600s, almost 200 years after Gutenberg printed his first Bible, and before that, the print book competed with the medieval manuscript, the hand-written version of the book, as the simulacrum of evidence. Hélène Cazes argued in class that it would be more fruitful to study the book as a thing always in transition, which helps scholars think of the book, materially and content-wise as very much transmuting in the context of digital technology, as we can see manifestations of book culture in webpages, e-readers, online periodicals, scrollbars, as well as archives.

Reviewing the methods of bibliography that were being hashed out in the 1950s with Fredson Bowers is not flying in the face of DH, or reveling in the nostalgia of book fetishizing. The review is a sign that humanists have come full circle in contemplating what a text means. We can realize that many questions about empirical methods and quantitative data that humanists set up to do text mining or big data reading harken back to questions that bibliographers like McKerrow and Bowers unearthed when doing print text projects. These questions are central to humanist inquiry – like whether Roland Barthe’s definitions of “work” and “text” can comfortably coexist with definitions of “text” and “content” in editorial fields, as well as the expansive definition of “text” found in rhetorical contexts.

In light of the interdisciplinarity that Digital Humanists promote, it is crucial to continue studying the development of the paper book, along with the words they contain, to, if anything, further understand the way humans take in and transform epistemological paradigms.

Works Cited

van der Weel, Adriaan. “The Order of the Book.” Changing Our Textual Minds: Towards a Digital Order of Knowledge. Manchester; New York: Manchester UP, 2011. 67-103. Print.

Uncovering Signals at DHSI 2016

Jonathan Tinnin — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

One of the first things that Maciej Eder explained in Stylometry with R: Computer-Assisted Analysis of Literary Texts is that stylometry is all about extracting signals from texts. As I progressed through the course during the second week of the 2016 Digital Humanities Summer Institute, I realized that Maciej had taken me from knowing nothing about stylometry to being able to extract those signals and uncover useful information about the novels being analyzed. While I know that there is still much to learn about stylometry, it was thrilling to begin experimenting with digital tools that will inform my future work. In fact, my goal is to use stylometric analysis to discern whether there are stylistic markers particular to literary magazines produced in 19th Century Scottish Mental Institutions, as opposed to such journals as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine or the Edinburgh Review.

However, authorial fingerprints were not the only signals I picked up at DHSI. I was quite pleased to find a welcoming environment that truly promotes collaboration. In fact, throughout the classes, my colleagues were always willing to share ideas, not just on how to solve the immediate technical problem that one might be facing but also suggestions for enriching the research that we are all performing. I certainly came away from DHSI with wonderful ideas for my project.

The final signal I’d like to mention is the signal of egalitarianism that I uncovered. At DHSI, I found people who are excited about propelling the humanities forward through digital work. The abrupt divide between graduate student, adjunct instructor, and tenure-track professor was conspicuously absent. Instead, I formed connections with people around common research interests and a passion for digitally-informed pedagogy and only discovered after the fact that they were professors who were long past my current stage. Questions of hierarchy and status didn’t matter; we were all just developing our skills and our knowledge bases. This spirit of equality was quite refreshing, and I can heartily recommend DHSI to anyone who has a desire to acquire digital tools for teaching and research.

Please Ask, Do Tell! at DH2016

Mia Ridge — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re attending the DH2016 conference in Krakow and you’re looking for professional advice, job opportunities or just want to say hi to some friendly people, keep an eye out for ‘ask’ and ‘tell’ stickers.

You can also add ask or tell stickers to your conference badge to help start conversations – pick up your sticker(s) at the ACH annual general meeting at lunchtime on Thursday!

Someone with this sticker may have some advice to offer or know about an interesting DH job – please feel free to ask them!

Someone with this sticker is looking for professional advice and/or job opportunities, so if you have something to offer, please let them know! Speaking of questions and answers, you can post or answer questions about digital humanities throughout the year at Digital Humanities Questions & Answers.

ACH AGM at Digital Humanities 2016

Mia Ridge — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) is a major professional society for the digital humanities. You are invited to join us this year for our General Meeting at the DH2016 conference. This year the meeting will take place Thursday, July 14, during the conference lunch break, 1-2:30pm in Exhibition Room 1, Audimax, Jagiellonian University, ul. Krupnicza 33. The meeting is open to the public, and all are welcome. Lunch will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis for up to 80 attendees.

New Tenure and Promotion Guidelines Discussion

We need your input! Following the lead of scholarly societies in some of the disciplines most actively represented in digital humanities work, the Association for Computers and the Humanities is putting forth some draft guidelines for the evaluation of digital scholarship in tenure and promotion processes. We will be discussing the new guidelines at our AGM meeting. Before we do so, we would like to hear from you. We have prepared a public copy of the draft on Google Docs for you to comment on. Please leave your inline comments using the comment feature, or if you would prefer to send us general comments please write to us at secretary@ach.org.

Jobs Slam

Our AGM will include our popular “jobs slam,” a fast-paced lightning round in which job seekers have an opportunity to introduce themselves to their digital humanities colleagues and potential employers (or be introduced by a mentor)—and people with jobs to announce can share their good news!

If you have a current or upcoming job opening at your institution, please send a message to brian.croxall@brown.edu with the following:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about the job (title, affiliation, duration, etc.)
A link to other information, if available

If you are on the job market or anticipate being so in the next few months, please send a message to brian.croxall@brown.edu with the following:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about your qualifications & area of expertise

Purveyors and seekers of jobs will each have up to 30 seconds to present. Please come join us for this exciting match-making event!

ACH’s Newcomers’ Dinner at the 2016 DH Conference

Brian Croxall — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Is this your first or second time at the Digital Humanities conference? Are you new to the DH community? Join a small group of newbies and DH old-timers at a local Kraków restaurant and make scholarly connections and new friendships. It’s not only for members of the ACH!

The dinners will happen the evening of Wednesday, 13 July 2016, with parties departing from the poster sessions. For ease of conversation, groups will be limited to six people.

Registration is already open and places are limited! Sign up online.

We look forward to meeting you in Poland!

Please note: attendees pay for their own costs. The ACH provides the organization and good cheer.

2015 Election Results Announced

Élika Ortega — Wed, 30 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the 2015 ACH election in which a new president, a vice-president/president elect, and three new executive council members were elected. Jen Guiliano was elected to serve as the ACH president for the 2016-2018 term; Matt Gold was elected to serve as the Vice President/President-Elect, for two consecutive two-year terms (2016-2018 and 2018-2020); and Micki Kaufman, Amanda Visconti, and Scott Weingart were elected to serve on the Executive Council for the 2016-2020 term. All new terms will begin at the close of the annual summer Executive Council meeting.

Newsletter, December 2015

Stéfan Sinclair — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Preamble

Dear friends and colleagues,

You are receiving this newsletter because you are a current member of the Association for Computing and the Humanities (ACH). The ACH is one of the proud constituent organizations of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). The ACH seeks to cultivate a vibrant professional community through support of conferences, publications, and outreach activities. Many people contribute to this work, including many of you (e.g. as conference reviewers), as well as members of the ACH Executive Council.

The ACH Executive Council has invested considerable energy this fall in strategizing about how we might further promote diversity and inclusivity within our community. We believe the ACH is not currently doing enough, nor are we doing enough within the larger ADHO family. ADHO has declared that “inclusivity is a core value” and has established an ad hoc Working Group whose “purpose is to promote the use of broadly inclusive language and participate in the development or refinement of policies, protocols, and informal practices meant to welcome more diverse constituencies to ADHO and strengthen the organization and field of digital humanities through their involvement.”

The ACH Executive strongly believes that diversity makes us stronger as a community and we’d invite all members to be mindful of this in our own scholarship and in the assessment of the scholarship of others.

In that context, we would enthusiastically receive any requests for occasional funding or sponsorship, especially ones that promote diversity. Our funds our limited, but but we’ll try to support what we can!

Finally, as you may be aware, John Nerbonne resigned this fall as Chair of the ADHO Steering Committee. John worked tirelessly on behalf of ADHO and its constituent organizations (including ACH), and I am deeply grateful for his efforts. Karina van Dalen-Oskam has been elected as the new Chair and the ACH Executive would like to warmly congratulate her and we look forward to her leadership in pursuing our common objectives.

With my very best wishes as your humble ACH President,

Stéfan Sinclair

ACH Elections – Vote by December 10

ACH members are entitled to vote in this year’s ACH’s election, in which a President, a Vice-President/President-elect, and three Executive Council members will be elected. The terms for all of these positions will begin at the close of the 2016 annual summer Executive Council meeting.

Per the recently amended ACH Constitution, the Vice President serves a two-year term and then becomes the President for an additional two-year term. Since this process is just beginning, a President must be elected for a two-year term. Members of the Executive Council serve four-year terms.

Two candidates have been nominated to fill the position of President.
Two candidates have been nominated to fill the position of Vice-President/President-Elect.
Ten candidates have been nominated to fill three positions of Executive Council Member.

You will be entitled to vote for only ONE candidate for the positions of PRESIDENT and VICE-PRESIDENT, and for up to THREE candidates for the position of EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OFFICER.

Elections began at midday on November 20, 2015 and end at midnight GMT on December 10 2015. Details of all the candidates can be found on the ACH website, or by clicking on the candidate links in the Online Voting Form.

To place your vote online, you will need your Subscription Number and your unique Voting Token sent to you by email. The token ensures that each member may vote only once and that the results are submitted anonymously. All queries and questions about the elections should be addressed to the Chair of the Nominations Committee, Élika Ortega (elections@ach.org). Please contact Élika if you don’t seem to have received a voting token and you’re sure you’re a current member.

Events

DH2016

Digital Humanities 2016 will take place from July 12-16, 2016 in Kraków, Poland. The Call for Papers is now closed and proposal reviews are due this coming December 13th (if you’ve been assigned reviews). There’s still time to submit a Workshop Proposal by February 14th, if you’re interested. Bursaries for Early-Career and Emerging Scholars will be available, guidelines will be posted soon at the ADHO website.

CSDH/SCHN 2016

The Canadian Society for Digital Humanities invites scholars, practitioners, and graduate students to submit proposals for papers and digital demonstrations for its annual meeting, which will be held at the 2016 Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Calgary, from May 30th to June 1. We encourage submissions on all topics relating to both theory and practice in the evolving field of the digital humanities. Scholars in the digital humanities are engaged in diverse digital and computer-assisted research, teaching, and creation. CSDH/SCHN welcomes proposals in French or English from all constituencies and disciplines, and encourages applications from women, Aboriginal and Métis people, people of color, LGBTQ, or other underrepresented groups. Proposals for papers (20 min.), digital demonstrations,, and panels (2-6 speakers for a 90-minute session) will be accepted until 10 December 2015 and must be submitted to Conftool. Full CFP.

What’s new on Digital Humanities Questions & Answers?

Recent discussions include Named Entity Recognition Tools for finding dates and ‘traces of time’ in French and English, finding funding agencies that can support DH projects in India, displaying Latin and English translations, and getting started with Gephi.

Keep in touch

Keep in touch with the ACH online at Twitter @achdotorg, Facebook or our website.

As always, the Humanist mailing list features job posts, calls for papers and discussion of a range of issues in the digital humanities.

Elections 2015: Candidate Statements

Alex Gil — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

As an ACH member, you should have received an email from OUP with instructions on how to vote. If you still have any questions or run into any problems, please contact elections@ach.org.

Voting will close at midnight GMT on Thursday, December 10.

Presidential Candidates

Vika Zafrin

Biography

My day job as Boston University’s Institutional Repository Librarian and a member of its Digital Initiatives and Open Access team has informed my ACH work since 2010. I’ve worked extensively at the institutional administrative level in various advisory capacities, notably on governance councils of our Information Services and Technology division. I am an active open access advocate on campus, and am working with BU Libraries administration to institutionalize support for digital research in the humanities and social sciences.

I’ve been active in digital humanities since 1998, and hold a PhD in Special Graduate Studies (Humanities Computing) from Brown. My major projects include Brown’s The Decameron Web and Virtual Humanities Lab, as well as my dissertation, RolandHT. I’ve received federal digital humanities funding as a co-PI in one case and project director in another, and assisted others in writing grant applications. I’ve served as a grant application reviewer for the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities.

Candidate Statement

The field of digital humanities continues to expand in scope with respect to the research areas, and also the geographic and cultural distribution of researchers, involved. We face tremendous demands to ensure true inclusivity as we engage an ever more diverse community of practice. At the same time, the “digital” in “digital humanities” is continuing to permeate all humanities research in deep and not always obvious ways, requiring a vigilant and subtle critical approach to the discipline. ACH and other digital humanities organizations within and outside ADHO have risen to these challenges, but we have a lot of work to do, and I’d like to focus on the following if elected.

I would like to serve you by continuing and expanding activities that ACH does well around supporting young scholars, liaising with discipline-specific scholarly societies, and [digital] humanities and open access advocacy at governmental levels when needed. I’d like to work with our formidable Executive Council to more effectively advertise our community services, such as DH Answers, to those who may find them useful, especially to researchers who do or want to do digital work but do not consider themselves DH scholars.

At a larger organizational level, I would like to lead the establishment of a more firmly defined identity for the organization within the quickly changing landscape of ADHO’s constituents and other DH organizations. This will make us more effective and productive collaborators within ADHO. In particular, I’d like for us to continue to improve our joint annual conference, ensuring its usefulness to and active support for the increasingly diverse community it serves.

Jen Guiliano

Biography

Jennifer Guiliano received a Bachelors of Arts in English and History from Miami University (2000), a Masters of Arts in History from Miami University (2002), and a Masters of Arts (2004) in American History from the University of Illinois before completing her Ph.D. in History at the University of Illinois (2010). She currently holds a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She has served as a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant and Program Manager at the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (2008-2010) and as Associate Director of the Center for Digital Humanities (2010-2011) and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of South Carolina. She most recently held a position as Assistant Director at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland where she also served as an adjunct instructor in the Department of History and the Digital Cultures program in the Honor’s College. Jennifer Guiliano currently serves on the Association for Computing in the Humanities (ACH) Executive Council (2013-2017), as co-director with Trevor Muñoz of the Humanities Intensive Teaching + Learning Initiative (HILT), and as co-author with Simon Appleford of DevDH, a resource for digital humanities project development. For more information including a current list of publications, please visit her website.

Candidate Statement

For the last few years, I’ve worked as a member of the executive council of ACH to organize outreach to disciplines that our organizations intersect with. With the help of members of ACH, we’ve staged special events and panels at conferences, supported funding for students to attend workshops and training, and developed greater transparency regarding our goals. I’m proud of what ACH and our membership has done and the plans for our future: increased mentorship, increased opportunities for publications and training, and even the growth of ACH as a professional organization. Yet, as we look to these activities, there is a stark need for ACH to step forward to take a proactive role in advocating for a diverse future that is built around the values of our membership. As such, I’d seek to:

conduct an open discussion among our members about ACH’s current status–given the rise of other international organizations, should ACH continue to be a global digital humanities organization or should we limit our engagement to a particular set of geographical boundaries? What can be gained or lost by adjusting our geographical approach?
develop a set of guidelines for the evaluation of digital humanities scholarship— the continuing insistence on privileging tenure-track faculty and their roles in digital projects do a disservice to ACH members. Many of our members occupy project roles across individual disciplines and outside formal academic tenure. We could lead and influence others by actively developing guidelines for use in inter and trans-disciplinary projects that are not tied to formal tenure processes and recognize the multiplicity of types of work and products that our organization intersects with.
seeking a deeper understanding of how to diversify our conferences and larger organizational structures—as our conference has gotten bigger, we’d hope it would get more diverse. Yet, repeatedly, our membership has expressed their frustration with the seeming lack of diversity in approaches, methods, and presenters. As president, I’d seek to work not just with ACH members but to recruit new members who might offer new perspectives on computing and the humanities. How might our activities better represent not just who we are now but the diverse future we hope to embody? Are there systemic issues that we should address to present not just linguistic diversity but diversity in its many manifestations?

I realize these items are potentially polarizing in their scope, but it is my hope that the future of ACH is one where our membership grows not just in number but also in its attempt to focus on our core values: inclusive, diverse, and accessible across the humanities disciplines as well as our own backgrounds.

Vice-Presidential Candidates

Matt Gold

Biography

I am Associate Professor of English and Digital Humanities at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). At the Graduate Center, I hold teaching appointments in the Ph.D. Program in English, the M.A. Program in Liberal Studies (MALS), and the doctoral certificate programs in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy and American Studies. I serve as Advisor to the Provost for Digital Initiatives, Executive Officer of MALS, Director of the CUNY Academic Commons, Co-Director of the CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative, Director of the GC Digital Scholarship Lab, and Director of the GC Digital Fellows Program. In all of these roles, I work to integrate digital tools and methods into the core research and teaching missions of the Graduate Center.

I am series editor (with Lauren F. Klein) of Debates in the Digital Humanities, which is now published on an annual basis by the University of Minnesota Press, tracking new developments in the field. My work has appeared in The Journal of Modern Literature, Kairos, and On the Horizon, as well as in the edited collections The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics, From A to <A>: Keywords of Markup, and Learning Through Digital Media: Experiments in Technology and Pedagogy. My collaborative digital humanities projects, including Looking for Whitman, Commons In A Box, Social Paper, DH Box, and Manifold Scholarship have been supported by grants from the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. In addition to serving on the Executive Council of ACH, I serve on the Steering Committee of HASTAC, the editorial board of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, the editorial collective of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and the Steering Committee of NYCDH.

Candidate Statement

ACH has a crucial role to play as the digital humanities expand. No other DH scholarly society has so strongly exemplified the salutary values of DH work and created so many opportunities for newcomers to get involved. From mentoring dinners at conferences to student bursaries for training institutes to microgrants for student projects, ACH has provided a central point of entry where newcomers can ask questions, meet colleagues, and find support for their efforts.

If elected as Vice President, I want to expand these initiatives and draw new communities to ACH, aiming particularly to increase representation within the organization — and within DH — from community colleges, teaching institutions, and historically black colleges and universities, among other institutional types. It is my firm belief that the digital humanities needs to be successful across a wide variety of institutional contexts if it is to be successful at all. As I have served on the ACH Executive Council over the past three years, I have co-chaired the Membership Committee, served as ACH Liaison on the Publications Committee of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), and worked to improve organizational outreach. As Vice President, I would aim to build on that work in collaboration with my colleagues on the Executive Council.

My career at CUNY — the largest urban public institution in the US — has focused specifically on this kind of community building and outreach. My first major digital humanities project, The CUNY Academic Commons, created a central platform for communication and collaboration that serves the 24 campuses in the CUNY system. That active and successful platform has led both to major contributions to large upstream free-software projects like WordPress and BuddyPress, but also to the creation of the Commons In A Box platform, now used by the Modern Language Association for its MLA Commons and the forthcoming Humanities Commons, as well as by a variety of regional DH groups — NYCDH, Texas DH, Virginia DH, and Florida DH. Likewise, my first DH Pedagogy project, Looking for Whitman, drew classes from multiple public and private colleges together into a collective scholarly endeavor. Recent collaborative projects, such as DH Box, have focused on reducing entry-level barriers to DH research for faculty, staff, and students at resource-poor institutions, improving access to a variety of DH tools. That larger goal of access is one that I would love to see strengthened within ACH.

As an organization and as a community, ACH needs to grow even as it maintains the scholarly work, generosity, and mentoring that has defined the organization for decades. I would be honored to continue to play a role in that growth.

Amy Earhart

Biography

I am an Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University and have been involved with digital humanities since 2003. My work has focused on building infrastructure for digital humanities work, embedding digital humanities projects within traditional humanities classrooms, and tracing the history and futures of dh, with a particular interest in the way that dh and critical race studies intersect. I have been particularly concerned with representing a diverse history of digital humanities, as is the case with my projects The Millican “Riot,” 1868, “Alex Haley’s Malcolm X: ‘The Malcolm X I knew’ and notecards from The Autobiography of Malcolm X” (a collaborative project with undergraduate and graduate students published in Scholarly Editing) and The Diverse History of Digital Humanities blog. I have published on a variety of digital humanities topics, with work that includes my forthcoming monograph Traces of Old, Uses of the New: The Emergence of Digital Literary Studies, my co-edited The American LIterature Scholar in the Digital Age, “The Digital Humanities as a Laboratory” in Humanities and the Digital, and “Can Information be Unfettered?: Race and the new Digital Humanities Canon” in *Debates in Digital Humanities.*My work has focused on building collaboration and understanding of the digital humanities within the traditional humanities.

My infrastructure work includes being co pi on the successful international application to launch our digital humanities center, the IDHMC. In additional I sit on the Executive and Americanist board of NINES. I have participated in the ACH organization since my 2006 attendance at DH in Paris, have reviewed submissions for the conference since 2011, and have served as a reviewer for DHQand Literary and Linguistic Computing. In 2015 I gave the keynote at the joint Canadian Society for Digital Humanities (CSDH/SCHN) and the Association for Computing and the Humanities (ACH) Conference during which I challenged our community to introspectively critique the type of future we envision, a task I would bring to my work as an ACH officer.

Candidate Statement

I am honored to be nominated to run for the position of Vice President of ACH, and welcome the chance to contribute to an organization that is central to my academic life. I view this election as a way to contribute to the larger digital humanities community that has given me so much. As I articulated in my keynote at the 2015 CSDH/SCHN and ACH conference, I believe that we are at a crucial historical moment in which we need to examine the current state of digital humanities and have a frank and introspective conversation about what we want to achieve in the future. If elected, I will work to provide a voice to all ACH members concerned about the future of digital humanities.
A priority of my service would be to continue to broaden the type of work that we imagine as digital humanities with a particular focus on the inclusion of rhetoric, pedagogy, new media, critical race studies, and gender studies. Such areas are not add ons to our current understanding of digital humanities, but central to the vibrancy of our scholarship. This also means that I believe it is important to focus on community building and broadening, continuing to develop ties with a greater geographic and linguistic community and giving all involved with the organization a voice. In addition, I would like to launch discussions about ACH’s relationship with ADHO and whether we imagine ourselves a geographic entity as are most groups affiliated with ADHO. Finally, I would like to continue to explore ways that ACH mentoring programs might be used to expand the digital humanities community.

Council Candidates

Laura Mandell

Biography

Director of Texas A&M’s Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture, Laura Mandell is Project Director of the Poetess Archive, an online scholarly edition and database of women poets, 1750-1900 ( http://www.poetessarchive.org), Director of 18thConnect (http://www.18thConnect.org), and Director of ARC (http://www.ar-c.org), the Advanced Research Consortium overseeing NINES, 18thConnect, and MESA. Her current research involves improving OCR software for early modern and 18th-c. texts via high performance and cluster computing and, as part of the NovelTM grant participants (http://novel-tm.ca) investigating methods for analyzing big data. She is the author of Breaking the Book: Print Humanities in the Digital Age (2015), Misogynous Economies: The Business of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Britain (1999), a Longman Cultural Edition of The Castle of Otranto and Man of Feeling, and numerous articles primarily about eighteenth-century women writers. An article in New Literary History, “What Is the Matter? What Literary History Neither Hears Nor Sees,” describes how digital work can be used to conduct research into conceptions informing the writing and printing of eighteenth-century poetry. Mandell is co-editor of the Programming For Humanists book series and runs the Programming4Humanists Webinar.

Candidate Statement

I have for a very long time enjoyed the benefits of ACH’s work in building the field of digital humanities and would very much like to have the opportunity to participate in the work needed to keep ACH as vibrant and strong as it is now. I look forward to supporting ACH’s activities in mentoring, in the annual DH Conference, and in other conferences where ACH has a presence, such as MLA. I would like to promote ACH’s guidance in curriculum development as universities around the world begin to develop DH majors for undergraduates as well as graduate programs.

Lauren Klein

Biography

Lauren Klein is an assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab. She combines her scholarly training in early American literature with her work experience as a web developer in her current research, which concerns the history, theory, and practice of data visualization. With Matthew K. Gold, she edits Debates in the Digital Humanities, a hybrid print/digital publication stream from the University of Minnesota Press. Her writing has also appeared in American Literature, American Quarterly, and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (formerly Literary and Linguistic Computing). She serves as co-PI on the NEH Office of Digital Humanities-funded TOME project, a tool to support the interactive exploration of text-based archives. In addition, she is a member of the executive committee of the MLA’s Digital Humanities Forum and co-head of the Americanist Board of NINES: Nineteenth-Century Scholarship Online.

Candidate Statement

Each of my professional roles— from my current role teaching digital humanities at a technical institute, to my position in grad school consulting with faculty about digital pedagogy, to my work experience before that at a number of startups— has involved the translation of values and ideas across communities and cultures. As a member of the ACH Executive Council, I would hope to direct this experience towards the current efforts of the ACH to increase communication among its various constituent groups, as well as towards new initiatives to expand the inclusivity and impact of the ACH itself. I would focus on two initiatives in particular: 1) enhancements to the ACH mentoring program so that it reaches a more diverse audience; and 2) outreach to organizations in allied fields, such as STS, media studies, and design. As the field of digital humanities continues to expand, we stand only to gain from the involvement of additional voices and ideas. If elected, I would work to communicate the aims and intentions of the ACH to potential partners, as well as to listen for what we– as an organization and as a field– have yet to learn.

Jean Bauer

Biography

Jean Bauer is the Associate Director of the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University where she leads a team of programmers, project managers, and DH consultants. Prior to working at Princeton she was the Digital Humanities Librarian at Brown University from 2011-2014. She has designed databases for the Dolley Madison Digital Edition and Documents Compass, and was part of the first full-year cohort of Graduate Fellows in the University of Virginia’s Scholars’ Lab. From 2012-2015 she served as the first Secretary to the International Executive Committee of centerNet. As part of the centerNet executive Bauer helped write and build the new governance structure that transitioned the organization to a truly multi-lingual, international organization committed to gender balanced representation. She is also a member of the Minimal Computing working group.

Through a combination of formal training and curiosity Bauer is an early American historian, open source developer, dataviz enthusiast, and photographer. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago (A.B.) and the University of Virginia (M.A. and PhD), where she developed and built The Early American Foreign Service Database, an open access/open source repository and analytic tool which she used to do analysis for her dissertation “Republicans of Letters: The Early American Foreign Service as Information Network, 1775-1825.” When not studying the relationship between power and information, Bauer seeks to share both through the big tent of Digital Humanities.

Candidate Statement

Having worked in DH centers and non-profit organizations, from state schools to the Ivy League, to international consortia, I have seen a major problem repeat itself over and over. Too much of the work of Digital Humanities community building is done with little more than sweat equity and altruism.

This is unsustainable. To expand DH we need to recognize that many people with important, marginalized voices are already struggling with too many commitments, too little money, and too little time. If we really want to grow our community and diversify our leadership, we need to provide support structures to help the people who are finding their voices get a platform to speak. I believe ACH, with its strong alt-ac community and enthusiastic membership, can model a healthy attitude toward distributed professional service, if we are willing to take on this challenge.

If elected to the ACH I will work to expand the excellent programs of mentoring, travel support, and job support. I will also advocate for greater visibility and formal recognition for the people who volunteer their time to make such programs happen. And I would encourage the creation of ACH sponsored “safe space” online fora to give the community a low-cost, lower-stress way to discuss charged topics, with clear procedures on how to send suggestions from those fora to the ACH executive board, and from there to the ADHO Exec.

Thank you for considering my candidacy. I would be honored to serve such an amazing organization that already does so much to welcome people into the Big Tent of DH.

Kalani Craig

Bio: Kalani Craig is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Indiana University—Bloomington. She conducts the American Historical Association’s annual Getting Started in Digital History Workshop and serves on the AHA’s Digital History Working Group, which helps institutions interpret the AHA’s guidelines on the evaluation of digital scholarship. Her research and teaching specialties are at the intersection of digital methodologies and medieval history. She uses text mining, spatial history and coding schema to explore conflict in medieval European history. She is currently conducting an educational-research study that addresses the digital divide, at both an institutional and an individual level, by examining pedagogy approaches to digital humanities methodology that use analog tools. Prior to returning to the scholarly world, she spent ten years managing Web sites and the technical and creative people responsible for creating those Web sites.

Candidate Statement

The ACH has long been a resource for digital humanities practitioners, and if elected to the ACH Executive Council, I would advocate for three areas of emphasis that have been important to the ACH and for my own work: outreach to new practitioners of digital humanities research, digital humanities pedagogy at the undergraduate and graduate level, and closing the access gap that opens because of varying levels (or the absence) of available institutional support. Specifically, that means working to expand the training efforts of more specialized digital-humanities bodies like the ACH, HILT and DHSI by increasing awareness in more formal scholarly associations like the AHA and MLA and through ongoing informal outreach and network; broadly advocating for more systematic analysis of digital humanities pedagogy in both student learning outcomes and research advancement for undergraduates and graduate students alike; and advocating for funding and infrastructure that emphasizes a network of institutional support provided to scholars regardless of institutional affiliation or resources.

Amanda Visconti

Biography

I am currently a librarian, assistant professor, and the Digital Humanities Specialist at the Purdue University Libraries. I recently completed a digital humanities dissertation in the University of Maryland English Department, and I also hold a master’s degree from the University of Michigan School of Information, where I tailored Digital Humanities specialization. I worked in a number of positions at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) fromm 2009-2015, beginning as an IMLS Model Digital Humanities Intern and ending as the Winnemore Digital Dissertation Fellow. I’ve been a professional web developer for over eight years, and most of my research takes the form of making things for the web.

I’ve been active in the digital humanities community since 2009, tweeting @Literature_Geek and keeping a popular DH blog at LiteratureGeek.com (11 posts have been highlighted on DH Now). My major projects include co-organizing the inaugural THATCamp Games with Anastasia Salter, applying one of the inaugural ACH Microgrants (now Incubator Grants) to visualize Digital Humanities Quarterly’s citation network, the creation of a participatory digital edition (InfiniteUlysses.com; over 13,000 unique visitors during its first month of open beta), and successfully designing and defending a unique “born-digital” digital humanities dissertation consisting of design, code, user-testing, blogging, and a whitepaper written in the final weeks of the project.

Candidate Statement

Candidate Statement

I’m particularly interested in creating more opportunities for dialogue, collaboration, and mentorship between more established members of ACH and newer members. I placed “mentorship” third in that last sentence because I’d love to see more opportunities for a wider and more diverse range of scholars new to digital scholarship to be heard by ACH. What are the major issues facing undergraduates, graduate students and recent graduates in terms of defining their place in the field, employment opportunities, and career paths? How can the ACH learn from the experiences of people like myself who only recently began to align themselves and their research interests with organizations like the ACH? How can we do more to make newer members feel welcome at conferences, in digital contexts, and in other forms of outreach?

I’m also very interested in how emerging scholars doing digital work define the value of that work to dissertation committees, departments, potential employers, and various audiences beyond the walls of academic institutions. I was fortunate to have access to great mentors at Northeastern, but I know that other ACH members may be seeking additional support and advice beyond their places of employment. I’m particularly invested in public humanities initiatives with digital components: how they work with external collaborators, what resources they supply to communities outside their institutions, and how this work needs to be documented, acknowledged, and supported by employers.

Scott Weingart

Biography

Scott B. Weingart is Carnegie Mellon’s Digital Humanities Specialist, co-author of The Historian’s Macroscope (2015), and a historian of science pursuing a Ph.D. at Indiana University. He has previously been a Stanford DH Data Scientist, an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and a Huygens ING research affiliate. Weingart is known for his blog, the scottbot irregular, his teaching at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, and his guest editorial work for the Journal of Digital Humanities.

Candidate Statement

The ACH is now big enough to be accidentally insensitive to its constituent members, which also happens to be big enough that those insensitivities add up in occasionally devastating ways. I’ve spent the last few years writing about the growth of DH organizations, offering suggestions to make our community more diverse and less tethered to the institutional inertia that marginalizes contingent scholars. As a member of the executive council, I would see these suggestions through, including expanding our peer reviewer pool to underrepresented communities and fostering initiatives to legitimize non-traditional scholarship or career routes. I would also work towards making our organizational histories available as easy-to-navigate open data files, because future historians don’t deserve the headache of reading through old mailing list archives.

Francesco Levato

Biography

I am a poet, a translator of Italian and Bolivian poetry, and a critical media artist. My work often focuses on the creation, theorization, and interrogation of literature through multiple forms of digital media. Recent works of digital scholarship include Machines of Dissymmetry and Semi-peripheral (3D). Machines of Dissymmetry is an interactive multimedia performance that explores, via the colonizing gaze, the complications of asymmetrical power structures inherent in creative work that appropriates textual and digital artifacts surrounding embodied subjects. The piece consists of multiple rhetorical streams intended to complicate the interactions and power relationships between audience, speaker, image, and text. These streams are performed live on stage through the mixing and projection of real-time audio and video of myself, as speaker, and audience participants, as interrogators, whose voices and images are appropriated through a wireless webcam and incorporated into the live projected video stream, all through the use of club VJ software. Semi-peripheral (3D) is an expansion of my hybrid text, Semi-peripheral: Spaces of Deviation, Abjection, Madness that utilizes a videogame development platform to immerse users in a 3-dimensional exploration of the theoretical frameworks that inform the hybrid text. The project’s virtual space symbolizes a Wallersteinian semi-periphery, and serves as overlapping heterotopias of deviation and crisis, where incongruous objects are juxtaposed and in tension with both the desire and threat of penetrating borders. Users navigate the project’s 3-dimensional world from a first-person perspective where they can engage with the original texts through various assemblages of symbolic objects and also through the actual texts themselves, which are scattered throughout the environment and can be picked up and read. In addition, I am a PhD candidate in English Studies, hold an MFA in Poetry, and I founded the Chicago School of Poetics; a school is dedicated to providing graduate-level poetry workshops, through online video-conferencing, to a global audience of students who don’t have the means to attend, or access to, traditional universities.

Candidate Statement

I would be honored to serve on the Executive Council of ACH and hope that my experience as both a practitioner and scholar of digital media would offer a unique perspective on the theorization and implementation of creative digital projects. I would help facilitate critical-creative maker spaces where digital media artists and scholars could collaborate, both online and at the conference. Further, I would advocate for, and work toward, opening access to the conference through online tools for those who don’t have the means to attend in person.

No You Are Not Crazy: What I learned from Presenting a Paper at the Joint ACH and CSDH/SCHN Conference 2015

Grant Glass — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Presenting my Paper “Towards a Quantum Digital Humanities” at a Digital Humanities conference was a wonderful opportunity to simultaneously share my views of where I believe the future of where Digital Humanities is headed and to connect with the larger community of scholars. In the newcomer’s lunch, I was able to make some meaningful connections with other faculty and graduate students that have helped shaped my confidence in practicing Digital Humanities.

As apart of my Master’s Degree at King’s College London in Digital Humanities, I needed to take a class on the Methods and Techniques in Digital Humanities. Listening to and reading about the plethora of approaches to the digital, I often wondered what I could bring to the conversation. Would like look at new ways of text mining or would I look to something new? It seems to me that any discipline grounded in technology, must constantly be looking forward to understand new technology as it develops.

With this in mind, I started to look at what new technologies might be of interest to the Digital Humanist. I came upon the topic of Quantum Computing through a news story that CNBC ran in September of 2014 that discussed how important Quantum Computing could be to airline manufactures. The story went to theorize that through this new type of computer, simulations could be accurately made to represent what happens when a piece of machinery fails during a flight. The CNBC correspondent talked about how it was the complexity of the problem that could not be handled by traditional computing and that only Quantum Computing could deal with this sort of problem. I immediately thought of the act of reading and how very complex it can be, and thought could this new computer make it possible for a machine to read?

I set out to try to either prove this right or wrong. Initially it was very difficult to get a grasp on the literature about Quantum Computing, since it is written in computer science theorems and equations that were hard to understand without a computer science degree. Still, I ventured on and started to understand part of the conversation that was happening around Quantum Computing. What stuck me is that all of the literature was very focused on results and rarely talked about implication. This is where my paper began and ended, how to first approach this subject that could benefit immensely from Digital Humanities.

The finished paper seemed like almost science fiction rather than scholarship, and with great nervousness I decided to submit it to the joint ACH CSDH/SCHN conference. I decided to present this paper, because I more than anything wanted to know if I was onto something. It was also a hope that I could inspire other scholars to take a closer look at new technologies like Quantum Computing and to try to understand and critique them. When the email came through that my paper had been accepted and that the comments on the work consistently pointed to an interest in the subject, I became instantly nervous. I hoped that my work would come clearly through in my presentation, and that I would not be too nervous presenting my paper in front of many scholars that I respected.

The day came for the presentation, and I had rewritten and rethought about my paper the entire week leading to conference. Then in the blink of an eye, I had read my last sentence and I looked to the audience for any questions. This had been the part that I had dreaded the most, the questions. My fear was that some scholar would ask me a question I had no clue how to answer. However, many of the questions were pointed to make me think more clearly on my paper and I felt that the community of scholars in front of me were cheering me on, wanting me to succeed. It was a wonderful feeling to have and I keep it with me when I am every uncertain about my work.

ACH 2015 Elections: Call for Nominations

Vika Zafrin — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Due date: Friday October 23, 2015

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) invites nominations for the 2015 elections, in which our members will elect:

Three Executive Council members for four-year terms (2016-2020);
A new President for a two-year term (2016-2018);
And, per our constitutional change last year, a Vice President/President-Elect, for two consecutive two-year terms (2016-2018 and 2018-2020).

We seek candidates who want to support and advance the field of digital humanities (DH) by helping to lead the ACH.

ACH officers and Executive Council members develop and uphold ACH policies, determine and distribute funding, and oversee all organizational activities. Planned activities for 2016 include a membership drive; various facets of our mentorship program and job slams; advocacy work; publications including the Humanist listserv, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and DH Answers; collaborations with ADHO partners in the annual DH conference and other professional activities; co-administration of a number of prestigious DH awards, distribution of student bursaries for DH training and education, as well as other priorities as set by the ACH membership. You can be involved in helping ACH programs succeed by nominating either yourself or someone else to be an active participant in the leadership of the Association.

Send nominations to nominations@ach.org by October 23, 2015. Please confirm with your nominee that he or she is willing to serve, and:

Put one of the following in the subject line, as appropriate:
- Executive Council nomination
- ACH President nomination
- ACH Vice President nomination
Provide a brief candidate statement and biography. Sample candidate statements from past elections are available. If your nominee cannot provide a biography and candidate statement at the time of nomination, they should email those to us before the close of nominations.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at nominations@ach.org. The three top vote-getters in the Executive Council race will be elected to four-year terms.

For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of ACH officers, see our constitution and bylaws. Current officers of the ACH are listed on our officers page.

Many thanks,

ACH Nominations Committee

Brian Croxall, Brown University
Élika Ortega, University of Kansas (Chair)
Mia Ridge, Open University , UK
Glen Worthey, Stanford University

Ex officio member

Stéfan Sinclair, McGill University (ACH President)

ACH Incubator Grants Winners 2015: Knowing Our Past

Susan Brown — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Incubator Grants competition!

ACH Microgrants were established to reward enterprising ideas that serve the digital humanities community by building on existing ACH initiatives like Digital Humanities Quarterly and DH Answers. We especially value proposals from emerging scholars and DH practitioners that promise to expand the community, create new content or analyses of existing content, or build links with other DH initatives. Our call this year emphasized knowing our past, which was interpreted variously by our community. Thanks to everyone who applied.

The ACH Incubator Grant winners for 2015 are:

The Caroline Miniscule Mapping Project

Anna Dorofeeva, University of Cambridge

$1000 towards developing a website to allow the Network for the Study of Caroline Minuscule to publish 30 summary articles, including bibliographies and links to online manuscripts, on the major scribal centres and regions that used the diverse and complex Caroline minuscule script in Europe c. 700–1000 AD.

Storifying “Digital Diasporas”

Kim Gallon, Purdue University; Zita Cristina Nunes, University of Maryland

$1000 towards creating a digital archive of the “Digital Diasporas: Digital Humanities and African American/African Diaspora Studies” conference held in 2008 at the University of Maryland, College Park, and an associated social media stream towards a second conference in 2018.

Electronic Literature Timeline

James O’Sullivan, Pennsylvania State University

$1000 to develop an interactive timeline that charts, with contributions from some of the field’s leading scholars and practitioners, the emergence and evolution of electronic literature and associated seminal criticism, visualizing the key creative and critical milestones in the field’s development.

ACH Incubator Committee 2015
(Susan Brown, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Bethany Nowviskie, Roopika Risam)

Everything I Know About Breaking Silos I Learned From You, It’s True: Lessons From Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries at HASTAC 2015

Caitlin Christian-Lamb — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The ACH awarded Caitlin Christian-Lamb a bursary to attend HASTAC 2015. The award came with an invitation to reflect on the experience in our blog.

As a conference, HASTAC 2015 seemed remarkably focused on interdisciplinarity and experimentation—in projects, in pedagogy, and in forming collaborations. My experience with HASTAC-connectivity began prior to my arrival in Michigan—a few weeks beforehand, Thomas Padilla and I began planning a dh+lib/DHIG meetup. As part of our preparation, I compiled a list of sessions that mentioned libraries, archives, or museums in their descriptions. It turns out that there were a lot, which is a testament to the interdisciplinarity and the inclusion of LAMs topics with the HASTAC community. As an archivist who works in an academic library, I’m always on the lookout for other LAM folks at digital humanities conferences, and want to see how others with similar roles are engaging with and participating in digital scholarship. The meetup was intended to provide that opportunity, but HASTAC’s interesting keynotes and sessions were also rife with chances to connect with people working in and with libraries—as well as learn from colleagues working in different fields.

The first conference session included one of my favorite panels,“The Georgia Virtual History Project: A New Way of Seeing the Past.” GVHP models a unique university/high school partnership, and the panel featured speakers (Jon Deen, Anna Kate Foshee, Christopher Lawton, Laura Nelson, Randy Reid, and Sachi Shastri) that ranged across the different roles involved in the project: University of Georgia faculty, an undergrad student who was about to start a graduate program, high school teachers, and a high school student. Randy Reid (Athens Academy) summarized the reasoning behind getting high school students involved in a digital local history project: “We wanted to provide the students with the opportunity to do the work that historians do.” Chris Lawton (UGA) summed up the whole project beautifully: placeness of local and oral history is key to the power that these stories hold with “the ability to go to a place and hear these stories.” The Georgia Virtual History Project creates that place digitally, producing public, popular, and local history that is accessible to a wider audience.

I served as the designated tweeter for two sessions, “Student-Centered Pedagogy and Technology: An Interactive Long Table Conversation,” and “Social Praxis and the Digital Archive.” Both sessions ended up being highlights of the conference for me.

“Student-Centered Pedagogy and Technology,” or the #futuresED panel, focused on involving the audience in a discussion about how to teach digital literacy (led by Cathy Davidson, Katina Rogers, Michael Dorsch, Danica Savonick, and Lisa Tagliaferri). We began with a think-pair-share exercise. Attendees were provided with butcher paper and markers, and asked to write down three learning goals for a class (past, present, or future iterations). We then brainstormed with the person sitting next to us, prior to sharing with the room— my partner was Anthony Curtis, a biology instructor and ecologist. Anthony and I ended up having a rich discussion on the similarities of our challenges, despite his firm STEM background and my interdisciplinary-but-still-majority-humanities role. My favorite of Anthony’s learning goals: “learn how to learn.”

The “Social Praxis and the Digital Archive” panel focused on seven projects that investigate the concept of digital archive as “third space.” As fellow designated tweeter Jen Shook summarized, the third space is “between physical/virtual, [and] between learning/knowing.” All of the speakers highlighted issues of identity-building, disruption of colonialism, and critical thinking on materiality and authority within archives, oftentimes emphasized by the creation and maintenance of digital projects. In particular, I was taken with Michael Pierse’s (Queen’s University Belfast) talk on the “Working-Class Cultures and Conflict in Northern Ireland Since 1945” and “’From Dark Tourism to Phoenix Tourism: The Ethics of Cultural Translation in Urban Festivals” projects, which discussed community collaboration within a context of institutional mistrust and complex sectarian divides. Equally compelling was Bettina Fabos and Sergey Golitsynskiy’s (University of Northern Iowa) presentation on FORTEPAN IOWA, a “public park of images” of Iowan life, the first sister site of Hungary’s FORTEPAN.

When I looked at the schedule prior to attending HASTAC, I marked off the “Doing Digital Liberal Arts: Projects and Pedagogies on Student-centered Campuses” panel as one I’d definitely be attending. I work at a small liberal arts college, so hearing how the panelists (Alex Galarza, Jacob Heil, Bill Pannapacker, Andrea Rehn, and Janet Simons) went about “doing Digital Liberal Arts” was of particular interest. This was a panel where nearly every sentence had me head-nodding or tweeting a hearty “YES!”—the initiatives, challenges, and ideas shared by panelists echoed my own experiences. In particular, Alicia Peaker’s comment on Twitter that Jacob Heil “IS a #diglibarts hub” resonated with me—archivists, librarians, and digital scholars who operate outside of institutional DH/DLA/DS centers often have to generate their own networks and forge connections on their campus. To paraphrase a thought from Brian Rosenblum’s presentation at last year’s Data Driven: Digital Humanities in the Library conference, DH librarians serve as nodes—connecting students, faculty, staff, and community with resources, but also with one another.

I also loved Bill Pannapacker’s talk—he emphasized that Digital Liberal Arts (DLA) is never just about the humanities; DLA is a more inclusive umbrella term than DH, and DLA initiatives and work on campus ideally reflect each institution’s mission. Alex Galarza’s discussion of a year-long undergraduate course he taught, designed to train students to be collaborative project architects, was also very inspiring. The course was split into thirds: one-third learning technological tools, one-third project management and grant writing, and one-third spent conducting research—scaffolded to encourage group and independent work, with lots of freedom for student scholarship.

I feel very lucky to have been part of the “Thinking Outside the Archive: Engaging Students and Community in Special Collections Digital Projects” panel. My co-presenters (Chella Vaidyanathan, Charlotte Nunes, Robin Wharton, and Elon Lang) are all working on innovative ways of connecting and creating archives, and their dedication to creative digital outreach and pedagogy inspired me. In particular, I’d love to crib ideas from the “The History of Student Life at Johns Hopkins University” project presented by Chella Vaidyanathan, and the “Freedom and Imprisonment in the American Literary Tradition” undergraduate course that Charlotte Nunes has been teaching at Southwestern University, both of which encourage digital archival literacy by having students build and use archives.

The final activity of my HASTAC 2015 experience was the post-conference “Workshop on Text Analytics with the HathiTrust Research Center: An Introduction to Tools for Working with Digitized Text and Metadata,” run by Sayan Bhattacharyya (assisted by Sveta Stoytcheva). The workshop was an incredibly helpful overview of the HathiTrust Digital Library’s (HTDL) holdings, and the tools being developed by the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC). I played around with several of the bookworm applications and topic modeling algorithms, creating a mini-corpus of Titanic-related materials from HTDL to then do some basic text mining and analysis on. Very fun—I look forward to using more of the HTRC tools in the future!

Participating in HASTAC 2015 reminded me of the value of attending interdisciplinary conferences, as opposed to annual organization meetings—while those too are valuable, connecting across our professional silos allows for new ideas and solutions, as well as providing an opportunity of explaining challenges that may be unique to specific roles. I left Michigan with a sense of renewed purpose, full of new ideas to experiment with, and new potential collaborations to build. Viva the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory!

The title of this post refers to the lyrics of the Taking Back Sunday song, “There’s No ‘I’ in Team.”

The Fundamentals: Learning Programming at DHSI 2015

Chris Fite — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

When discussing digital humanities with colleagues, the same objection comes up time and again: “I can’t learn programming.” I always emphasize that digital humanities encompasses a wide range of activities and that programming knowledge is not a prerequisite. I say, “You don’t have to know programming. Once you get involved, you’ll discover the types of projects that interest you and what you need to know.” However, a time may come when they need to know some programming, and many of my peers believe that learning programming is an insurmountable obstacle. Fortunately, they could put their fears to rest with a class like “Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists),” a DHSI course taught by John Simpson of Compute Canada and Dennis Tenen of Columbia University.

I took the class this year at DHSI 2015, and I could not have asked for a better introduction to programming. From the start, John and Dennis stressed that we were learning how to think like programmers. We were working in Python, but the point of the class was not to master a set of commands in a particular language. Rather, we were learning how to think through problems and work step-by-step towards objectives. It reminded me of my historical research methods class in college.

On the first day, we became familiar with the command line and the Bash shell. Python would be of little use if we could not even navigate directories. On the second and third days, we worked in the Python interpreter. Yet, even as we learned new Python commands, John and Dennis never let us forget best practices. We outlined in pseudocode before writing any code. When something worked, we saved a copy as a checkpoint. When we were finished, we made sure to leave good comments for the benefit of future users.

For the last day and a half of class, we split into groups and designed our own projects. I was part of a group that created a tool to check metadata for digital collections. It required a lot of trial and error (and some valuable guidance from John and Dennis), but we persevered and were successful. Our program takes data from a CSV file, checks it against standards we defined, and writes it into a new file. Any errors are flagged with three asterisks, making it easy for someone to find and correct them.

More important than any of our programs, however, was the confidence we gained in the process. Our DHSI crash course delivered exactly what it promised. We learned the fundamentals and laid a foundation on which we can continue to build. As John exhorted us, “You know enough to be dangerous. Be dangerous for good, not evil.”

Please visit our class GitHub page for course materials and the code for our group projects.

In Praise of Paper Prototypes: Lessons Learned from Crowdsourcing at DHSI 2015

Mary Borgo — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

It may come as a bit of a surprise that paper can play a crucial role in developing digital humanities projects. For me, one of the most powerful aha! moments at this year’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute came through a paper-prototyping exercise in our crowdsourcing class.

Before arriving in Victoria, my conception of crowdsourcing was limited to projects which asked the public to perform work that would normally take undergraduate and graduate assistants hundreds of hours to do. What I admired most about projects like Zooniverse’s Ancient Livesor UCL’s Transcribe Bentham were their ability to engage with a broader audience based on a common interest; by crowd-sourcing transcribing tasks, thousands of hand-written documents became more searchable, accessible, and readable in a relatively short amount of time.

This course challenged my assumptions about “the public” and what the crowd could—and should—be asked to do. By targeting an audience with a shared interest in our research materials, humanities projects often limit the scope of our audience to a relatively small proportion of people. In other words, Transcribe Bentham’s success is enviable, but not necessarily repeatable with smaller, more esoteric collections. Furthermore, relying on free or cheap labor to perform tasks that we would normally pay workers to do benefits projects with limited funding, but we should be conscious of the ethics of such a decision, especially in light of new regulations barring workers from outside the US from Mechanical Turk.

More importantly, humanists often approach crowdsourcing projects with a limited understanding of what they can do. Our instructor, Edith Law, encouraged us to think of crowdsourcing as a means to generate new data rather than as a vehicle for enriching previously-existing collections. She reminded us of fundamental differences in the ways that disciplines approach research. Computer scientists tend to use crowdsourcing to gather data as a way of answering a research question; humanists typically use research to problematize previous answers.

Breaking out of this data-enrichment mindset was challenging at first. As we looked at examples of successful citizen-science games like Stupid Robot, I realized that it would be hard to pitch tasks like adding metadata and transcribing to a broader audience as…well…fun.

Paper prototypes not only gave an abstract idea shape and direction, but it also facilitated collaboration. With Edith Law’s help, Karen Bourrier, Joanna Schmidt, and I began to develop a transcription game. Moving from an abstract concept into a play-able prototype required us to think about content, design, and game mechanics simultaneously. Because paper prototypes are not bounded by the limits of my patchy coding vocabulary, this exercise gave my creativity free reign. Transitioning from a paper to a digital prototype was much smoother (and much less intimidating) because we had a very clear sense of the final product.

Our hope is that future iterations game balance enriching pre-existing archives with generating new data. Early versions of the game will be used to test designs which use information-gap theory to engage gamer’s curiosity. This information could be extended to a number of citizen-science and humanities games to create win-win situations for users and researchers. More broadly, designing a crowdsourcing project gently reminds us humanists that there is a broader public by encouraging us to focus on the user. Unlike many traditional formats through which we express our research, digital humanities projects require us to be highly conscious of visual design and layout.

On a more personal level, I learned new ways to bridge the material and the digital world through this creative and collaborative process. The familiarity of paper makes it easy to brainstorm and easy to parse the process of creating a virtual version into small coding tasks. Tackling HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with a specific project in mind gave me momentum to work in a medium that I am only just beginning to understand. In the future, I hope to extend these playful, paper-based exercises into my classroom as a way to make students feel more comfortable learning essential skills to thrive in virtual, as well as real-world, environments.

Connecting the Past: Digital History and Linked Open Data at DHSI 2015

Steven Anderson — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The ACH awarded Steve Anderson a student travel bursary to attend this summer’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute, DHSI 2015. The award came with an invitation to reflect on the experience in our blog.

This summer I spent three weeks at DHSI (Digital Humanities Summer Institute) completing the new Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities. Last year I attended DHSI 2014 and HILT 2014, and I was able to transfer-in these classes for credit toward the DH certificate which requires five weeks of study. All three weeks at DHSI 2015 were incredibly busy and also very rewarding — I met old friends and made new ones, all the while surrounded by innovative DH projects and new forms of digital curation and production. For my digital project in the DH certificate program I created a blog, The Life DHSI with Steve Anderson, where I included my essays, journals, and thoughts on DHSI and the digital humanities in general. The three classes I took this year were Digitization Fundamentals, RDF and Linked Open Data, and also Professionalizing the Early Career Digital Humanist. At a glance it might not seem like these three classes would build on each other. Yet, as the weeks progressed I found one of my ideas about teaching with historical primary sources beginning to take the shape of a grant proposal.

In Digitization Fundamentals we worked with HTML5, CSS, audio, and also video. Coming in to this class I had a pretty good handle on HTML5 and CSS, but my audio and video skills were somewhat lacking. I worked with digital audio files in the past, but I did not have a good understanding of audio frequency and sampling rates until our class discussions took place. I’ve been working on producing video essays for students as a companion to primary source texts. With the skills learned in this class I can add more depth to the video essays with a variety of historical sounds and moving images. For example, a video essay with a still image of a locomotive could also include audio of a train passing by, or a photograph or silent film of a busy urban street could include ambient sounds from people and cars.

I found the second class, RDF and Linked Open Data, to be the most difficult, however it was also the most rewarding, and this is where the kernel of the grant proposal began to germinate. Linked Open Data is simultaneously a very complicated and very simple idea — lots of information is added to the web every day, but most of it is isolated or separated from other materials. Adding machine-readable links with RDF (Resource Description Framework) between content can create a “web of data,” one that can be used to connect materials together (see Tim Berners-Lee on “Linked Data”). I’ve been creating HTML5 excerpts of primary source readings on my project website SGA Historical Materials, and these are often read in class by students using smartphones or tablets.

The .html documents I’ve created of primary source excerpts only contain text, and perhaps a link to Wikipedia or Google Books. With Linked Open Data I could extend these primary source readings so that machines can understand them as primary sources too, and that they’re from a certain historical period, and taking place at a specific geographical location. Extra code added to these simple .html documents could connect them more directly to libraries, archives, and museums, the very groups already working on turning their vast collections into Linked Open Data (see Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives, and Museums, also as #lodlam on Twitter).

The third class, on professionalization, was where the idea for writing the grant came together. In this class we worked on personal and professional identities online, and how to present ourselves in the best possible light for hiring and job search committees. In addition, we looked at grant funding agencies and how social and professional pathways must be navigated in order to produce a successful grant proposal. Building on the new forms of aural and visual media discussed in Week 1, and drawing on the concept of Linked Open Data in Week 2, I began to see how a project focusing on historical primary sources could take shape.

For a wonderful project using historical primary sources and Linked Open Data, see Linked Jazz.

By working with the #lodlam community, I could create a plan for locating digitized or born digital primary sources. These materials, whether traditional text or new media could be linked to archival information, and also linked to each other. Showing how certain historical documents are related to each other would help students see the many connections between seemingly disparate texts or materials. Also, linking these primary source excerpts back to pertinent artifacts in libraries, archives, and museums would help students understand how history is written, how documents are preserved, and how the public can interact with the past in meaningful ways.

It will take some time to put all of these ideas together as a grant proposal, perhaps as an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant. I’ll need to do some research on other similar projects and NEH grant winners, what skill-sets and digital tools and equipment are needed, and how to best present the idea. A working prototype is also necessary, and thankfully with the experience of DHSI all of these things are now possible.

For more information on Linked Open Data, and my project which is tentatively titled “Linked Open History,” see my blog post at The Life DHSI: Linked Open History: Using RDF and Linked Open Data to Connect Primary Source Materials

ACH’s Newcomer Dinner at the 2015 Digital Humanities conference

Mia Ridge — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Is this your first or second time at the Digital Humanities conference?

Are you new to the DH community? Join a small group of newbies and ACH (Association for Computers and the Humanities) old-timers at a local Parramatta restaurant, to make scholarly connections and new friendships. It’s not only for members of the ACH.

Dinners will happen the evening of Wednesday 1 July 2015 at 7.30pm, with parties departing from the reception of the Park Royal Hotel, Parramatta at 7.15pm.

Registration is already open and places are limited! Sign up form.

For ease of conversation, groups will be limited to six people and we will want you to identify yourself with ‘n’ for newbie (in your first or second year attending DH) or ‘v’ for DH conference veteran (no more than 2 veterans per party, please!). We will also need one veteran leader for each group, to make a reservation and walk the group over to the restaurant; long-term ACH members and other DH conference veterans are heartily encouraged to volunteer!

Please note: attendees pay for their own costs. The ACH provides the organization and good cheer.

Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen Young Scholar Prize

Stéfan Sinclair — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Canadian Society for DH are very pleased to announce the 2015 winners of the prestigious Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen Young Scholar Prize. This prize, sponsored by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, is intended to recognize a young scholar who has contributed in a significant way to scholarship at a humanities conference using digital technology. The winners were selected unanimously by a joint awards and program committee comprised of representatives from CSDH and ACH.

ACH recipient: Micki Kaufman “Everything on Paper Will Be Used Against Me: Quantifying Kissinger”
CSDH recipient: Lai-Tze Fan “On the Value of Narratives in a Reflexive Digital Humanities”

Congratulations!

ACH Jobs Slam at the 2015 CSDH-SCHN / ACH Conference

Brian Croxall — Thu, 21 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH will host a Jobs Slam on Wednesday, June 3rd, during the CSDH Annual General Meeting at 4:45pm in Colonel By C03. (Please note: the ACH Annual General Meeting will take place this year at the DH 2015 conference in Sydney, Australia.) The Jobs Slam is a lively event and a chance for employers to get the word out about upcoming jobs as well as for prospective employees to introduce themselves to everyone present.

If you have a current or upcoming job opening at your institution, please send a message to brian.croxall@emory.edu with the following:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about the job (title, affiliation, duration, etc.)
A link to other information, if available

If you are on the job market or anticipate being so in the next few months, please send a message to brian.croxall@emory.edu with the following:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about your qualifications & area of expertise

Purveyors and seekers of jobs will each have up to 30 seconds to present. Please come join us at the for this exciting match-making event!

ACH’s Newcomer Dinner at the 2015 CSDH-SCHN / ACH conference

Brian Croxall — Wed, 20 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH will extend one of its traditions to the joint CSDH-SCHN/ACH conference in Ottawa in June with the annual Newcomers’ Dinner on the evening of 1 June 2015. This dinner is a chance for individuals who are new to digital humanities conferences (first- or second-time attendees) to connect with those who have been around for a bit longer. Groups of six will be led by one or two veterans will head to local restaurants where they will get a chance to get to know others in the field. Sign up or and learn more.

Please note: attendees pay for their own costs. The ACH provides the organization and good cheer.

Lessons Learned from “Bridging the Gap: Women, Code, and the Digital Humanities”

Wed, 06 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This fall we had the opportunity to launch DH Bridge, an open curriculum and workshop framework for teaching computational thinking in the context of the humanities, funded by an ACH microgrant. Borrowing liberally from Rails Bridge and Rails Girls, we set out to adapt the model of a distributed pedagogy to the needs of humanities scholars who, while not looking to become programmers per se, want to develop the skills and patterns of thinking necessary to apply computational methods to their scholarship.

Computational thinking is a pattern of problem solving that involves organizing and analyzing data, abstracting in search of patterns, and breaking complex problems into discrete, solvable parts (Jeannette Wing, 2006, doi: 10.1145/1118178.1118215). It enables humanities researchers to formulate new questions and to think through how to leverage both data and computational processes to explore those questions. While these skills may be taught in the context of a particular programming language, in our case Python, the patterns of thought are transferable to any language or computational process.

For the DH Bridge curriculum, we wanted to provide concrete exposure to the ways scholars might leverage data and code in the service of humanities questions. We also wanted participants to leave the workshop with a sense of how to approach a problem computationally, as well as to begin using the computer to perform the desired analysis. To achieve these goals, we used data from the Digital Public Library of America as the foundation for our curriculum and asked participants to explore the ways the collection’s holdings related to “cooking” were gendered. Breaking this abstract question into computationally solvable parts meant walking participants through using the DPLA’s API, parsing the JSON output, isolating particular data points, and using the Natural Language Toolkit for Python to find patterns in the text.

In what follows, we will discuss the pedagogical choices we made, our development process for the curriculum, and lessons learned from the workshop held on November 1, 2014.

Pedagogical Choices

Working from our observations and participant feedback from Rails Girls DH, we wanted to make a few deliberate pedagogical changes for the new curriculum:

Work from concrete problem to abstract concepts.
Focus on computational thinking and helping participants build a mental model of the computer, data, and working computationally.
Design the tutorial to potentially be a standalone reference (for people with some programming experience), but pair it with the coaches guide to give a more personalized and enhanced learning experience.

In working purposefully from a concrete problem and data to more abstract concepts, we wanted to provide a clear entry point for humanities scholars. This is the opposite approach from what is commonly pursued in coding tutorials, where concepts and descriptions of terms and elements are defined in the abstract first. We’ve observed that this adds a layer of difficulty for participants in translating to actual implementation. At the same time, we were concerned about the desire to understand “all the details”–meaning the more abstract computer science conceptual foundations–before being willing to play, which can also keep people from being willing to engage with hands-on learning. By starting with a model of computational thinking that considers the computer, data, and research questions in conversation from the beginning, we sought to present a balanced approach between the conceptual and technical.

In terms of the curriculum, there are two main components: a detailed tutorial made up of 14 modules and a coaches’ guide. Each addresses different aspects of the learning goals, although they were conceived to work together and be implemented together by potential future workshop organizers. For people with some programming experience, the tutorial could serve as a standalone reference and step-by-step guide. In putting the tutorial together, it became clear that some of the important context and explanations didn’t fit well within the narrative flow of the modules. We decided that this material would be best served through discussion among the participants and the coaches, and so wrote the coaches’ guide with learning checks, discussion questions, and the key concepts for each module. We wanted to emphasize this social aspect of learning, and we found that could only be achieved through conversations in the room during the workshop itself.

Iterative Process

While developing the curriculum, we asked for and received substantive feedback from a number of our peers and professors. Knowing that participants would likely be a mix of Mac and Windows users, we wrote instructions for each and repeatedly tested the tutorial on both operating systems. Two weeks prior to the workshop, we got together with a number of the coaches for a dress rehearsal of the curriculum. We gathered valuable feedback and made final tweaks, clarified directions in the tutorial, fleshed out concepts, and added parts to the coaches guide to reinforce our model of computational thinking and keep everything aligned with the learning goals.

Lessons Learned

For this kind of workshop, we found that a participant to coach ratio of 2-3 to 1 seemed to work much better than our Rails Girls DH ratio of 5 to 1. For DH Bridge, there were plenty of coaches around to answer questions and troubleshoot, so participants were generally not stuck for long. One thing that we noticed was how the ratio affected collaborative group activities. Participants on the whole progressed at their own pace, which was great, but this made it difficult to stop for the learning checks and discussions we’d built into the modules. Also, the number of coaches at hand made participants more likely to ask them immediately for help rather than hash problems out with their group members. Balancing the asynchronous and synchronous aspects will be an ongoing consideration as we refine our workshop model. We gathered feedback informally after the event and through an optional survey. Several DH Bridge participants shared with us that they believed in their ability to translate the skills and concepts gained throughout the day to their current work, but we have yet to develop an effective way of assessing long-term learning. Maintaining a sense of community and following-up with participants is also a tricky proposition for us since participants came from a range of institutions across the DC metro area and from as far as Davidson College in North Carolina.

Next Steps

In the near future we will work to fix the small errors that were encountered as part of the event. We also plan to review feedback from the participants and coaches to assess what other adjustments are needed going forward. Longer term goals include writing a version of the tutorials for Python3, as well as soliciting ideas for additional modules that would be useful for humanities scholars. In addition, we would like to think through how to continue efforts to effectively partner with underrepresented populations to help more interested people take part in DH Bridge.

There are an ever increasing number of opportunities for training in the digital humanities, from informal workshops held at THATCamps to multiple week training programs, such as the NEH Institutes for Advanced Topics, Humanities Intensive Learning and Teaching (HILT), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI). While these workshops provide excellent opportunities to gain exposure to new ideas or to dive deep into a particular subject area, they are also dependent upon the expertise of the particular instructors and, depending on the length of the workshop or institute, require substantial commitments of time and money.

DH Bridge offers an additional model for training in the digital humanities. Building on the model of Rails Bridge and Rails Girls, DH Bridge offers one to two day workshops that provide intensive training in using computational thinking in humanities contexts. What is unique about this model is that the workshops run from a central but open curriculum, one that can be expanded and adjusted for the needs of a particular community but that also removes the need for each workshop to begin from scratch. By using a format that is low-cost, both for participants and for organizers, and focusing on patterns of thinking, rather than use of particular tools, we can effectively work to expand the community of scholars leveraging computational approaches in their research.

2015 ACH Awards for HASTAC!

Jen Guiliano — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

ACH is pleased to announce our 2015 Bursary Winners for the 2015 HASTAC annual conference. Caitlin Christian-Lamb of Davidson College will be presenting her work as part of the Thinking Outside the Archive: Engaging Students and Community in Special Collections Digital Projects. Lauren Rae Hall of the University of Pittsburgh will be presenting her short paper, New Old Educational Media: Finding a Public for a Personal Archive.

The HASTAC 2015 conference will be held May 27-30, 2015 at the Kellogg Center on the campus of Michigan State University. Connecting with HASTAC’s interdisciplinary mission, the conference will center on the theme of the “Art and Science of Digital Humanities.” Conference tracks will range in focus from current digital humanities work to featuring groundbreaking new work at the intersection of the arts and sciences. The conference will feature a mini-conference for HASTAC Scholars followed by two full days of conference activities and opportunities for collaboration.

ACH 2015 Bursary Winners for DHSI

Tanya Clement — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

ACH is pleased to announce our 2015 Bursary Winners for the 2015 Digital Humanities Summer Institute:

Ewa Drygalska, Jagiellonian University
Mia Tootill, Cornell University
Jim McGrath, Northeastern University
David Levine, Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies
Krista Murchison, University of Ottawa, Canada
Mary Borgo, Indiana University
Alyssa D. Collins, University of Virginia (English Department)
Steven Anderson, Department of History, University of California, Riverside”
Chris Fite, University of South Carolina
Jana Smith Elford, University of Alberta

DHSI is a premier, week-long training institute for digital humanities tools, methods, and approaches, held at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Each year, ACH offers several bursaries, awarded on merit, to help defray the travel and lodging costs of its graduate student members.

ACH Incubator Grants 2015 Call for Proposals: Knowing Our Past

Susan Brown — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Proposals due ~~30 April 2015~~ 22 May 2015 (deadline extended)

Awards: up to $1000; $3000 total grant call

The Executive Council of the Association for Computers and the Humanities is delighted to announce its fourth round of Incubator Grants (formerly known as Microgrants).

This year, we particularly invite proposals on Knowing Our Past, although applications will still be considered in other areas that advance the goals and mission of the ACH, to support computer-assisted research, teaching, and software and content development in humanistic disciplines. Projects should be modest and designed to be accomplished within roughly six months.

Examples of possible projects, meant to inspire rather than limit:

digital genealogies of DH
interactive timeline
citation or scholarly network analysis
making DH conference abstracts accessible
DH self-archiving app
producing a self-reflexive tool to work with the online journal Digital Humanities Quarterly

Proposals may be for projects in a range of forms including, but not limited to, apps, plugins, and tools. All Incubator Grant recipients will be required to write some kind of reflective output, typically a blog post, for the ACH website.

Graduate students and early stage researchers are encouraged to apply. Mentorship is available, either at the development stage of applications or during the projects themselves. Those interested in mentorship during the application stage should submit a draft submission in advance of the deadline in order to receive feedback. Those interested in being paired with a mentor for the duration of the project should note in their application the area of skill or expertise in which they would benefit from mentoring. Incubator Grants may involve mentorship only without a cash component.

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

excellence and innovation of the proposal;
contribution of the activity to development and promotion of the ACH mission;
deliverables can be accomplished within the proposed budget and time period.

For further technical information about the ACH/DHQ websites please see further details below.

Applicants must be members of the ACH at the time of application.

Grants will be up to $US 1000. These are intended to be small grants that enable innovative activities by community members, such as graduate students, alt-ac faculty and staff, and junior faculty, who don’t have access to the resources of senior researchers. They are not intended to support corporate, long-term, or large-budget projects. Projects should begin no later than three months after receipt of notification of acceptance and should conclude by 31 December 2015.

Applicants will be expected to report back to the ACH three months after the conclusion of the project. Applicants will also be expected to provide the ACH or DHQ with an appropriate Creative Commons license to any content to be posted, and open source software license for any code.

Proposals should be no longer than three pages (ca. 750 words) and should contain the following information:

Name, background and full contact details of proposer (institutional affiliation, email address, etc).
Name of organization (if the proposal is being submitted on behalf of an organization).
Narrative addressing the criteria above, both conceptual and technical, with clear statement of deliverables, including the nature of the reflective output.
Describe support needed from ACH or DHQ technical staff, if needed.
Budget justification that indicates clearly how the funds will be spent (no longer than ½ page). Projects must be feasible upon receipt of the Incubator Grant. Any other resources needed to accomplish the project must be obtained in advance (though they may be contingent upon receipt of the ACH Incubator Grant) and specified in the application. If the Incubator Grant is related to a larger project, explain the relationship.
Date for project start date, date of conclusion, and for reflective output.

Should an early career scholar be barred, due to institutional policies, from holding a grant directly, that grant may be held by another member of the institution on their behalf, provided that the individual guarantees in writing that the entire grant will be dedicated to the project for which it is awarded and that the individual(s) responsible for that project can be listed publicly as having won the award, with the official PI mentioned parenthetically.

No indirect costs may be deducted from the value of the grant, which must go entirely to support the project for which it is awarded.

Please send proposals or queries to microgrants@ach.org by 30 April 2015.

Susan Brown, for the Incubator Grants Committee: Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Bethany Nowviskie, Roopika Risam, Lisa Spiro

Further technical details:

The DHQ publication platform includes a RESTful API that exposes both the TEI/XML source and the generated HTML data, as well as several generated indexes (e.g. to authors and article titles; others are also feasible); the data exposed through the API is TEI/XML and includes structured text, an abstract, a teaser, publication metadata, and a bibliography. The ACH website is Drupal-based. DH Answers runs a modified version of bbPress.

For inquiries about the website please contact webmaster@ach.org, or for DHAnswers, write to dhanswers@digitalhumanities.org. For additional details on the DHQ platform, please email John Walsh jawalsh@indiana.edu and Julia Flanders julia_flanders@brown.edu.

Previous grant winners can be found here:

Announcing the ACH-sponsored Roundtable for MLA 2016: What we talk about when we talk about DH

Lisa Marie Rhody — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Each year, in its role as an affiliated organization of the Modern Languages Association, ACH sponsors a panel at the MLA’s annual convention. This year the MLA Convention is scheduled for January 7-10, 2016 in Austin, Texas, and the ACH-sponsored roundtable will address interdisciplinary vocabularies using a revised format designed to foster dialogue among panelists and attendees. More information about the roundtable will be posted on our site on December 1st; meanwhile, the title, abstract, and biographical statements of participants appear below. We look forward to a lively and generative conversation in Austin!

What we talk about when we talk about DH: Interdisciplinary Vocabularies

This roundtable will consider how the interdisciplinary nature of digital humanities scholarship exposes tensions over disciplinary terms. What exactly do we mean when we use words like archive, code, curation, edition, data, or writing? How might our disciplinary affiliations, methodologies, and training shape our use of such terms, which may be deployed differently in another humanities discipline? How might the use of such terms help or hinder conversation? What responsibility do we have to acknowledge the disciplinary values attached to such vocabularies before appropriating them as part of “digital humanities?”

Tension between disciplinary values, language, and methods is hardly unique to digital humanities. Regarding the ascendancy of cultural studies within the academy, Stanley Fish’s 1989 article “Being Interdisciplinary is So Very Hard to Do” points out that “the announcement of an interdisciplinary program inaugurates the effort of some discipline to annex the territory of another, or “interdisciplinary thought” is the name (whether acknowledged or not) of a new discipline, that is, of a branch of academic study that takes as its subject the history and constitution of disciplines” (19). Considering the ways in which digital humanities is not only interdisciplinary but also tactical for social and financial reasons as, for example, Matthew Kirschenbaum suggests, discussion will focus on tensions that arise from the appropriation of vocabularies rooted in disciplinary traditions, methodologies, and theory. By sharing definitions as well as describing shared interests, roundtable participants and attendees will be asked to consider ways we might accommodate disciplinary vocabularies within the interdisciplinary discourse of digital humanities.

Roundtable participants will be limited to five-minutes to introduce a common digital humanities term with longstanding disciplinary histories, allowing for maximum time to be spent in facilitated discussion. Provided the necessary technology is available and operable, the session’s Twitter stream and public notes will be made available via overhead projection.

Fish, Stanley. “Being Interdisciplinary is so very Hard to do.” Profession (1989): 15-22. ProQuest. Web. 31 Mar. 2015.

Kirschenbaum, “What is ‘Digital Humanities,’ and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things about It?” differences 25.1 (2014): 46-63.

Participants

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (code) is Professor and Chair of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2006), and Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT 2011); she is co-editor (with Tara McPherson and Patrick Jagoda) of a special issue of American Literature entitled New Media and American Literature, co-editor (with Lynne Joyrich) of a special issue of Camera Obscura entitled Race and/as Technology and co-editor (with Thomas Keenan) of New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader (Routledge, 2005). She has been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and a Wriston Fellow at Brown, as well as a visiting associate professor in the History of Science Department at Harvard, of which she is currently an Associate. She is working on a monograph entitled Imagined Networks.

Patricia Hswe (data) is Digital Content Strategist and Head of ScholarSphere User Services at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, where she has worked since 2010. She co-leads the department of Publishing and Curation Services, a digital scholarship department launched in 2012 to provide a framework to help researchers put into practice a lifecycle management approach to the enterprise of scholarly inquiry.

Micki Kaufman (curation) is a doctoral student in US history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She received her B.A. in history from Columbia University summa cum laude in 2011 and her M.A. from GC-CUNY in 2013. A three-time recipient of GC-CUNY’s Provost’s Digital Innovation Grant from 2012–2015, her research project, titled “Everything on Paper Will Be Used Against Me: Quantifying Kissinger,” involves the use of computational analysis and visualization techniques in the study of the DNSA’s (Digital National Security Archive’s) Kissinger Memcon and Telcon collections. She is a co-author of “General, I Have Fought Just As Many Nuclear Wars As You Have,” published in the December 2012 American Historical Review, and presented her research at the American Historical Association’s 2015 Annual Meeting. Micki has served as a project manager and digital humanities consultant for a number of organizations and institutes, and leads workshops in text analysis, visualization and historical interpretation. She is also an accomplished film composer and recording engineer, having co-composed the score for the Sundance 2013 and Teddy Award-winning film “Concussion (2013)” and engineering the Platinum award-winning “Live From the Fall (1996)” by Blues Traveler. In February 2015, Micki joined the Modern Language Association (MLA) as their first Director of Information Systems.

Laura Mandell (edition) directs the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media and Culture and is Professor of English at the University of Texas A&M. She is the author of Misogynous Economies: The Business of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Britain (1999), a Longman Cultural Edition of The Castle of Otranto and Man of Feeling, a forthcoming book called Breaking the Book: Print Humanities in the Digital Age, and numerous articles primarily about eighteenth-century women writers. She is Project Director of the Poetess Archive, an online scholarly edition and database of women poets, 1750-1900 , Director of 18thConnect, and Director of ARC, the Advanced Research Consortium overseeing NINES, 18thConnect, and MESA. Her current research involves developing new methods for visualizing poetry, developing software that will allow all scholars to deep-code documents for data-mining, and improving OCR software for early modern and 18th-c. texts via high performance and cluster computing.

T-Kay Sangwand (archive) is the Human Rights Archivist for the University of Texas at Austin Libraries’ Human Rights Documentation Initiative and the Librarian for Brazilian Studies for the Benson Latin American Collection. Over the past six years, she has worked with non-governmental organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the U.S. to preserve their human rights documentation. In 2015, she was recognized for this work and was named one of Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers. She holds an MLIS and an MA degree in Latin American Studies from UCLA with specializations in Archives, Spanish, and Portuguese. She is currently a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists and completed the Archives Leadership Institute in 2013.

Annette Vee (writing), Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, is interested in the ways that computer code shapes and merges with textual writing, and how this intersection plays out in approaches to writing from rhetoric and literacy studies. She has written on the history of literacy and computer programming, definitions of programming in the law, and social factors in learning programming. Her work has appeared in Computers in Composition, Computational Culture, Enculturation, JAC, and Literacy in Composition Studies, and she is currently working on a book manuscript titled Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming is Changing the Terms of Writing.

Lisa Rhody (presiding) is Associate Director of Research Projects at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. She manages development on digital humanities projects such as Zotero and PressForward and is the general editor of Digital Humanities Now. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Digital Humanities and differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, and her research interests include text analysis and visualization of poetry, new modes of scholarly communication and peer review, and the history of self publication.

ADHO Call for Bids to Host DH2017

Stéfan Sinclair — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The ADHO Conference Coordinating Committee now invites proposals to host the following two DH conferences, in 2017 and 2018. The DH2017 conference in particular is intended to be hosted at a North American venue. For more information on this call, please visit AHDO's website.

Help us shape our outreach and affiliations efforts

Jen Guiliano — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Last year, the Association for Computers and the Humanities developed an Affiliations Committee charged with facilitating outreach to other professional organizations and initiatives. The committee is comprised of: Jennifer Guiliano, James O’Sullivan, Dot Porter, Miriam Posner, and Lisa Rhody. With outreach ongoing to the American Historical Association, the IEEE, the Medieval Academy of America, the Modern Language Association, and other professional organizations, we now ask for your assistance in completing a very brief, three question survey to assist the committee in the next round of its work.

The survey asks you to tell us which professional organizations you might currently be a member of so that we can identify potential outreach that might be developed in the coming year.

Please note that we are not surveying organizations we have a prior affiliation with (e.g. Modern Language Association, American Historical Association, Medieval Academy of America).

Questions regarding this survey can be directed to Jennifer Guiliano (jenguiliano@gmail.com) with Survey in the subject line. To complete the survey, please visit our online form.

HASTAC 2015 Bursary Funding Now Available

Jen Guiliano — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In an effort to encourage cross-pollination of the ACH membership with other digital humanities organizations, ACH will be offering bursary awards to enrolled members who have submissions accepted for presentation at the annual HASTAC conference. These awards are to encourage new contributions to scholarship in the digital humanities and to encourage ACH members to support other digital humanities organizations. Accepted paper, panel, and/or poster submissions qualify for consideration.

Eligibility

Authors who are currently-enrolled members of ACH are eligible for consideration. This may include current students and/or those who are new to the field of digital humanities or new to academia. A participant in a multi-author paper or poster is eligible for an award providing they contribute substantially to the paper/poster. If two or more co-authors are qualified, they may make a joint application and share the award.

Schedule

Bursary applications for 2015 will be available when the notification of acceptance for conference papers have been sent out (projected early February 2015).

Selection

Winners are chosen by a review panel constituted by members of the ACH Executive Committee, based on the applicants’ submission abstracts and information from an Application Form. The panel may also request additional documentation to support the application or prove eligibility, when necessary.

Terms

Two recipients will receive a cash award of $300 USD to help defray expenses incurred in attending the conference such as the conference registration, airline/train fare, lodging, and meals paid by the recipient. The funds will be disbursed to the recipient after the conference.

All questions must be answered. Guidelines are given to each set of question. If you have any questions about the application process, please write to secretary@ach.org with ACH/HASTAC Bursary in the subject line). To apply, complete our online application.

ACH at the American Historical Association’s 2015 Conference

Jen Guiliano — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Having recently been granted as an Affiliate Society, ACH was delighted to sponsor four sessions at the American Historical Association’s Annual Conference held this past January in New York City. These sessions were selected by ACH to represent stellar ongoing work at the intersection of digital history and digital technologies:

Session 99, Blogging and the Future of Scholarship, included presentations by Sara Georgini (Boston University), Michelle Moravec (Rosemont College), and Jonathan VanAntwerpen (The Henry Luce Foundation). The roundtable examined blogs and blogging in the discipline of history highlighting how historians addressed different audiences through blogs. Session 99 also underscored how blogs build networks of scholars, and how blogs are changing the forms of scholarly communication and interaction.

Session 102, Digital Histories of Slavery, explored the history of American slavery and freedom and the ways digital scholars have attempted to ask new questions The roundtable panel offered exemplary efforts to assemble the fragmentary records related to slavery in the digital space, provide access to scholars and the public, and use digital methodologies to advance historical interpretations. Presenters included Edward Baptist (Cornell University), Don Debats (Flinders University), Vanessa M. Holden and Jessica M. Johnson (Michigan State University), and William G. Thomas III (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) and Jennifer E. Guiliano (IUPUI).

Session 149, Visualization and Digital History: Techniques and Demonstrations, explored the spatial and visual turn in digital history. Working with new technologies of geographic information systems, data mining, and computational linguistics, scholars on this panel reexamined the concept of the historical atlas, the underpinnings of state authority to map certain kinds of information, and the embedded nature of spatial data in historical sources. This roundtable panel featured leading research projects that use spatial and visual presentation and assessed the ways visualization affect historical interpretation and analysis. Presenters included Scott Nesbit (University of Richmond), Benjamin Schmidt (Northeastern University), and Thomas Summerhill (Michigan State University).

Session 158, Authoring Digital Scholarship for History: Challenges and Opportunities, highlighted the characteristics of scholarship in the digital environment and interrogated disciplinary ideas about authorship, audience, and what constitutes scholarship. This panel featured scholarship and scholarly communication explicitly created for and in the digital medium, blending tools, sources, and interpretive analysis. Panelists addressed several critical questions: does digital scholarship fundamentally break with the traditional forms, is a more hypertextual history possible, how is the representation of historical knowledge changing, is the digital medium suitable for historiographical questions? Presenters included Cameron Blevins (Stanford University), Adeline Koh (Richard Stockton College of New Jersey), Lauren Tilton (Yale University), and Yoni Appelbaum (Harvard University).

These were just four of a growing number of digital history sessions at the AHA. ACH will be developing additional activities as an affiliate society of AHA. If you have ideas, are interested in contributing, or intend to submit a proposal to AHA 2015 in Atlanta, please contact me (jenguiliano@gmail.com) with "ACH-AHA 2015" in the subject line.

The Devil in the Recording: Deformative Listening and Poetry

Lisa Marie Rhody — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

(The following by Brandon Walsh, which is cross-posted from his personal website, precedes his upcoming talk at the ACH-sponsored MLA panel “Digital Deformance and Scholarly Forms” on January 9, 2015 in room 212 of the WEST Vancouver Convention Center. Panelists were invited to share their thoughts about methodology in advance of Friday’s panel in efforts to foreground considerations of interpretation over process. If you are unable to attend our upcoming panel, you can follow us on Twitter using the hashtags #mla15 and #s292.)

My talk for the ACH’s panel at MLA 15 is entitled “The Devil in the Recording: Deformative Listening and Poetry.” I will be talking about the problems and affordances for deformance in the context of audio recordings, specifically those that have literary content. The particular method I will focus on is the reversal of audio recordings, taking my cue from the infamous claim that you can hear Satanic lyrics in Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” if you play the recording backwards. In the example below I will show how to reverse an audio file, and I will be working with Langston Hughes’s reading of “Motto” with Charles Mingus and Leonard Feather on his 1958 recording Weary Blues.

Professional-grade sound-editing software like Pro Tools or Logic give you the capacity to do a lot in the way of sound mixing and work with music, but I often find myself drowning in their limitless options. They are also quite expensive. Audacity is my audio editing software of choice: the tool is open source and, most importantly, fairly intuitive and easy to use. Audacity is somewhat more limited than other options, but it does what it can cleanly and intuitively.

To reverse an audio file, begin by opening that clip in Audacity in the same way that you would open a file in any other piece of software. You will get something that looks like this:

What you see here is a waveform, a way of graphically representing the audio file in way that allows you to manipulate it. The y-axis of the waveform corresponds to volume – the taller the waveform, the louder the sound file’s contents are at that particular moment in time. This can be a quick and easy way to identify chunks of activity by looking for spikes in the volume.

The x-axis represents time – the Hughes file I have sliced out is 46” long, and the program gives you a timeline along the top of the segment to situate you in the file. Clicking anywhere on the waveform will set the file playback to begin at that point, and you can click and drag to highlight a selection of the clip for processing.

To process the file, highlight the section that you want reversed. In this case, since we are working with the entire file, we will just select everything. Under the “effect” menu, Audacity gives you a range of options for remixing your sound data, but we want the “reverse” function.

Now you have a reversed file at your disposal. Sound tends to work in attack and decay, and much of the strangeness of a reversed recording comes from sounds increasing rather than fading in intensity over time. And, as I will discuss in my talk, the process throws into sharp relief the distinct character of recorded linguistic content.

Audacity saves files in Audacity project formats by default, so you will need to export your file to a different file format if you want to play it in a media player. I tend to use both .ogg and .mp3 files for browser compatibility. Audacity will also give you the opportunity to input light metadata for your file before it exports in case you want to curate your file for inclusion in an archive or home-library.

Audacity gives many other options for experimenting with sound remixing, distortion, and deformance that I would encourage you to explore. The software also gives you many options for working with sound files more generally. I have written elsewhere about using Audacity to prepare sound files for research and presentation. Check out my other post if you want to learn more about how to slice out clips, mix together two sound files, or process DRM files.

ACH at MLA 2015: “Digital Deformance and Scholarly Forms”

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

On Friday, January 9 from 12:00 to 1:15 PM in room 212 at the West Vancouver Convention Center (East VCC), ACH will be sponsoring a panel titled “Digital Deformance and Scholarly Forms” (#s292) at the Modern Language Association’s Convention (#mla15).

Building on the previous two years’ success at ACH panels at MLA, our CFP prompts participants to share the interpretive fruits of their work. De-emphasizing focus on methodology in deference to increased attention on the scholarly benefits of their digital process, participants will spend fifteen minutes each considering the ethical, procedural, and/or representational challenges of their approach, as well as offer fresh insights opportuned by the act of deformance.

Abstracts and biographical statements for the following presenters can be found below:

Brandon Walsh (University of Virginia), “The Devil in the Recording: Deformative Listening and Poetry”
Christina L. Boyles (Baylor University), “(Re)shaping Scholarship, (Re)claiming Folklore: Reassessing Hurston’s Oeuvre Using TEI”
Christopher Gabbard (University of North Florida), “Have Qrafter Ready: What Literature Students Can Learn from Digital Deformation”

Additionally, presenters were offered the opportunity to write brief blog posts regarding their methods, as well. Brandon Walsh has taken up that invitation, and we have cross-posted it on the ACH site.

There is one change from the MLA program. Unfortunately, Danielle Gustafson-Sundell (Minnesota State University) will be unable to attend the conference and has withdrawn her paper “songs that start with i.”

We look forward to seeing those who can attend at MLA in Vancouver and invite you to follow along and participate in the conversation via Twitter using the hashtags #mla15 and #s292.

Presenters’ Abstracts

Brandon Walsh (University of Virginia), “The Devil in the Recording: Deformative Listening and Poetry”

Modernists at the turn of the twentieth century were enamored of sound recording technology for the new possibilities that it offered for preserving their work, but they also obsessed over the materiality of the new media: skipping needles, record grooves, and the hiss of the recording. This talk examines the possibilities for listening to sound recordings of modernist works in ways newly enabled by digital technologies so as to reflect back on modernist engagement with sound and media. Lisa Samuels and Jerome McGann invoke Emily Dickinson’s suggestion of reading backwards line-by-line as a model for deformative reading. Retrograde constructions have been part of music theory treatises for centuries, and my work works in dialogue with these modes of thought to take the backwards turn a step further by listening to poetry recordings in reverse. Listening to recordings backwards alienates us from the semantic meanings of a text, but the process offers us a new sense of the recordings as sound objects, allows us to reconceive sonic and interpretive enmeshings, and enables us to hear anew the relationship between verse and music in song settings. Ultimately, I suggest that deformative listening practices offer heightened forms of close listening. Digital tools used will likely include Audacity and Sound Arguments, and I will discuss recordings of works by T.S. Eliot and Langston Hughes.

Brandon Walsh is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia, and the title of his dissertation is “AudioTextual: Modernism, Sound Recording, and Networks of Reception.” He has work published or forthcoming in Literary and Linguistic Computing, Conradiana, the James Joyce Quarterly, and the International Trumpet Journal. He was a 2012-2013 Praxis Program Fellow in the UVA Scholars’ Lab, and he currently serves as Project Manager of the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES).

Christina L. Boyles (Baylor University), “(Re)shaping Scholarship, (Re)claiming Folklore: Reassessing Hurston’s Oeuvre Using TEI”

While scholars realize that Zora Neale Hurston’s works were heavily censored, none have as of yet examined the impact of those changes on her oeuvre. Analyzing previously omitted passages in her texts may provide the key to redressing assumptions made in Hurston scholarship. In particular, critics have failed to consider Hurston’s oeuvre in light of its use of folklore which, for Hurston, is a knowledge-sharing, identity-forming practice that both unveils and masks the self by providing “feather bed resistance” to outsiders. Since scholars often disregard folklore for being “non-academic” or “unrefined”, critics such as Susan Meisenhelder, Trudier Harris, and Cheryl Wall have viewed Hurston in terms of race and gender rather than in regards to her connection to folk tales.

By transcribing the previously censored portions of Hurston’s autobiography into TEI, I will both preserve the text and provide a new venue by which to assess its content. My digital analysis will demonstrate the need to view Hurston as more complex than previous scholarship allows. In particular, the digitized text will show, through an analysis of word frequency, that Hurston spends far more time discussing folklore and storytelling than she does discussing race. As a result, Hurston’s published works, particularly her nonfiction, need to be “unmasked” and analyzed through a different lens: folklore. By looking at folklore, it becomes evident Hurston engages with the race issues and also seeks to move beyond the restrictions often applied to studies of race. Folklore, then, is crucial to understanding Hurston’s nonfiction texts because it “unmasks” her connection to race and culture.

Christina Boyles is a Ph.D candidate at Baylor University specializing in cultural studies, feminism, digital composition and digital humanities. Her work has been published in Southern Literary Journal, South Central Review, Pupil, and The Write Book. She is currently working on a project involving the folktales of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft.

Christopher Gabbard (University of North Florida), “Have Qrafter Ready: What Literature Students Can Learn from Digital Deformation”

Digitally inflected scholarship opens up novel approaches to literary interpretation and challenges traditional literature-classroom pedagogies. In Fall, 2014, I conducted “Galerie de Difformité” (inspired by Gretchen Henderson), a seminar for English majors at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville. The students—deformants—read five texts in which themes of defect, deformity, monstrosity, disfigurement, and/or disability are prominent: Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, Pomerance’s Elephant Man, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Swift’s Gulliver‘s Travels, and Shakespeare’s Richard the Third. The deformants then undertook projects of deforming one of the texts and digitally capturing the results. At the end, they uploaded their deformations collectively to the Difformité Chapbook. Operating with understanding that creation is deformation and vice versa, they responded to the texts in unconventional ways to produce a new truth-content as it related to the originating text.

While each student produced an interpretation, each also recognized the role imagination played in composing it. As Jerome McGann and Lisa Samuels write in Deformance and Interpretation, “we may usefully regard all criticism and interpretation as deformance. Scholars murder to dissect, as Wordsworth famously observed.” The students of “Galerie de Difformité” responded to the texts by using visual / digital media, as opposed to writing traditional interpretive-analysis essays. This alternative acknowledged and foregrounded what McGann and Samuels describe as “the inevitable failure of interpretive ‘adequacy.’” The course instructed both students and professor about the possibilities digitally inflected scholarship offers for working “toward discovering new interpretive virtues” (McGann & Samuels). The proposed paper will explore a few of these new interpretive virtues.

Dr. D. Christopher Gabbard earned his doctorate at Stanford University. Since 2001 he has taught at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, where he specializes in British eighteenth-century literature, Disability Studies in the Humanities, and Narrative Medicine. His essays have appeared in PMLA, Eighteenth-Century Studies, SEL, ELN, and other journals. His chapter on the implications of care giving in Jane Eyre appeared in The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability (Ohio State UP, 2012), and he has work forthcoming in Keywords in Disability Studies (Routledge) and Six Sorts of Sots: Critical Histories of Intellectual, Developmental and Learning Disability (Manchester University Press). He is working on two books: Idiocy and Wit: Deforming the Mind in the Age of Reason, and a personal memoir, The City of Small Dreams: Reports from the Other Side of Parenting.

2014 Election Results Announced

Vika Zafrin — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the 2014 ACH elections.

The amendments recently made to our Constitution and Bylaws by the ACH Executive Council have been ratified by the membership. The amended version is available on the ACH website.

Per the newly amended constitution, all new officer and Executive Council terms will begin at the close of the annual summer Executive Council meeting. This year the meeting will be held at the joint CSDH/SCHN and ACH conference in Ottawa, Canada in June 2015. Current officers and outgoing Exec members will serve until then.

Elected to serve on the Executive Council for the 2015-2018 term, in alphabetical order, are Quinn Dombrowski, Alex Gil, and Élika Ortega.

We congratulate our newly elected representatives, and thank all of this year’s candidates for being willing to donate time to the organization. What a slate! We look forward to working with all of you, in ways formal and informal, in the coming year.

2014 ACH Executive Council Elections

Glen Worthey — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

As we write this, there are just a few days left in the 2014 ACH Executive Council elections: if you haven’t voted, please do so before the deadline of December 17!

For present and future reference, and because we’re so very pleased with the great response of our ACH community, we’re reproducing below the biographies and candidate statements of the nine (yes, you read that right: nine!) outstanding candidates on this year’s slate.

There are a couple of points to make about this slate: first, there are only three open spots on the Council this year, which means that 2/3 of these people sadly won’t be elected this time around. However — and more importantly — we also firmly believe that simply standing for election is one of the most visible and substantial ways of supporting the ACH and serving the Digital Humanities community, regardless of the election’s individual outcomes.

We on the Nominations Committee and the current Exec would like to thank publicly and to celebrate all nine of these fine candidates, none of whom have ever served on the ACH Council before. These people represent both the flourishing present and the bright future of our Association — so if you know them (or when you meet them), please remember to thank them for taking the risk by putting their names out in front of the community, and for their important contribution in doing so.

I first ventured into the world of digital humanities in 2003 when my advisor at the University of California—Santa Barbara, Patricia Fumerton, wanted to create an online ballad archive, starting with the Pepys Ballads, which were only available in a print facsimile edition that cost $2000 or at the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge (which was only open two hours a day). Today, the English Broadside Ballad Archive has made available 62% of extant ballads and is on its fifth NEH grant, and even though I left the project in 2009, my time as project manager and technical lead informs many of my early DH experiences. I have attended DHSI three times, been to several THATCamps, completed a PhD in Early Modern Literature, finished a Masters in Information Science with a specialization in digital libraries, been a HASTAC Scholar, taken classes on photogrammetry and recreation of historical buildings in 3D, worked with the Advanced Visualization Lab at Indiana, created humanities-based datasets for use on Indiana’s Science on a Sphere, and just moved into a new full-time role as the first digital humanist based in UITS at Indiana. I would welcome the opportunity to serve the community as a member of ADHO Executive Council. Thanks.

Harriett Green

Biography

Harriett Green is the English and Digital Humanities Librarian and assistant professor, University Library, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on the use and users of digital humanities tools and resources, digital pedagogy, and humanities data curation.

Her publications include published and forthcoming articles in LLC: Literary and Linguistic Computing, EDUCAUSE Review, Journal of the Association of Information Science and Technology, Journal of the Chicago Colloquium for Digital Humanities and Computer Science, College & Research Libraries, Library Quarterly, and portal: Libraries and the Academy. Her research has been supported by grants awarded from the Institute for Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her current projects include working on the research teams for the HathiTrust Research Center and Emblematica Online.

She has presented on her work nationally and internationally, including at the conferences of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), and Modern Language Association Annual Convention, American Library Association (ALA), Association for College & Research Libraries (ACRL), and International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). She is professionally active in the Association for College and Research Libraries, the Association for Computing in the Humanities (ACH), Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC), and the Modern Language Association (MLA). She earned her MSLIS from the University of Illinois, and also holds a MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago and a BA in History and Literature from Harvard University.

Candidate Statement

My involvement in digital humanities began in part with the ACH Mentoring Program and as my work and research in digital humanities has grown, I have found ACH always to be a supportive, collaborative, and inclusive community. I have long admired how the ACH continues to promote the work of digital humanities by effective and innovative means, and I would be honored to serve on the ACH Executive Council to continue developing ways for supporting digital humanities scholars and scholarship, and expanding the communities that are part of this work. I believe there are exciting avenues of research, pedagogy, and public engagement still to be explored by digital humanists, and I would strive to work with ACH colleagues and fellow associations around the world to help advance digital humanities further in these areas.

Diane Jakacki

Biography

I am the Digital Scholarship Coordinator at Bucknell University. In this role I am responsible for developing and instituting a robust and sustainable insitution-wide DH program. My work focuses on curricular integration, interdisciplinary faculty-undergraduate student collaboration, and community-building within Bucknell and between the university and other institutions on regional as well as research and affinity levels. Within the DH community I have been particularly active in community development and digital pedagogy professional training, through DHSI and more recently through the Keystone DH Initiative in Pennsylvania. My professional research focuses primarily on the application of faceted DH methods to early modern drama and performance studies. The projects on which I collaborate are international large-scale, long-term, multi-scholar/institutional programs. I serve as an Assistant Director to DHSI as well as a member of the Digital Advisory and Editorial Boards of the Internet Shakespeare Editions, the Map of Early Modern London project, the Records of Early English Drama, and Iter Gateway to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I am a member of the Program Committee for DH2015, serving as the representative for CSDH-SCHN.

Candidate Statement

I am honored to be considered as a candidate for the ACH Executive Council. My connections with the Digital Humanities community have spanned my postgraduate, postdoctoral, and professional experiences. I have been grateful for the support and encouragement I have received at every turn from generous digital humanists at all levels of their careers. This mentorship and guidance has been invaluable to me, and I hope I offer that same support and encouragement to other emerging DH scholars.

I recognize that the rapid growth of DH on a global scale offers significant challenges as we try to support the expanding community. I see the ACH’s objective of finding balance between the global and the regional as being central to the realization of those challenges as opportunities that recognize and honor the global nature of DH while supporting the need for region-based activities and initiatives.

If elected to the ACH Executive Council I would focus my energies on supporting and extending the ACH’s efforts to encourage development of institutional models for undergraduate as well as graduate curricular integration; on reinforcing and enhancing programs that offer professionalization support for emerging scholars; on experimenting with new ways to foster dynamic community-building within the larger DH network; and on sustaining our uniquely collaborative, generous, and generative nature as we continue to grow and evolve.

Micki Kaufman

Biography

Micki Kaufman (MA CUNY, BA Columbia) is a fourth-year doctoral student in US History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research, titled “‘Everything on Paper Will Be Used Against Me:’ Quantifying Kissinger,” involves the application of text analysis and visualization techniques to the study of the American statesman’s diplomatic correspondence, most notably the DNSA (Digital National Security Agency)’s Kissinger Collection. A GC Digital Fellow and Teaching Assistant for the GC’s Praxis Program, she speaks and gives workshops frequently on project management, data visualization, text analysis and historical interpretation, including two upcoming panels at the January 2015 American Historians’ Association annual meeting. She is the project manager for the CUNY Academic Commons collaborative platform as well as the “DH Debates” interactive book website, and has managed numerous software and hardware projects since the mid-nineties. In addition, she is an accomplished film composer and recording engineer, having co-composed the score for the Teddy Award-winning film “Concussion (2013)” and engineering the Platinum award-winning “Live From the Fall (1996)” by Blues Traveler.

It’s an honour to submit my candidacy for an organisation that does so much to foster outreach and build community amongst scholars—and it is my hope that, should I be elected, I could do much to uphold these aims through the following activities:

As someone who will be working in, and has trained in the global south, I feel it is important to address how local contexts shape and inform our understanding of the digital humanities as a discipline. I am keen to facilitate conversations between the wider DH community and the newly launched South Asian Digital Humanities Network that addresses questions of access, infrastructure, economic and government policy, the exigencies of working in languages other than English, rate of technological growth and obsolescence, and our different institutional histories to broaden these horizons. In practical terms, I hope my role will enable me to ensure a greater representation from this part of the world by fostering training initiatives, exchanges and network-building activities.
This year, at the annual SHARP conference, I hosted a workshop on book history and the digital humanities and I was fortunate enough to attend DHSI on a SHARP scholarship a few years ago. These experiences have been valuable in enlarging and enriching my intellectual vocabularies and methodologies and urges me to suggest that we should extend our advocacy activities to other disciplinary venues to ensure that academics, especially those who are early in their careers, can find a community of belonging. I am aware that ACH is invested in creating a welcoming space for interdisciplinary scholars and I will endeavour to facilitate these relationships as much as I can.

November Updates

Jeremy Boggs — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Joint ACH/Canadian DH 2015 Conference

Hear ye, hear ye! The joint ACH and CSDH 2015 conference will be held in Ottawa from June 1-3, 2015. This is the first time that the two associations are partnering on a major digital humanities conference in North America, and we hope it’s the start of something beautiful!

The deadline for proposals is December 1, 2014 (see CFP). Abstracts for paper proposals should be approximately 500 words long, and should clearly indicate the paper’s thesis, methodology and conclusions. We also welcome proposals for Digital Demonstrations of innovative projects or tools. Demonstrations will be given table space and a backdrop so they can set up a poster and a computer for a 2-hour session. Please note that all presenters must be members of ACH or CSDH/SCHN at the time of the conference. There is a limited amount of funding available to support graduate student travel, as well as two Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen Young Scholar Prizes.

To submit a proposal, visit the submission website.

Hope to see many of you in Ottawa this June!

ACH Elections 2014 Update

We are collaborating with our OUP colleagues to set up the annual elections voting system. A few delays along the way mean that we will open polls slightly later than the usual early December. We hope to be ready by mid-December; please watch around then for an email ballot from Oxford University Press!

Graduate Student Funding for Keystone DH

The ACH is covering registration support for ten graduate students to present at the Keystone DH conference! The deadline for proposals is January 2, 2015. Submit a proposal of 200-300 words, along with your name and email address, to keystonedh.conference@gmail.com. Community peer review of proposal will take place January 15-February 15. Proposers will be notified by March 1. Find out more about the conference at the Keystone DH site.

DHSI@Congress

Constance Crompton — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The DHSI, CSDH/CSHN and CFHSS are pleased to announce the DHSI@Congress, a series of 2.5-hour workshops for scholars, staff, and students interested in a hands-on introduction to the ways that traditional and digital methods of teaching, research, and dissemination intersect and enhance one another.

The DHSI@Congress workshops, which run on Saturday May 30th and Sunday May 31st at the Canadian Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa, are built on the community model of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria (to find out more about the DHSI in Victoria, now in its 12th year, please visit the DHSI website). The DHSI@Congress sessions, facilitated by established scholars and emerging leaders in the field, introduce a wide range of Digital Humanities methods and methodologies from 3D printing to DH pedagogy, from text analysis to database development (and more!). We invites interested Congress attendees to register for any and all workshops that engage their interest at the DHSI@Congress web page

The sessions will conclude with a plenary address by Brian Greenspan, founding director of Carleton University’s Hyperlab. The plenary, on May 31st at 4:30, is free and open to the public.

Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors and hosts, all spots in the workshops are made available via a tuition scholarship, requiring only the payment of a $25 administrative fee for each session. DHSI@Congress has been developed by the DHSI in partnership with the Society for Digital Humanities/Société canadienne des humanités numériques (CSDH/SCHN) and the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS). The 2015 workshops will be delivered in English, with plans for French-language sessions in coming years.

DHSI@Congress Schedule

Full descriptions on the DHSI website

Saturday May 30th

9:30-12:00
– Issues in the Digital Humanities
– CWRCshop

1:30-4:00
– Introduction to Databases for Humanists
– Voyant Tools For Text Analysis

Sunday May 31st

9:30-12:00
– Issues in the Digital Humanities
– Digital Humanities Pedagogy
– Desktop Fabrication

1:30-4:00
– 3D Modelling for the Digital Humanities and Social Sciences
– Digital Humanities Pedagogy

4:30-5:45
– Closing Plenary: Brian Greenspan “Burning in the Library” (Free and open to the public)

ACH 2014 Elections: Call for Nominations

Glen Worthey — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Due date: October 31, 2014

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) invites nominations for the 2014/2015 elections, in which our members will elect three Executive Council members for four-year terms. We seek candidates who want to support and advance the field of digital humanities (DH) by helping to lead the ACH in the coming years.

ACH officers and Executive Council members develop and uphold ACH policies, determine and distribute funding, and oversee all organizational activities. Activities for 2014/2015 include our mentorship program and job slams; advocacy work; publications including the Humanist list, Digital Humanities Quarterly and DH Answers; collaborations with ADHO partners in the annual DH conference and other professional activities (including the first-ever joint conference of ACH and CSDH-SCHN (our Canadian counterpart); co-administration of a number of prestigious DH awards, distribution of student bursaries for DH training and education, as well as other priorities as set by the ACH membership. You can be involved in helping ACH programs succeed by nominating yourself, or someone else, to be an active participant in the leadership of the Association.

To stand for election as an Executive Council member, candidates must be members in good standing of the ACH. Council members commit to being present (whether in person or virtually) at annual meetings usually held at the Digital Humanities Conference, and to participating in discussions during the rest of the year by email and audio/video conference. Council members are expected to be active in the digital humanities community.

We welcome participants not just from universities and colleges, but also galleries, libraries, museums, community groups, and other organizations engaged with digital humanities, from anywhere in the world. We also welcome nominations of people from all constituencies and humanities disciplines, and especially encourage the nomination of women, people of color, LGBTQ, or other under-represented groups. Demonstrated commitment to the organization and to the field counts for more with our membership than professional affiliation, academic status, or job title.

Send nominations to nominations@ach.org by October 31st, 2014. Please confirm with your nominee that he or she is willing to serve if elected; the only other requirements are to:

Provide a brief candidate statement and biography. Sample candidate statements from past elections are available on our Candidates page. If your nominee cannot provide a biography and candidate statement at the time of nomination, they should email those to us before the close of nominations.
Have the nomination seconded. Per ACH bylaws, all nominations require two nominators (including oneself, if self-nominating) before being included in the ballot, so please allow time for a second nominator to email us in support of your nomination.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at nominations@ach.org.

The three top vote-getters in the Executive Council race will be elected to four-year terms. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of the ACH Executive Council, read our Bylaws.

Visit our Officers page for a current list of officers.

Thanks for helping shape the future of the ACH!

The 2014/2015 ACH Nominations Committee Brian Croxall, Emory University Mia Ridge, Open University Roopika Risam, Salem State University Glen Worthey, Stanford University (Chair) Dot Porter, University of Pennsylvania (ex officio, ACH Vice President)

Joint ACH & Canadian DH Conference 2015

Stéfan Sinclair — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce the first joint conference between the Canadian DH and the Association for Computers and the Humanities. We invite scholars, practitioners, and graduate students to submit proposals for papers, sessions and digital demonstrations during this collective meeting, which will be held at the 2015 Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Ottawa, Ontario from 1-3 June. We encourage submissions on all topics relating to both theory and practice in the evolving field of the digital humanities.

Proposals for papers (20 min.), digital demonstrations, and panels (2-6 speakers for a 1½ hour session) will be accepted until the ~~1st of December 2014~~ 8th of December 2014 and must be submitted to https://www.conftool.net/csdh-schn-ach-2015/. Abstracts for paper proposals should be approximately 500 words long, and should clearly indicate the paper’s thesis, methodology and conclusions. We also welcome proposals for Digital Demonstrations of innovative projects or tools. Demonstrations will be given table space and a backdrop so they can set up a poster and a computer for a 2-hour session. We encourage projects with software to show to apply for this venue.

There is a limited amount of funding available to support graduate student travel. Please note that all presenters must be members of ACH or CSDH/SCHN at the time of the conference.

Scholars in the digital humanities are engaged in diverse digital and computer-assisted research, teaching, and creation. ACH and CSDH/SCHN welcome proposals from all constituencies and disciplines, and encourages applications from women, people of color, LGBTQ, or other under-represented groups.

Selected papers from the conference will appear in special collections published in the CSDH/SCHN society journal, Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, as well as in the ACH society journal, Digital Humanitiques Quarterly.

2015 Program committee: Jon Saklofske (program chair), Stéphane Levesque (local organizer), Jon Bath, Susan Brown, Tanya Clement, Miriam Posner, Dot Porter, Michael E. Sinatra, and Stéfan Sinclair.

Newsletter, October 2014

Jeremy Boggs — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Note from the President

It’s with great pleasure (and a bit of anxiety) that I take over as president of ACH from Bethany Nowviskie, who has led the organization so admirably in the past years, tirelessly promoting so many of the core values and priorities of the ACH, including diversity, openness, and new scholar support and mentoring. Please join me in a richly-deserved standing ovation for Bethany. … Thanks very much as well to members of the ACH Executive Council who completed their terms this summer, Ernesto Priego, Geoffrey Rockwell and Tanya Clement (Tanya stays on as Treasurer). A warm welcome to new members Miriam Posner, Lisa Rhody, and Roopika Risam, as well as Dot Porter, our new Vice President.

The momentum of Digital Humanities continues to grow (there were over 750 participants at DH2014 in Lausanne!), and the ACH will continue its work to promote both regional strengths and features, as well as many interests we share as an international community. The ACH is a proud member (also known as “constituent organization”) of ADHO, the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations. Individual membership to the ACH and ACH participation in ADHO help to enable the rich ecology of digital humanities that we have, including journals like Literary and Linguistic Computing and Digital Humanities Quarterly, training venues like the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, various conferences and events, and a range of travel bursaries and fellowships. In the coming years the ACH will be particularly keen to explore ways of helping foster even more regional activities (in part to make events more accessible and to promote local identities).

The ACH is strong thanks to its members. By being a member you’re already contributing, but if you’d like to contribute in other ways (ideas, time, resources, etc.), please let us know!

Humbly yours,
Stéfan Sinclair

Digital Humanities 2014

ACH was delighted to participate in the annual Digital Humanities conference, held this past July in Lausanne, Switzerland. As usual, we contributed reviewers to the Program Committee and proposal review process, and a representative to the ADHO Conference Coordinating Committee. At the conference we once again held our day-long Executive Council meeting and the Annual General Meeting (notes). Since DH 2014, we have been busy preparing for the coming elections, collaborating with CSDH/SCHN on a conference in Ottawa next June (details below!), and minding our action items from the July meeting.

Digital Humanities 2015

The next Digital Humanites conference will be held in Sydney, Australia, 29 June–3 July 2015! The conference theme is Global Digital Humanities, and while the program committee welcomes proposals on any aspect of the digital humanities, it also especially encourages proposals that address global aspects of the digital humanities. Visit the DH 2015 conference website for more information and to submit a proposal!

Joint CSDH & ACH Conference 2015

We are delighted to announce a formal collaboration with our Canadian DH colleagues (CSDH/SCHN) to host a joint CSDH / ACH conference in Ottawa from June 1-3, 2015. As co-sponsor, ACH members will benefit from reduced registration rates and several student travel bursaries and awards will be offered. There will also be a DHSI@Congress event (half-day and full day workshops). Keep an eye on the usual channels for more information coming very soon about the Call for Papers!

Nominations and Elections for ACH Executive Council

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be gathering nominees for election for three positions on the ACH Executive Council beginning July 2015. The Council consists of 12 representatives, as well as a few other officers, elected by and from among the entire ACH membership: this means YOU! Please consider nominating a favorite colleague—or yourself!—for this great opportunity to serve the community and to shape its activities and policies in the coming years.

The only requirement to stand for election is to be a current member of the ACH (and of course, one can become a member at any time). We are a group that is diverse in age, experience, professional position, and all other ways, and we welcome candidates of absolutely all stripes, from grad students to emeriti. You can find a more formal statement of how the ACH is governed in our Constitution & Bylaws; on this same site, you can also see a list of the current Council Representatives.

ACH Council Representatives serve for four years. During that time, we engage in spirited (and always collegial) discussion and decision-making over email; we have occasional conference calls; and we meet in person, generally at the annual Digital Humanities Conference. As an all-volunteer organization, each member of the Council may also take on special projects or serve on committees that work to support the community and to advance the cause of digital humanities.

For questions or to submit a nomination, please contact nominations@ach.org. Our Nominations Committee will then be in touch with details about submitting a brief biographical and candidate statement.

Bursaries for Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2015

Once again, the ACH is proud to sponsor travel bursaries for the Digital Humanities Summer Institute! Available for graduate student members of the ACH, these bursaries help defray travel and lodging costs to attend the institute. To apply, just indicate your eligibility when you also apply for a tuition scholarship for DHSI. And if you’re not yet a member, consider joining the ACH to become eligible for the bursary and other benefits!

Affiliated Sessions at AHA and MLA Meetings

The ACH Affiliations Committee is delighted that we will be sponsoring sessions at this year’s meetings of the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association!

American Historical Association Conference, New York City, January 2-5, 2015

Visit the AHA Affiliates Programfor more information.

Modern Language Association Convention, Vancouver, January 8–11, 2015

Digital Deformance and Scholarly Forms

Microgrant Winners

ACH Microgrants were established to reward enterprising ideas that serve the digital humanities community by building on existing ACH initiatives. The winners for 2014 are:

Alexander Christie, University of Victoria, for Pedagogy Toolkit
Jeffrey Moro, Smith College; Elizabeth Alexander, graduate of Amherst College; Criss Guy, graduate of Amherst College for The_Critical_Is: […]Video Game Pedagogy
Thomas G. Padilla, Sara D. Miller, Hailey Mooney, Bobby L. Smiley, Michigan State University Libraries, for Library-Led DH Pedagogy: Modeling Paths Toward Information and Data Literacy
Celeste Sharpe, George Mason University; Jeri Wieringa, George Mason University, for Bridging the Gap: Women, Code, and the Digital Humanities.

Proposals for Digital Humanities 2015

Jeremy Boggs — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Get your proposals written and submitted for Digital Humanities 2015, in Sydney, Australia! The conference theme is Global Digital Humanities, and while the program committee welcomes proposals on any aspect of the digital humanities, it especially encourages proposals that address global aspects of the digital humanities. See the Call for Papers for details, and use the conference’s proposal system to submit your proposal.

Especially important to keep in mind are deadlines: the deadline to submit poster, short paper, long paper, and multiple paper session proposals is midnight GMT, 3 November, 2014. In addition, three will be two rounds of workshop and pre-conference tutorial proposals: Round 1 workshop proposals are due by midnight GMT, 1 October, 2014 (with notice of acceptance by 31 October, 2014) and Round 2 workshop proposals are due by midnight GMT, 16 February, 2015 (with notice of acceptance by 27 February, 2015).

You can keep up with news about the conference on the DH 2015 Conference website and the DH at UWS Twitter account!

Notes from 2014 Annual General Meeting

Vika Zafrin — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to post notes from the 2014 AGM, which took place at the Digital Humanities conference in Lausanne, Switzerland on July 9, 2014. Please let us know if you have corrections or additions!

Welcome

Hello to Bethany over our webcasting connection!
Introductions of the officers and Executive Council

Updates

Over the past year we continued to provide support for DH endeavors
- DHSI student bursaries (leveraged to find additional funding!)
- contributions to Balisage through the occasional funding process
- DHQ contributions additional to ADHO’s
- Humanist contribution
- ADHO-level SIGs and efforts
Membership in ACH and ADHO, and institutional subscriptions to LLC, allow us to do what we do. Please check with your library and confirm that your institution is subscribed to LLC. This would help the organization a lot!
Our mentoring activities have slowed down a bit, but the portfolio is now turned over to Brian Croxall, and will be reinvigorated. Mentoring is for jobs, for projects, for professional development, therapy as needed… And there’s also the job slam that we run at the annual general meeting!
- On an informal note, if you’re free Thursday evening of the conference, we’re again running a newcomers’ dinner. Small groups go out to dinner, consisting of a mix of DH conference veterans with people who are at their first or second conference. This is a way to meet people, start networking. There’s an open Google Doc for signups.
Microgrants (Susan Brown updates):
- This is the third year we’ve run the program, rewarding young scholars and students for their contributions.
- This year, four projects were awarded microgrants
Affiliations (Jen Guiliano updates)
- For the first time, ACH is announcing an affiliations committee whose aim is to broaden our relationships with other professional societies, organizations, and initiatives.
- MLA is a long-standing partner at whose conference we offer sessions and other events
- A new partner is the American History Association, at whose January conference we’ll be sponsoring four panels
- We’re interested in doing more, and are calling for nominations. Please help us identify potential organizations for us to affiliate with, generating more cross-polination in fields related to DH. We are looking for ACH members in good standing to be on the committee for two-year terms — email tweet Jen. Official nominations process is also posted on the ACH website.

Jobs Slam

Tanya Clement ran the annual jobs slam, which has become a tradition. Job seekers and job purveyors each had 30 seconds to present themselves and available jobs, respectively.

Thank you to Bethany Nowviskie

Stéfan led the Executive Council and the rest of ACH in expressing our huge thanks to Bethany Nowviskie as outgoing president. Bethany will be sticking around as immediate past president, and continues to be as involved as ever in the work. Thank you so much, Bethany!

Regional Ecologies

The bulk of the meeting was spent in discussion of ACH’s regional status (or not) in the context of ADHO, the possibility of regional SIGs, and the possibility of regional conferences. The following is a summary of the discussion, anonymized for the sake of participants’ comfort.

In some ways we are a regionless association in the context of ADHO. There are regions of the world that won’t be hosting the DH conference any time soon, and it would be expensive to go there anyway — as members, what do you think of the question of regionality
ACH is not confined to a region, but we’re advocating regional conferences. How does that play together?
Though ACH isn’t confined to a region, humans do have regionality. One of the purposes of this discussion is to see: where are the places where ACH members might want to actually meet physically, that are maybe more convenient than the regions where the DH conference is held? So: ACH is dispersed widely, but regionality is worth talking about for logistical purposes.
So, how would you feel about an ACH conference, and where might that be hosted?
Positive! I’ve benefited from having our Canadian thing at Congress. It’s not as competitive, it’s cheaper, students have really benefited. If ACH were able to do that for other groups of people—Eastern [North American] seaboard, Mexico, whatever, we should be supportive of that.
One of our core values (bursaries, training opportunities, travel support to conferences) is training of emerging scholars. If there’s a dearth of opoprtunities for them to present their scholarship in a particular region, one of our responsibilities is to provide them with opportunity to present what they’ve done. We can’t pay for everyone to go far away, but maybe we can help them hold regional events.
Two questions: with the regional conferences, what exactly are you thinking in terms of support, what kind and extent of support are you thinking about? And: at least in the U.S., we are seeing groupings of DH (Boston area, New York area, Chicago DH colloquium). Is it possible for ACH to work with existing regional groups to help them put on a conference or provide graduate student bursaries to those rather than put on something new?
To your second question: yes, absolutely. We’ll need to have conversations.
The grand total of revenue for ACH is on the order of $12,000. We do a lot with that. As much as we’d like to support events more substantially, we just can’t. There’s a form on the ACH website for occasional support. We’ve supported events on the order of $250-750. It’s a financial investment, but we can also offer non-monetary support (advertisement on our website, peer reviewers, etc).
There’s also a level of expertise. How do you constitute a PC, deal with logistics, etc. ACH has a lot of engagement with that. We are cash poor but expertise rich. It’s not just the ACH imprimatur, but people who can offer advice and models for new events.
We should support unconferences. They’re easier to organize.
In my area, we’ve had several unconferences. Maybe next year instead of an unconference we should have a conference? Unconferences are valuable, but in our experience you get many people who are interested and want to know more, and it’s nice to come here and hear experts talk. Both should be supported.

Closing

Stéfan closes the meeting. Anyone wishing to be more involved with ACH? Please talk to us!

Call for Nominations: Affiliates Committee

Jen Guiliano — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) invites nominations and self-nominations for a newly established standing committee on Affiliates. The committee is charged by the Executive Council, in its desire to broaden its involvement with other professional societies, associations, or initiatives, to work with our membership to identify potential affiliate relationships. They will also be charged with responding to external solicitations for ACH affiliate status, and reporting to the ACH Executive as appropriate. We seek committee members who want to advance the field of digital humanities (DH) by helping broaden ACH’s engagement with other professional societies, associations, and initiatives. You could be involved in helping ACH succeed by nominating yourself, or someone else, to be an active participant in the Standing Committee on Affiliates.

To join this committee, candidates must be members in good standing of the ACH. They commit to serving a two-year renewable term where they will participate in discussions by email and audio/video conference. Primary duties will include identifying potential affiliate relationships, completing affiliate applications, and responding to inquiries from other organizations.

Nominees are expected to be active in the digital humanities community. We welcome participants not just from universities and colleges but also galleries, libraries, museums, community organizations, and other organizations engaged with digital humanities. We hope to assemble a diverse committee and encourage participation by ACH members from under-represented groups.

Send nominations or self-nominations to jenguiliano@gmail.com by August 1, 2014. Please confirm with your nominee that he or she is willing to serve, and:

Put the following in the subject line: ACH Affiliate Nomination
Provide a brief statement of interest regarding your (or your nominee’s) vision of ACH’s engagement with potential affiliates.
Provide contact information and a short, 1-paragraph professional biography.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at jenguiliano@gmail.com or via twitter @jenguiliano

ACH Microgrants Winners 2014!

Susan Brown — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is pleased to announce the winners of the 2014 Microgrants competition!

ACH Microgrants were established to reward enterprising ideas that serve the digital humanities community by building on existing ACH initiatives like Digital Humanities Quarterly and DH Answers. We especially value proposals from emerging scholars and DH practitioners that promise to expand the community, create new content or analyses of existing content, or build links with other DH initatives. Our call this year emphasized pedagogy and met with a strong response. Thanks to everyone who applied.

The ACH Microgrants winners for 2014 are:

Pedagogy Toolkit

Alexander Christie, University of Victoria

$1000 to enable further development of the Toolkit by adding new tools to the repository and building relationships with their expert practitioners, adding a space for sharing syllabi through the repository, extending its code to include a templating framework for online syllabi, and a series of blogposts reflecting on different disciplinary communities.

The_Critical_Is: […]Video Game Pedagogy

Jeffrey Moro, Smith College; Elizabeth Alexander, graduate of Amherst College; Criss Guy, graduate of Amherst College

$499.03 towards a six-month experiment in how one might structure critical conversations about video games online: a web platform through which a core group of players will explore a variety of approaches through which to “write,” in words, images, and sounds, about video games through blog posts, podcasts, edited videos, and live-streamed gameplay, and a report on the feasibility of their template.

Library-Led DH Pedagogy: Modeling Paths Toward Information and Data Literacy

Thomas G. Padilla, Sara D. Miller, Hailey Mooney, Bobby L. Smiley, Michigan State University Libraries

$391.75 towards a one-day symposium to work towards aligning DH-led library instruction with the Association of College and Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, the Data Information Literacy program competencies and other standards to design and share 4-5 DH workshop models, crosswalk those models with standards, competencies and guidelines, along with a series of reflective blog posts.

Bridging the Gap: Women, Code, and the Digital Humanities

Celeste Sharpe, George Mason University; Jeri Wieringa, George Mason University

$750 to develop an open-source curriculum for a one-day workshop on DH directed at closing the gender gap in coding by means of a tutorial; documentation and instructions for use of materials; and a guide for coaches; the testing of this curriculum through a workshop, and a reflective blogpost.

ACH Microgrants Committee 2014
(Susan Brown, Tanya Clement, Jarom McDonald, Lisa Spiro, Vika Zafrin)

ACH Annual General Meeting livestream and remote participation

Vika Zafrin — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH Annual General Meeting will take place tomorrow, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 at 12:30pm CEST (UTC +1:00) at Digital Humanities 2014 in Lausanne, in the Amphimax Building, UNIL, Room 350/351.

The meeting will be webcast live—if you are not at the conference, we hope you join us! And when we say join, we mean participate. We will be monitoring the #achagm hashtag on Twitter, and hope you will send in questions and comments.

See you there!

ACH Newcomers’ Dinner at DH2014 in Lausanne

Stéfan Sinclair — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH is once again organizing its ACH Newcomers’ Dinner. This year the event will take place Thursday July 10th at DH2014 in Lausanne. These gatherings provide an opportunity for those who are attending DH for the first or second time to get to know others in the community. It’s not only for members of the ACH! Please sign up!. Parties will be departing from the scheduled reception.

Reflecting on DHSI

Andrea Kampen — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The ACH awarded Andrea Kampen a student travel bursary to attend this summer’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute. The award came with an invitation to reflect on the experience in our blog.

As a first time attender to the Digital Humanities Summer Institute I had no idea what to expect. I wanted to examine my burgeoning interest in the digital humanities and learn how to apply that to what I am learning in my Master in Library and Information Management studies program. DHSI was recommended to me as an experience which would allow me to do just that. I enrolled in the Augmented Reality class because I am interested in learning about how this digital technology affects our day to day experiences. I couldn’t think of a better topic through which to learn about a technology that is meant to add to reality without detracting from it. We had so many interesting discussions and I enjoyed learning so much from my peers through their understanding and implementation of Augmented Reality. Though the classes were the focus, attending the colloquiums, un-conference and Birds of a Feather sessions supplemented the experience. As a newcomer I felt welcomed and encouraged to join the multidisciplinary projects being explored in field. Thinking critically about the digital humanities is important for its survival and DHSI utilized The Birds of a Feather sessions to examine the future of the discipline. I am very interested in all the work that is going on in the Digital Humanities and am looking forward to incorporating what I’ve learned at the DHSI at my home institution.

DHSI 2014 Reflection

Zachary Schoenberger — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The ACH awarded Zachary Schoenberger a student travel bursary to attend this summer’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute. The award came with an invitation to reflect on the experience in our blog.

During the first week of June, I attended for my first time Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria, Canada. A tuition scholarship was generously awarded by DHSI and its sponsors and a small travel bursary by the Association for Computers and the Humanities. My home institution is the University of Alberta, Edmonton, where I am an MA Humanities Computing / MLIS graduate student.

Fellow DH enthusiasts have recently posted on a range of themes, from building DH communities to a DHSI inspired argument for the MLA Report. On the final day, Alex Gil delivered an exceptional closing keynote that has since received repeated well-deserved attention as a #DHSI2014 highlight. I am writing about DHSI more generally and my own experience as a first-time attendee.

DHSI is composed of a week long mash-up of workshops, colloquiums, and hosted receptions. It is tour through the current state of DH in North America. More than that, it is characterized by the hallmarks of DH—hacking AND yacking, institutional boundaries dissolved, and collegiality at its best. Perhaps utopian or idealistic, DHers are regularly discussing how the collaborative enthusiasm experienced at DHSI can be harnessed for export to their home institutions.

As someone who studies DH and MLIS, I found respite at DHSI where all projects seemingly fall under the digital librarian’s umbrella. DHSI, therefore, offers me the greatest of educations and networking possibilities, and epitomizes my academic “home.” Conversely, the angst expressed by attendees over disciplinary structures revealed to me the peculiarity of my own interdisciplinary graduate education in the context of graduate education in North America. DH has not yet grown institutionally to allow it to stand on its own apart from, most often, the English department. For those who seek a “pure DH” experience, then, DHSI is a treasure.

DHSI has demonstrated to me the strength of the academic library—a place where interdisciplinarity is permissible—as an institution ideal for housing DH projects. The DH community that connects through DHSI, however, is one that I cannot move forward without. This is where inspiration for future projects, inter-institutional collabs, and debate in DH is found to thrive.

“All Models are Wrong”: Lessons from DHSI

Jeri Wieringa — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The ACH awarded Jeri Wieringa a student travel bursary to attend this summer’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute. The award came with an invitation to reflect on the experience in our blog.

“Essentially, all models are wrong but some are useful.” This phrase, attributed to George Box, was the mantra for the Data Mining for Digital Humanists course at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. Throughout the course, we worked to understand the mathematical concepts behind some of the most common algorithms used to solve classification and clustering problems. In data mining, the goal is to create a heuristic that allows one to predict with a high degree of accuracy how to classify new data based on the data one has seen in the past. From Amazon and Netflix recommendations to Pandora and even self-driving cars, the results of data mining work are present all across our digital lives.

And yet all models are wrong. In thinking about how to use data mining in my own work, it was helpful to learn that the goal of data mining is not to perfectly fit the model to the data at hand. Data mining is predictive: based on the results of the past, you create a model that predicts the label or classification to be assigned to future data. If you match your model too closely to the original data, if you overfit, the predictive power of the model decreases. Models are created to generalize. There are always outliers and items that are misclassified, but the payoff is the ability to abstract and to get a reliable prediction when faced with new data.

All models are wrong but some are useful. This should not be surprising to scholars in the humanities. In history, we frequently work with models to help us elucidate processes and explain events. We use economic models, political models, and models of race, class, and gender to explain actions and causes. While useful for drawing attention to the ways particular factors shaped events in the past, these models are necessarily incomplete. We know that there is more than economics at play, more than politics, more than religion, more than individual genius.

One area of concern surrounding computational approaches to humanities scholarship is the question of truth claims. Will algorithmic approaches fool us into claiming that we have uncovered the “truth” of the text, the “true” cause of a historical event, the “truth” of the human experience? Are computational approaches at odds with humanistic thinking that stresses contingency, subjectivity, and irreducibility? These are open questions that we need to continue to explore.

But all models are wrong. Data mining that seeks the “truth” is data mining done poorly. I think computational approaches can be very useful in the context of the humanities when we are looking for useful patterns to shed light on particular questions. Different models of the same data can answer different questions or suggest different conclusions. This makes data mining not an answer generating machine but a way of modeling data that is itself the result of theoretical and interpretive choices.

Remembering that all models are wrong is very useful for my own work. I am working to model and discuss the ways health reform ideology, social constructions that delineate power relationships, and religious and theological commitments were in conversation in the development of Seventh-day Adventism. There are many ways to model language similarity and use, some of which will be more useful than others for exploring the interrelationship between multiple cultural systems. My goal, however, is not to create the perfect model – that is impossible. Instead, my goal is to create useful models that help elucidate particular aspects or patterns, models that will necessarily fall short and make no claims to expressing the “truth” of the historical processes I study.

What I am taking away from the data mining course is a better understanding of how those in computer science, statistics, and applied mathematics view the intellectual space where they work. Rather than black-boxes that give “truth,” the algorithms developed and used for data mining problems constitute a variety of models that work with different ranges of accuracy on different problems. There is no one right model, but there are a variety of algorithms that one can use to isolate aspects of a given dataset. This allows one to create useful models of the data in order to describe, make predictions, and better understand the material at hand. And this is an understanding that I think has many possibilities for productive overlap with research in the humanities.

My week at DHSI

Cammeron Girvin — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The ACH awarded Cammeron Girvin a student travel bursary to attend this summer’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute. The award came with an invitation to reflect on the experience in our blog.

What a great time I had this week! With its sunny but pleasantly mild climate, Victoria was the perfect place to spend a week in the summer. And, of course, the constant learning experiences and my many enthusiastic co-participants really made the trip to DHSI worthwhile.

The course I chose this week was “Fundamentals of Programming/Coding for Human(s|ists).” While I entered the class with virtually no knowledge of computer languages except for some very rudimentary HTML, I felt a great sense of accomplishment in that, by Friday morning, I had a solid understanding of the basic functions and capabilities of Python. Our instructor was admirably patient and clear while escorting us down this “express lane” to basic coding literacy!

DHSI also proved a valuable opportunity to connect with and be inspired by interesting people from a variety of fields. While I work primarily on Slavic philology and folklore studies, I found that disciplinary boundaries were essentially irrelevant this past week. I enjoyed seeing some of the ways that scholars from history, sociology, English, and other fields were using technology in creative ways to enhance their research and presentation of their work. While I’ve used digital technologies in my own work primarily in the form of Drupal databases, I left with several ideas of new things I want to try out with my data.

And, as should be the case with any successful academic gathering, I departed with a renewed sense of inspiration to carry on with my current projects. I feel lucky to have been able to attend DHSI this week and am very grateful for the support from ACH!

DHSI and Urgent Optimism

Courtney Lawton — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The ACH awarded Courtney Lawton a student travel bursary to attend this summer’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute. The award came with an invitation to reflect on the experience in our blog.

(Also posted at English is the New Math.)

Two things happened after I returned from DHSI 2014, or, as I like to call it, nerd summer camp. First, I saw a sea otter. In the wild. For the first time in my life. Then, I made a shocking discovery about “the rest of the world,” or the world IRL. These two things don’t seem interrelated, but they are. They are.

When I signed up for DHSI at Matt Jockers’ urging, and had applied for a scholarship and a bursary, I had really hoped to get placed in a “serious” class. None of this gaming stuff for me. What did gaming have to do with my real life? Really. I study American Literature, and literature centered around women’s literary apprenticeships, darn it. I am a serious person. When Ray Siemens wrote to me to let me know that I had received a scholarship, and that I would be in Games for Digital Humanists, I started to reconsider. Why travel out to BC when funds are short and dogs have to be walked and plants watered and gardens tended to and reading lists finalized when all I was going to do was develop games? Or study games? Or play games? Or what? Ray told me to give it a chance.

I went in to the class wary, having spent two weeks teaching myself the Unity game engine and Javascript. I looked like a harassed Hermione Granger. Then. I learned to play. I learned to play with games. I learned about Jane McGonigal, someone I had heard nothing about until Andy Keenan and Matt Bouchard discussed her work extensively in class, and about how what matters, what really matters in solving any problem, but especially global problems that are urgent and desperate and menacing, is what we all learn by playing games. McGonigal points to the importance of gaming in our confidence and perseverance: we learn urgent optimism through the weaving of social fabrics and blissful productivity in projects that have, or seem to have, epic meanings.

The team I was randomly placed with was tasked with developing a game that had the following elements: first daters or a lonely-hearts club, blocks falling from the sky or the apocalypse, and a tool must be used. In short, we played a game to develop a game. Angel, David, and I stumbled around a bit, but we finally settled on a game that was a queering of the Game of Life. We created a board game called “In the Life,” for high school students in California public schools, that would teach the history of LGBTQ people from the 19th century to today. We were optimistic that our game would work and could be played. After wireframing the game using newsprint and post-it notes, we test played it. Players had to choose whether to be “in the life” and out of the closet as LGBTQ or an ally, or in the closet. As they landed on different squares, they earned money, emotional capital, and love. Our game worked! People could play it, and the mechanism of the game, the “race to the end” and the procedural rhetoric of life being a series of liminal moments where one could come out of or revert to a closet was not lost on any of our players. Even better? None of this felt like “work.” Instead, we were all “blissfully productive.”

Upon my return home, I was listening to NPR’s Saturday’s All Things Considered with Arun Rath. A segment featured Rath’s attendance at E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. I was please to hear that what digital humanists had been talking about for years, the criticism of video games by gamers, was starting to sift down to mainstream media. Rath commented that, “Looking around at E3, it’s tough to imagine the console players are really half women.” Rath went on to interview Megan Farokhmanesh, who writes for Polygon, and Risa Cohen, a game developer for Tequila Works. Both women stood as audible challenges to the assertion that games, game development, and gaming were male-specific enterprises, despite what Justin McElroy, also of Polygon, posited when he claimed, “Dudes are playing video games. Dudes are making video games. Dudes are putting dudes in the games for the dudes to play. Anything that goes against that is going to be work.” Then, I read the comments.

I broke my rule: never read the comments. You will experience a precipitous drop in IQ. Just don’t. I wasn’t so much shocked to discover the usual troll under the bridge, lying in wait to grab my rhetorical ankle, as I was shocked that I had something to say back to him that would utterly and completely express what I had learned at DHSI: that games and play are not exclusive territory of any gender or false construct of race, and that criticism of games and gaming is part of the industry and is intrinsic to the joy of gaming and writing games. Most of the fun of gaming derives from the lucid playing of the game, the lucid ludicity, if you will. “Brim Stone” mansplained away the focus of NPR’s story about E3 by whining, “White dudes invented video games for white dudes to play. Why can;t [sic] you just let it be NPR? Why do you hate white males? Why don’t you go cover the lack of diversity in the cosmetics industry?” I felt touched by his naivete, and discovered that instead of feeling like, oh god, here we go again, I felt the ability to engage on NPR’s site as a digital humanist who has something to say about gaming. Shocking, at least to me. (The article can be found on NPR.)

Now, I am on the look out for games all the time. I look at my dissertation as a game, my reading list as a game, these objectives that I seek to achieve by willingly engaging in unnecessary obstacles. The sea otter? Well I saw one on a sea kayaking outing during my time in Powell River, BC. You have to keep a sharp eye out for these creatures. And when you see them, you’re so full of wonder. Games can do that.

Thanks, Matt, Andy, and Ray, for putting a sense of play back into my life at Nerd Camp, er, DHSI2014, and thanks to the ACH for making all this possible.

Sound in the Digital Humanities: my time at DHSI

Penny Johnston — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Editor’s note: The ACH awarded Penny Johnston a student travel bursary to attend this summer’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute. The award came with an invitation to reflect on the experience in our blog.]

I came to DHSI this year hoping to learn a little about manipulating digital sounds and to network with others who might be interested in similar digital endeavours, particularly those related to oral history. I wanted to learn about using Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) because I am embarking on a series of ethnographic interviews as part of my PhD research (funded by the Irish Research Council). I was interested in learning two things in particular; the first about how to ensure high quality audio recordings suitable for deposition in an oral history archive, the second about how to disseminate those recordings so that members of the public have appropriate access to the research.

The class covered useful topics such as equipment, and the best ways to match this to requirements and budgets. This was really useful as I am about to buy microphones and recorders; the new tips should make it a smaller spending spree than it would otherwise have been.

We also spent a lot of time discussing some issues pertinent to everyone working in DH (e.g. copyright) and other issues that are particularly relevant for those who are actively collecting material for archive (e.g. ethics).

And of course we spent quite a bit of time working on our computers. I came away from these sessions with a much better understanding and knowledge of Audacity, an open source DAW. I’m hoping to use these skills as I put together material for public engagement projects in the future. At the moment I’m considering podcasts and we discussed how to go about setting these up in class.

I also attended an unconference session – my first. I went to an informal tutorial about working from the command line, and came away with a useful reference resource for those who want to teach themselves code, Learn Code The Hard Way. I’ll be starting to work with Linux in August, I suspect that I’ll be using this resource a lot.

But DHSI is not just about class and unconferences, there were other events such as the colloquium, demonstrations of electronic literature and current debates/provocations in the Birds of a Feather sessions. Each one of these elements are impressive in their own, but combined they make up a week that is more than just the sum of its parts.

Throughout the week we were visited in class by people participating in the DH for Departmental Chairs and Deans. On Thursday (Day 4) one of these administrators visited and chatted to me about my experience of the class. She asked me to sum up three lessons that I would take away after my experience of DHSI. At the time. I could only come up with two (in my defence, it was Thursday, Day 4 and I was exhausted!). I’ve been thinking hard about it since, so here are my conclusions:

1. Pace yourself

Ray Siemens said this in the opening lecture and people laughed. Now I know that it isn’t a joke. There are so many things to attend. After trying the colloquium, an unconference and a Birds of a Feather session (as well as class) in one day, my brain was fried. Sadly, it just wasn’t possible to attend everything.

2. Don’t be afraid to ask the person next to you for help

I got a lot of handy tips (like how to cross-fade in Audacity) from asking those around me about how to do things, and sometimes from just watching them as they worked.

3. Collaborate

One of the really exciting things about our class was meeting the range of different people with a wide variety of interests. There were other oral historians, but also people working on poetry archives, and teachers interested in how sound could be incorporated into their pedagogy. Despite the diversity of our interests we all managed to collaborate on one five-minute sound piece that was performed during the DHSI colloquium on Friday. It’s also available on the DHSI Sound of the Digital Humanities page on Radio Nouspace if you’d like to have a listen. Not only was this great fun to work on, it was a good way of learning about the importance of the listening experience as a whole, instead of simply concentrating on the factual information that is held within audio recording such as oral history interviews.

My first trip to DHSI was an enriching experience, thank you so much to the Association of Computing in the Humanities for the financial help that made it happen.

Jobs Slam at the Annual General Meeting at DH2014

Tanya Clement — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH will again be organizing a Jobs Slam during its annual general meeting at the DH2014 Conference in Lausanne (July 9th at 12:30pm in the Amphimax Building). The Jobs Slam is a lively event and a chance for employers to get the word out about upcoming jobs as well as for prospective employees to introduce themselves to everyone present.

If you have a current or upcoming job opening at your institution, please send a message to tclement@ischool.utexas.edu with the following:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about the job (title, affiliation, duration, etc.)
A link to other information, if available

If you are on the job market or anticipate being so in the next few months, please send a message to tclement@ischool.utexas.edu with the following:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about your qualifications & area of expertise

Purveyors and seekers of jobs will each have up to 30 seconds to present. Please come join us for this exciting match-making event!

Digital Humanities 2014

Alex Gil — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

ACH Annual General Meeting and Jobs Slam

The ACH AGM will be held Wednesday, 9 July 2014 at 12:30pm CEST (UTC +1:00) in the Amphimax Building, UNIL, Room 350/351. Join us for a free, healthy, vegetarian-friendly lunch!

Sure, there may be some sub-committee reports and even an important vote or two, but you haven’t really experienced an annual general meeting until you’ve been to an ACH Jobs Slam! This is a lively event where prospective employees and employers have 30 seconds of floor-time to woo each other**.**

We will have a live webcast of the AGM. Use the #achagm hashtag on Twitter (and be sure to follow us at @ACHdotorg) to ask questions during the meeting.

ACH Newcomers Dinner

Is this your first or second time at the Digital Humanities conference? Are you new to the DH community? Join a small group of newbies and ACH old-timers at a local restaurant, to make scholarly connections and new friendships.

Dinners will happen the evening of Thursday, 10 July. For ease of conversation, groups are limited to six people. Long-term ACH members and other DH conference veterans are heartily encouraged to volunteer! Sign up and learn more.

Please Ask, Do Tell

Looking for professional advice or job opportunities? Willing to share some professional advice or news of job opportunities? Use our Please Ask, Do Tell stickers to let conference attendees know!

Someone with this sticker may have some advice to offer or know about an interesting DH job – please feel free to ask them!

Someone with this sticker is looking for professional advice and/or job opportunities, so if you have something to offer, please let them know! Pick up your sticker(s) at the ACH annual general meeting!

Join ACH

And if you like what you see, and want to become part of a welcoming, international, interdisciplinary, and inter-professional DH association, we invite you to join the ACH today.

An Open Letter, and Resources on Net Neutrality

Bethany Nowviskie — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Today, 33 presidents, chairs, founders, leaders, and editors of 27 major, international digital humanities scholarly organizations and platforms joined together in an open letter to American FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

The effort was spearheaded by the US-based Association for Computers and the Humanities, and our joint letter urges the FCC to preserve “the fundamental character of the open, nondiscriminatory, creative, and competitive Internet,” by enacting strong net neutrality protections — the first step to which is the reclassification of broadband providers as “common carrier” telecommunications services.

The full letter and list of signatories is available on our website, and may shortly appear on other professional societies’ websites as well. We welcome wide distribution of the letter, and urge our members and readers to take individual action and make their voices heard ahead of the FCC’s May 15th Open Commission Meeting.

The ACH also provides a short set of background readings on net neutrality, and some suggested actions you can take.

Open Letter on Net Neutrality

Bethany Nowviskie — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Update: 30 September 2015

The letter was delivered and was used as the basis for the MLA’s letter on the same subject. Earlier this year the FCC ruled that broadband is a telecommunications service and that the net should therefore be neutral. Clearly, the ACH didn’t do all the work, but we got what we campaigned for. Thank you all who helped out!

Update: 30 April 2014

Great interest is being shown in this letter by our various professional communities and colleagues in the digital humanities and aligned fields. Some have requested to sign on. The letter has already been sent to Chairman Wheeler, so we strongly encourage you to modify, adapt, quote, or endorse it in a new message to the FCC, in order to amplify the response. That said, we welcome statements of solidarity in the comments field below. But please do more than add your name: review our suggested action items and readings, which will help you stay alert to other opportunities to work for net neutrality.

Open Letter

Dear FCC Chairman Wheeler;

We write as leaders of 27 major professional societies, boards, committees, and publications, representing a broad and international community of scholars and students, information professionals, artists, and technologists working in the digital humanities, digital media, and aligned fields.

On behalf of the communities we serve, we urgently ask that you lead the FCC in protecting the fundamental character of the open, nondiscriminatory, creative, and competitive Internet. To do this, the FCC must reclassify broadband service as “common carrier” telecommunications in the United States.

Joining in this appeal are the presidents, chairs, founders, and organizers of:

the Association for Computers and the Humanities;
the Electronic Literature Organization;
the European Association for Digital Humanities;
the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/Société canadienne des humanités numériques;
the Japanese Association for Digital Humanities;
the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities;
HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory
the Committee on Information Technology of the Modern Language Association;
the Digital Library Federation;
centerNet;
4Humanities;
Global Outlook::Digital Humanities;
the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory;
ARC: the Advanced Research Consortium
MESA: the Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance
18th-Connect
NINES: the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship
the Steering Committee of the international Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations;

and the editors and founders of the following pioneering journals and digital publication platforms:

Digital Humanities Quarterly;
Kairos: a Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy;
Journal of Digital Humanities;
Open Context;
Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net;
Digital Studies/Le champ numérique;
MediaCommons: a digital scholarly network;
Humanist;
and LLC: the Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities.

Individual members of our organizations — researchers, teachers, students, artists, and technology and information professionals — have lobbied tirelessly for net neutrality protections over the past many years. We write you now on their behalf, as a united alliance of academic leaders.

The scholarly and technical community our organizations represents is a global one, and the world is watching. The United States must follow suit with peers in Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East, and elsewhere, to protect the openness and fairness of Internet communication.

True net neutrality:

stimulates competition, creativity, and innovation;
protects the freedom of speech;
and promotes equal and non-discriminatory access to information.

Please fulfill your responsibility to the public and make it possible for the FCC to assert strong network neutrality regulations, by announcing on May 15th that you will reclassify Internet broadband providers as common carriers.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bethany Nowviskie
Director of Digital Research & Scholarship, University of Virginia Library
Special Advisor to the UVa Provost and CLIR Distinguished Presidential Fellow
Chair, MLA Committee on Information Technology
President of the Association for Computers & the Humanities

Paul Arthur
Dr R. Marika Visiting Chair of Australian Studies
University of Cologne, Germany
Professor of Digital Humanities, The University of Western Sydney
President of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities

Cheryl Ball
Fulbright Scholar, Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Associate Professor of New Media Studies, Illinois State University
Editor, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

Susan Brown
Professor of English, University of Guelph and University of Alberta
President (English), Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/Société canadienne des humanités numériques
Project Leader, Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory

Cathy N. Davidson
John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English
Co-Director, PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge
Co-Founder, HASTAC
Dr. Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Director of Scholarly Communication, Modern Language Association
Co-founder and Editor, MediaCommons

Neil Fraistat
Professor of English & Director
Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH)
Chair, Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO)
Co-Chair, centerNet

Rachel L. Frick
Director, Digital Library Federation
Council on Library and Information Resources

David Theo Goldberg
Professor, Comparative Literature
Director, UC Humanities Research Institute
University of California Irvine
Co-Founder, HASTAC

Dene Grigar
Director and Associate Professor
DTC@Creative Media and Digital Culture
Washington State University Vancouver
President, Electronic Literature Organization

Christine Henseler
Professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies
Chair, Department of Modern Languages & Literatures
Union College
Co-leader, 4Humanities

Eric Kansa
Technology Director, Alexandria Archive Institute
UC Berkeley, D-Lab
Program Director, Open Context

Alan Liu
Professor, Department of English
University of California Santa Barbara
Co-leader, 4 Humanities

Laura Mandell
Director of the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture
Professor of English
Texas A&M University
Director of ARC (Advanced Research Consortium)
Director of 18thConnect.org

Willard McCarty
Professor, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London
Research Group in Digital Humanities, University of Western Sydney
Editor, Humanist

Prof. Dr. Jan Christoph Meister
Institut für Germanistik
Universität Hamburg
Chair, EADH: the European Association for Digital Humanities

Jerome J. McGann
John Stewart Bryan University Professor, University of Virginia
Adjunct Research Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Founding Director, NINES: the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship

John Nerbonne
Professor of Computational Linguistics
Head of Humanities Computing Department
Director, Center for Language and Cognition
University of Groningen
President, EADH: the European Association for Digital Humanities

Daniel Paul O’Donnell
Professor of English, University of Lethbridge
Founding Chair, Global Outlook::Digital Humanities
Editor-in-Chief, Digital Studies/Le champ numérique

Dot Porter
Curator, Digital Research Services
University of Pennsylvania Libraries
Co-director, MESA: Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance

Dr. Lisa M. Rhody
Co-editor, Journal of Digital Humanities
Research Assistant Professor, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
George Mason University

Geoffrey Rockwell
Professor, Department of Philosophy
University of Alberta
Co-leader, 4Humanities

Avi Santo
Associate Professor
Director, Institute for the Humanities
Old Dominion University
Co-Founder, MediaCommons: a Digital Scholarly Network

Dr. Masahiro Shimoda
Professor and Director, Digital Humanities Initiative, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology
The University of Tokyo
President, Japanese Association for Digital Humanities

Michael E. Sinatra
Associate Professor, Département d’études anglaises, Université de Montréal
Founding Editor, Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net
President (French), Canadian Society for Digital Humanities/Société canadienne des humanités numériques

Prof. Stéfan Sinclair
Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures, McGill University
Director of the McGill Centre for Digital Humanities
Co-leader, 4Humanities

Andrew Stauffer
Associate Professor of English
University of Virginia
Director, NINES: the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship

Timothy L. Stinson
Assistant Professor
Department of English
North Carolina State University
Co-director, MESA: Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance

Prof. Melissa M. Terras
Director, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities
Professor of Digital Humanities, UCL Department of Information Studies
University College London
Co-leader, 4Humanities
General Editor, Digital Humanities Quarterly

Lindsay Thomas
4Humanities Lead Research Assistant
Ph.D. candidate, English Department
University of California, Santa Barbara

Dr. Joan Fragaszy Troyano
Co-editor, Journal of Digital Humanities
Research Assistant Professor, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
George Mason University

Edward Vanhoutte
Research Associate of the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities
Editor-in-Chief, LLC. The Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities

Katherine L. Walter
Co-Director, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities
Professor and Chair, Digital Initiatives & Special Collections
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Co-Chair, centerNet

ACH Microgrants 2014: DH Pedagogies

Susan Brown — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

ACH Microgrants 2014: Microsteps to Advance the Digital Humanities

Proposals Due 31 May 2014

Awards: up to $1000; $3000 total grant call

The Executive Council of the Association for Computers and the Humanities is delighted to announce its third round of Microgrants.

This year, we particularly invite proposals on pedagogy, although applications will still be considered in other areas that advance the goals and mission of the ACH, to support computer-assisted research, teaching, and software and content development in humanistic disciplines. Projects should be modest and designed to be accomplished within roughly six months.

Examples of possible projects, meant to inspire rather than limit:

a framework for sharing DH syllabi
a means of annotating and sharing DH assignments or exercises
pedagogical podcasts (microgrants can be used to purchase commercial software for producing screencasts or videos)
pedagogical tools or apps
enhancements to DH Questions & Answers
activities that add pedagogical features to the online journal Digital Humanities Quarterly

Graduate students and early stage researchers are encouraged to apply. Mentorship is available, either at the development stage of applications or during the projects themselves. Those interested in mentorship during the application stage should submit a draft submission in advance of the deadline in order to receive feedback. Those interested in being paired with a mentor for the duration of the project should note in their application the area of skill or expertise in which they would benefit from mentoring. Microgrants may involve mentorship only without a cash component.

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

excellence and innovation of the proposal;
contribution of the activity to development and promotion of the ACH mission;
deliverables can be accomplished within the proposed budget and time period.

For further technical information about the ACH/DHQ websites please see further details below.

Applicants must be members of the ACH at the time of application.

Proposals should be no longer than three pages (ca. 750 words) and should contain the following information:

Name, background and full contact details of proposer (institutional affiliation, email address, etc).
Name of organization (if the proposal is being submitted on behalf of an organization).
Narrative addressing the criteria above, both conceptual and technical, with clear statement of deliverables, including the nature of the reflective output.
Describe support needed from ACH or DHQ technical staff, if needed.
Budget justification that indicates clearly how the funds will be spent (no longer than ½ page). Projects must be feasible upon receipt of the microgrant. Any other resources needed to accomplish the project must be obtained in advance (though they may be contingent upon receipt of the ACH microgrant) and specified in the application. If the microgrant project is related to a larger project, explain the relationship.
Date for project start date, date of conclusion, and for reflective output.

Should an early career scholar be barred, due to institutional policies, from holding a grant directly, another member of an affiliated institution
may undertake to serve as grantholder, provided that the prospective grantholder guarantees in writing that the entire grant will be dedicated to
the project for which it is awarded and that the individual(s) responsible for that project can be listed publicly by the ACH as having won the award,
with the official grantholder mentioned parenthetically along with the insitution.

No indirect costs may be deducted from the value of the grant, which must go entirely to support the project for which it is awarded.

Please send proposals or queries to microgrants@ach.org by 31 May 2014.

Susan Brown, for the Microgrants group: Jarom McDonald, Lisa Spiro, and Vika Zafrin

Further technical details:

Previous microgrant project winners for 2012 and 2013 are on our website.

ACH lobbies US Senate for increased humanities funding

Stéfan Sinclair — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

On Tuesday, the United States Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a full-committee hearing on the subject of “Driving Innovation through Federal Investments.” Testifying at the hearing will be the directors of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other research-oriented agencies.

The Association for Computers and the Humanities joins over 100 institutions and organizations in expressing to Chairwoman Mikulski and the Committee the great value of federal investment in research and development. What is special about ACH’s response is that it comes from a strong humanities perspective. Humanities investments are investments in innovation.

Read ACH President Bethany Nowviskie’s submitted testimony (PDF link), and seek ways to strengthen humanities voices in conversations about federal funding and policy through the National Humanities Alliance.

Other examples of ACH’s advocacy work on behalf of digital humanities scholars and practitioners are available here.

ACH Bursary Award Winners for DHSI 2014

Tanya Clement — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

ACH is pleased to announce our 2014 Bursary Winners for the 2014 Digital Humanities Summer Institute:

Cammeron Girvin, University of California, Berkeley
Ty Berringer, Texas Tech University
Penny Johnston, University College Cork, Ireland
Andrea Kampen, Library and Information Studies, Dalhousie University
Stephanie Kingsley, Scholars’ Lab Fellow, University of Virginia
Courtney Lawton, Nebraska Literary Lab, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Chris Leeder, School of Information, University of Michigan
Aaron Plasek, Humanities & Social Thought, New York University
Zachary Schoenberger, Humanities Computing, University of Alberta
Jeri E. Wieringa, George Mason University

Call For Proposals to Host Digital Humanities 2016

Bethany Nowviskie — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The call for proposals to host Digital Humanities 2016, the annual, joint conference of the international Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (of which ACH is a founding member) has been posted on ADHO’s website, with expressions of interest to be made as soon as possible to ADHO Conference Coordinating Committee chair, John Nerbonne. The 2014 DH conference will be held in Lausanne, Switzerland, and in 2015 the ADHO organizations will meet in Sydney, Australia. Please see the call for more information, and browse past conferences, guidelines for local organizers, and other materials on the ADHO site.

Announcing our Affiliation with the American Historical Association

Jen Guiliano — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

ACH is pleased to announce its formal affiliation with the American Historical Association (AHA). Founded in 1884, the AHA is the largest historical professional organization in the US. With over 100 affiliated organizations, the Association devotes itself to the promotion of historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching, and publication; the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts; the dissemination of historical records and information; the broadening of historical knowledge among the general public; and the pursuit of kindred activities in the interest of history.

At its broadest, ACH sought this affiliation as the application of digital research, teaching, and advocacy have entwined with the practice of literary and historical scholarship for twenty-first century historians, including those working in GLAM, K-12, and other educational communities. At its core, the practice of history seeks to explore the human condition and the ongoing tools, research methodologies, and publication platforms that digital humanities contributes to the field of historical scholarship that have subtly and not so subtly begun to transform the historical discipline. ACH recognizes the influential ways in which AHA and its membership have shaped the practice of historical research and publication and hope to join the association in our joint efforts to ensure quality scholarship within the academy and beyond.

ACH encourages its membership to explore the AHA website and the benefits of membership in our affiliated organization. ACH members are invited to consider submitting a poster for the AHA2015 conference in New York City, “History and Other Disciplines.” Poster proposals are due by March 17th, 2014. More information on additional ACH/AHA activities will be forthcoming in the coming months.

MLA CFP “Digital Deformance and Scholarly Forms”

Stéfan Sinclair — Sat, 22 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Last year’s session—organized by the Association for Computers and Humanities (ACH)— at MLA featured a “just the results, please” approach to presenting digitally-inflected scholarship in literary studies and prioritized discussion of interpretive results over process. In a similar vein and taking its cue from Lisa Samuels and Jerome McGann’s term “deformance,” this year’s panel will feature presentations of digital interpretations born out of deformative and/or performative technology-enabled processes. “Digital deformance” is meant to be broadly construed; as a result, methods might span a wide range of approaches from programming to game design to computational analysis to fabrication to digital editing.

This panel will feature presentations that offer interpretations of texts, language, literature, images, and/or literary history that result from deforming, reshaping, and representing texts and suggest ways in which such processes may inform existing critical assumptions.

Papers should consider the ethical, procedural, and/or representational challenges to such an approach, as well as the fresh insights opportuned by the act of deformance. Much like last year, we will ask presenters to speak not about their methods but instead about their interpretation, results, and conclusions.

Speakers will also be invited to write brief blog posts to be shared on their own websites as well as that of the ACH about their methods and approaches. These posts will be shared at the session but will not become the focus of the conversation.

Send 250-word abstracts and a 1 paragraph bio to lmrhody@gmail.com by 15 March 2014 at 12pm EST. N.B. All panelists will need to be MLA members (or have their membership waived) by April 7th.

ACH is an allied organization of the MLA, this session is guaranteed for the 2014 MLA.

2013 Election Results Announced

Vika Zafrin — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the 2013 ACH elections.

The amendments recently made to our Constitution and Bylaws by the ACH Executive Council have been ratified by the membership. The amended version is available on the ACH website.

Per the newly amended constitution, all new officer and Executive Council terms will begin at the close of the DH 2014 conference, to be held this July in Lausanne, Switzerland. Current officers and outgoing Exec members will serve until then.

Elected to serve as ACH President for the 2014-2016 term is Stéfan Sinclair.

Elected to serve as ACH Vice-President for the 2014-2016 term is Dot Porter.

Elected to serve on the Executive Council for the 2014-2018 term, in alphabetical order, are Miriam Posner, Lisa M. Rhody, and Roopika Risam.

On behalf of the ACH, we congratulate our newly elected representatives, and thank all of this year’s candidates for being willing to donate time to the organization. What a slate! We look forward to working with all of you, in ways formal and informal, in the coming year.

Viral Texts as Signals of Influence among Antebellum Periodicals

Ryan Cordell — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

My talk will draw on the early results of the Infectious Texts project, in which I and my co-researchers are developing theoretical models to help scholars better understand what qualities—both textual and thematic—helped particular news stories, short fiction, and poetry “go viral” in nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines. Prior to copyright legislation and enforcement, literary texts as well as other non-fiction prose circulated promiscuously among newspapers as editors freely reprinted materials borrowed from other venues. While scholars such as Meredith McGill have learned much about the “antebellum culture of reprinting” using traditional archival methods, we are using algorithms to compare repetitions of words between pages in the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America newspaper archive, identifying the boundaries of reprinted passages which are not known a priori and allowing us to study antebellum reprinting practices at a tremendous scale. We delve into the technical specifics of this approach in “Infectious Texts: Modeling Text Reuse in Nineteenth-Century Newspapers” (PDF), which will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press for Proceedings of the Workshop on Big Humanities.

In keeping with the theme of the “Beyond the Digital” roundtable, my MLA talk will focus not on the tools that enabled this modeling, but on how this modeling illuminates the structure of nineteenth-century print culture and the texts that circulated through it. Our initial tests yielded tens of thousands of potential reprinted texts—the most popular of which were printed in newspapers from New England to the Nebraska and Kansas territories (or beyond)—and most of which have been for years outside the purview of period scholars. I will discuss what what kinds of texts we’re uncovering as the most “viral” during the antebellum period, and reflect on what the most popular of these seemingly ephemeral texts might teach us about antebellum editors, authors, and readers. I’ll tie this conversation to a broader meditation on “virality” as an anachronistic but possible useful frame for understanding historical text sharing. With the term “viral texts,” I point to a continuum of practices around textual reuse and sharing, including reprinting, reauthorship, and remixing. Viral texts point directly to influence—a text from one publication was deemed worthy enough (or worthy enough of scorn) to be reappropriated by another. Finally, I will discuss how looking at viral textuality at scale might illuminate relationships among historical newspapers and editors that might be opaque at the level of the individual text(s). Nineteenth-century texts moved through intermeshed networks of authors, readers, and editors, often not tied to local geography. Instead, connections were often formed through common denominational or political affiliation; personal acquaintanceships between editors and writers; or the communications infrastructure determined by roads, postal routes, and railway lines. Using network analysis tools our vast index of reprinted texts can be used to model antebellum print culture at scale. We can ask, for instance, which publications most shaped the network by analyzing whose texts were most likely to be reprinted elsewhere. What were the central publications that shaped antebellum readers, and thus helped shape antebellum taste and opinion? These models are wonderfully suggestive, leading to new insights about the ways antebellum readers discovered and experienced new works.

Revising Ekphrasis: Methods and Models

Lisa Marie Rhody — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

When Brian Croxall asked each of our roundtable participants to write a blog post in advance of MLA describing our methodologies, he mentioned that he’d prefer a minimum of 500 words. Our maximum limit, however, he described as “whatever it takes.” I doubt he would have predicted an over 113-page post with 4 extended appendices, but that is, as best as I can determine, what it would take to explain how I got to the point at which I felt prepared to begin making statements about ekphrasis that extend from topic modeling and social network analysis.

The following post, therefore, serves as an introduction to the open publication of two chapters of my dissertation that present the methodologies that undergird the research I will be presenting at MLA this year. Accounting for about 33% of my written dissertation, “Ekphrastic Revisions: Verbal-Visual Networks in 20th Century Poetry by Women,” chapters four and five establish the methods, values, and decisions that contributed to the collection, preparation, description, and testing of approximately 4,500 poems that make up the Revising Ekphrasis project.

Chapter four, “Collecting Ekphrasis: Building a Digital Collection of Modern Verse to Study Ekphrasis” (PDF), introduces the means by which the poems in the corpus were collected, prepared, and described. The chapter presents methods for collecting 4,771 poems from five sources including The American Academy of Poets and Poets.org, through a combination of automated capture and human input. Additionally, I expose the values and priorities that guided decisions about which metadata to capture, how it would be recorded, and how to keep track of changes to the data and metadata as the project iterates. Working through four sample topic model experiments, I demonstrate the effects of stopword lists on topic models of poetic corpora and the ways in which “close” reading may also limit our assessment of poetry by placing too much emphasis on economy of language as a significant feature of verse.

In the fifth chapter, “Review, Revise, Requery: Reading Ekphrasis as/in a Dynamic Social Network” (PDF), I introduce the challenges of topic modeling with figurative language, present a possible approach to interpreting topic models of figurative language, and present social network graphs that prompt the questions and suggestions that become the focal point of my MLA talk. This chapter considers the composition of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topics when the corpora used to create the models depend heavily on ambiguity and figurative language. I consider the usefulness of existing evaluative methods for testing topic models and later demonstrate how social network graphs prompt new pairings, contextualizations, and readings of ekphrastic poetry against the grain of existing critical assumptions about the genre’s tradition.

The chapters found here have origins in blog posts from Spring 2012, such as “Small Projects & Limited Datasets,” “Why Use Visualizations to Study Poetry?” and “Some Assembly Required: Understanding Topics in LDA Topic Models of Poetry.” I’m deeply grateful to those who took the time to comment on those early blog posts, as they contributed to the refinement and revisions that took place between these early drafts and the later dissertation. In January 2013, I was asked to revise my earlier blog posts on topic modeling and poetry, which had been selected as Editors’ Choice features for Digital Humanities Now, for possible publication in the Journal of Digital Humanities issue on topic modeling edited by Scott Weingart and Elijah Meeks. Therefore, the first half of chapter five was heavily revised for my essay, “Topic Modeling and Figurative Language,” which offers a more brief introduction to the methods deployed on the way to exploring 276 ekphrastic poems.

Finally, I have also posted copies of my dissertation’s appendices (all PDFs). These include a complete list of 4,771 poems in the full dataset, two primary metadata fields (sex and genre), and the breakdown of text sources (Appendix A); stopword lists used in chapter 4 (Appendix B: The Mallet default stoplist, Appendix C: a heavily edited stoplist based on Appendix B, and Appendix D: a lightly edited stoplist based on Appendix B), and the Mallet commands used in the chapter four experiments (Appendix E). Should anyone wish to repeat my experiments, the required poems to harvest, the methods for preparing the data, and the MALLET commands required to perform the experiment are all included in these chapters.

As I will explain during my brief talk at MLA, these methods have helped me to reconsider critical assumptions about ekphrasis as a network of ongoing, socially situated discourses. Casting a wider net by including a broader spectrum of poems by a more diverse demographic of poets, my MLA presentation will demonstrate that latent patterns in language detected by topic models and organized by social network graphs offer opportunities for exploring subtle and nuanced relationships between the “sister arts,” as well as opportunities to recuperate ekphrastic poetry by women heretofore excluded from critical histories of the genre.

Quantifying Yeats’s Dialogues

Shawna Ross — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Origin Story

This project originated in a coincidence that occurred sometime in or around 2006, when I was a graduate student at Penn State. I was binge-reading Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit at night while methodically proceeding through Yeats’s entire oeuvre during the daylight hours. Somewhere around the Phenomenology’s self-consciousness section and the soothsaying lunar charts of A Vision, it struck me that Yeats used dialectical forms to dramatize the gradual emergence of the self-conscious poet-craftsman—quite as much as Jean Hyppolite claims of Hegel’s bildungsroman of consciousness.

No doubt under the influence of the psychedelic Vision, as I stared at the Contents page of The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, it was if I’d snipped precisely the right thread and the progress of poems seemed to disaggregate in front of me. I was left with a pile of dialectical pairs—self and anti-self, self and soul, Owen Aherne and Michael Robartes, Hic and Ille—given speech in poems structured like dialogues. Take “Ego Dominus Tuus,” for example, a dialogue between Hic and Ille: when Ille intones, “By the help of an image / I call to my own opposite,” Hic responds, “And I would find myself and not an image.” In this exchange, Yeats introduces the artist—the one who deals in images—into the Hegelian profession from the abstract to the negative and thence into the concrete.

So far, so good. But at this point, connecting Yeats and Hegel was little more than a hunch. How could I know this connection was not a mere coincidence, or if the inspiration came less from the material itself than from the canny opportunism of a graduate student writing three seminar papers in early December? Combing through Yeats’s letters, I could trace his introduction to the dialectic through Nietzsche and then watch him reading and facing Hegel himself in his late 1920s The Tower period. That gave me a firmer foundation, but nothing that would let me add something new to accounts of Yeats’s dialecticism by other scholars.

Besides, tangled in metaphysical minutiae, I knew I was no philosopher; I am literary critic and am generally embarrassed by those trained in literature attempting philosophy qua philosophy. Nonplussed by the accounts of Yeats and philosophy that hardly considered the literariness of the texts, I wanted to bring it back to form, style, aesthetics—back, in other words, to my wheelhouse.

In addition, I wanted, if possible, to avoid the formulaic U-Pick method of tossing a theoretical concept and a literary text into a blender, and I knew I was squarely in the danger zone. So I went back to the poems, specifically those poems in which Yeats staged conversations, as it was in them that Yeats achieved the conceptual clarity and profundity that was, paradoxically, lacking in the overtly philosophical A Vision. The dialogue poems have been addressed before (Balachandra Rajan, David Richman, Malati Ramratnam, M. L. Rosenthal), but I was frustrated by the lack of specificity and organization in the existing criticism: Where was the definitional work, the careful parsing of “dialogue” and “dialectic?” Where was the appreciation of the dialogues as a genre with unique qualities, not a bastardization of form or wistful placeholder for the plays he “really” wanted to write?

I quickly encountered (one of) the barriers to definitional work: the sheer number and variety of dialogue poems that Yeats had written. The solution that the above scholars had turned to was to focus on the examples that used playscript indentation to make it typographically unmistakeable. Taking up my copy of the Collected Poems with a highlighter, I attempted to identify each dialogue poem with precision, with accuracy, with rational principles, expecting to a end up with a nice, neat couple dozen poems to work with.

Beginning with my foundational criterion—neither a lyric poem nor a dramatic monologue, a dialogue must record a conversation by transcribing rather than paraphrasing its dialogue, a difference typically indicated by typographical tells like quotation marks, italics, colons, or space breaks—I doggedly combed the volume. There was one. Another, another, another. Maybe. No. Yes. Maybe. I think so? No. Kind of? A little bit. Yes. No. If you didn’t count the first verse. Yes, yes, no, yes. Only that one part. Only if you squinted. So that was why no one had done “sufficient” definitional work.

Methods

What could I do to organize the frustratingly large corpus, to satisfy my need to feel certain, amid all the reading and rereading, that there was, indeed, a there there? What could I do other than flip manically through my Collected Poems, hoping to light on the perfect poem? Categorization was the answer.

To the infinite amusement of my co-seminarians in Janet Lyon’s Yeats course, I showed up at draft day with a chart:

1. **Self-quoting** — Speaker quotes self 2. **Hypothetical** — Speaker quotes impossible speaker 3. **3rd Person** — Speaker acts as 3rd person narrator 4. **1st Person** — Speaker acts as 1st person narrator 5. **Juxtaposed** — Bare quotes without narrative infrastructure 6. **Dramatic** — Set up like a play with speaker labels 7. **Choral** — Uses refrains or choruses 1. **Simple** — No other quotation system involved 2. **Framed-quote** — Chorus is a 3rd person narrated quotation 3. **Narration** — Chorus is narrative infrastructure for verses 4. **Dramatic** — Verses are 3rd person narrated quotations 5. **Experimental** — Miscellaneous structures used only once 8. **Imperative** — Speaker quotes what he tells someone to say 9. **Combination** — Combines multiple quotation strategies 10. **Incidental** — Quotations not integral to poetic structure

A Typology of Yeats’s Dialogue Poems

To claim any level of rationality—though we do not have to reach total objectivity with DH, we should commit to fumbling towards it, carefully collecting exceptions and absurdities for footnotes—I knew I had to devote a generous chunk of time to devising my categories. As I always (following Cheryl Glenn’s Making Sense) tell my composition students, categories must be consistent, exclusive, and complete:

Consistent: You must use the same principle of distinction to create each category.
Exclusive: Each object cannot fit more than one category.
Complete: Every object under consideration must qualify into a category.

I began naming categories according to the source of the quoted material, so that each category indicates the relationship between the poem’s speaker and the other interlocutor quoted by that speaker.

Devising the categories with respect to completeness, exclusivity, and consistency took about the same amount of time it would take me to write ten pages of manuscript. I spent that time anxiously, beset by the clock ticking without anything to “show” for it—for I had assumed that this would be the easy stage, whereas the writing would be difficult. Nonetheless, despite all my hand-wringing, the resulting system was not completely consistent: only first six of ten categories share the same principle of categorization (consistency).

When I veered off into a different kind of organization principle, it was in order to ensure completeness and exclusivity (the other two criteria). More importantly, though, the process of compromising itself forced me to think critically about the definition, affordances, and development of Yeats’s dialogue poems. Each “problem” represented an interesting authorial choice; each deviation revealed a curious traits of each category of dialogue poem. In its imperfections my categorization process produced ideas and theses, pushing my thinking further well before the stage I had thought would be the “interpretive” one. But merely interacting with the texts to create data points was probably the most productive move in the entire process.

Having to alter my categorization scheme reflected changes in the way Yeats styled dialogue poems. Each decision to slot a poem into a category—or to fashion a new category for it—required me to reflect on the speakerly qualities of poetry, on what constitutes a quotation, on how Yeats uses different types of speakers to create tone, even to the extent that a poem’s dialogue style suggests its philosophical orientation and its subject. Of course, my distinctions are not entirely elegant or intuitive, but each exception explains something about Yeats’s creative process. Given the overwhelming number of poems I was dealing with, I would not have perceived these nuances and changes had I not experienced so much trouble creating the categories.

Now that I had my categories, how could I use them? In 2006, I did not really feel connected to what I thought the digital humanities were—I was under the impression it was solely a modified New Media Studies—much less have any familiarity with its tools and software. Instead, relying somewhat on rusty skills vaguely recalled from undergraduate statistics, but mostly on trial-and-error, I produced a compact array of charts and graphs visualizing the changing proportions of dialogue poems versus total poems over Yeats’s career, as well as the changing proportions of which type of dialogue poem Yeats preferred in each collection of poems. These statistics also helped to pair each category of poem with a particular research question.

Again to the infinite amusement of my co-seminarians, I showed up at the due date with, in what may be perhaps the lowest-fi DH project imaginable, a paper supplemented with Excel files. Here are some of the most suggestive:

Dialogue Type	Total #	% All Poems	% Among Dialogues
Self-quoting	5	1.3	4.9
Hypothetical	7	1.9	6.9
3rd Person	17	4.5	16.7
1st Person	12	3.2	11.8
Juxtaposed	4	1.1	3.9
Dramatic	13	3.5	12.7
Choral	37	9.9	36.3
Imperative	4	1.1	3.9
Combination	3	0.8	2.9
1Incidental	19	5.1	15.8

Figure 1: Frequency of each major dialogue category

Collection	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	7a	7b	7c	7d	7e
Cross		1	2		1	1	3				3
Rose			2		1				1
Wind	1	2	1						2
S Woods				3		1	2	1		1	1	1
Helmet	2	1		1	1					2
Resp		1	2	1			2		2	2	1		1
W Swans	1		3	1	1	4	1			3	1
Robartes	1		2			2				1
Tower		1								3
Stair		1	2	3	1	3	10	1	1		7	1	1		1
Parnell			1				2			1	2
New			1	2			12			1	7	1	1	3
Last			1	1		1	5			2	3				2

Figure 5: Variety of Dialogue Types by Collection

What did these numbers and visuals do for my understanding of Yeats? I want to save these results—what I know about Yeats now (the Results section)—for the MLA conference. Besides, I am still experimenting with other tools and do not precisely know where this will take me.

What’s In It For You?

Some of the potentially broader ramifications I can gesture toward.

For Yeats Studies

Returning to questions of poetic craftsmanship what is not only a traditionally unquantifiable concept but also one critics tend to dissociate from form and style: Yeats’s metaphysics. My project may eventually posit a new relationship between modernist literature and philosophy.
Forging a new point of entry for understanding the ontological preoccupations driving Yeats’s late career: discerning (or not) the knower from the known and dancer from the dance.

For Poetry Studies

Creating a new way to conceptualize the trajectory of a poet’s career, not simply in terms of the dialogue poem in particular, but also in terms of using various categorization schemes to locate handles on any poet with an oeuvre as excitingly unwieldy as Yeats’s.
Elaborating a slightly different vocabulary for capturing the relationship between speech and poetry, both in terms of genre (What makes speech different from poetry?) and in terms of style (What different forms of speaking exist inside a poem?).

For the Digital Humanities

Learning the value of error, of confusion, of frustration at the early stages of a project. What kind of intellectual work is really going on when we create data sets, and how is that different from writing? What is “real” intellectual work, and when does it really happen?
Finding shades between qualitative and quantitative inquiry, between the study of the subjective and the cultivation of the objective. As Yeats wrote to Ezra Pound in 1918, “I will use certain philosophical ideas to give subjective hardness as Dante used Aquinas […]. Subjective hardness is what we all trying to get in different ways. In poetry it is the escape from imagination, the only vast pattern. All the rest is haycocks in the flood.”

Modernist Frequencies: A Computational Stylistics approach to National Modernisms

James O‘Sullivan — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Computational stylistics offers a variety of methodologies through which authorial signatures might be explored and used for analysis within literary criticism. This MLA ‘14 paper will use computational methods to reproblematise the stylometric elements of national modernisms, with a specific focus on Western, first-generation English works. A corpus of modernist novels from across the American, British, Irish and wider European canons has been selected, and analysed using a variety of computational techniques. It is hoped that the results of this study will further contribute to ongoing debates on the regional division of modernist literature.In the introduction to their aptly entitled Geomodernisms, Doyle and Winkiel note that modernist interpretations depend on “which modernism … which city, which hillside”, revealing “diverse modernisms formed against and through each other, proximate or distant, and constituted by their locations in the world” (1). What is yet to be revealed, however, is the extent to which spatial influences have been reflected across modernist stylistics. Friedman argues that as the significance of boundaries with cultural studies continues to recede, there has been an increased tendency for scholars to read modernism “on a planetary scale” (500). Recognising the need to facilitate both intra- and interdisciplinary collaboration if such a holistic approach to criticism is to be adopted, Friedman represents a transnationalist discourse which, while perhaps not yet dominant, is undoubtedly prominent among literary scholars. Critics have long delineated what Berman labels as “the geographical impulses of modernist writing” (282), but, as already noted, there is a lack of direct engagement with style. Modernisms are frequently defined as being spatiotemporally conceived, yet it is worthwhile exploring the extent to which the modernisms of place equate to any authorial signatures which might emerge as being geographically distinct. Modernist literature is characteristically borne of its environment; of interest here is whether or not such topologies can be traced throughout the relevant stylistics. When one speaks of American or Irish literary modernisms, do distinct stylometric patterns emerge? Using computational methods, this paper seeks to address this issue. Computational stylistics, or stylometry, is the process of applying computational approaches to assist in the distant reading of style, so that traditional approaches to critical arguments might be supplemented with quantitative evidence. Hoover defines such approaches to literature as representing “elements or characteristics of literary texts numerically, applying the powerful, accurate, and widely accepted methods of mathematics to measurement, classification, and analysis”, noting the importance for these methodologies to be tempered by more established practices (“Quantitative Analysis and Literary Studies”). While this approach to criticism is indeed based on statistical models and quantitative methodologies, “computational literary criticism is insufficiently scientific” (Ramsey), requiring sufficient literary contextualisation and interpretation, generally validated through close reading, if findings are to be legitimate. In his recent book, Jockers defends the use of macroanalytical approaches in literary criticism, offering a tentative description of these approaches as being “designed for probing” literature (32). Computers can probe large corpora at a far more efficient rate than any individual or team of scholars, but while a machine merely counts, critics read. Thus, in keeping with the spirit of this panel, this opportunity will be used to outline my approach, while my literary findings and interpretations will be reserved for the forthcoming gathering of readers in Chicago.

Primarily, the “Stylo” package for R (Eder, Kestemont, and Rybicki) is used to conduct several multivariate stylometric analyses of the following dataset:

Beckett, Samuel
Murphy (1938)
Molloy (1955)
Malone Dies (1956)
The Unnamable (1958)

Bennett, Arnold
The Grand Babylon Hotel (1902)
Helen with the High Hand (1910)
Imperial Palace (1930)

Bowen, Elizabeth
The Hotel (1927)
Friends and Relations (1931)

Compton-Burnett, Ivy
Dolores (1911)
Men and Wives (1931)
A Family and a Fortune (1939)

Conrad, Joseph
Heart of Darkness (1899)
Nostromo (1904)
The Secret Agent (1907)

Faulkner, William
The Sound and the Fury (1929)
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Intruder in the Dust (1948)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott
This Side of Paradise (1920)
The Beautiful and the Damned (1922)
The Great Gatsby (1925)

Ford, Ford Madox
The Fifth Queen Crowned (1908)
The Good Soldier (1915)
The Fifth Queen and How She Came to Court (1906)

Forster, E. M.
The Longest Journey (1907)
Howards End (1910)
A Passage to India (1924)

Hemingway, Ernest
The Torrents of Spring (1926)
A Farwell to Arms (1929)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

Huxley, Aldous
Crome Yellow (1921)
Brave New World (1932)
Island (1962)

Joyce, James
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Ulysses (1922)
Finnegan’s Wake (1939)

Lawrence, D. H.
The White Peacock (1911)
Sons and Lovers (1913)
The Rainbow (1915)

Nabokov, Vladimir
Lolita (1955)
Pnin (1957)
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969)

O’Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)
The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor (1962)
The Third Policeman (1968)

Richardson, Dorothy
Pointed Roofs (1915)
The Tunnel (1919)
Interim (1920)

Wells, H. G.
The Time Machine (1895)
The Invisible Man (1897)
The War of the Worlds (1898)

Wharton, Edith
The House of Mirth (1905)
Ethan Frome (1911)
The Age of Innocence (1920)

Woolf, Virginia
Night and Day (1919)
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
The Years (1937)

The dataset is intended to be a selection of authors, from the relevant canons, heavily associated with literary modernism throughout its “height”, and thereafter. For the purposes of this analysis, authors are classified as being either “American”, “British”, “Irish” or “European”, but these assignments are merely a reflection of the nationality with which they are typically aligned. Authorial signatures are formed based on the 100 most frequent words in each text. Initial insights are provided through a cluster analysis (see Fig. 1), before a more robust representation of similarities across stylistic fingerprints is presented using a bootstrap consensus tree (see Fig. 2). Clustering via the consensus tree is conducted using Burrows’ Delta (Burrows), over maximum frequency words ranging from 100 to 1000, in intervals of 100. Proximity is presented using a consensus strength of 0.5. Using most frequent words as determinants of style, as well as the suitability of Burrows’ Delta to English-language literary macroanalysis, is an established and validated approach to literary criticism (Hoover; Burrows; Rybicki and Eder).

The results of both analyses indicate that no overarching similarities exist between modernist styles when classified by region. However, as will be discussed at the MLA conference, there are particular instances within these results where clusterings warrant further appreciation. This is particularly the case with Irish modernists, which are further examined in isolation, using Gephi to assist in the visualisation of consensus tree results (see Fig. 3).

Using Zeta, which counts how many words from each segment in one corpus do not appear in a corresponding dataset (Craig and Kinney), I identify those words typical of the style of each author. These words are then factored into a further cluster analysis, once more using Delta as the measure of distance, giving more robust results (see Fig. 4). There is a distinct correlation between the style adopted by Flann O’Brien and his countryman, James Joyce, in particular texts. Of course, O’Brien is considered foremost among the Joycean disciples. Theses findings demonstrate that this approach has much to contribute to this topic, and so further analyses have been conducted in collaboration with Jan Rybicki and Katarzyna Bazarnik, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, and Maciej Eder, Pedagogical University of Krakow.

Remaining with the primary results (see Fig. 1; Fig. 2), interpretations to be offered and discussed in Chicago will focus on the notion of style across national modernisms. It would appear that, stylistically at least, a transnational discourse is applicable to this literary movement, though some exceptions do exist. In particular, I will argue that, in relation to style, we can now conclude that we do not read Beckett, but rather, read Becketts, and that Joyce is very much an Irish writer, who may see himself as “part of a European modernist literature” (Lernout 106), but writes in a style in-keeping with that of his compatriots. The national centrality of modernist icons like Joyce and Faulkner does not typically extend to stylistic influence, but there are exceptions of geographical note. Generally, however, my findings support the consensus argument that modernism’s pre-occupation with place transcends style – modernist authors use their literature to treat places, but not necessarily in a style that is determined by such spaces.

Works Cited

Berman, Jessica. “Modernism’s Possible Geographies.” Geomodernisms. Ed. Laura Doyle and Laura Winkiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Print.

Burrows, John. “‘Delta’: A Measure of Stylistic Difference and a Guide to Likely Authorship.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 17.3 (2002): 267–287. Print.

Craig, Hugh, and Arthur F. Kinney, eds. Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print.

Doyle, Laura, and Laura Winkiel. “Introduction: The Global Horizons of Modernism.” Geomodernisms. Ed. Laura Doyle and Laura Winkiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Print.

Eder, Maciej, Mike Kestemont, and Jan Rybicki. “Stylometry with R: A Suite of Tools.” Digital Humanities 2013: Conference Abstracts. University of Nebraska–Lincoln: N. p., 2013. 487–489. Print.

Hoover, David L. “Frequent Word Sequences and Statistical Stylistics.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 17.2 (2002): 157–180. Print.
—. “Quantitative Analysis and Literary Studies.” A Companion to Digital Literary Studies. Ed. Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture.
—. “Testing Burrows’s Delta.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 19.4 (2004): 453–475. Print.

Jockers, Matthew L. Macroanalysis: Digital Methods & Literary History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013. Print.

Lernout, Geert. ‘European Joyce’. A Companion to James Joyce. Ed. Richard Brown. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. 93–107. Print.

Ramsey, Stephen. “Algorithmic Criticism.” A Companion to Digital Literary Studies. Ed. Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.

Rybicki, Jan, and Maciej Eder. “Deeper Delta across Genres and Languages: Do We Really Need the Most Frequent Words?” Literary and Linguistic Computing 26.3 (2011): 315–321. Print.

Stanford Friedman, Susan. “World Modernisms, World Literature, and Comparativity.” The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms. Ed. Mark Wollaeger and Matt Eatough. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 499–525. Print.

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Orla Murphy and Graham Allen, School of English, University College Cork, as well as Jan Rybicki (Jagiellonian University, Krakow), Maciej Eder (Pedagogical University of Krakow) and Katarzyna Bazarnik (Jagiellonian University, Krakow).

Methods and More for “Beyond the Digital” at MLA 2014

Brian Croxall — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

On Friday, January 10 from 5:15-6:30pm in Sheraton I at the Sheraton Chicago, the ACH will sponsor a session (#402) at the Modern Language Association’s Convention.

Earlier this year, the ACH put out a call for papers on the subject “Beyond the Digital.” In recent years, an increasing number of sessions at the MLA have been devoted to the digital humanities. As we wrote in the CFP, however, what is sometimes forgotten is that the output of digital analysis is not itself the goal; rather, such analysis is a means to an end, and that end is the interpretation of a text or corpus (understood widely). The goal of the ACH’s session, then, is to re-establish this understanding and conversation, defamiliarizing the conversation about the digital and making it re-familiar to the larger body of MLA participants.

The panelists’ brief talks will offer interpretations of texts, language, literature and/or literary history that definitely began with a digital approach. But—and this is crucial—we have asked our presenters to focus not on their methods but instead on the interpretations they have reached as result of their digital praxis.

And yet: since method is crucial for the work these scholars have been doing, the ACH still wanted to make information about their methods available to those who might be curious. Consequently, we have asked the panelists if each of them would write a post for the ACH to explain some of the process they used in starting the project—the tools, approaches, and methods of interpretation.

We are pleased to present posts from all seven of our panelists today:

Jeffrey Binder (CUNY Graduate Center) and Collin Jennings (NYU), “Cultures of Visualization: Adam Smith’s Index and Topic Modeling“
Ryan Cordell (Notheastern), “Viral Texts as Signals of Influence among Antebellum Periodicals“
Cedrick May (University of Texas at Arlington), “Authentication of Poem Written by 18th-Century Slave and Author, Jupiter Hammon“
James O’Sullivan (University College, Cork), “Modernist Frequencies: A Computational Stylistics approach to National Modernisms“
Lisa Marie Rhody (George Mason University), “Revising Ekphrasis: Methods and Models“
Shawna Ross (Arizona State University), “Quantifying Yeats’s Dialogues“

Given the two different purposes of the posts and the presentations at the MLA—method and interpretation, respectively—the former will likely contain very different content from what you hear in Chicago. We realize that scholarly work is always a conflation of method and interpretation, but since the goal of the panel is to underscore how digital work is qualitatively compatible with “regular” interpretive literary studies it seems worth the imposition of the false binary. In the end, the post and panel presentation taken together are what should be might consider the complete version of the scholarship.

We hope that you will join us at the MLA (Friday, January 10 from 5:15-6:30pm in Sheraton I) or follow along via Twitter at the hashtags #mla14 and #s402.

Cultures of Visualization: Adam Smith’s Index and Topic Modeling

Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Our project situates topic modeling historically by investigating its paper-based antecedents. Our current focus is a comparison between the eighteenth-century subject index—a genre that reflects the period’s emphasis on producing systematic knowledge—and the twenty-first-century topic modeling method known as Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Prefacing a machine-learning term with a historical designation sounds odd (in part, because there is no such thing as an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century topic model), but we contend that this de-familiarizing move offers a useful way of locating the conceptual work being done by topic modeling. Our critical method enacts a kind of epistemological anachronism by producing a statistical correlation of eighteenth-century subject headings and topic distributions. The terms index and topic originated in the same classical disciplines: rhetoric and logic. Index refers to the longer phrases index locorum or index locorum communium, meaning index of places or index of common places (Walter Jackson Ong 123). Topic comes from the Greek work topoi (also meaning places), which referred to lines of argument and themes that orators drew upon in the process of composing their speeches. The index and the topic both belonged to cultural practices of organizing and storing ideas that could be recalled by memory. The development of written and print cultures through the early modern period in Europe transformed these oral rhetorical concepts into our modern notions of indexicality and topicality that refer to any system of categorical organization.

The shift from the rhetorical to the indexical also entailed a transition from local oral forms to universal print ones. Our turn to the eighteenth-century subject index—a genre that emerged when the former usage still held and the latter usage was developing—indicates an attempt to draw upon the terms and concepts of relationality found in the earlier rhetorical discourse as a way to approach the results of digital methods. This move offers a way of grappling with the oft-cited difficulty of the situating and interpreting ‘signals’ identified by quantitative text analysis.

Our comparative approach has an important precedent in the emergence of media studies in the mid-twentieth century, which responded, in part, to the proliferation of electronic technologies. Scholars of orality and literacy such as Albert Lord, Marshall McLuhan, Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Walter Ong compared new forms of oral transmission that were invented in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries to historical forms of orality, including oratory, ballads, and epic poetry. Looking back on this boom of electronic orality, Ong observes, “Contrasts between electronic media and print sensitized us to the earlier contrast between writing and orality” (Walter Jackson Ong 2–3). The culture of visualization that has developed on the web and in the academy as an outgrowth of digital media presents a comparable opportunity to scholars. Visualization has emerged as a new kind of research genre. We have attempted to interpret the consequences of visualization for humanistic interpretation by examining genres and concepts that emerged in what scholars of print consider to be the original age of visualization—the early modern period. (See, for instance, Ong on “visualist analogies” in Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue or John Bender and Michael Marrinan’s argument in The Culture of Diagram.)

In most cases, quantitative methods like topic modeling are used to identify a pattern within a set of textual data, and that pattern is interpreted within an already established set of historical, cultural, or generic expectations. D. Sculley and Bradley Pasanek have usefully explored the challenge this approach presents because of its tendency to produce hermeneutic circularity (Sculley and Pasanek 410). Our approach does not solve the problem of circularity; we accept that it is a given obstacle that faces any interpretive act. Instead we confront circularity by relating the computational model to another historical referent (the subject index), which turns our interpretation from the model itself to the relationship between the model and the index, at specific sites of correlation and contradiction.

We first imagined our tool, the Networked Corpus, as an algorithmic method for marking passages with topical or discursive similarities. Inspired by the practice of cross-referencing passages in printed books, the tool generates hyperlinks between passages that share topics according to a topic model. From this original conception, the tool echoed the practice of Renaissance commonplacing, which involved collecting literary exemplars under thematic or logical headings. Our tool differed, however, in not giving fixed names to the topical units—instead of enabling navigation from heading to passage, the Networked Corpus encourages users to navigate from one passage to another, without assuming any prior knowledge about what the topics that connect might be.

One of our reasons for choosing this design is that the topics of topic modeling are difficult to name in a way that accurately reflects what they represent. Although the topics can sometimes appear to correspond to headings such as one might find in an index, they almost always contain words that are difficult to account for in this simplistic sort of interpretation. Thinking about what sort of navigation paradigms might work best with topic modeling led us to more general questions about the ways in which abstract models of texts can guide reading. It also occurred to us that some of the same issues that we were dealing with could also be applicable to the sort of print indexing that became popular in the late eighteenth century, which could be said to involve its own abstract model of textual content.

We decided to put these two different models into dialogue by comparing a print index from the eighteenth century to a topic model trained on the same text. We chose the index from the 1784 edition of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations because it is an exceptionally detailed index, and because Smith’s text exemplifies one of the theoretical issues that we’re dealing with—the relation between abstract models and concrete particulars. The text also frequently switches between different conceptual frameworks that have distinctive vocabularies, making it unusually well-suited to topic modeling, which generally does not work very well when trained on a single book. We downloaded a copy of the text and index from Project Gutenberg, and used a Python script to split the file up and parse the index into a data structure that could be easily manipulated.

Our first goal after parsing the index was to come up with a way of determining how similar it was to a topic model. To do this, we needed to find possible matches between index headings and topics. There is a conceptual difficulty here, because the index and the topic model do not have quite the same structure. While the topic model assumes that pages can draw on topics to varying degrees represented by numbers between zero and one, the index headings either refer to a page or do not. There are also a large number of index entries for very specific subjects that only refer to a few pages, so we would only expect a fraction of the index headings to correlate with any topics.

We decided that the best way of dealing with this was to use a rank correlation formula—specifically, Spearman’s rho. This method correlates topics with index headings entirely in terms of a rank ordering; in the case of the topic model, the pages are ranked by the coefficient for the topic, and in the case of the index, all of the pages indexed under the heading are ranked above all those that are not. Using this definition, a perfect correlation would mean that the pages indexed under that heading always have a higher topic coefficient than the ones that are not. Each of the cases where this is not true decreases the correlation coefficient.

The first thing that we used this calculation for was to determine how many topics we should include in the topic model in order to get it to match up with the index as well as possible according to the coefficient that we have selected. For each possible number of topics from 5 to 60, we generated 40 topic models on The Wealth of Nations using the topic modeling program MALLET (and automating things using Python). For each of these models, we then determined the number of index headings that correlate relatively well (rho >= 0.25) with some topic in the model. We plotted the results using R.

Since the number of index headings matched does not increase much after the number of topics exceeds 40, we concluded that a topic model with 40 topics would be the best to compare to the index, and generated a model with this number of topics to use as our comparator.

Although we did find correlations that were strong enough to establish matches between the index and the topic model, the highest correlation coefficients are still fairly low (generally around 0.35), suggesting that the topic model does not do a very good job of predicting where a page will appear in the index. However, many of the matches do make conceptual sense, despite the large number of pages where the correlations break down. For example, the topic with the top words “wages labour common workmen employments year employment” correlates best with the index heading “Labour”. Our hunch was that looking at the particular passages where the index and the topic model fail to match up could be revealing about the different assumptions that underlie the two models. To enable this sort of reading, we created a special version of the Networked Corpus that shows the index and the topic model side-by-side, and enables the user to view a list of the passages where a particular heading and topic do and do not coincide. You can view this tool online.

Interpreting the two models by means of this visualization has enabled us to gain a new perspective on a technology that is so familiar as to appear transparent—the index—and has also helped us to better understand some of the conceptual issues that can arise in the interpretation of topic models. Although the code that we developed for comparing topic models and indexes is of relatively limited applicability, we believe that our theoretical approach could be applied elsewhere. Many of the computational methods we use today have precedents in the pre-computer era; and many artifacts from the past can be understood as embodiments of abstract models that could be interpreted through comparison with computational analogues. Our purpose in writing software to facilitate these comparisons is not the construction of new tools that can be used repeatedly, but the interrogation of the tools that we are already using, be they old or new.

All of the code we used in this project is available online on the Networked Corpus GitHub repository and the Adam Smith repository. Our project website is Networked Corpus.

Works Cited

McCallum, Andrew Kachites. “MALLET: A Machine Learning for Language Toolkit.” http://mallet.cs.umass.edu. 2002. Online.
Bender, John, and Michael Marrinan. The Culture of Diagram. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Print.
Ong, Walter J. Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: Fro the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason. Chicago (; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. Print.
Ong, Walter Jackson. Orality and Literacy. London; New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Sculley, D., and B. M Pasanek. “Meaning and Mining: The Impact of Implicit Assumptions in Data Mining for the Humanities.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 23.4 (2008): 409–424. Print.

Authentication of Poem Written by 18th-Century Slave and Author, Jupiter Hammon

Cedrick May — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The Uses of Metadata

Prior to the revelations of Edward Snowden's leaking of classified information regarding NSA monitoring of US citizens’ private communications, the word “metadata” was little-known or understood to people other than IT professionals, programmers, and the odd scholars engaged in information interchange.

But metadata is everywhere. In the old index files of libraries, the under-appreciated and oft-neglected front matter in published books, the “Product Details” section of an Amazon.com item, and even in the images we take using our digital cameras. Most of us are familiar with the metadata stored in index files of libraries, but a majority of people would be surprised at the wealth of information digital images contain, too. Information from the type of camera used to snap the photo to geolocation information pinpointing where the image was created might well be embedded in the images we share online every day.

![The moon in its third-quarter phase](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/The_phase_of_Moon.jpg)

"[The Phase of Moon](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_phase_of_Moon.jpg)", photo by [阿爾特斯](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%E9%98%BF%E7%88%BE%E7%89%B9%E6%96%AF). Hosted by Wikimedia Commons.

By using an online metadata extractor, you can see the metadata embedded in this photo and any other photo taken with a modern digital camera. For instance, this image hosted on the Wikimedia website contains a wealth of information that you cannot see until the image is processed through a metadata extractor of some type.

So, metadata is everywhere, and it can be useful for helping us to think about, organize, and understand the documents and other assets that are a part of our everyday work with literature and literary interpretation. Librarians and other information specialists know the incredible value of Dublin Core Metadata as a means for describing electronic assets. Dublin Core is a metadata standard used to help identify digital assets stored in various online repositories, and is the default metadata standard for the Omeka publishing platform.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has its own in-house metadata standard designed to be compatible with other common standards, such as the Dublin Core. In fact, the DPLA policy is to share the metadata associated with its digital assets freely. So, though the current trend in the news media is to shroud the term “metadata” in mystery and associations with secret, hidden information, the fact is that metadata is a tool that can be openly produced and shared among scholars in digital environments toward the goal of collaborative scholarship and knowledge production.

Metadata and Close Reading

Metadata is used for many purposes, but its primary purpose for most scholars is to describe and assist in organizing and interpreting information. As Lou Burnard put it, it is “data about data.” But someone has to do the work of attributing the data to the data, and in a system like the TEI, it is usually an individual or a team of encoders who must do this work by hand. Computers can read and manipulate metadata, and embedded systems can automatically generate metadata prescribed by engineers, but computerized systems cannot accurately produce meaningful metadata for newly digitized documents. This means that the human encoders must become expert close readers of their documents, adding and attributing data about their subject with an expert eye and keen interpretive skill.

The act of encoding a document using XML, just like the practice of transcription and documentary editing, is an act of interpretation bounded by certain agreed-upon constraints defined by an international scholarly community of TEI experts and users of the standard. However, the individual editor/encoder of a document may engage in encoding with greater or lesser detail, depending on their needs and interests.¹

In the case of digitizing and encoding the known works of the 18th-century American poet and slave, Jupiter Hammon, my goal was to do a basic markup of his works, mainly using the TEI-Lite tagset, with a few additional tags I thought would be useful for the project. My graduate students and I would use original digital copies of Hammon’s works collected during the course of the fall semester of 2011 as our copy-texts.

The project went smoothly, and we were able to collect all of Hammon’s known works, do original transcriptions of those works, and then mark them up into TEI XML documents. The whole process took the entire semester, but the close attention to detail and my later editing of the transcriptions and TEI encoding made me particularly sensitive to the content of Hammon’s body of works. I was already well acquainted with Hammon’s writings from years of reading, teaching, and writing about him, but the exercise of closely editing his poems and essays from digitized originals was nevertheless enlightening, leading me to notice details that would be very useful later.

A Unique Discovery

In the process of collecting these digital images to use as our copy-text, we came across a document attributed to Jupiter Hammon at Yale University’s Sterling Library.

A full account of the discovery can be read in my recent joint article with Julie McCown published in Early American Literature. But here is where the real fun begins.

When we requested information about the manuscript in Yale’s possession, the online finding aid did not have a title for the poem, just that there was a manuscript of a poem in their Hillhouse Family Papers collection. An archivist at Yale libraries emailed my graduate student the partial title of the poem they had in their possession; no one knew the title would turn out to be something totally unknown. The assumption was that Yale had a copy of a printing of an already-known poem by Hammon. It wasn’t until I looked at the email and saw that the poem was titled “An Essay on Slavery” that I thought to myself that there are no known poems of this name by Jupiter Hammon. Upon further inquiry, we eventually received an email with the full title and the first two stanzas of the poem.² I recognized right away that two of the eight lines in the alleged Hammon poem were close paraphrases of lines reproduced from a 1778 poem, “An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley.” I could also see that the meter, rhythm, and vocabulary of the stanzas appeared similar to what I was familiar with in other Hammon poems and prose works.

I knew then that my main task was the process of authenticating the document in Yale’s possession as genuinely Jupiter Hammon’s. So, after receiving a digital scan, I began doing those things that are a part of the process. As Kline and Holbrook state in A Guide to Documentary Editing, 3rd Edition, “The process of authenticating documents by handwriting, signatures, and literary style begins now. To these methods of identification the editor should add a sense of logic and historical context, assigning dates or authors to undated or unsigned materials” (Kline and Holbrook 76). It was my work in assigning and editing metadata that helped me to accomplish these tasks by exposing me to the appropriate documents, transcriptions, and historical contexts that are a necessary part of both authentication and accurate metadata encoding.

Think of it this way: it’s one thing to closely read and reread a document, having conversations about it with students and colleagues along the way. It is another thing to labor over the significance of each and every mark (even those that appear to be stray ones) on a manuscript or holograph page in order to decide on the proper metadata encoding to attribute to it–and then argue the merits of your choices with other reader-encoders. Such closeness to a text requires a deep engagement with interpretation and memorization that is important to the discipline of literary scholarship.

In some ways, it was the somewhat long and laborious effort to find physical documents to transcribe and encode that led to this discovery. But it was also the work of transcribing and encoding those documents with metadata by hand with a plain-text editor that later aided in the authentication of the work. For instance, I knew from examining the original extant copies of Hammon’s works that there is only one document that we know of that has an example of his handwriting on it, and my team of transcribers had been working with a digital copy of it. The essay, “A Winter Piece,” located at the Connecticut Historical Society Museum & Library, and published in 1782, has an autograph on the title page, with what was presumed to be Jupiter Hammon’s handwriting. There is no mention of this autograph in any of the collections of Hammon’s writings. It wasn’t until I actually received a digital copy of the 1782 edition from the Connecticut Historical Society that I realized there was an extant example of Hammon’s handwriting. This turned out to be a fortuitous discovery, as “An Essay on Slavery” is a four-page holograph, and upon comparing the two documents on my computer screen, the handwriting matched perfectly.

Tradeoffs: What We Gain & Lose in Digitization

“Even more basically, an editor can never assume that a document is authentic because it comes from a well-known repository: at even the oldest and best-known libraries, there are dark archival corners that have never been reviewed carefully by modern curators” (Kline and Holbrook 76).

What my students and I gained in digitizing and encoding the known works of Jupiter Hammon far exceeded expectations. We gained a much deeper knowledge of Hammon’s poetry and prose by scrutinizing original, published manuscripts and assigning markup to our transcriptions. We found and debated the meaning of extra-textual markings, such as hand-written annotations, signatures, missing and obscured letters, and holes in the pages to the meaning in the text and encoded our ideas as part of our TEI markup. Unexpectedly, the project contributed to the discovery of a completely unknown handwritten manuscript by our author. There are many more benefits to the transcription and encoding of digital documents that I could name, but it was the close reading and interpretation skills that made the lessons of the exercise so useful and even thrilling.

The “Maid of Dort” form of a Pro Patria watermark located on one half of the paper on which Jupiter Hammon’s “An Essay on Slavery” is written. This Watermark cannot be seen on a regular scanned image of the page. This image is a photograph taken while resting the manuscript page on a light table to make the watermark visible to the naked eye. But there are always tradeoffs to using one technology over another. While digital technologies have made it much easier to collect and work with manuscripts without having to physically be in the archive, there are still some dark corners of the digital world that require personal contact with materials. Just as it is not yet possible for computers to make meaning or generate consistently accurate metadata from scanned manuscripts, it is also difficult to see some of the details of a manuscript page on a given scan, no matter how high the resolution.

For instance, the scan of “An Essay on Slavery” Yale delivered to me was of invaluable use due largely to its very high quality and resolution, but the scanning technology used to create the digital image could not “see” or reproduce important details of the holograph page. Two important features of the page useful for authentication were the watermark and countermark that required the use of a light table to see. This “information” in the form of watermarks was as important to dating and authentication the poem as Hammon’s writing style and handwriting. The make of the paper (laid), and the measurements of the laid lines were also important, as they helped me to establish (as Kline and Holbrook direct) the manuscript’s context. That is, they helped me figure out not only when the poem was written, but where. Also, being in the physical archive helped me to make numerous comparisons and data collection across hundreds of documents from several collections within the holdings at Yale libraries, which would have been impossible remotely. However, in the end, it was that one line of text in an email, received while looking for digital copies of known works that led to an original discovery. And that original discovery, made as part of a digital humanities project, is contributing to a thorough reevaluation of Jupiter Hammon’s works, particularly as they relate to the way he wrote about the institution of slavery.³ All of the new context, information, and interpretation will further inform the metadata that will eventually encode all of the digital transcriptions and TEI documents that are currently being edited into my digital edition of Hammon’s expanded body of known works.

In other words, not only have the results of this project to digitize Jupiter Hammon’s works led to the interpretation of individual documents but also to the reevaluation of his life’s work and his significance as an historical figure.

The TEI encoding of metadata in the Jupiter Hammon project will not be of the sort hidden within digital images and NSA files. Rather, it will be the open and openly shared data that will hopefully contribute to further enriching what we know about this important author and the world in which he lived. Perhaps the data we already have, or even the lapses within it, will point researchers toward the other lost writings that are known to have been written during Jupiter Hammon’s lifetime.

Footnotes

^1. Of course, many of the users of the TEI also engage in vigorous, daily debate about the composition and best methods for using the markup standard. A look at the archive for the TEI mailing list will reveal some of the most active scholarly deliberations about metadata, meaning and interpretation to be found anywhere.

^2. Since the discovery of the Jupiter Hammon poem has been made public, Yale libraries has updated the finding aid and corrected the metadata in their own systems, listing the poem’s name along with its author and moving the holograph manuscript to its own box. See the finding aid, “Guide to the Hillhouse Family Papers, MS 282.”

^3. I should take a moment here to point out that Jupiter Hammon has had an unfortunate reputation among some scholars and other readers of his works because of certain statements he made about his condition as a slave in his final published work, “An Address to the Negroes in the State of New York” (1787). Certain passages in the essay have been misconstrued in such a way as to make Hammon seem like an apologist for slavery, as someone with no strong feelings against the institution. However, this is a longstanding error that this new poem, “An Essay on Slavery” definitively corrects.

Travel Bursaries for DHSI

Jeremy Boggs — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re a graduate student who’s considering attending next year’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute (and if you hadn’t considered it, you should!), ACH is offering several bursaries graduate student members to help defray costs for travel and lodging. Any ACH graduate student member is eligible for our bursaries.

Additionally, DHSI is offering ten tuition scholarships to members of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) and its constituent organizations. You can find more details about the bursaries and scholarships on the DHSI Scholarships page.

ACH Election Nominations 2013

Mia Ridge — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Due October 31st, 2013.

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) invites nominations for the 2013/2014 elections, in which our members will elect a President and Vice President for two-year terms, as well as three Executive Council members for four-year terms. We seek candidates who want to advance the field of digital humanities (DH) by helping to run the ACH.

ACH officers and Executive Council members develop and uphold ACH policies, determine and distribute funding, and oversee all organizational activities. Activities for 2013/2014 include our mentorship program and jobs slams, advocacy work, publications including Digital Humanities Quarterly and DH Answers, collaborations with ADHO partners in the annual DH conference and other initiatives, co-administration of a number of prestigious DH awards, distribution of student bursaries for DH training and education, as well as other priorities as set by ACH. You could be involved in helping ACH programs succeed by nominating yourself, or someone else, to be an active participant in the leadership of the Association.

To be confirmed as an ACH officer or Executive Council member, candidates must be members in good standing of the ACH. They commit to attending annual council meetings at the Digital Humanities conference and participate in discussions during the rest of the year by email and audio/video conference. Council members are expected to be active in the digital humanities community. We welcome participants not just from universities and colleges but also galleries, libraries, museums, community organizations, and other organizations engaged with digital humanities. Independent scholars, graduate students, alternative academics, women, those of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, and other under-represented communities are especially encouraged to self-nominate, or to be nominated by the membership. Demonstrated commitment to the organization and to the field counts for more with our membership than professional affiliations or academic status/titles.

Send nominations to nominations@ach.org by October 31st, 2013. Please confirm with your nominee that he or she is willing to serve, and:

Put one of the following in the subject line, as appropriate:
- Executive Council nomination
- ACH President nomination
- ACH Vice President nomination
Provide a brief candidate statement and biography. Sample candidate statements from past elections are available. If your nominee cannot provide their bio and candidate statement at the time of nomination, they should email those to us before the close of nominations.
All nominations require two nominations (a self-nomination counts as one nomination) to be considered for the ballot (per ACH bylaws), so please allow time for a second nominee to email in support of your nomination.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at nominations@ach.org.

The three top vote-getters in the Executive Council race will be elected to four-year terms. For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of ACH council members, see our Bylaws. Current officers of the ACH are listed on our officers page.

Many thanks,

ACH Nominations Committee

Mia Ridge, Open University (Chair) Ernesto Priego, City University London Jennifer Guiliano, MITH Johanna Drucker, UCLA

Ex officio member

Stefan Sinclair, ACH Vice President

Call for Papers: Special “DH 2013” issue of LLC

Bethany Nowviskie — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

LLC: The Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities will publish a special issue of top papers from Digital Humanities 2013, the annual conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, held this summer at the University of Nebraska. We invite submissions from anyone who presented at the meeting, including those who gave long and short papers, or who participated in panels and poster sessions.

Long articles of up to 6,000 words in length (notes & bibliography excluded) should take up theoretical issues in digital humanities or report on completed work, including at least preliminary evaluation of its results. While there is more room in shorter articles for description of work at earlier stages, we emphasize that short papers of no more than 2,000 words should make scholarly points and not merely report on DH project activities. All submissions will be evaluated by at least two independent referees.

Submissions must be received by midnight CET on November 15th 2013.

Interested authors should:

Contact Bethany Nowviskie (bethany@virginia.edu) as soon as possible to inform the editors of an intention to submit.
Prepare manuscripts using the LLC guidelines
Submit manuscripts directly to the LLC submission site by November 15th. Please make clear in your submission that it is for the ‘DH2013 issue’, and see the instructions for online submission.

We emphasize that it is the author’s responsibility to see that LLC’s formal guidelines are met. All content from this special issue will be released as open access by Oxford Journals for a period of three months after publication. Authors retain their copyright, may make pre-prints available without restriction, and may share post-prints after a 24-month embargo. Proceeds from LLC are the primary means of support for the ADHO organizations (EADH, ACH, CSDH-SCHN, aaDH, JDH, and centerNet) and their various open-access journals and publications.

Guest editors for this special issue are Bethany Nowviskie (University of Virginia) and Melissa Terras (University College London), respectively chair and vice-chair of the 2013 program committee, and Katherine L. Walter (University of Nebraska), local host of the conference.

O DH Pioneers! at the AGM in Nebraska

Susan Brown — Thu, 18 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to all of the contributors to our Pedagogy Lightning Talks at the ACH AGM at DH2013. A tremendous wealth of creativity and experience was shared in a short 15 minutes, and the slides will very shortly be posted on this site.

In the meantime, though, here is the wonderfully witty poem that provided a wonderful capstone to the lightning presentations.

Some people believe in the “new new new thing”
That we know as DH — but I’d like to bring

Something older and wiser to the next generation:
DH history, tradition, respect, veneration.

Willa Cather, whose homeland is hosting, my dears,
Has inspired my title: O DH Pioneers!

I tell DH students of Busa and Bush
(that’s Roberto and Vannevar — not George Dubya, whoosh!)

I like them to know Michael Sperberg-McQueen,
And then claim XML as his DH machine.

I also proclaim, from my own institution,
A somewhat less famous DH contribution:

My very own colleague, Elijah R. Meeks,
Who gave Wikipedia its first DH tweaks.

But something is missing: No need to be prudish:
These DH pioneers are all whitish, and dudish!

DH women and people of color — we’ve got ’em!
I’d like to suggest that it’s time that we taught ’em.

To enhance our rich history with something less cursory:
Not only more History, but also more Herstory.

— Glen Worthey, 2013

ACH Microgrants Winners 2013!

Susan Brown — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is very pleased to announce the winners of our second Microgrants competition!

The 2013 ACH Microgrants winners are:

Adeline Koh (Director of the Center for Digital Humanities and Assistant Professor of Literature, Richard Stockton College) and Roopika Risam (Assistant Professor of World Literature and English Education, Salem State University): $500 for an initial prototype of “Digitizing Chinese Englishmen” and public report on the impact of this initial intervention in colonial archival silences.

Purdom Lindblad (College Librarian for Humanities and Digital Humanities, Virginia Tech), Andi Ogier (Data Science and Informatics Librarian in the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, Virginia Tech Libraries), and Quinn Warnick (Assistant Professor of digital rhetoric in the English Department, Virginia Tech): $500 for “dm4dh: Data Management for the Digital Humanities”, a series of podcasts and supplemental blog posts to explore data management for digital humanities.

Scott B. Weingart (Ph.D. student, School of Informatics, Indiana University): $500 for “Assessing Relevancy in DH”, a project to produce a series of blog posts exploring trends in the DH world via analysis of past DH conference offerings, the data for which will be made available in a shareable database.

An ACH Survey on Travel Funding

Bethany Nowviskie — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Ahead of the annual Digital Humanities conference and our summer ACH executive council meeting, we’re wondering: how well-supported are your DH-related travels?

Please take a moment to answer this brief survey!

ACH Events at DH 2013

Bethany Nowviskie — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The annual Digital Humanities conference is an opportunity for the ACH to pursue in-person many of the initiatives that we support more virtually during the year. We hope you’ll be able to join us for some or all of our events at DH2013 in Nebraska! See our full listing of activities, including a jobs slam, pedagogy lightning talks, mentorship mixer, newcomers’ dinners, and more!

ACH Endorses San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

Lisa Spiro — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) has endorsed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), a set of recommendations for applying more nuanced, accurate ways to evaluate research than the Journal Impact Factor (JIF).

Originally developed as a tool for librarians to use in determining what journals to subscribe to, the Journal Impact Factor calculates a ranking for scientific and scholarly journals based on the average number of citations their articles received in the previous two years. This ranking is used by many institutions to make hiring, promotion and funding decisions, even though the score reflects the number of citations for the journal as a whole rather than for particular articles. The JIF has significant flaws, including being skewed as a result of a journal publishing a few highly-cited articles, not distinguishing between more frequently-cited review articles and research articles, disadvantaging and discouraging new journals, not accounting for different citation rates in smaller fields, having the potential for being gamed, and not being transparent in how impact factors are calculated. DORA makes eighteen recommendations for researchers, funders, research institutions, organizations that provide metrics, and publishers, such as focusing evaluation on the content of a paper, applying article-based rather than journal-based metrics, incorporating research outputs such as datasets and software in evaluating impact, and promoting the reuse of reference lists through the adoption of Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication licenses.

Signing DORA corresponds with ACH’s broader aims to advocate for reforms in scholarly communication, including promoting open access. ACH is proud to be the one of the first humanities organizations to sign DORA. The ACH Executive Council encourages members to consider signing it as well.

Pedagogy Lightning Talks at the Annual General Meeting at DH2013

Vika Zafrin — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Do you have a quick story about a student project or training model to share? Want to tell us how you organized your syllabus, or make a pitch for a new way of thinking about DH education?

The ACH will be organizing a round of Pedagogy Lightning Talks during its annual general meeting at the DH2013 Conference in Lincoln at the Nebraska Student Union from noon-1:30pm on Wednesday, July 17th. We picture this as a fast-moving series of informal talks, and an opportunity for community members to talk about a single favorite teaching strategy or project—or a failed venture that you think is a useful learning experience!

One Slide, One Minute talks will be one minute long (strict time limit), and we will allow one slide.

The slide can be simple, with your name, a short talk title or the name of your strategy, and contact information in case someone from the audience would like to continue the conversation with you later. Or you could include a screenshot that summarizes or shows the site or tool or strategy that you’ll talk about.

In the interest of time, we will not be pulling up live websites; if you’d like to talk about a web resource, please put a screenshot into a slide. Links to further resources from your slide are also welcome.

If you would like to present, please email your slide (in PowerPoint or Pages format) to secretary@ach.org by July 12, 2013. We will combine all the slides into one document and post them online in advance of the AGM, as well as project them at the AGM itself.

Please join us for this exciting conversation-starting event!

Jobs Slam at the Annual General Meeting at DH2013

Stéfan Sinclair — Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH will again be organizing a Jobs Slam during its annual general meeting at the DH2013 Conference in Nebraska (time and location TBD). The Jobs Slam is a lively event and a chance for employers to get the word out about upcoming jobs as well as for prospective employees to introduce themselves to everyone present.

If you have a current or upcoming job opening at your institution, please send a message to sgsinclair@gmail.com with the following:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about the job (title, affiliation, duration, etc.)
A link to other information, if available

If you are on the job market or anticipate being so in the next few months, please send a message to sgsinclair@gmail.com with the following:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about your qualifications & area of expertise

Purveyors and seekers of jobs will each have up to 30 seconds to present. Please come join us for this exciting match-making event!

Digital Humanities 2013

Alex Gil — Sat, 04 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

ACH Annual General Meeting, Jobs Slam, and Pedagogy Lightning Talks

Also planned for this year’s AGM is an open program of informal lightning talks on DH pedagogy. Do you have a quick story about a student project or training model to share? Want to tell us how you organized your syllabus or make a pitch for a new way of thinking about DH education? See our post on lightning talks for details and to sign up!

The ACH AGM will be held in the Nebraska Student Union from noon-1:30pm on Wednesday, July 17th. Join us for a free, healthy, vegetarian-friendly lunch!

We also hope to enhance remote participation to this year’s AGM, beyond just the backchannel communication that we’ve had in past years. Internet gods and hotel conference wifi willing, we will find a way to broadcast the proceedings and enable remote participation. We will update this space with more details as we’re able.

ACH Newcomers Dinner

Dinners will happen the evening of Wednesday, 17 July, with parties departing from the lobby of the conference hotel at the times indicated. For ease of conversation, groups are limited to six people. Long-term ACH members and other DH conference veterans are heartily encouraged to volunteer! Sign up and learn more.

ACH Mentorship Mixer

This is a very casual outing where all current participants in the ACH Mentoring program are invited to a local pub or bar to chat with one another. The first round of refreshments is offered by the ACH. This year’s edition will take place at the Starlite Lounge, Thursday July 18th at 7pm (247 N 8th St, Suite 101, Lincoln NE 68508).

Please Ask, Do Tell

After a hiatus of a couple of years the "Please Ask! Do Tell!" stickers will be back with a vengeance, complete with a new design. Don’t be shy, ask and tell!

Someone with this sticker may have some advice to offer or know about an interesting DH job – please feel free to ask them!

Someone with this sticker is looking for professional advice and/or job opportunities, so if you have something to offer, please let them know! Pick up your sticker(s) at the ACH display near the DH 2013 registration tables!

Join ACH

And if you like what you see, and want to become part of a welcoming, international, interdisciplinary, and inter-professional DH association, we invite you to join the ACH today.

Help us promote DH work!

Bethany Nowviskie — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) invites applications for the position of publications liaison, a volunteer position to help increase the visibility of the association’s journals and other publications.

ADHO publications are primarily owned by its constituent organizations; these publications include:

LLC. The Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (a print journal whose ownership resides with ALLC/EADH);
Digital Humanities Quarterly (an online journal whose ownership resides with ACH);
Digital Studies/Le champ numérique (an online journal whose ownership resides with CSDH/SCHN);
DH Commons (an online publication whose ownership resides with centerNet);
Humanist (an online discussion group);
Digital Humanities Questions and Answers (a community-based Q&A board whose ownership resides with ACH and ProfHacker); and
Topics in the Digital Humanities (a monograph series);

More information about ADHO publications may be found at on their website.

The ADHO publications liaison would work with publishers and indexing services to ensure that ADHO publications are properly indexed, advise on metadata best practices, and recommend other discovery strategies.

Appointment will be made by the ADHO Steering Committee upon recommendation from the ADHO Publications Committee. The publications liaison will begin a three-year term of appointment following the Digital Humanities conference in July 2013.

Applications, including a current CV and a brief statement outlining a proposed plan for increasing ADHO publications’ visibility, should be sent to:

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Chair, ADHO Publications Committee: kfitz47@gmail.com.

The deadline for receipt of applications is 15 April 2013.

ACH Microgrants 2013: Microsteps to Advance the Digital Humanities

Jeremy Boggs — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Proposals due 15 April 2013.

Awards: ~$200-500; $2000 total grant call

The Executive Council of the Association for Computers and the Humanities is delighted to announce its second round of Microgrants.

We invite proposals that will advance the goals and mission of the ACH, to support computer-assisted research, teaching, and software and content development in humanistic disciplines.

Projects should be modest and designed to be accomplished within roughly six months. Examples of possible projects, meant to inspire rather than limit:

a mobile app for the DH conference
a framework for sharing DH syllabi
enhancements to DH Questions & Answers
initiatives that enhance the redesigned ACH Website
activities that add functionality/features to the online journal Digital Humanities Quarterly
an approach for aggregating or curating videos related to the digital humanities, such as conference talks, project-related videos and oral histories
new content, such as podcasts
making old content, such as DHQ content or ACH-related history, accessible in new forms or amenable to visualization or analytics.

Proposals may be for projects in a range of forms including, but not limited to, apps, plugins, and tools. ACH is particularly interested in proposals that focus on enhanced communications with ACH members and our mentoring and advocacy initiatives. Proposals should seek to draw in the community, expand the existing community, or link to other initiatives. Graduate students and early stage researchers are encouraged to apply.

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

excellence and innovation of the proposal;
contribution of the activity to development and promotion of the ACH mission;
deliverables can be accomplished within the proposed budget and time period.

For further technical information about the ACH/DHQ websites please see further details below.

Applicants must be members of the ACH at the time of application.

It is expected that grants will be in the range of $US 200-500. These are intended to be small grants that enable innovative activities by community members, such as graduate students, alt-ac faculty and staff, and junior faculty, who don’t have access to the resources of senior researchers. Projects should begin no later than three months after receipt of notification of acceptance and should conclude by 31 December 2013.

Proposals should be no longer than three pages (ca. 750 words) and should contain the following information:

Name, background and full contact details of proposer (institutional affiliation, email address, etc).
Name of organization (if the proposal is being submitted on behalf of an organization).
Narrative addressing the criteria above, both conceptual and technical with clear statement of deliverables.
If support will be needed from ACH or DHQ technical staff, please state the type of support needed.
Budget justification that explains what is needed and why (no longer than ½ page).
Date for project start date, date of conclusion, and for final report.

Further technical details:

Last year’s microgrant projects can be found here: http://ach.org/news/2012/04/ach-announces-microgrants-winners. Quinn Dombrowski’s project is on hold pending changes DH Questions and Answers. Amanda Visconti’s visualizations of DHQ content can be found here: http://digitalliterature.net/viewDHQ/. The DH jobs list created by Matt Burton and Dave Lester is here: http://jobs.lofhm.org/about/.

Please send proposals or queries to microgrants@ach.org by 15 April 2013.

Susan Brown, for the Microgrants group: Jarom McDonald, Lisa Spiro, and Vika Zafrin

Beyond the Digital CFP for MLA 2014

Brian Croxall — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Recent MLA Conventions have featured many sessions about the digital humanities, considering their impact on methodology, pedagogy, bibliography, race, and the profession itself. What is sometimes forgotten, however, is that the output of digital analysis is not itself the goal; rather, it is a means to an end, and that end is the interpretation of a text or corpus (understood widely). This session—organized by the Association for Computers and Humanities (ACH)—seeks to re-establish this understanding and conversation, defamiliarizing the conversation about the digital and making it re-familiar to the larger body of MLA participants.

This panel will feature presentations that offer interpretations of texts, language, literature and/or literary history that definitely began with a digital approach. Crucially, however, we will ask presenters to speak not about their methods but instead about their interpretation, results, and conclusions.

Speakers will give brief talks (5-7 minutes, depending on number of participants). Speakers will also be invited to write brief blog posts to be shared on their own websites as well as that of the ACH about their methods and approaches. These posts will be shared at the session but will not form the subject of the conversation.

Send 300-word abstracts and bio to brian.croxall@emory.edu by 27 March 2013 at 12pm EST. N.B. All panelists will need to be MLA members (or have their membership waived) by April 7th.

I am organizing this session on behalf of the ACH. Since the ACH is an allied organization of the MLA, this session is guaranteed for the 2014 MLA.

ACH endorses OSTP policy/FASTR

Lisa Spiro — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Last year, the Association for Computers and the Humanities strongly advocated for “open access to federally-funded research and research publications, and the inclusion of humanities voices in… crucial conversations” about public access to public goods, in an open letter to the US White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Today, the ACH Executive Council celebrates a groundbreaking OSTP policy memorandum.

This policy institutes guidelines for open access closely aligned to the recently-introduced Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR). We urge our US-based members to advocate for legislation like FASTR, and to share their support for the new OSTP policy with federal funders of digital humanities research.

A bi-partisan bill, FASTR would make the new OSTP policy into law, mandating that federal agencies with extramural research budgets of at least $100 million give the public online access to research manuscripts resulting from taxpayer funding. These manuscripts would be made available no more than six months after being published in a peer-reviewed journal. FASTR would build upon the success of the NIH mandate for public access to federally funded research, which has made available an average of 90,000 papers annually and served approximately 700,000 unique users each weekday. FASTR includes protections for publishers of subscription-based journals, including an embargo of up to six months and the requirement that the final version of the manuscript, not the published version, be deposited. ACH encourages its US-based members to contact their representatives in support of FASTR, which promises to ensure access to scholarly research funded by the public, facilitate innovative computational research methods such as text and data mining, foster the sharing and discovery of knowledge, and increase the visibility and value of academic work.

On behalf of its membership, the ACH Executive Council also reiterates the importance of including humanities perspectives in continuing conversations about public access to taxpayer-supported research, with an eye toward requiring that all funding agencies take open access policies and mandates seriously.

“Today’s OSTP announcement is a watershed moment for open access in the United States,” said ACH president Bethany Nowviskie. “Humanities agencies like the NEH and IMLS may have special challenges in implementing such policies, but digital humanities scholars and practitioners can help lead the way. Taxpayer-funded humanities scholarship is a public good,” she added, “and it is our duty, where necessary, to reconfigure existing systems of academic publishing and prestige in order to make this work as freely and immediately available as we can.”

ACH mourns Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen

Bethany Nowviskie — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Like many in the global DH community, members of the ACH Executive Council were saddened to learn of the death of our friend Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen, chair of ALLC, the European Association for Digital Humanities.

Lisa Lena was a steadfast mentor to junior scholars, a keen supporter of cross-cultural collaboration, and a warm and intelligent participant in worldwide DH conversations over the past two decades. We join our ADHO colleagues in gratitude for her contributions and sorrow at her passing.

New membership rate for 2013!

Bethany Nowviskie — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Great news for students, early-career professionals, and unwaged or low-waged independent scholars!

You can now join ACH as a joint ADHO member at the extremely low cost of $25.

This annual fee entitles you to all the regular benefits of ACH (and joint ADHO) membership, including reduced registration fees at events like Digital Humanities 2013, the ability to vote in elections and be elected to leadership positions in our association, eligibility for young-scholar bursaries at conferences and workshops and for opportunities like ACH microgrants, and all our other programs and services. Your fees will also contribute to a number of ACH and ADHO open access publishing ventures, including Digital Humanities Quarterly and DH Questions and Answers!

Just choose the “Student rate – Society fee” option on our OUP-managed subscription site. (An improved interface for joining ACH and ADHO is in the works!)

A subscription to LLC: the journal of digital scholarship in the humanities is, however, not included at this level of membership. Students wishing to subscribe to the journal as part of their memberships are encouraged to do so at an annual cost of $72 (ACH only) or $87 (joint ADHO membership). Institutional subscriptions and individual membership support for LLC funds the good work of ADHO associations worldwide.

If financial concerns have prevented you from becoming an ACH member in the past, we happily and warmly invite you to join us now.

ACH Election Results Announced

Vika Zafrin — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the 2012 ACH elections held earlier this month.

Elected to serve on the Executive Council for the 2013-2016 term, in alphabetical order, are Brian Croxall, Jennifer Guiliano, and Mia Ridge.

Elected to fill a one-year vacancy on the Council is Ernesto Priego.

On behalf of the ACH, we congratulate our newly elected representatives, and thank all of this year’s candidates for being willing to donate time to the organization. It was a tremendous slate, and we look forward to working with all of you, in ways formal and informal, in the coming year.

Ticket Bursaries for UKMW12

Stéfan Sinclair — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In support of museums’ ongoing engagement in the world of the digital and encouragement of young professionals’ exploration of the digital humanities, ACH is pleased to offer up to five (5) ticket bursaries for student/unwaged participants in UKMW12, the UK conference for Museums on the Web.

To apply, please send a short email to Eric Johnson at ej9k@virginia.edu by 5pm GMT on Thursday, November 22, 2012, indicating any previous attendance at UKMW and briefly describing what you hope to gain from UKMW12 and your interest or involvement in the broader fields of the digital humanities and museums/digital heritage. Preference is given to first-time conference attendees or those who are new (one to three years) in the field. (You can be reimbursed for your registration if you've already paid and your bursary request is granted.)

Museums Computer Group (MCG) Museums on the Web

The Museums Computer Group (MCG) is a professional society for museum, gallery, archive and higher education professionals who work with museum technologies and digital heritage. The MCG organises the annual UK Museums On The Web (UKMW) conference for people who make museum websites great. UKMW12 will be held in London on 30 November 2012.

UKMW12 is about being ‘strategically digital’. Responding to the issues faced by museums today, it's an opportunity to take a step back from the everyday and think strategically about the impact of the digital revolution on museums and digital heritage projects. The sold-out conference brings together speakers from organisations including the Tate, the V&A, UCL, King's College, the Guardian, Strategic Content Alliance, Collections Trust and Caper who'll share their hard-won lessons about implementing digital strategies in museums, and the realities of working with online audiences and platforms.

ACH advocacy news

Bethany Nowviskie — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Today, the ACH is celebrating a very favorable ruling for digital research and fair use in a United States district court. This summer, we joined a group of 46 digital humanities scholars in filing two amicus briefs in lawsuits related to digitization of in-copyright and orphaned works in the Google Books and HathiTrust corpora.

The briefs describe how DH scholars employ innovative data-mining techniques in ways consistent with fair use, and how scholarship could be held back if this kind of research is not well supported by the courts. Yesterday's ruling in the matter of Authors Guild v. HathiTrust cites the Digital Humanities brief twice as meaningful evidence in support of scholarly fair use.

This effort, spearheaded by Matthew Jockers, Matthew Sag, and Jason Schultz on behalf of the DH community, is described in the journal Nature (paywalled link) and the brief itself is available for download.

Partnership with DHCommons on ACH Mentorship

Stéfan Sinclair — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH is very pleased to announce a partnership with DHCommons meant to broaden our successful digital humanities mentorship program. The ACH's mentorship program matches newcomers to the digital humanities with experienced advisors in the field for job market advice, networking, and professional guidance.If you would like to participate, visit the DHCommons sign-up page and complete the ACH Mentoring program fields.

Once you've filled out your basic information, click "ACH Mentorship Program" in the left column and indicate 1) whether you would like to request a mentor or volunteer to be a mentor and 2) your experience and interests in DH. The ACH's mentorship program coordinator, Stéfan Sinclair, will use this information to match you with a partner who shares your interests within a few days. To learn more about the ACH's mentorship program, visit our mentoring page.

All information about ACH mentees and mentor volunteers is kept private, and shared only with the matching committee and the mentor/mentee you're matched with. If you're seeking guidance about digital humanities, or if you're willing to share your experiences and offer advice, edit your DHCommons profile today to sign up for the ACH Mentoring Program!

ACH Election Nominations

Jeremy Boggs — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Due date: September 21st, 2012

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) invites nominations for this year's elections. We are electing three Executive Council members to four-year terms and one to fill a 1-year vacancy, and seek candidates who want to advance the field of digital humanities by helping to run the ACH.

ACH officers and Executive Council members form ACH's policies, decide how we will spend funds, and oversee all activities. These include our mentorship program and jobs slams, advocacy work, bursaries for DH training programs, publications like Digital Humanities Quarterly and DH Answers, and our collaborations with ADHO partners in the annual DH conference, along with its prestigious awards and student bursaries. You could be involved in helping ACH programs succeed by nominating yourself to be an active participant in the life of the Association.

To be confirmed to the Executive Council, candidates must be members of the ACH. They commit to attending annual council meetings at the DH conference and hold discussions during the rest of the year by email and Skype. Council members are expected to be active in the digital humanities community. But these are not roles reserved to those in senior positions: graduate students have often served on the council, and demonstrated commitment to the organization and to the field counts for more with our membership than job titles.

Send nominations to ach-nominations@digitalhumanities.org by September 21st. Please confirm with your nominee that he or she is willing to serve, and provide a brief note of interest and qualifications. A platform statement will also be needed for the ballot but need not be included with the nomination. You are warmly encouraged to nominate yourself, but note that per ACH bylaws each nominee requires two nominations to be considered for the ballot. This year, the committee charged with creating a balanced slate will put forward no more than 20 names The three top vote-getters will be elected to four-year terms. The candidate winning the 1-year slot will be eligible for re-election next year.

For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of ACH officers, see our constitution and bylaws. Current officers of the ACH are listed on our officers page.

Many thanks,

ACH Nominations Committee

Katherine L. Walter, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Chair
Johanna Drucker, UCLA
Matt Jockers, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Ernesto Priani, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

Ex officio members

Bethany Nowviskie, ACH President
Stefan Sinclair, ACH Vice President
Jarom McDonald, ACH Treasurer

Digital Humanities 2013 (“Freedom to Explore”) – Call for Papers

Jeremy Boggs — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Digital Humanities 2013 ("Freedom to Explore") – Call for Papers
Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations
Hosted by the University of Nebraska
16-19 July 2013
Paper/Poster/Panel deadline: 1 November 2012 Workshop proposal deadline: 15 February 2013

Call for Papers

I. General Information

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) invites submissions of abstracts for its annual conference, on any aspect of the digital humanities. This includes but is not limited to:

humanities research enabled through digital media, data mining, software studies, or information design and modeling;
computer applications in literary, linguistic, cultural, and historical studies, including electronic literature, public humanities, and interdisciplinary aspects of modern scholarship;
the digital arts, architecture, music, film, theatre, new media, digital games, and related areas;
the creation and curation of humanities digital resources;
social, institutional, global, multilingual, and multicultural aspects of digital humanities;
and the role of digital humanities in pedagogy and academic curricula.

We particularly welcome submissions on interdisciplinary work and new developments in the field, and encourage proposals relating to the theme of the conference.

Presentations may include:

posters (abstract max of 750 words);
short papers (abstract max of 1500 words);
long papers (abstract max of 1500 words);
multiple paper sessions, including panels (regular abstracts + approximately 500-word overview);
and pre-conference workshops and tutorials (proposal max of 1500 words)

The deadline for submitting poster, short paper, long paper, and sessions proposals to the international Program Committee is midnight GMT, 1 November 2012. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 1 February 2013. Workshop and pre-conference tutorial proposals are due at midnight GMT on 15 February 2013, with notice of acceptance by 15 March 2013. An electronic submission form will be available on the conference site at the beginning of October 2012. Previous DH conference participants and reviewers should use their existing accounts rather than setting up new ones. If you have forgotten your user name or password, please contact Program Committee chair Bethany Nowviskie at bethany@virginia.edu.

II. Types of Proposals

Proposals may be of five types: (1) poster presentations; (2) short paper presentations; (3) long papers; (4) three-paper or full panel sessions; and (5) proposals for pre-conference workshops and tutorials. Based on peer review and its mandate to create a balanced and varied program, the Program Committee may offer acceptance in a different category from the one initially proposed, and will normally not accept multiple submissions from the same author or group of authors. Papers and posters may be given in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish.

1) Poster Presentations

Poster proposals (500 to 750 words) may describe work on any topic of the call for papers or offer project and software demonstrations. Posters and demonstrations are intended to be interactive, with the opportunity to exchange ideas one-on-one with attendees. In addition to a dedicated session, when presenters will explain their work and answer questions, posters will be on display at various times during the conference.

2) Short Papers

Short paper proposals (750 to 1500 words) are appropriate for reporting on experiments or work in progress, or for describing newly conceived tools or software in early stages of development. This category of presentation allows for up to five short papers in a single session, with the length held to a strict 10 minutes each in order to allow time for questions.

3) Long Papers

Proposals for long papers (750 to 1500 words) are appropriate for: substantial, completed, and previously unpublished research; reports on the development of significant new methodologies or digital resources; and/or rigorous theoretical, speculative, or critical discussions. Individual papers will be allocated 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for questions. Proposals about the development of new computing methodologies or digital resources should indicate how the methods are applied to research and/or teaching in the humanities, what their impact has been in formulating and addressing research questions, and should include critical assessment of their application in the humanities. Papers that concentrate on a particular tool or digital resource in the humanities should cite traditional as well as computer-based approaches to the problem and should include critical assessments of the computing methodologies used. All proposals should include relevant citations to sources in the literature.

4) Multiple Paper Sessions

These consist of one 90-minute panel of four to six speakers, or three long papers on a single theme. Panel organizers should submit an abstract of 750 to 1500 words describing the panel topic, how it will be organized, the names of all the speakers, and an indication that each speaker is willing to participate in the session. Paper session organizers should submit a statement of approximately 500 words describing the session topic, include abstracts of 750 to 1500 words for each paper, and indicate that each author is willing to participate in the session. Papers that are submitted as part of a special session may not be submitted individually for consideration in another category.

5) Pre-Conference Workshops and Tutorials

Participants in pre-conference workshops or tutorials will be expected to register for the full conference as well as pay a small additional fee. Proposals should provide the following information:

a title and brief description of the content or topic and its relevance to the DH community (not more than 1500 words);
full contact information for all tutorial instructors or workshop leaders, including a one-paragraph statement of their research interests and areas of expertise;
a description of target audience and expected number of participants (based, if possible, on past experience);
and any special requirements for technical support.

Additionally, tutorial proposals should include:

a brief outline showing that the core content can be covered in a half day (approximately 3 hours, plus breaks). In exceptional cases, full-day tutorials may be supported as well.

And workshop proposals must include:

the intended length and format of the workshop (minimum half-day; maximum one and a half days);
a proposed budget (as DH workshops are expected to be self-financing);
and, if the workshop is to have its own CFP, a deadline and date for notification of acceptances, and a list of individuals who have agreed to be part of the workshop's program committee.

III. Information about the Conference Venue and Theme

DH 2013 ("Freedom to Explore") will take place in Lincoln, Nebraska, a capitol city of 258,000 people on the Great Plains of the United States. Lincoln is known for its artistic treasures, live music scene, fabulous trails, and friendly Midwestern attitude. It is also the home of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, chartered in 1869 as both a land-grant and a research university. UNL's approximately 25,000 students come from about 120 different countries. Among its many degree offerings is an interdisciplinary graduate certificate in digital humanities. The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities is this year's local organizer.

IV. Bursaries for young scholars

The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations will offer a limited number of bursaries for early-career scholars presenting at the conference. Application guidelines will appear on the ADHO website later this year.

V. International Program Committee

Craig Bellamy (ACH)
John Bradley (ALLC)
Paul Caton (ACH)
Carolyn Guertain (CSDH/SCHN)
Ian Johnson (aaDH)
Bethany Nowviskie (ACH, chair)
Sarah Potvin (cN)
Jon Saklofske (CSDH/SCHN)
Sydney Shep (aaDH)
Melissa Terras (ALLC, vice-chair)
Tomoji Tabata (ALLC)
Deb Verhoeven (aaDH)
Ethan Watrall (cN)

Draft FairCite Proposal to the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations

Jeremy Boggs — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Early in 2012, a discussion began among members of the ADHO community concerning fair citation practices in digital humanities, and in particular the question of how to cite digital humanities projects. These projects pose a particular challenge for citation, because they are typically very broadly collaborative and because standard practices for citation of such projects do not yet exist as they do for more traditional forms of publication. An informal initiative was developed, led by a group including Adam Crymble, Julia Flanders, Bethany Nowviskie, Stéfan Sinclair, and Melissa Terras, and using the term "FairCite", to prompt discussion within the ADHO community concerning citation practices. Adam Crymble and Julia Flanders have developed a draft proposal based on that discussion. This draft is being circulated to the executive councils of the ADHO constituent organizations for discussion and comment. It is intended primarily to prompt that discussion. ADHO and its constituent organizations have reviewed the draft below and encouraged the FairCite group to move forward to encourage public discussion, and to develop a further draft based on the comments and suggestions we receive and submit it to ADHO for formal consideration.

Comments of all kinds are encouraged and should be sent to Adam Crymble faircite@digitalhumanities.org; all comments will be shared with the FairCite working group and may be used in developing the final proposal.

Proposal

We urge the ADHO members to adopt a resolution that supports clear citation guidelines for digital projects that acknowledge the collaborative reality of these undertakings. We also urge that ADHO convene a broad discussion of the more complex set of issues raised in the Appendix to this proposal.

This proposal describes two things: first, a set of general best practices to provide for fair citation of digital humanities projects; and second, a more precisely defined set of practices for projects to follow if they want to identify themselves as "FairCite compliant". Compliance as envisioned here is not a requirement of any kind, but a way of clearly identifying whether a constrained set of practices is being followed.

Proposed guidelines for web-based digital humanities projects in providing citation information about team participants

Websites should provide clear instructions to the public and a statement of how the project team would like the project cited. This citation information should be available via the “about” page or some other relevant webpage on the website. Sites conforming to the FairCite guidelines should place this statement in a standard place (e.g. /cite at the root level of the web site).
Citation examples should clearly outline which team members’ names should be included in the citation and if not all names are included then “et. al” should be appended after the last team member’s name.
Names of individuals who made significant contributions but that are not included in the citation should be available elsewhere on the website with a full and honest explanation of that person’s role in building the project.
If the project undergoes regular, major updates, then a version number should be included with the citation, as well as a date of the last major change.

Proposed guidelines for authors wishing to cite web-based digital humanities projects

Authors wishing to include a bibliographic citation of a digital humanities project should use the FairCite compliant citation form if one is given.
In the absence of a FairCite compliant citation, authors should seek citation information on the project site, and follow the requested format if one is given.

Proposed guidelines for publications (e.g. journals and books)

Publications should recommend that authors follow the FairCite guidelines for citation of digital humanities projects. FairCite compliant publications should require that authors follow these guidelines.

Appendix: Additional issues and questions for further discussion by ADHO members

In the initial FairCite discussions, responses were varied concerning who should decide whom to credit, and how that decision should be made:
- it should be up to the individual project, based on their local culture; it should be treated as an internal matter
- there should be public moral pressure and a sense of best practice, but there is no role for anything like a 'standard' practice
- there should be an articulated best practice; it's a matter of public concern and a legitimate domain for standard-setting
In the initial FairCite discussions, responses were even more varied concerning whom should be credited. The responses can be summarized roughly as follows:
- credit for project work is good…
- but is unrelated to citation
- but is poorly handled by citation; better to use a portfolio or other approach
- but citation is an irrelevant or damaging mechanism
- and should be handled through citation…
  - and could be standardized
  - but has to be handled on a case-by-base basis
- credit for project work is unimportant
- credit for project work is undesirable
The initial FairCite discussions also included the question of how best to credit people, with focus on the following issues:
- the issue of how much detail to include, and of what terminology to use
- the question of whether it is possible or desirable to use standard descriptions of roles
- the question of whether to distinguish between "intellectual" and "technical" work, between "content" and "infrastructure" work
- the problem of crediting third-party contributors who developed components used

Microgrants Update: View DHQ

Jeremy Boggs — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In just three months, our microgrants are already starting to bear fruit. Earlier this week, Amanda Visconti published her project, View DHQ, which provides visualizations of citation networks in the Digital Humanities Quarterly.

Amanda also blogged about the project in a two-part series: "Visualizing Data from the Digital Humanities Quarterly" and "Getting Started with Gephi for DH Vis". Nice work, Amanda!

Jobs Slam at the Annual General Meeting at DH2012

Stéfan Sinclair — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The ACH will again be organizing a Jobs Slam during its annual general meeting at the DH2012 Conference in Hamburg (July 19th at 12:30pm). The Jobs Slam is a lively event and a chance for employers to get the word out about upcoming jobs as well as for prospective employees to introduce themselves to everyone present.

If you have a current DH-related job posting or anticipate one in the next few months, please send a message to stefan.sinclair@mcgill.ca with the following information:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about the job (title, affiliation, duration, etc.)
A link to other information, if available

If you are on the job market or anticipate being so in the next few months, please send me a message with the following:

Your name, affiliation and basic contact information
Basic information about your qualifications & area of expertise

Purveyors and seekers of jobs will each have up to 30 seconds to present. Please come join us for this exciting match-making event!

Call for nominations for the 2014 Zampolli Prize

Jeremy Boggs — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Zampolli Prize is a awarded every three years by The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) in recognition of an outstanding singular achievement in the Digital Humanities.

The Prize is named in honor of Antonio Zampolli, one of the founders of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) and its president when he tragically died in 2003.

The first award was given to Chad Gaffield in 2011.

The next Zampolli Prize will be given at the DH conference in 2014. The Award Committee, made up of members of the constituent organizations of ADHO, now invites nominations. These may be made by anyone with an interest in humanities computing and neither nominee nor nominator need be a member of any of the ADHO constituent organizations.

The nomination should consist of the following information: a description of the nominee's work and the reasons why this work is considered to be an outstanding contribution to the field of Digital Humanities. A list of bibliographic references to the nominee's work is desirable. Nominators are welcome to resubmit updated versions of unsuccessful nominations submitted in previous years.

The recipient of the award will receive 1000 GBP and is expected to give a keynote or plenary lecture (on a topic of their choice) at the 2014 annual Digital Humanities conference. ADHO will host the recipient as a guest of honor for the conference at which the Prize is awarded and the lecture is given – this means that all travel, accommodation and subsistence costs of the Prize recipient will be paid by the Alliance.

Nominations should be emailed to Karina van Dalen-Oskam karina.van.dalen@huygens.knaw.nl no later than October 1st, 2012. The winner of the Award will be announced at the 2013 meeting and awarded at the 2014 meeting.

More information about the award can be found on the ADHO web site.

The ADHO Awards Committee,

Karina van Dalen-Oskam (chair)
Matt Jockers
Jon Saklofske
Øyvind Eide

ACH Agenda-Setting: Next Steps

Bethany Nowviskie — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last month, the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) began an experiment in grassroots idea-generation and transparent agenda-setting.

Using an open-source platform called "All Our Ideas," association members and interested digital humanists added 18 fresh concepts to a starter-set of 8, which had been drawn from earlier conversations among elected representatives and the ACH community. In May, participants on 6 continents cast more than 2700 votes, generating a ranked list of interests and priorities.

The five most popular suggestions were:

"to explore a membership model that doesn't require subscription to a journal;"
"to create and promote standards for credit & authorship in collaborative projects;"
"to explore relationships w/ DH-sympathetic orgs operating beyond the academy (Museum Computer Network, Nat'l Council on Public History, etc);"
"to devise guidelines for training undergraduates and graduates in digital humanities;" and
"to develop models for distributed digital humanities training, recognizing that local communities are small and not all can afford to travel."

Other highly-ranked ideas centered around DH outreach and expansion, including ways to support and guide the growth of our annual ADHO-sponsored Digital Humanities conference, and to create other opportunities for ACH members to engage with local and international DH communities.

The full results of our polling experiment are available online. Although we have captured the current state of the data and already begun to work, the poll will remain open through this summer's mid-July Digital Humanities conference, when ACH holds its annual business and members' meetings.

We announced this experiment with a promise: that, while ACH can't undertake every project suggested, we will take our community's views seriously and address as many resulting ideas as possible, in open and public dialogue.

Some of your priorities match initiatives and conversations ACH has already begun. Others are new. Some will spark targeted and concrete projects; others will drive us toward further conversation with you and with our partners in the international ADHO community. Over the weeks and months to come, look for a series of newsletter mailings, blog posts on the ACH website, and announcements on the Humanist list. These will describe new and ongoing partnerships and projects, report on progress and share challenges, and (above all) ask for your further input and guidance.

We will also call for volunteers on committees and ad hoc working groups. As always, we welcome participation by members and non-members alike — but we encourage you to support ACH by joining the association!

We're grateful for the energy and goodwill of the community we serve — and for the opportunity you've given us to do more and more meaningful work. Thank you!

On behalf of the ACH Executive Council,

Bethany Nowviskie,
President, Association for Computers & the Humanities

Open Agenda-Setting

Bethany Nowviskie — Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In 2012, the ACH is working toward more open and transparent agenda-setting. We need you to help us better serve the international digital humanities community — by generating new ideas for ACH to explore, and prioritizing items already on our radar. Please join in!

Open Agenda-Setting

Bethany Nowviskie — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In 2012, ACH began taking concrete steps towards adopting a more open and transparent agenda-setting as a professional society. Since then we have looked to you to help us better serve our diverse, international digital humanities community — by generating new ideas for us to explore, and helping to prioritize items that are already on our Executive Council's agenda.

To that end, we launched an "idea marketplace" using a transparent, grassroots, pairwise voting system called "All Our Ideas." Below, you'll find two ideas chosen at random from our community-generated pool, and will be asked to click on the one you find more important for ACH to pursue. You can also decline to decide between the two ideas, or add a suggestion of your own. A "view results" tab reveals the whole set of contributed ideas (helpful to read before suggesting a new one!) as ranked by the community.

ACH can't undertake every project you suggest, but we do promise to take our members' and community's views very seriously and to address as many of them as we can, in open dialogue.

Both association members and non-members are welcome to contribute to this process, and we are only moderating new submissions to prevent unproductive overlap or to clarify language.

Please take a moment to share your views on All Our Ideas.

ACH announces Microgrants winners!

Bethany Nowviskie — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is very pleased to announce the winners of our 2012 Microgrants competition!

The 2012 ACH Microgrants winners are:

Amanda Visconti (PhD student, Maryland-College Park): $285 to develop and share methods for visualizing the citation network evident in articles published by Digital Humanities Quarterly

Quinn Dombrowski (Chicago): $169 for a proposal on behalf of DH Commons and Bamboo DiRT, to provide cross-linking from both projects with mentions of specific tools on Digital Humanities Questions and Answers

Matt Burton (PhD student, Michigan) and Dave Lester (master's student, UC Berkeley): $500 to develop a digital humanities jobs database, incorporating historical data collected by ACH

ACH appoints a new Executive Secretary

Bethany Nowviskie — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Vika Zafrin as Executive Secretary of ACH and an ex officio member of the ACH Executive Council.

Vika is an institutional repository librarian at Boston University and a long-time member of the ACH community.

She takes the place of Dot Porter, Associate Director for Digital Library Content & Services at Indiana University, who is stepping down from the position of Executive Secretary to devote more time to the development of MESA, the Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance.

We are very grateful to Dot for her five years of creative and dedicated service to ACH — and look forward to working with Vika in her new role!

Advocacy Work at ACH

Bethany Nowviskie — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last year, the ACH Executive Council expanded the mandate of our committee on Outreach to include advocacy work on issues that matter to our members.

First, we were pleased to contribute funding to the 4Humanities initiative, which aims leverage the energy and expertise of the global DH community in demonstrating the value of humanities and cultural heritage work in the digital age.

Next, an open call through DH Answers, Twitter, and the Humanist list yielded a great deal of community input on two subjects: the value of open access content and open source software — particularly in the case of projects funded by public agencies — and the importance of careful planning for sustainability of digital work.

Based on community feedback, ACH crafted two powerful letters, to the National Endowment for the Humanities and (in collaboration with SDH-SEMI) to SSHRC. These agencies are the two major public funders of digital humanities work in the US and Canada. Our letters advocated the requirement of data management plans similar to those recently instituted by the NSF and NIH. We received a positive response from NEH Chairman Jim Leach, who described requirements subsequently announced as part of NEH's new Digital Humanities Implementation Grants — and shared the news that similar data management plans will become a part of ODH's Start-Up grants and other programs.

Among future areas of attention for the Outreach and Advocacy committee of ACH are matters of open access, and of proper attribution of credit for effort by our members in collaborative projects and on standards bodies.

Our involvement, along with other representatives of ADHO organizations, in the information-gathering phase of the FairCite initiative speaks to this latter concern. To address the former, this winter we issued a public response to a set of US White House RFIs, having to do with public access to federally-funded data and research outputs. ACH strongly advocated open access to federally-funded research and research publications, and the requested the inclusion of representatives from humanities agencies in crucial conversations about research for the public good. Our work in this area will continue.

Most recently, ACH participated in a widespread, ultimately successful, protest of proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation that would have gravely endangered free, open, and innovative online communication in the digital and public humanities.

We wish to serve as strong advocates for causes that matter to ACH members and to the broad digital humanities community. Stay tuned for further opportunities to provide your input: transparent, public agenda-setting for ACH is a major priority of our newly-elected leadership. In the meantime, please contact any of our Officers or Executive Council members with your ideas.

ACH election results

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the 2012 elections at the Association for Computers and the Humanities.

Officers, to serve 2012-2013:

President: Bethany Nowviskie (University of Virginia Library)
Vice-President: Stéfan Sinclair (McGill University)

ACH Executive Council, to serve 2012-2015:

Johanna Drucker (UCLA)
Matthew K. Gold (CUNY)
Glen Worthey (Stanford University)

See our full roster of officers and council members here.

Thanks very much to all the candidates and to these individuals for being willing to serve — and thanks also to all who voted. Thanks are also due to the nominations committee (Dot Porter [chair], Neil Fraistat, Brian Pytlik Zillig, and Bill Turkel) for preparing such a strong slate, and to all those who agreed to stand as candidates.

Finally, we offer our warm thanks to the outgoing members of the Council, Paul Caton, Bethany Nowviskie, Stéfan Sinclair, and Susan Schreibman, for their many years of service and their contributions to the ACH.

Julia Flanders (outgoing President, ACH)
Dot Porter (Secretary, ACH)

ACH Microgrants

Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

ACH Microgrants: Web Development and Scholarly Communication
Proposals Due 25 February 2012
Awards: ~$200-500; $2000 total grant call

The Executive of the Association for Computers and the Humanities is delighted to announce a call for Microgrants.

Proposals will be accepted in two categories:

initiatives that enhance the redesigned ACH Website, or
activities that add functionality/features to the online journal Digital Humanities Quarterly.

Proposals might include developing new content such as podcasts or making existing content more user friendly, more visible, or amenable to analytics. Proposals may take the form of apps, plugins, or tools. For DHQ, of particular interest are proposals focusing on integration of DHQ content with digital humanities tools, visualization of DHQ data, or enrichment of DHQ data. ACH is particularly interested in proposals that focus on enhanced communications with ACH members, our mentoring and advocacy initiatives, Digital Humanities Questions and Answers, or on the history of the association. Proposals should seek to draw in the community, expand the existing community, or link to other initiatives. Graduate students and early stage researchers are encouraged to apply.

Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

excellence and innovation of the proposal;
contribution of the activity to development and promotion of the ACH or DHQ missions;
deliverables can be accomplished within the proposed budget and time period.

For further technical information about the ACH/DHQ websites please see further details below.

Applicants must be members of the ACH at the time of application.

It is expected that grants will be in the range of $US 200-500. These are intended to be small grants that enable innovative activities by community members, such as graduate students, alt-ac faculty and staff, and junior faculty, who don't have access to the resources of senior researchers. Projects should begin no later than three months after receipt of notification of acceptance and should conclude by 31 December 2012.

Proposals should be no longer than three pages (ca. 750 words) and should contain the following information:

Name, background and full contact details of proposer (institutional affiliation, email address, etc).
Name of organization (if the proposal is being submitted on behalf of an organization).
Narrative addressing the criteria above, both conceptual and technical with clear statement of deliverables.
If it is envisioned that support will be needed from ACH or DHQ technical staff, please state the type of support needed.
Budget justification that explains what is needed and why (no longer than ½ page).
Date for project start date, date of conclusion, and for final report.

Further technical details

The DHQ publication platform includes the following features:

A RESTful API that exposes both the TEI/XML source and the generated HTML data, as well as several generated indexes (e.g. to authors and article titles; others are also feasible)
The data exposed through the API is TEI/XML and includes structured text, an abstract, a teaser, publication metadata, and a bibliography (though the encoding of the latter is very basic at the moment, pending completion of our current NEH startup grant to create a centralized bibliography for the journal).

The ACH website is Drupal-based. DH Answers runs a modified version of bbPress.

For additional details on the DHQ platform please email John Walsh jawalsh@indiana.edu and Julia Flanders julia_flanders@brown.edu. For ACH, please email dhanswers@digitalhumanities.org.

Please send submissions for grants to achgrant@googlegroups.com by 25 February 2012

ACH response to White House RFIs on open access to research

Bethany Nowviskie — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Today, the ACH issued a response to two Requests for Information made by the US White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

On behalf of the digital humanities community we represent, ACH strongly advocates open access to federally-funded research and research publications, and the inclusion of humanities voices in these crucial conversations.

We urge ACH members and other interested individuals to respond as well. The OSTP's deadline is January 12th.

Candidates for ACH Election

Elli Mylonas — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

ACH President

Bethany Nowviskie

I have had the privilege of serving on the ACH Executive Council since 2004. During that time I have helped coordinate several outreach initiatives, including the ACH Mentoring Program for emerging scholars (this includes an ongoing mentoring service, the ACH mixer at the annual Digital Humanities Conference and the Jobs Slam during the Annual General Meeting). I also helped establish the Digital Humanities Questions & Answers site, a community-driven resource motivated by a desire to share digital humanities expertise. As VP for the ACH I would like to continue and expand on these initiatives, particularly as the digital humanities community experiences continued growth and diversification.

Lisa Spiro

Biography

As the director of NITLE (National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education) Labs, I work with liberal arts colleges to promote innovative approaches to pedagogy and technology. I am a member of the team organizing the Digital Humanities Commons, which will act as a hub connecting people to DH projects and tools. Currently I serve on the ACH Executive Council; I have also been a member of the ACH’s outreach and nominations sub-committees. I edit the Digital Research Tools (DiRT) wiki and author the Digital Scholarship in the Humanities blog, where I explore topics such as DH education, getting started in digital humanities, and the significance of collaboration. My recent writing projects include a proposal for a networked, open DH certificate program; a call for the DH community to craft a values statement; and a discussion of why and how to pursue an alt-academic career. Before coming to NITLE, I directed the Digital Media Center at Rice University’s Fondren Library, where I oversaw the university’s central multimedia lab, led workshops on topics such as digital storytelling and digital research tools, and contributed to digital library projects. While a graduate student in English at the University of Virginia, I encoded texts at the Electronic Text Center and worked briefly as managing editor of Postmodern Culture.

Candidate Statement

I am honored to be nominated for the vice presidency of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), since I think the organization plays a vital role in supporting scholarly conversations, publication and information sharing, mentoring junior scholars, and representing the digital humanities community. I believe that I would bring energy, creativity and a broad understanding of the digital humanities to the office. As the digital humanities undergo rapid transformations, the ACH can convene the community to address challenges such as evaluating (and demonstrating the value of) digital scholarship; helping people develop the skills, knowledge and collaborations to pursue DH work; and defining and promoting common interests. Since the ACH is an all-volunteer organization with limited resources, it must be strategic in how it pursues such goals, particularly by creating opportunities for the community to participate and seeding projects.

As vice president, I would promote three main ideas:

collaboratively mapping out the future of the organization through an open, participatory planning process
expanding communication and outreach to ensure that the ACH represents the diversity of the global DH community
exploring how the ACH can support DH education and training, such as by promoting the sharing of syllabi and course resources, coordinating discussions of curriculum, and expanding the mentorship program

ACH Executive Council

Craig Bellamy

Biography & Candidate Statement

Dr Craig Bellamy is the Secretary/Treasurer for the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities and is a driving force in DH advocacy in the region. He is on the Programme Committee for the inaugural regional conference, ‘Digital Humanities Australasia’, as well as the ‘Sustainable Data from Digital Research’ conference in Melbourne in December, 2011. He has research interest in Virtual Research Environments for the humanities, textual analysis, and more recently, 19th Century colonial history. Like many scholars in the Digital Humanities field, Craig has had an eclectic; at times challenging, but always intrepid career path. He first entered computing in humanities in the mid-1990s as a history Masters student in ‘History and Hypertext’ at the University of Melbourne. After theoretically disentangling himself, he undertook a PhD in History and new media that included a large digital component. His thesis was a historical investigation of a local community in Melbourne that included a pioneering ‘hypertextual oral-history video-archive’ (2002). Since this time, Craig has lectured in the field of media and technology, has been a visiting fellow at the University of Virginia, and has worked as a Research Associate at King’s College in London. He is presently an Analyst, Digital Humanities, for VeRSI at the University of Melbourne that involves setting- up numerous events and seeding new projects. Craig brought THATCamp to Melbourne in 2011 and has invited lectures by international luminaries in the field thus forging links between the Australian and international fields. Craig will bring a fresh and energetic voice to the ACH; one of the premier organisations in the field, and seek regional and international opportunities to advance computing in the humanities in a meaningful way. He will help promote and advance the work of the ACH, especially through his experience in outreach, training, and publishing activities.

Jeremy Boggs

Glen Worthey

Biography

Glen Worthey is Digital Humanities Librarian in the Stanford University Libraries. You may remember him from such events as DH2011, where he was one of the local co-hosts. Glen has been active in the digital humanities since about 1995, when, as a graduate student, he took part in his first CETH Summer Seminar at Princeton, with many of the luminaries and pioneers of our field; he has been a member of ACH since 1997.

Glen's library work is focused on the selection, creation and curation of digital resources for humanities research and teaching at Stanford, and he is a member of the Stanford Literary Lab. His academic background and interests are in Russian literature (in which he is currently ABD at the University of California, Berkeley), Spanish language, translation theory and practice, and children's literature and culture.

Candidate Statement

I am honored to submit my candidacy to the ACH Executive Council. If I were elected to the Council, I would consider my service there as a continuation of the greatly challenging, enormously rewarding, immensely inspiring work that was co-hosting the DH2011 conference at Stanford.

The theme of DH2011 (which, if you'll pardon the immodesty, came from me) was "Big Tent DH," and it is this theme that continues to animate my thoughts and feeling about our DH community. But what exactly did I mean by it? Most obviously, the Big Tent was meant to signify a broad disciplinary inclusiveness. I believed then, as I do now, that our field — our conferences, our publications, our community — are at their best when they're most inclusive of many kinds of DH practice, and many kinds of DHers — whether they work in academic departments, libraries, computing centers, museums, or elsewhere. I believe it is this very same openness that has made DH both a haven for people on some sort of "alt-ac" career path, and an exemplary extended experiment in hierarchy-challenging collaboration.

But the DH2011 Big Tent meant more to me than just that. Risking immodesty again, I'd like to mention two different and very gratifying efforts I undertook in order to make DH2011 as inclusive and welcoming as possible: one was to arrange for conference childcare, and the other was to actively foster participation from DH colleagues (both present and potential) in Mexico. I hesitate to call these efforts "outreach": in both cases, though the number of people directly affected was relatively small, I believe it was our entire community that benefited from their inclusion. There are dozens of other under-represented or unrepresented communities (whether defined linguistically or geographically, by discipline or family status or career path) that could enrich our big ACH tent with a new vibrancy.

It's an outstanding time for the digital humanities, as both popular and academic attention are increasingly focused both on our work and on our community. I believe we should proclaim boldly the inclusiveness of that community, happily uniting with all those whose work can find resonance with ours. At the same time, the newly popular awareness of computational approaches in humanities research demands that we bring to bear all the historical depth and disciplinary seriousness that have come with decades of ACH activity.

Thank you for considering my candidacy for the ACH Council.

CFP: Digital Humanities 2012 (Hamburg, Germany)

Bethany Nowviskie — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The ADHO-sponsored conference is to be held at the University of Hamburg, 16-22 July 2012. Deadline November 1st. Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations Digital Humanities 2012 – Call for Papers Hosted by University of Hamburg 16-22 July 2012. Abstract deadline: November 1, 2011 (Midnight GMT). Please note: The Program Committee will not be offering an extension to the deadline as has become customary in recent years. The deadline of November 1 is firm. If you intend to submit a proposal for DH2012, you need to submit it via the electronic submission form on the conference website by November 1 Presentations include: Posters (abstract max of 1500 words) Short papers (abstract max of 1500 words) Long papers (abstract max of 1500 words) Multiple paper sessions, including panels (overview max of 500 words).

Call for Papers Announcement

I. General Information

The International Program Committee invites submissions of abstracts of between 750 and 1500 words on any aspect of digital humanities, from information technology to problems in humanities research and teaching. We welcome submissions particularly relating to interdisciplinary work and on new developments in the field, and we encourage submissions relating in some way to the theme of the 2012 conference, which is 'Digital Diversity: Cultures, languages and methods'.

With the Digital Diversity theme in mind, we especially invite submissions from scholars representing emerging digital humanities communities, scholars in the digital arts and music, in spatial history, and in the public humanities. The conference web site and will be developing over the next few weeks. The program committee aims for a varied program and for that reason will normally not accept multiple submissions from the same author or group of authors for presentation at the conference. Proposals might, for example, relate to the following aspects of digital humanities: research on data mining, information design and modeling, software studies, and humanities research enabled through the digital medium; computer-based research and computer applications in literary, linguistic, cultural and historical studies, including electronic literature, public humanities, and interdisciplinary aspects of modern scholarship. Some examples might be text analysis, corpora, corpus linguistics, language processing, language learning; the digital arts, architecture, music, film, theatre, new media, digital games, and related areas; the creation and curation of humanities digital resources; the role of digital humanities in academic curricula. In the spirit of the conference theme, and in consultation with the ADHO Standing Committee on Multilingualism & Multiculturalism (MLMC), we particularly invite proposals on the potential and impact of digital methods and models in fostering multilingualism and multiculturalism, and on the challenges and potential presented to DH in terms of linguistic and cultural diversity. Proposals regarding endangered, lesser-known or minority languages and cultures are especially welcome, as are case studies demonstrating the successful integration of multilingualism and multiculturalism with digital methods. Selected papers may be eligible for inclusion in future ADHO publications devoted to the topic of multilingualism and multiculturalism. The range of topics covered by digital humanities can also be consulted in the journal of the associations: Literary and Linguistic Computing (LLC), Oxford University Press. The deadline for submitting poster, short paper, long paper, and sessions proposals to the Program Committee is November 1, 2011. Since the deadline is firm, we urge you to begin preparing your proposals before the submission form is ready. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by February 1, 2012. The electronic submission form will be available on the conference site at the beginning of October 2011. See below for full details on submitting proposals. A separate call for pre-conferences and workshops will be issued by the Program Committee shortly. In addition, proposals for non-refereed or vendor demonstrations should be discussed directly with the local conference organizer, Jan Christoph Meister, as soon as possible. His email address is jan-c-meister@uni-hamburg.de. All other proposals should be submitted to the Program Committee through the aforementioned electronic submission form on the conference web site. For more information on the conference in general, please visit the conference web site.

II. Types of Proposals

Proposals to the Program Committee may be of four types: (1) poster presentations; (2) short paper presentations; (3) long papers; and (4) sessions (either three-paper or panel sessions).

The type of submission preferred should be specified on the application; however, the committee may accept the application in another category based on the number of proposals and the nature of the abstracts. In part this addresses the incredible response to recent calls and in part recognizes that all applications are refereed and that the types of presentations are therefore equal in importance. Papers and posters may be given in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish.

1) Poster presentations

Please submit an abstract of 750 to 1500 words. Poster presentations may include any work in progress on any topic of the call for papers as outlined above, computer technology, project demonstrations, and software demonstrations. Posters and software demonstrations are intended to be interactive, with the opportunity of the presenter to exchange ideas one-on-one with attendees and to discuss their work in detail with those most deeply interested in the same topic. Presenters will be provided with board space to display their work, computer connections may be available, and presenters are encouraged to provide a URL, business card, or handouts with more detailed information. Posters will be on display at various times during the conference, and a separate conference session will be dedicated to them when presenters should be present to explain their work and to answer questions. Additional times may be assigned for software or project demonstrations. Poster sessions may showcase some of the most important and innovative work being done in the digital humanities. In recognition of this, the Program Committee will award a prize for best poster.

2) Short papers

This is a new category of presentation, allowing for up to five short papers in a one-hour session, with the length held to a strict ten (10) minutes each in order to allow time for one to two questions per paper. Short paper proposals (750 to 1500 words) are appropriate for reporting shorter experiments; describing work in progress; and for describing newly conceived tools or software in early stages of development. At the behest of the Program Committee, short papers may be presented as both a short paper and as a poster session. For research or projects further along in development, presenters should consider applying for a long paper presentation.

3) Long Papers

Proposals for long papers (750-1500 words) are for reporting substantial, completed, and previously unpublished research; the development of significant new methodologies or digital resources; and/or rigorous theoretical, speculative, or critical discussions. Individual papers will be allocated twenty (20) minutes for presentation and ten (10) minutes for questions. Proposals about the development of new computing methodologies or digital resources should indicate how the methodologies are applied to research and/or teaching in the humanities, what their impact has been in formulating and addressing the research questions, and should include some critical assessment of the application of those methodologies in the humanities. Papers that concentrate on a particular application or digital resource in the humanities should cite traditional as well as computer-based approaches to the problem and should include some critical assessments of the computing methodologies used. All proposals should include relevant citations to sources in the literature.

4) Multiple Paper Sessions (90 minutes) are either

Three long papers. The session organizer should submit a 500-word statement describing the session topic, include abstracts of 750-1500 words for each paper, and indicate that each author is willing to participate in the session; or, A panel of four to six speakers. The panel organizer should submit an abstract of 750-1500 words describing the panel topic, how it will be organized, the names of all the speakers, and an indication that each speaker is willing to participate in the session. The deadline for session proposals is the same as for proposals for papers, i.e. November 1, 2011. Several points about the sessions papers: papers that are submitted as parts of special sessions may not also be submitted individually for consideration in another category. Session proposers should justify bundling the three papers into a special session, i.e., explaining the added value of the special session as opposed to including the papers separately, particularly how the special session addresses the conference theme.

III. Format of the Proposals

All proposals must be submitted electronically using the online submission form, found at the conference web site beginning October 1, 2011. Anyone who has previously used the confTool system to submit proposal or reviews should use their existing account rather than setting up a new one. If anyone has forgotten their user name or password, please contact Paul Spence at paul.spence@kcl.ac.uk

IV. Information about the conference venue

Hamburg on the river Elbe has about 1.8 million inhabitants within the city limits, making the old Hanseatic merchant city Germany's second largest metropolis. Hamburg is characterized by its port, its international orientation and a cosmopolitan flair. The University of Hamburg was founded in 1919. Today the Faculty of the Humanities is home to over 10,000 students. Since its inception Hamburg University has maintained a strong focus on foreign languages and cultures. To foster and to explore such diversity is a key task of the Humanities – and to provide theories, methods and tools to this end poses a particularly interesting challenge to the Digital Humanities. We hope you will join in the discussion on "Digital Diversity" at the DH2012 and look forward to seeing you in Hamburg!

V. Bursaries for young scholars

A limited number of bursaries for young scholars will be made available to those presenting at the conference by the Association of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). Young scholars who wish to apply for a bursary will find guidelines on the ADHO website later this autumn (roughly November 1st). More details will be issued about this subject in the next few weeks.

VI. International Program Committee

Susan Brown (SDH-SEMI – Vice Chair)
Arianna Ciula (ALLC)
Tanya Clement (ACH)
Michael Eberle-Sinatra (SDH-SEMI)
Dot Porter (ACH)
Jan Rybicki (ALLC)
Jon Saklofske (SDH-SEMI)
Paul Spence (ALLC – Chair)
Tomoji Tabata (ALLC)
Katherine Walter (ACH)

Call for Nominations

Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Association for Computers and the Humanities invites nominations for this year's elections. We are electing a president, vice-president, and three Executive Council members, and seek candidates for all these offices who want to advance the field of digital humanities by helping to run the ACH.

Together with other officers, these are the people who form the ACH's policies, decide how the ACH will spend its funds, and oversee its activities. They meet for an annual council meeting at the Digital Humanities conference every year, and hold discussions during the rest of the year by email and occasional phone conferences.

Candidates must be (or be willing to become) members of the ACH and must commit to attending the council meetings at the Digital Humanities conference. The president and vice-president serve two-year terms; council members serve four-year terms. Candidates are expected to be active members of the digital humanities community. But these are not roles reserved to those in very senior positions: graduate students have often served on the council, and commitment to the organization and to the field have usually counted for more with the membership than job titles.

Nominations should be sent to ach-nominations@digitalhumanities.org by September 15. They should include an email address for the nominee. A brief biographical statement will also be needed for the ballot but need not be included with the nomination. You are warmly encouraged to nominate yourself if you are interested. Please note that per the bylaws each nominee needs two nominations to be considered for inclusion on the ballot. The nominations committee shall determine the final slate of candidates to stand for election for the available positions.

For more information on the responsibilities and obligations of ACH officers, see our constitution and bylaws. Current officers of the ACH are listed on our officers page.

Many thanks,

ACH Nominations Committee

Julia Flanders
Neil Fraistat
Dot Porter (chair)
Brian Pytlik Zillig
Bill Turkel

Roberto Busa dies aged 97

Kathleen Fitzpatrick — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

There are perhaps not many fields in the humanities that can trace their roots to certain individuals, collaborations, and innovative new approaches. But within the application of computing to humanities problems one name looms large. Roberto Busa, one of the pioneers of humanities computing, died in Italy on Tuesday (November 13, 1913 – August 9, 2011).

Roberto Busa is considered by many to be the founder of the scholarly application of computing in the humanities and is most well-known for his collaborations with Thomas Watson, the founder IBM. This resulted in the Index Thomisticus, a complete lemmatization of the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the immensely influential 13th Century philosopher and theologian. The Index Thomisticus is a tool for doing sophisticated searches within the large corpus that eventually allowed the printed publication of the 56 Volumes of the Index in the 1970s; work that took almost 30 years until fruition. An online version was released in 2005.

In 1956, Time Magazine wrote this about his collaboration with IBM.

But in seven years IBM technicians in the U.S. and in Italy, working with Busa, devised a way to do the job. The complete works of Aquinas will be typed onto punch cards; the machines will then work through the words and produce a systematic index of every word St. Thomas used, together with the number of times it appears, where it appears, and the six words immediately preceding and following each appearance (to give the context). This will take the machines 8,125 hours; the same job would be likely to take one man a lifetime…

ACH Annual General Meeting, Stanford 2011

Stéfan Sinclair — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This is intended as a brief report on the ACH Annual General Meeting that took place during the Digital Humanities 2011 conference at Stanford.

The first notable aspect of the meeting was the astounding attendance: there were over 80 people present. In the past years the meeting has shifted from reporting the deliberations of the Executive Council (not always the most compelling content) to a summary of key points and a more open format of discussion and community-focused initiatives.

We began the meeting by recognizing the passing away of our friend and colleague Chuck Bush, who was the ACH Treasurer and served on its executive council for more than 20 years.

New members of the Executive Council were welcomed and outgoing members were thanked. A warm and sustained ovation was reserved for Julia Flanders, outgoing President extraordinaire.

Next we launched into the annual ACH Jobs Slam, a chance for prospective employees to introduce themselves (Ed Finn and Molly Des Jardin) as well as an encouraging range of job opportunities:

We also pointed to two very useful lists of jobs: Arts Humanities and HASTAC. Finally, we reminded everyone of the ongoing ACH mentoring programme. We encourage thesis supervisors who have students finishing and looking for DH-oriented jobs to contact the Mentoring committee.

Following the Jobs Slam we covered some new and ongoing initiatives. In particular:

the ACH has a completely revamped website!
we invited everyone to express interest to get involved in ACH committees
we discussed the success of DHAnswers and invited colleagues to contribute

Finally, we had two open discussion topics. The first was regarding a possible name change for ACH. The Executive Council recognizes that "Association of Computers and the Humanities" may not be as expressive of contemporary digital humanities scholarship and teaching as it might be. Some present pointed out the danger that the title may keep new people away. However, the overwhelming tenor of the discussion was that a change would present several logistical challenges and there was a certain attachment to the historical context that the ACH represents (much like the anachronistic sounding Association for Computing Machinery). Moreover, using the acronym ACH somewhat masks the details anyway.

Second, we discussed possibilities for the ACH to partner with local events to provide more continuous and more regional support and presence for the ACH constituency. A whole range of suggestions were offered and the ACH Exec will try experimenting with some of them and report back about this next year.

Thanks to all who were present and contributed!

ACH and ADHO Bursary recipients

Elli Mylonas — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

ACH Bursaries for Digital Humanities Summer Institute, University of Victoria

2010

Mike Frangos
Tara Hargrave
Jessica Jacobson-Konefall
Natalie Milbrodt
Matteo Romanello
Oscar Oliver Santos Sopena
Jeremy Thorne
Ali Grotkowski

2009

Claire O'Connor
Elizabeth Vincelette
Andrew Bretz
Sara Schmidt
Amber Skoglund
Jessica Murphy
Elizabeth Lorang
Diane Jakacki
Neal Audenaert

ADHO Student and Young Scholar Bursaries, DH Conference

(These replaced separate ACH and ALLC bursaries in 2009.)

Chen Szu-pei, National Taiwan University, “On Building a Full-Text Digital Library of Land Deeds of Taiwan” (paper)
Maciej Eder, Pedagogical University, Cracow, Poland, “PCA, Delta, JGAAP and Polish Poetry of the 16th and 17th Centuries. Who Wrote the Dirty Stuff?” (paper)
Joseph Gilbert, University of Virginia, “New World Ordering” (paper)
Rachel Kraus, Stanford University, “Modulating Style (and Expectations): An Experiment in Narrative Voice in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury” (poster)
Jacob Mason-Marshall, Stanford University, “Modulating Style (and Expectations): An Experiment in Narrative Voice in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury” (poster)
Henriette Roued Olsen, University of Oxford, “Towards an Interpretation Support System for Reading Ancient Documents” (paper)
Patrick Shiel, National University of Maynooth, Ireland, “Ghost in the Manuscript: Hyperspectral Text Recovery and Segmentation” (paper)
Kristen C. Uszkalo, Simon Fraser University, MONK panel organizer, “The Devil and Mother Shipton” (paper)
Sharon Webb, University of Ireland, Maynooth, “MIHS—Text Mining Historical Sources using Factoids” (paper)
Matthew Wilkens, Rice University, “Corpus Analysis and Literary History” (paper)

ACH Young Scholar Bursaries, DH Conference

DH2008

Joe Shapiro
Mengjia Zhao
Mark Anthoney
Shawn Averkamp
Sarah Allison
Rachel Lee
Elizabeth Vincelette
Mary Tripp
Junte Zhang

DH2007

Roderick Klein
Maria Esteva
Isabel Galina-Russell
Roman Gnutikov
Alexey Lavrentev
Marc Plamondon

ACH also awarded bursaries prior to these dates, and the recipients will be added to this page soon.

DH2011 – “Big Tent” Digital Humanities

Elli Mylonas — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

DH 2011 will take place at Stanford University June 19-22, and will feature workshops, an exciting program of papers, posters, and panels, and plenary talks by David Rumsey, Chad Gaffield, Erez Lieberman-Aiden, and Jean-Baptiste Michel. See you under the big tent!

Charles Douglas Bush, 1948 – 2011

Elli Mylonas — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The digital humanities community lost a good friend and colleague with the death of Chuck Bush, long-time Treasurer of the Association for Computers and Humanities and an unfailingly warm presence at the annual digital humanities conference which he attended with his wife, Junola.

Chuck was trained as a linguist and worked at Brigham Young University as a Senior Research Consultant in the Humanities Technology and Research Support Center, where he often explored his interests in both print and electronic publishing. He was one of the early advocates for Humanities Computing education, as he both administered and taught in the Computers and the Humanities Program. Humanities faculty at BYU will remember Chuck for his kind and dedicated assistance with arcane computer issues, as well as for his enthusiasm and unfailingly pleasant manner.

Chuck served for more than 20 years on the ACH Executive Council, and for those of us who worked closely with him during that time he was a constant source of calm good sense, humor, and organizational memory. An absolutely trustworthy steward for the ACH during its slowly rising fortunes, Chuck played a crucial role in managing the ACH's alliance with ADHO in 2005-6 and in helping the organization through a challenging transitional time. He could be counted on to suggest a helpful compromise, clarify a tricky point, or bring a discussion down to earth—he was never rattled or partisan.

Chuck was not given to self-display, but he had a great and subtle wit even in routine email. He was principled without imposing on others. With his particular dedication to supporting younger scholars and education, he was a strong champion of the ACH and ADHO bursary programs, and as ACH Treasurer he had the pleasure each year of handing out checks in a worthy cause. Those of us who met him annually for meetings and a conference will remember him with great affection, taking off his glasses in a meditative way before offering his thoughts. He will be much missed and warmly remembered by all.