Author Archives: cparry@uoregon.edu

Call for Papers: Digital Humanities Forum 2015, University of Kansas

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Digital Humanities Forum 2015

Peripheries, barriers, hierarchies: rethinking access, inclusivity, and infrastructure in global DH practice

September 25 & 26, 2015
University of Kansas
Call for proposals

Digital Humanities engages in many alternative scholarly forms and practices, and thus positions itself as a channel for exploring and challenging how social and institutional constructs shape traditional and digital academic discourses. Yet DH itself contains many non-neutral practices and is far from barrier-free. Digital Humanities practices, tools, infrastructures, and methodologies often embed a variety of assumptions that shape what kind of scholarship gets made, studied, and communicated; how it is represented to the world; and who can participate in that making and communication. A truly accessible DH goes beyond technical standards and provides people and communities of different abilities, genders, sexual orientations, languages and cultures–and of varying levels of access to technology and infrastructure–the capacity to shape and pursue scholarship that addresses their own interests and needs.

In a global context, the expansion of DH practices around the world and beyond the academy can reveal the ways in which dominant, hegemonic practices within the field tend to reinforce the very inequalities DH attempts to correct through its embrace of accessibility and knowledge production. Thus, specific practices in Global DH can call attention to the explicit and implicit contradictions in broader DH practices.

University of Kansas’ 2015 Digital Humanities Forum will take a critical approach to exploring peripheries, barriers and hierarchies of digital humanities practice in a global context, identifying those assumptions, and advocating and showcasing alternative practices to advance the field. Participants will critically engage these issues by exploring themes such as inclusivity, accessibility, global perspectives, decolonization, and democratization as they relate to digital humanities practice and infrastructure.

The Forum will take place on Saturday, September 26, following a full day of (gratis) Digital Humanities workshops on Friday, September 25.

They seek projects, research results, or critical/theoretical approaches to topics such as (but not limited to) the following:

  • How do embedded assumptions of DH practice shape what gets made, studied, and communicated;
  • The limitations of digital structures and infrastructures such as code/databases/ operating systems/interfaces/standards to represent or highlight cultural/gender/linguistic specificities, and efforts to get past these limitations;
  • Inclusion and exclusion in digital collections: archival silences, massive digital libraries, digital recovery projects;
  • “Accessible DH” that includes different abilities, languages, genders and sexual orientations, socio-economic conditions, and access to technical knowledge and infrastructure;
  • Case studies of projects focusing on accessibility and actively focusing on openness;
  • Case studies of indigenous, gendered, transnational, or “Global South” DH;
  • The concept and practice of minimal computing (sustainable computing done under some set of significant constraints of hardware, software, education, network capacity, power, or other factors);
  • Projects exploring data in languages other than English or working towards multilingual presentation;
  • Critical making, hacking, tinkering, and non-textual modes of knowledge production;
  • “Soft infrastructures” such as ideas of ownership, copyright, and intellectual property and their impact on global DH practice.

DH Forum best student paper award: Graduate students are encouraged to submit abstracts of papers or poster presentations. One student presentation will be selected for an award based on the quality, originality, clarity of the written abstract, along with its alignment with the DH Forum theme and expected future impact. The awardee will be presented with a check for $400 and award certificate at the conference. Students should identify themselves as such at the time of abstract submission to be considered for the award. For a paper to be eligible, at least fifty percent of the research reported in the paper must be performed by one or more student authors, and the student must be the primary presenter of the paper at the conference.

Please submit abstracts of 500 words maximum in PDF format to idrh@ku.edu by June 1

UO Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Center Graduate Affiliates to Host 3 Grad Student Workshops

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On June 8th and 9th, the UO Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Center Graduate Affiliates will host three workshops for graduate students interested in incorporating digital methods into their research. On June 8th, Adam Turner, doctoral candidate in the History department, will help students learn to manage their workflow using Pandoc and Markdown. On June 9th, Matthew Hannah, doctoral candidate in the English department, will introduce students to social network analysis and Laura Strait, doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Communication, will teach students how to research using Twitter.

All workshops are free, but registration is required. To register, please email Patrick Jones at patrickj@uoregon.edu. The full schedule of workshops follows below.

Digital Scholarship Workshops Schedule:

Monday, June 8
Write For Your Future Self: Getting Started with Plain Text
Adam Turner (History)
3:00-4:00PM, Digital Scholarship Ctr Conference Room (142 Knight Library)

It’s easy to get stuck in the world of Word, fighting with it over footnotes and spending hours fixing formatting. But there’s another way: In this introductory workshop, you’ll learn the basics of writing ​Markdown​ (an easy to read and write plain text format) and using ​Pandoc​ to convert that plain text into beautifully formatted documents in many formats: PDF, DOCX, HTML, LaTex, presentations, and more. Plain text is fast, flexible, system agnostic, and free. C​ ome learn more about plain text and how it can benefit your workflow for all kinds of research and writing projects.

Tuesday, June 9
Social Network Analysis with Palladio
Matthew Hannah (English)
12:00-1:00PM, Digital Scholarship Ctr Conference Room (142 Knight Library)

Have you ever wanted to create social network visualizations but didn’t know how? In this workshop, Matthew Hannah, a PhD Candidate whose dissertation “Networks of Modernism” applies social network analysis to literature, will cover the basics of ​Palladio​, a free web-based network program. ​You will learn both the key terms of network analysis and begin to apply network analysis​. In addition, you will be provided with a spreadsheet to manipulate but will also learn how to create your own.

laura straitTwitter Research Methods
Laura Strait (Media Studies)
3:00-4:00PM, Digital Scholarship Ctr Conference Room (142 Knight Library)

In this workshop we will learn basic techniques for ​scraping Twitter​ data using Twitter’s API in combination with a number of other tools, such as T​ warc​, and T​ witteR​. We will then learn to decode/parse this data and output it into a preferred format such as a matrix, map, or wordcloud.

To register, email Patrick Jones (patrick.jones4@gmail.com), providing your name and which workshop(s) you wish to attend.

Ada Issue 08 IRL Peer Review Session

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Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology
Peer review of Issue 8: Gender, Globalization and the Digital

WHEN: 6PM on Thursday May 21
WHERE: DSC (142 Knight Library)

The peer review process is open to all members of the Fembot Collective to read and comment on the submissions. The formatting may still a work-in-progress, so we emphasize substantive feedback about content, argument, and scholarship will be much more helpful to authors at this stage in their writing.

The community review process is open only to registered members of the Fembot Collective, comments will be made public, on the review site, when the issue is finalized.

If you’re not a member of the Fembot Collective, you can find details about joining the collective [here].

 Ada Issue 8: 
“In this issue we seek essays that explore gender and sexuality concerns in digital spaces and cultures, as well as academic fields such as the digital humanities and computational sciences. Possible topics include: what is the shape of the global “gender gap”? Where are digital products produced and consumed and how do these reveal economic, social and structural inequalities? How do global flows of capitalism construct uneven modernities around the world? How do race and ethnicity intersect with the structure of gendered, global digital communities and diasporas? How does the digital provide and police spaces for organizing around trans issues? What are the networks of affect, intimacy and sexuality that grow out of digital cultures?  How are operations of interface, output and input structured by ideas of gender, sexuality and language? How do access and ableism structure issues of gender and sexuality in digital spaces?”
Read more.

 

Penn State University Seeks Postdoctoral or Post-M.F.A. Scholar in Interdisciplinary Arts/Design Research

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DESCRIPTION

The Arts & Design Research Incubator (ADRI) within the College of Arts and Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University invites applications for a nine-month postdoctoral or post-MFA scholar in interdisciplinary arts and/or design research, to begin on August 17, 2015, with the possibility of renewal for a second academic year.In addition to a full-time salary and Penn State benefits, the fellow will receive funding in support of his/her research agenda.

Founded in 2014, the ADRI operates within the Arts & Architecture Research Office and provides seed funding, technical support, and workspace for high-impact arts and design research projects with a strong probability of attracting external funding. ADRI projects are typically collaborative and interdisciplinary in nature, push methodological boundaries, link research and teaching, make innovative use of technology, engage with university-wide research initiatives and priorities, and have the potential to garner national and international recognition.

The ADRI also coordinates and hosts a range of programming designed to foster and support innovative arts/design research and entrepreneurship. For information on current projects and recent activities, see: sites.psu.edu/adri.

The fellow will pursue her/her research/creative agenda, teach one interdisciplinary graduate course (formulated in consultation with the ADRI director) during Spring semester, and assist in providing logistical and administrative support for ADRI and its programming.

At the time of appointment, applicants must hold a terminal degree in an arts or design discipline, or a closely related field of study. They must also possess a record of innovative research/creative work appropriate to the ADRI mission.

To Apply: submit a letter of interest that details relevant qualifications and the research/creative agenda that will be pursued during the term of the residency, as well as a current CV and the names and contact information for three references. Materials must be submitted electronically.

Review of applications will begin on June 8, 2015 and continue until the position is filled.

Full job posting

APPLY

GAME OVER: thinking beyond death in video games

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GAME OVER is a project by CJ Risman, a student at Brown studying Modern Culture & Media and American Studies. Read the entire article on HASTAC.

 

As video games continue to become more and more “lifelike,” they bring users closer to visual experiences of actual “death.” They desensitize us to the act of death, however, by having immediate rebirth as a procedural norm. This project responds to the procedural rhetoric of contemporary popular video games in addressing death. Most games found in the market today have some feature of numerous chances, several “lives,” and/or rebirth with little consequence. Through their pervasiveness, I fear how these games make light of death and refuse to acknowledge the ramifications of dying. Many theorists and intellectuals have studied and highlighted how the procedurally of video games can be affective and I do not think enough thought has been given to the effect of rebirth in so many games. Through this project, I work within the format of a video game to redefine the death of an avatar.

 

http://www.flowlab.io/game/play/161419

 

The first level of my game is meant to mirror “life,” with multiple paths the user can take, all with various “life events” that pop up as you go along. Each “life event” that a user activates, however, is followed with a user-directed question, mirroring the existential angst that often comes along with life. For example, a life event pop-up may read: “got a puppy” and be followed by: “do you feel less alone now?” The user has control to move at their own pace through this level, and can even go back to follow a different path and move through different “life events” if they are willing to put in the time (much like in life!).

There is no “winning” or “completing” the first level. There are however, spikes, which, if landed on, “kill” the user. As the user travels on a “life” path, the spikes increase in frequency over time, eventually becoming almost unavoidable. One of the last “life events” (which entails retiring and then asking what “you” will do with all the free time) evenrequires “dying” in order to be activated. If, however, the user does reach the “end” of the level, there is simple a wall, boxing them in, forcing them to stay where they are, consider turning back, or consider purposefully “dying.”

After this initial level, come three levels of questions. The first such level asks the user to state whether or not they are religious. The answer input does not matter; both answers take the user to the next level. Rather the level acclimates users to the new diegesis, in which they are asked to respond to serious questions with honest answers. The following level, and the second “question level” asks users to state whether or not they believe in rebirth. This is the real kicker. If users answer “yes,” they believe in rebirth, then they are brought back to the first level and allowed to “play again.” If the user answers “no,” however, they are led to the final question: “believe in afterlife?” Here, if the user answers “no,” they are “stuck;” they constantly restart this level over and over again in perpetuity. If the user answers “yes,” however, that they believe in afterlife, they are taken to the final level. The final level is a blue space filled with white, cloud-like objects. The user may somewhat jump from cloud to cloud but that is all. Using the gaps between clouds, the avatar will eventually fall out of the frame and not be followed, leaving the user with nothing to do other than stare at the static screen of a sky-like canvas. (See video to left for playthrough of game!)

Level 1

 

Level 2

 

Level 3

 

As a result of my own coding limitations, I created this game through a third party platform, Flowlab. In using this format, I was unable to create a game involving commonplace violence or gun action, which perhaps make up the most problematic games in which rebirth is a given and death is stripped of value. Nevertheless, the “death” that occurs in my game is treated with weight. I view the resulting product as a prototype. Flowlab has allowed me to create a functional game, playable by others, but it is a first attempt to approach the issue of death/rebirth in games through a game.

My prototype approach does have its own rhetorical advantages, however. For instance, in reminding us of the simplified origins of videogames, the product asks us to reconsider what we have come to “expect” from a “game.” Is the commonplace, vivid violence of so many modern games now a critical feature of gaming? Without this violence and “life-like” interaction, what does it even mean to “die” in my game?

By redefining more than one aspect of the popular modern game, my project seeks to approach these various questions. However, other limitations were also imposed by flowlab. My free subscription to the service allowed me to have only 5 levels in my game, for example, and therefore limited the number of question levels I could have. Nevertheless, the game serves its most basic purpose; through playing my game, users, ideally those with experience in other forms of gaming, have to reexamine their own gaming habits and the rhetoric they receive from other games. My game not only gives gravity back to virtual dying, connecting it back to that of the “actual” world, but it also further highlights the disconnect between death and “play” in most traditional or commonplace games…

Read more.

 

 

Analog Game Studies CFP: Gender & Sexuality in Analog Games, Performance & Play, and Materiality & Games

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Analog Game Studies (analoggamestudies.org) is a journal seeking short abstracts (250 words) or full pieces (1500-2000 words) for the special issues detailed below. Articles published online will likely appear in a yearly print anthology as well.

 

Gender and Sexuality in Analog Games

Through strategies of representation, game mechanics, and target audience, gender and sexuality inscribe what and how we play. This special issue will focus on teasing out dynamics often ignored in the analysis of many games’ content: how queerness, femininity, masculinity, heterosexuality and a host of other topoi are contested, packaged and projected through games. What role-playing games appeal most to certain demographics and why? How do abstract systems express or refute heteronormativity? What censorship procedures have been used around sexuality in board games? How might one queer Magic: The Gathering?

 

Performance and Play

As evidenced by the prevalence of the word “play” in theatrical vocabulary, performance and games have always shared a deep connection. We are interested in digging into the history of ways in which performance and games have intersected through the activity of play. In what ways are games used in the production of drama, music, dance or other performance traditions? Are there ways in which performance skills and techniques are evident in analog games, even outside of role-playing games? What do the similarities between theater and role-playing mean more broadly for scholars of culture, media, and education? Where is there still room for growth and development in connecting games and performance in unconventional or unexpected ways?

 

Materiality and Games

What do games do, and what are the parts, components, manuals, dice, and miniatures doing inside of games? We are soliciting submissions that deal specifically with the material affordances of games and play. Topics might include the political economy of meeples, cultural rituals around dice rolling, or Jenga and Object Oriented Ontology. Submissions should make a case for the ways that materiality and games interact in a fundamentally new way that challenges existing theory.

 

In addition to the calls above, AGS also always welcomes submissions on other topics relevant to analog game studies. We also welcome submissions for book or game reviews, or interviews (please see this and this for examples of the style we aim for).
Please email submissions to analoggamestudiesjournal@gmail.com by June 8, 2015 (and feel free to submit more than once!)

Interested in Learning R? Introducing UO’s R Club

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R Club is a student-led group, open to members of all experience levels who are interested in learning R, as well as programming in general.

R club promotes the belief that the best way to learn programming is through hands-on experience by using it to complete projects. They alternate between having students find out about a topic and present it (from 5 minutes to an hour), and offering consultations to grad students who would benefit from programming part of their workflow / analyses / etc. but don’t know how.

For more information about R Club, useful links, and to learn about upcoming meetings, visit their website: http://blogs.uoregon.edu/rclub/

R Club meets every Tuesday from 3:00pm-04:20pm in Straub 008.

Upcoming DSC Workshop: “Time-Travel for Academics: Get your digital life in order, and protect yourself from yourself”

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Recent NMCC graduate Jacob Levernier will lead a workshop at the Lewis Integrative Science Building on campus this Monday, May 18th as part of the Quantitative Methods Lab (“MethLab” for short).

When: Monday, 5/18 from 12-1pm (It will last an hour with time after for questions).

Event details: If you’ve ever been working on a manuscript, statistical analysis, or notes on your reading, you might have started saving versions of your work with names like “Manuscript_good_3_a”, “Manuscript_after_edits_good”, “Manuscript_Use_This”, and “Manuscript_Use_This_Final”. Not only for your advisor or collaborators, but also for yourself a few months in the future, this approach to managing versions of your work can be confusing at best and misleading at worst, causing you to forget which version is the most up-to-date and, as a result, to re-do or lose work.

“Version control” is a type of free software that you can use to manage your work — not only to remember which versions are from when, but also to see exactly what you changed between versions, and why. Like a time machine, version control software lets you move back and forth between versions without clogging your hard drive with multiple copies of the same files.

We will be discussing the “why” and “how” of using Git, a popular and free version control system that is also the foundation for GitHub, which software developers and academics alike are using to share and collaborate on their work.

This talk will use both the command-line (the Terminal app in Mac OSX and Linux, and Command Prompt or Cygwin (https://www.cygwin.com/) inWindows — no experience assumed) and a point-and-click program called GitEye (http://www.collab.net/downloads/giteye).

 

Seeking Applicants for Visiting Assistant Professor Position, Washington State University

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The English Department at Washington State University invites applications for a visiting assistant professor in the area of Digital Humanities & Digital Scholarship as part of a grant-funded project through the University’s Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation (CDSC), a joint program between WSU’s Libraries and College of Arts and Sciences.

The initial appointment begins August 16, 2015 and is subject to renewal after two years. This hire will teach undergraduate courses in the department’s Digital Technology and Culture (DTC) Program and work with CDSC faculty and staff and faculty in other departments to enhance WSU’s presence in digital humanities.

More information: https://chroniclevitae.com/jobs/0000882845-01#sthash.4KtS5NCc.dpuf