MITH is thrilled to announce the Spring 2020 Digital Dialogue line-up. This eclectic season covers a range of interesting DH topics including oral histories, music encoding, movement and technology, poetry and algorithms, and community data curation. From 25 February to the 31 March six speakers will present on Tuesdays at 12:30 pm.  Digital Dialogues are open to the public and all are welcome, so please join us in the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities Conference Room, 0301 Hornbake Library North. We look forward to seeing you there to share in the discussion.

Spring 2020 Digital Dialogues

2/25   Anna Kijas
Music Librarian, Head of Lilly Music Library  |  Tufts University
MEI for All! or Lowering the Barrier to Music Encoding through Digital Pedagogy

3/3   Heather Hart
Black Lunch Table  |  Co-founder
Visiting Lecturer  |  Rutgers University Mason Gross School of Art

Jina Valentine
Black Lunch Table  |  Co-founder
Associate Professor of Printmedia  |  School of the Art Institute of Chicago

The Black Lunch Table Archive: A Radical Reimagining of Digital Authorship
Co-sponsored by African American History, Culture, and Digital Humanities (AADHum)

3/10   Leonardo Flores
Professor and Chair of English  |  Appalachian State University
President  |  Electronic Literature Organization
Distant Writing
Co-sponsored by Digital Studies in the Arts and Humanities (DSAH)

SPRING BREAK

3/24   Jennifer Garcon
Bollinger Fellow in Public and Community Data Curation  |  University of Pennsylvania
Building a Community Data Curation Practice: Digital Archiving through Partnership and Resource Sharing

3/31   Kristin Carlson
Assistant Professor, Creative Technologies Program  |  Illinois State University
Tracking the Invisible: Following Movement Beyond Space and Time Markers
Co-Sponsored by Immersive Media Design (IMDM) at the University of Maryland

Digital Dialogues is MITH’s signature events program, held during the academic year, and is an occasion for discussion, presentation, and intellectual exchange that you can build into your schedule. For more information see Digital Dialogues schedule page, which will be updated with more information about each talk as it becomes available.

The post Announcing the Spring 2020 Digital Dialogues Line Up appeared first on Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.

We are delighted to open nominations for spring 2020 Digital Dialogue speakers. Digital Dialogues is MITH’s signature events program, held almost every week while the academic semester is in session. Digital Dialogues is an occasion for discussion, presentation, and intellectual exchange that you can build into your weekly schedule.

To see a list of previous speakers, see our past dialogue schedules.

Nominations should be submitted by 11:59pm Thursday, November 7, 2018. Let us know who you would like to present!

The post Nominations Open, Spring 2020 Digital Dialogues appeared first on Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.

The Cleaners (2018)

Please join us in MITH on October 30, 2019 (All Hallows’ Eve Eve) from 6-8pm for a screening of The Cleaners, a documentary which provides an in depth look at the hidden labor of content moderation that makes today’s social media platforms possible. Once the dream of Silicon Valley tech startups, the democratization of web publishing has brought huge challenges to the mega-corporations that run today’s social media platforms, as they struggle to prevent the viral spread of online hate, violence and abuse.

Key to these moderation systems are large numbers of human moderators, who interpret community guidelines, and sometimes clandestine content rules, in order to decide what content will remain online. As Sarah Roberts details in her book Behind the Screen (a recent Digital Studies Colloquium pick) commercial content moderators work behind the scenes, in remote locations and precarious working conditions, where they are often subjected to a barrage of unsettling material that can leave lasting psychological and social impacts.

A brief discussion will follow the screening. Popcorn and soda pop will be available, but feel free to bring some take-out or some pre-Halloween candy.

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We are delighted to announce the lineup for the Fall 2019 Digital Dialogue series. We will host eight speakers for six incredible sessions. All Digital Dialogues will be held Tuesdays, at 12:30 pm in the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities Conference Room, 0301 Hornbake Library North beginning October 1, 2019.

Digital Dialogues are open to the public and all are welcome.

Fall 2019 Digital Dialogues

Tuesday, October 01: Setsuko Yokoyama, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English (University of Maryland)
The Sound of Public Humanities and its Oscillatory Accessibility

Tuesday, October 08: Jen Guiliano, Associate Professor in the Department of History and affiliated faculty in both Native American and Indigenous Studies and American Studies (IUPUI, Indianapolis, Indiana).
Difficult Heritage: Indigenous Collections in Digital Humanities

Tuesday, October 15: Kelsey Corlett-Rivera: Head of the Research Commons (University of Maryland Libraries) and Nathan Dize: Ph.D. Candidate (Vanderbilt University)
A Colony in Crisis after Five Years: Digital Konbit in Practice

Tuesday, October 22: Sylvia Fernandez Ph.D Candidate (University of Houston)
Behind the Line: Digitally Rethinking and Restructuring Geopolitical Borders and its Surroundings

Tuesday, October 29: Kimberly Bain, Ph.D. Candidate (Princeton University)
Hold:Space

Tuesday, November 05: Jessica H. Lu, Associate Director, Design Cultures & Creativity, (University of Maryland Honors College) and Caitlin Pollock, MLIS, MA; Associate Librarian & Digital Scholarship Specialist (University of Michigan Library)
Design, Development, and Documentation: Hacking TEI for Black Digital Humanities

For more information see Digital Dialogues schedule page, which will be updated with more information about each talk as it becomes available.

Digital Dialogues is MITH’s signature events program, held during the academic year, and is an occasion for discussion, presentation and intellectual exchange that you can build into your schedule.

The post Mark your calendars! Fall 2019 Digital Dialogues Line Up appeared first on Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.

Dr. Aleia Brown has been appointed as the new Assistant Director for the African American History, Culture, and Digital Humanities (AADHum) initiative. Aleia is our first appointment following the award this summer of a three-year $2 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the growth of AADHum. Most recently, Aleia served as Program Manager at Humanities Action Lab and a Mellon/American Council of Learned Society Public Fellow at Rutgers University—Newark. In that role she oversaw Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice, an international initiative that engages students, faculty, and advocates in 23 cities to produce a traveling exhibition, programming, and digital platform. Prior to this, Aleia served as Visiting Curator of African and African American History and Culture at the Michigan State University Museum where she worked on a multi-year acquisition project and curated the Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi-Women of Color Quilters Network collection. Her current research project draws on oral history, material culture analysis, and undercommons as archives—traveling through the segregated south to urban cultural hubs to examine the life and work of Black women creating on the fringes of the Black arts movement.

As AADHum’s Assistant Director, Aleia will serve as a member of the AADHum leadership team and contribute to strategic planning, leadership, and administration of AADHum with a particular focus AADHum’s pedagogical agenda.

Dr. Susan Wiesner has been appointed as Principal Faculty Specialist for the Performing Arts. Susan comes to MITH following an appointment at the University of Maryland Libraries as Digital Humanist in Residence at the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. Her ongoing project, ARTeFACT, has been presented at several academic conferences (both Dance and Digital Humanities), been awarded an NEH Start-up Grant, and has been featured in book chapters and journal articles. She has conducted research into metadata and the development of ontologies for the performing arts using digital humanities methodologies and has developed a database of dance publications. A choreographer and dancer, Susan has presented her work in both the US and the UK, written as a dance critic, and taught at several universities. Her current research focuses on movement and notation systems as a means of machine learning and transfer of data between artistic forms.

At MITH, Susan will develop and manage projects focusing on the performing arts and teach a course on the digital humanities and embodied knowledge.

T’Sey-Haye Preaster is already a core member of the MITH team in her role as Graduate Assistant and Project Coordinator for the Documenting the Now project. We’re delighted that T’Sey-Haye will now join MITH in a full-time capacity. Her new appointment as Project Manager, Research Initiatives encompasses both her work on Documenting the Now, which will continue, and significant responsibilities as the Program Manager for AADHum. A PhD Candidate in the Department of American Studies, T’Sey-Haye examines the histories and lived experiences of Black women working strategically to (re)define the meaning and mission of philanthropy (e.g., gifts of time, talent, treasure and testimony) for/by Black communities in the United States. Prior to graduate school, T’Sey-Haye served for nearly a decade in community philanthropy as a program assistant for The Rhode Island Community Foundation where she worked on statewide grant-making initiatives and community advocacy campaigns for affordable housing, women and girls, LGBTQ equity, nonprofit excellence and Black philanthropy.

MITH is tremendously excited to welcome these scholars to the team!

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MITH is pleased to announce that we are accepting applications for the Fall 2020 Winnemore Digital Humanities Dissertation Fellowship. The Winnemore Fellowship provides support to a University of Maryland graduate student whose dissertation engages with digital humanities or new media and the arts and humanities. 

Eligible graduate students must be enrolled in an appropriate terminal degree program (Ph.D. or M.F.A) at the University of Maryland and must agree not to accept any other form of financial support from the University or other fellowships of $2,000 or more during the term for which this fellowship is awarded. Winnemore Fellows are provided a stipend of $9,929 and a $1,509 contribution toward health insurance fees. Fellows are also provided with work space at MITH, consultation with MITH staff about their project, and technical support (including server space) where applicable.

Fellows are expected to be in-residence throughout the duration of their fellowship.  They are encouraged to attend MITH events such as Digital Dialogues, contribute to the intellectual community of MITH, share their work on the MITH blog, participate in professional development opportunities, and be engaged with the digital humanities more broadly. 

Interested applicants should submit:

• a cover letter that includes your name, program/department, college, email, phone, title of dissertation, and advisor’s name, phone, and email. The cover letter should also include the date that you completed coursework and any other degree requirements, the date that you passed your prospectus/proposal examination, the date you advanced to candidacy, and the proposed date for your dissertation defense. All dates should include month and year;
• a current short CV;
• a 250-word abstract written for a general audience including your name and the title of your dissertation or project.
• the proposal itself, which should be no longer than three pages and which should specifically address the following points:
  • the project that you will work on if awarded the fellowship;
  • how the use of advanced technology would help achieve your research goals and contribute to the intellectual outcome
  • a statement of work completed to date;
  • a detailed timetable or work plan for duration of the fellowship including the projected date of completion.
• two confidential letters of recommendation, including one from your dissertation director that outlines how the applicant’s advisor will support the student’s effort for the duration of the fellowship in addition to the merit of the applicant.

A committee composed of digital humanities faculty and staff will review applications. Proposals should specify how a Winnemore Fellowship would be crucial to the dissertation or equivalent project’s development. The committee will place emphasis on projects that center the perspectives of underrepresented or oppressed groups and such proposals are highly encouraged. Also encouraged are projects addressing complex ethical issues inherent to engagement with new media, cultural heritage data, and the digital humanities.

We encourage applicants to consult with MITH regarding their applications. All application materials should be sent in PDF format to Purdom Lindblad, by 11:59 PM Tuesday, November 5, 2019. Announcement of the Winnemore Fellow will be made by Friday, December 13, 2019.

The post Call for Proposals: Winnemore Fellowship – Updated Deadline appeared first on Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.

Prior to joining MITH, T’Sey-Haye was key in making sure that the “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black” conference hosted by the AADHum initiative in October of this year came off so successfully. At that time, she was a member of the Marketing and Communications Office in the College of Arts and Humanities.

Check out her biography, follow her on Twitter, and look for her byline here talking about the exciting things happening on the Documenting the Now project.

Welcome T’Sey-Haye!

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With a $1.2 Million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, Shift, and the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia (UVA) will collaborate to lead the ongoing work of the Documenting the Now project. Started in 2014 with a grant to Washington University in St. Louis in partnership with the University of California, Riverside and MITH, Documenting the Now is committed to developing tools and community practices that support the ethical collection, use, and preservation of social media and web archives. Continuing the important work the project has accomplished over the past four years, the second phase of Documenting the Now will be focused on three interdependent strands of activity: software development, pedagogy, and engagement with community-based archiving of social justice activism.

Leading this second phase of Documenting the Now will be Trevor Muñoz, Interim Director of MITH & Assistant Dean for Digital Humanities Research at UMD who will serve as the Principal Investigator and the Administrative Lead; Bergis Jules, Director of Equity Initiatives at Shift Design Inc who will serve as a Co-Principal Investigator and the Project Director; Dr. Meredith Clark, Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at UVA who will serve as a Co-Principal Investigator and Academic Lead; and Ed Summers, Lead Software Developer at MITH who will be the project’s Technical Lead.

During this phase of the project, our technical work, led by Summers with support from Alexandra Dolan-Mescal,  Francis Kayiwa and Dr. Raffaele Viglianti, will focus on continuing to develop, test, and deploy the software utilities built during phase one. These tools include DocNow, the Tweet ID Dataset Catalog, Hydrator and Twarc. One of the main focuses for the software that the project team will develop in this phase will be human-centered design approaches that privilege interaction between content creators and users of our tools who are interested in collecting social media data as archival content.

One example of work that will exemplify the project’s goal to undertake human centered design is Social Humans. Created by Dolan-Mescal, UX and Web Designer for Documenting the Now, Social Humans is a set of data labels designed to empower content creators and inform researchers about user intent. In addition to continuing work developing software and fostering a community of practice around social media/web archiving that is grounded in an ethics of care for the histories of oppressed people, the next phase will also see the project team engage in pedagogical activities around social media and race, with the exciting addition of Dr. Meredith Clark as a Co-Principal Investigator. Dr. Clark is a former newspaper journalist whose research focuses on the intersections of race, media, and power. Her work on the project will include the development of academic courses, including a series of experiential learning tasks and assignments using DocNow tools and support. The project team is excited she agreed to join this phase of the effort.

Phase two will also include work on archiving activism history through a set of community-based archiving workshops. The goal of the program will be to build digital community-based archives in direct partnership with social justice activist organizations. Local activists are usually the people closest to the issues negatively impacting a community and they are most frequently on the front lines agitating for support and offering the most effective solutions, whether their causes are addressing police violence, inadequate educational opportunities, food scarcity, mass incarceration, or racial injustice. The Documenting the Now project is interested in exploring how we might build digital community-based archives from the perspectives of local activists and in equitable partnership with them. The archives will be built on Mukurtu CMS and we’re excited to work with that team because of their commitment to community control of local cultural heritage. Activist groups will be selected to participate in the program through an open application process. We will be sharing more information about the workshops and the application process soon, including incentives for the activist organizations, the workshop team, and the structure of the program. Stay tuned to the Documenting the Now Twitter and blog, or join our Slack for more information.

MITH, along with our partners, are extremely grateful for the support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for Documenting the Now, and for the Foundation’s continued support of cultural heritage work that is intentionally community centered and grounded in an ethic of care for the lived experiences of the most vulnerable people in our society. We are particularly excited for the opportunity that continued support provides for enacting our strategic values in combination with the Foundation’s support for African American History, Culture and the Digital Humanities (AADHum).

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) is a leading digital humanities center that pursues disciplinary innovation and institutional transformation through applied research, public programming, and educational opportunities. Jointly supported by the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities and the University of Maryland Libraries, MITH engages in collaborative, interdisciplinary work at the intersection of technology and humanistic inquiry.

Shift Design, Inc is a US 501(c)3 non-profit corporation that was established with a specific focus to design products for social change. Much of our work to date has focused on building an inclusive record of our shared cultural heritage, including projects like Historypin and Storybox.

The Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia began in Fall 2000 as an interdisciplinary undergraduate major in the College of Arts and Sciences. The department is historical and critical in orientation and takes media as its object of study. The department focuses on the forms, institutions, and effects of media (radio, film, television, photography, print, digital and electronic media), with particular emphasis on the mass media of the modern and contemporary period.

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• Kelsey Corlett-Rivera, Librarian III (Associate Professor), University of Maryland Libraries
• Jason Farman, Associate Professor of American Studies, College of Arts and Humanities
• Katrina Fenlon, Assistant Professor, College of Information Studies
• Matthew Kirschenbaum, Professor of English, College of Arts and Humanities
• Alexis Lothian, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies/LGBT Studies, College of Arts and Humanities
• Matthew Miller, Assistant Professor of Persian Literature and Digital Humanities, College of Arts and Humanities
• Ricardo Punzalan, Assistant Professor of Archives and Digital Curation, College of Information Studies
• Catherine Knight Steele, Assistant Professor of Communication, College of Arts and Humanities
• Daryle Williams, Associate Professor of History, College of Arts and Humanities

Our goal with these affiliate appointments is to make visible the amazing partners and interlocutors who enrich and inform our work as well as to make the contours of our DH community at Maryland more visible overall.

Congratulations to these amazing scholars! We are grateful to have their partnership in the future of MITH.

The post MITH Appoints Affiliate Faculty appeared first on Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.

We are delighted to open nominations for spring 2019 Digital Dialogue speakers. Digital Dialogues is MITH’s signature events program, held almost every week while the academic semester is in session. Digital Dialogues is an occasion for discussion, presentation, and intellectual exchange that you can build into your weekly schedule.

To see a list of previous speakers, see our past dialogue schedules.

Nominations should be submitted by 11:59pm Wednesday, November 7, 2018. Let us know who you would like to present!

The post Call for Nominations, Spring 2019 Digital Dialogues appeared first on Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.