Angel David Nieves Associate Professor & Chair of Africana Studies Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), Co-Director/Co-PI Janet Thomas Simons Associate.

Angel David NievesAssociate Professor & Chair of Africana Studies

Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), Co-Director/Co-PI

Janet Thomas SimonsAssociate Director, Instructional Technology

Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), Co-Director/Co-PI

Mary Lehner Hamilton ’12

Steve Young Unix/HPC System Administrator

How Do You ‘do’ Digital Humanities?GLCA Workshop, 7-8 October 2011

OVERVIEW/ROADMAP

• What is Digital Humanities?• How do we ‘do’ DH @ Hamilton

?• What is necessary?• Our model …– Seed money (thank you Mellon

Foundation)

– Scalable, sustainable, technology …

– Case studies …• Japanese Film Archive• Sinixit Nation

– Explain, promote, P&T

MISSION

DHi challenges the traditional ways in which teachers and students interact, primarily through creation and use of digital collections (archival holdings) and through the design and implementation of new digital tools.

DHi creates opportunities for new interdisciplinary models and methods of collaboration between faculty and students as co-researchers and co-creators of new knowledge. These activities support a fundamental shift in humanities research, leveraging the potential of technology to access and manipulate rich media collections in ways that increase collaborative scholarship (not only within Hamilton humanities but also, potentially, with other institutions around the world).

DHi supports innovative inter and multidisciplinary research while integrating that research with teaching at the undergraduate level through ITS and the HILLgroup.

DHi sponsors a wide range of activities, including faculty development workshops, media literacy programs, scholarly conferences and symposia, undergraduate seminars, a fellows program for Hamilton College students and faculty, and humanities programs designed for the public-at-large.

DHi establishes a cohort of faculty well-trained in the digital humanities who can assist in outreach, mentor colleagues, and enhance faculty development.

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

THEMES:

The Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi) is a research and teaching collaboration where new media and computing technologies are used to promote humanities-based research, scholarship and teaching across the liberal arts.

“I am confident that the DHi will transform the ways in which humanities scholarship and teaching are practiced not only at Hamilton, but also, through collaborations, among our peers across the liberal arts … To remain relevant to new generations of students and faculty, the humanities must embrace the tools of technology to enhance scholarship, create knowledge, and inform curricula. Hamilton’s DHi will make these digital tools available to faculty and their student partners, teach them how to employ these tools to create new knowledge and interactive collections of artifacts, and help them integrate their discoveries into the classroom and beyond.”

President Joan Hinde Stewart

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

CHARACTERISTICS OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES RESEARCH

Transformative

Connections to traditional approaches but asking a fundamentally different set of questions by applying new methods and novel approaches.

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

CHARACTERISTICS OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES RESEARCH

Collaborative

• It is the intersections of perspectives and methods. DH approaches require collaboration – Multiple experts sharing expertise. • Teamwork and division of

labor to divide and conquer, build knowledge that others can further build upon.

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

CHARACTERISTICS OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES RESEARCH

Interactive

• Enhance scholarship through collaborative knowledge building, interdisciplinary connections, and interactive collection development.• Understanding through

experience and shared knowledge development.

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

CHARACTERISTICS OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES RESEARCH

Transformative + Collaborative + Interactive

= MESSY

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

Communication and Project Management

are absolutely necessary!!!

http://www.dhinitiative.org/projects/support/

DHI PROJECT GUIDELINES FOR FUNDING

I. Must be digital humanities-based research question

II. Project scope must fit within digital humanities prototype technology/infrastructure

III. Expect that projects will take 2 years to reach proof of concept stage

a. Within the 2-year timeframe, expect to write a grant proposal with our support to further project developmentb. Emphasis on NEH grants & others for visibility

IV. Must be connected to the curriculuma. Coursework, project in course, etc.

V. Must have civic and/or public component

VI. Project durations reevaluated at regular milestones (6 mo.) in consultation with DHi.

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

BEST PRACTICES IN INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable, scalable infrastructure and processes that combine the best of existing technology and library practices with feature rich options in support of collaborative digital scholarship.

Characteristics include

• Connected data, artifacts, working tools, presentations

• Shared collections – among faculty/students, institutions

• Collaborative working environments

• Efficient, scalable project workflows

• Collaboration among faculty/students/support experts – Project teams and Advisory Committee

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

Collection LayerRepository

Objects with metadata – High Quality, High Resolution formats – Fedora IR

Working SpaceTools & Methods to Access & Manipulate objects in CollectionOriginals unaltered, new instances of objects monitored and

may be added to the Collection Layer. Discovery Garden.

Presentation LayerDigital Scholarship drawing from Working space with additional

programming as necessary. Public Presentation, peer review, and collaborative scholarship. Drupal CMS.

DR. KYOKO OMORI, “COMPARATIVE JAPANESE FILM ARCHIVE”

• Omori began development of a Japanese film archive over the summer of 2009. • As of September 2009, the archive stores video clips and stills from 14 feature-length films and 4 shorts. • Having collected close to five hundred images from these movies, the archive obviously covers only limited aspects of Japanese cinema. • The impetus of the list of films selected to date was provided by her new “Introduction to Japanese Film” course. This course surveys the history of Japanese cinema over the last 110 years. As it stands now, the archive is useful for any student or faculty interested in determining certain directors’ signature styles and in assessing genre differences – from camera work, editing, sound effects, lighting, stage properties, and acting, to various other aspects of film.

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

DR. NATHAN GOODALE AND ERICA KOWSZ, “SEARCH”

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

Promotion and TenureUniversity of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA

http://cdrh.unl.edu/articles/promotion_and_tenure.php

University of Victoria, BChttp://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Foyer/CompRecog.html

RESEARCH TRANSLATED INTO THE CLASSROOM

Faculty research projects supported through DHi are required to have a curricular component. HILLgroup course support, among other collaborative services, will be crucial to the translation of research outcomes into assignments, course designs, and independent projects.

Goals

• Increased access to and use of rich media collections

• Increased literacy in manipulation and presentation of scholarly work

• Increased opportunities for inter-institutional collaborations around courses and programs

• CLASS (Culture, Liberal Arts and Society Scholars Program) … more to come …

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT