[This past
weekend, we held the fifth annual New England American Studies
Association (NEASA) Colloquium.
So this week I’ll share some responses to each of the five colloquia to date,
leading up to a special weekend post on AmericanStudies in 2015!]
On two
impressive kinds of digital humanities work shared at
the 2014 Colloquium, and one more I’d add into that mix.
1)
A Career in DH: Salem
State University’s Professor Roopika Risam, one of the founders of the Postcolonial Digital Humanities site and a DH
pioneer in every sense, spoke at the colloquium about the challenges and
opportunities of a career in the Digital Humanities. Along with Northeastern
University’s Ryan Cordell (who shared similar perspectives at the Fall
2012 NEASA Conference in Providence) and others, Roopika exemplifies the
possibilities of the Digital Humanities on every academic level—in teaching and
advising undergraduate and graduate students, in preparing future educators and
strengthening current ones, in producing scholarly work, in building community,
and more.
2)
A Model DH Project: Dartmouth
University’s Professor Ivy Schweitzer spoke at the colloquium on a hugely
impressive DH project, the digital
edition The Occom Circle, a
website on the life and work of 18th
century Mohegan writer and activist Samson Occom. Ivy has worked on the project
for more than three years, with support from the NEH and Dartmouth as well as
student and faculty collaborators. But make no mistake, this project has been
Ivy’s at every step, and represents a true labor of love (as well as skill and
knowledge and research and a very worthy and significant subject). Like the DH
projects on which my
Dad Stephen Railton has worked for years and continues to work today, Ivy’s
Circle models both the work required
to create such a DH project and the immense payoffs (for everyone) of putting in
that work.
3)
Pre-Conference Blogging: In a much smaller and
more communal way, I tried for a few years to help bring a digital component to NEASA, and
particularly to its annual conference. That component took the form of a pre-conference blog, a
space in which conference presenters, participants, and all other interested
parties could share and
discuss their upcoming talks and panels, as well as all related ideas and
questions. I’m not sure if the blog will continue—and NEASA has begun to expand to social media in other important
ways in any case—but I would certainly make the case for such digital
elements to conferences; I believe that the three conferences for which we ran
the pre-conference blog, as well as NEASA overall, were enriched by these
digital conversations and communities.
Last follow up tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Digital projects (AMST or otherwise) you’d highlight?
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