Digital Humanities Forum to explore Nodes & Networks in the humanities


Fri, 08/22/2014

author

LeeAnn Sarah Meyer

LAWRENCE — The Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities will host its fourth-annual Digital Humanities Forum next month on the theme of "Nodes & Networks in the Humanities: Geometries, Relationships, Processes."

The forum, which will be Sept. 12-13 at the University of Kansas, is open to the public and will offer workshops on new digital tools for working with humanities data along with presentations by national scholars.

The network has emerged as a powerful model in humanities scholarship in recent years. It is used as a visualization and analytic tool to explore objects, ideas or events and their relationships; as a method to discover, link and create new resources and data; and as a social structure through which people communicate, conduct their scholarly and social lives, and develop self-identity. Digital objects and digital selves all exist in "the Net."

"This year's theme reflects growing use of the network as a model for analyzing the relationships between objects in a wide range of humanities contexts," said Brian Rosenblum, co-director of IDRH and head of KU Libraries’ Center for Faculty Initiatives and Engagement. "This year's forum will give us a chance to explore how network visualizations and network analysis tools and methods can further humanistic research beyond just providing some nice infographics and DH eye candy." 

The forum will host several hands-on workshops Sept. 12 on digital tools by local and national instructors on topics such as data visualization, harvesting and making use of web data, and annotating 3-D environments. On Sept. 13, the Forum will feature research papers and posters by scholars on a range of topics. An award for best graduate student paper will also be presented.

In addition, the forum will feature three keynote talks:

Steven Jones, Loyola University: "The Network Inside Out and the New Digital Humanities" 

4:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12, Watson 3 West

Isabel Meirelles, Northeastern University: "Learning from Constraints in Visualizations of Information"

9 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, Alderson Auditorium, Kansas Union

Scott Weingart, Indiana University: "Networks In and Of Society"

4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, Alderson Auditorium, Kansas Union

The forum is free and open to participants beyond KU, but space is limited.

The Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities was created to address a growing need on campus for digital services and expertise in humanities research. The institute, created through a partnership of KU Libraries, the Hall Center for the Humanities and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, supports and enhances humanities research at KU. Its mission is to promote the use of computing technology to advance humanistic scholarship across disciplines, publish and disseminate scholarly research through new Web-based models, and study the effects of technology on society and on the scholarly record.

Fri, 08/22/2014

author

LeeAnn Sarah Meyer

Media Contacts

LeeAnn Sarah Meyer

KU Libraries

785-864-0467