Author: watrall
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Public Engagement
In my most recent blog post http://chi.anthropology.msu.edu/2018/12/what-is-your-purpose/, I discussed the importance of public engagement by researchers in academia, focusing on the role of biological anthropologists and their unique ability to contribute to the conversation on social race and ancestry. I mentioned how this concern led me to broaden the target audience of my CHI fellowship…
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projects of recovery
When we returned in January, I realized that I am still quite unsure of what I want for this project. I still don’t know. While working on my wireframe and project vision, I found myself a bit lost which led to me asking myself about the purpose, the goals, the audience all over again. Moreover,…
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The Challenges of “Digitizing Indigenous History”
While I face many challenges moving forward with my project for the CHI fellowship (I argued with a masthead for hours last week), the most challenging part of my online exhibit is respectfully displaying and interpreting the quill boxes created by makers in The Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa. As most social scientists…
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Do I Want to be Remembered for This? Digitization and 1990s Anime Fandom
Part of the impetus for embarking on this project was the conservation of convention history. Many of the constituent components of early fandom have disappeared or were never recorded in the first place. As pop culture is seen as disposable–ask anyone who has longed for an original Action Comics #1–there was even less incentive to…
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Reflections on a past field season
This past December I had a short field season in Arequipa Peru where I finished collecting data for my master’s thesis. Even though this season was short (only 2 weeks), I feel like I learned as much as I did during my summer field season (2 months). One of the major things I learned about…
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What is your purpose?
That title sounds really deep. What I am proposing to ask yourself is: In my professional career, why am I doing what I do and does my position serve a purpose to the public? My initial project goal was to develop a map of craniofacial morphology that would be embedded in our project website (http://macromorphoscopic.com/).…
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Finally, the Topic!
This week I met with a few of the MSU museum staff to explore museum collections and discuss the scope of the project. The intent is to create an online museum exhibition that demonstrates the variety and lineage of Native American crafts in the Great Lakes Area. Fortunately, there is a plethora of resources both…
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Rememory
One of my most salient goals as an academic and a writer, as a person, is perhaps directly related to one of my greatest fears: forgetting home, and thus, losing home. While many of our technologies and actions today reflect globalization and the sharing of ideas, cultural practices, and artifacts, it is often driven by…
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Teaching Early African History/Studies with a Digital Lens
I recently attended a panel on teaching pre-1800 African history using digital humanities. The panel focused on early African history, but some of the presentations ignored the digital humanities portion of the title and only really focused on the pre-1800 part. Perhaps the theme of the panel changed after the program was printed, or maybe…
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Rethinking Quantification in African History
Numbers remain unwelcome facets of African history. Foreigners collected most of them until independence, and after independence the published numbers tend to reflect Africa’s lack in terms of economic and social development. Of course, these numbers, most of which have been extrapolated from trade and population statistics, reflect the preoccupations of those who collected them.…