Author: watrall
-
Digitizing the Dead
Recently, a joint effort between the Royal College of Surgeons of London, the University of Bradford, and the Museum of London Archaeology announced the creation of a collection of digitized pathological skeletal specimens for study by osteoarchaeologists and bioarchaeologists. Digitised Disease, which is currently in beta version, will provide high resolution 3D models generated by laser…
-
Toilet Technology: The Appropriation of Bathrooms for Digital Activity
One of the distinguishing, if not alarming qualities of our current historical moment is that cultural change occurs so rapidly and dramatically that one generation can scarcely recognize the next. Digital innovations of even the last twenty years have so forcefully changed everyday behaviors and communicatory norms that a grandparent simply asking a grandchild “what…
-
Indigenous Language and Twitter
As and older student I remember being an undergraduate during a time when email was new and rarely used on campus. Most of my communication with my professors was in person or sometimes by telephone; the kind that were attached to walls! Grades were posted outside of their doors next to your social security numbers…
-
Laypeople’s Role in Cultural and Heritage Preservation
Laypeople and community organizations can aid scholars and professionals dedicated to digitizing African American culture and heritage in four important ways. First, scanning photographs, obituaries, organizational documents, class photos, workplace photos, and other documents (such as report cards and newspaper clippings) into digital format will help preserve primary sources that will prove valuable for students,…
-
Returning to the Fellowship: The Epic Search for a Database
This year, I am returning to the CHI Fellowship. I first participating in the program in 2011 when it was in its first year. My project for the first time around was creating an OMEKA for the MSU Campus Archaeology Project. The goal was to have somewhere to share information in a museum-like format. This…
-
Television News Cameras and the Observer Effect
There is a distinct power in the act of observation. Both in the world of quantum mechanics, where the life of a cat hangs in the balance, and in the messy world of human behavior. In my last post, I discussed how the existence of video footage of an event should fundamentally alter how historians…
-
Indigeneous Research Approaches and Archival Work
As I continue thinking about how to do archival work, I found myself this week listening to Malea Powell’s words from her chapter “Dreaming Charles Eastman: Cultural Memory, Autobiography and Geography in Indigenous Rhetorical Histories” published in the book Beyond the Archives: Research as Lived Process. In this chapter, Powell tells her story about her…
-
African Studies in the Digital Age
This past weekend, I attended the 56th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in Baltimore, Maryland. It was a fantastic event, bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, from history and anthropology to public health and geography. In addition to sharing their research, scholars also reflected on future trajectories of African Studies. Aside…
-
Digitizing and Preserving African American History and Heritage
Digitizing and preserving African American history and heritage is an important mission in the digital age. Providing access to K-12 and undergraduate students and educators, as well as the community at large, is the largest challenge. Furthermore, strategies for preserving African American heritage and history as it happens is the newest challenge faced by those…
-
The Visual Image’s Challenge to History as a Profession
Asked to imagine the trial and death of Socrates, we might conjure up an image of Jacque-Louis David’s oil painting Death of Socrates, or recall Plato’s written accounts. We might even imagine modern day reinterpretations of the event. However, none of these interpretations are perfect reconstructions, and their flaws – be they problems of translation,…