Category: Uncategorized
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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…
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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…
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What we talk about when we talk about archives:
On January 4th, I attended an MLA panel titled “Representing Race: Silence in the Digital Humanities.” Adeline Koh – a speaker on this panel – talked at length about her current project “Digitizing Chinese Englishmen: Representations of Race and Empire in the Nineteenth Century. (This panel provoked a great deal of discussion. For now, here’s…
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On Archival “discoveries”: What does it mean?
In June 2012, The Atlantic published an article by Suzanne Fischer titled “Nota Bene: If you ‘Discover’ Something in an Archive, It’s not a Discovery.” [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/nota-bene-if-you-discover-something-in-an-archive-its-not-a-discovery/258538/]. Fischer wrote the article in the aftermath of the publication of the Leale Report. Briefly, Charles Leale was the Surgeon-General when President Abraham Lincoln was shot. He was the…
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Scattered Speculations on Value and OA Publication Venues
For the past two weeks, the CHI fellows have spent much time thinking about issues of scholarly publishing and issues of access to information. These conversations have revolved primarily around Kathleen Fitzpatrick‘s Planned Obsolescence. It was really a moment that occurred earlier in the book that resonated quite strongly with me. She writes: And universities,…
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Digitizing and Localizing Radical History
Overview In the beginning, I indicated that one of my primary interest in research is investigating and understanding the dynamics of space as it is shared by individuals and groups who are connected and disconnected in a variety of ways. Specifically, I’m interested in they ways a digital intervention might organize and display various understandings…
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Mapping Spaces, Enabling Travel
In my last blog I hinted that I have a deep interest in exploring the ways in which creative applications of information and computing technologies can help map environments and subsequently allow for alternative levels of engagement that are geared toward helping community stakeholders envision and create more livable, sustainable communities. I thought that I…
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Some reflections on The Lesbian Herstory Archives digital collections
Over the past couple of years, as part of my dissertation, I have been writing about the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA), located in New York. The LHA lives in a beautiful brownstone building in Parkslope, Brooklyn. Its first home was in the Upper Westside of Manhattan, in the apartment of Joan Nestle, who was one…
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What role does “digital” have within Anthropology? – Part I
This is a question that I asked fellow graduate students here in the Department of Anthropology at MSU. The impetus for asking my peers this question occurred as a result of last week’s meeting of CHI Fellows, whereby Donnie Sackey suggested that it would be useful to us to get a sense of how people…
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MSU, a Global and Diverse Community
For the Fall 2012 semester, there were 6,599 international students (including undergraduate, graduate, and non-degree students) from 130 countries enrolled at Michigan State University (MSU). In response to this surge of foreign students, I made a map (using MapBox) to reflect the demographic composition of the MSU’s international student population. Of the 6,599 international…