Jana Remy
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Jana Remy

  • Writing
    • Disability
    • Making History
    • Digital Humanities
      • dayofDH
    • Canoeing
    • Creative Nonfiction & Essays
    • Feminism
    • Bibliographies
      • Pacific Worlds Bibliography
    • Social Media
      • Mentions/Links
  • Scholarship
    • Awards/Fellowships
    • Conferences & Invited Talks
    • Collaboration
    • Workshops
    • Conference Planning
    • Technical Skills
  • Teaching
    • Blogposts About Teaching
Monthly Archives

April 2014

digital humanities

Being interested and sharing, at DHSoCal

Screen shot 2014-04-25 at 11.30.31 AM

From https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n15ij8a5SZuZvOs4GVOPHLmH9eku7V5zeTV-7QLkMqw/edit#heading=h.fblu5pcck9xj

A few years ago, at THATCamp SoCal, a handful of us generated the idea for a regional Digital Humanities network.  Since then, the idea has gained momentum and we now have affiliates from nearly every university campus in Southern California represented our group.

I made the Word Cloud, above, from the notes of our latest gathering at UCSD.  As you can see from the Wordle, there are several key topics that emerged: teaching, projects, syllabus, students, data, funding, program.  What struck me the most from this are the words “interested” and “sharing” which point to how each attendee came to the meeting seeking a better understanding about how DH is being taught and practiced at other institutions and is interested in sharing what they are doing at their own.

 

April 25, 2014
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digital humanitiesteaching

Lessons from Ted Nelson

When I prepped my syllabus for the “Introduction to Digital Humanities” class that I taught last year, I included Ted Nelson’s article “Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate” because I wanted my students to gain some historical knowledge about how modern-day computer interfaces developed from the ideas of visionary thinkers like Nelson.  At the time, I was unaware that Nelson would be a Visiting Fellow on our campus or that I would have the luxury of becoming personally acquainted with him.

Screen shot 2014-04-24 at 9.36.11 PM

Ted Nelson, who coined the term Hypertext.

My students struggled a bit with the Nelson article.  Not only was it long, but his ideas didn’t seem to spark much interest.  As we discussed his piece together, I pointed out just how revolutionary his thoughts were in 1965, but that seemed to have little impact on their thinking.  Moreover, his ideas about hypertext, or links between words and documents seemed so obvious to their minds that it was difficult to underscore their significance.  So I took a different tactic and we created a list of all of the characteristics of Nelson’s imagined platform: it would be connected and iterative and creative and collaborative.  It would “grow indefinitely, gradually including more and more of the world’s knowledge.”

“Do you know of any platform like that?” I asked.

The response: Wikipedia.

When I shared their reply with Ted a few weeks later, he seemed frustrated.  And I could see why.  Wikipedia, although a valuable resource and an excellent knowledge repository, is not a creative space.  Indeed, it tends towards being rather scripted and formulaic, as well as hierarchical in ways that don’t gel with Nelson’s vision.

My students’ response to my question about Project Xanadu points to the unrealized nature of Nelson’s early vision–we remain locked into ways of digitally writing that replicate paper and although many of us read e-books or use text-based apps of various kinds, they are simply re-presentations of analog modes of creation.  But it also points out a far larger problem: that the development of our computer interfaces and software feels like a “given” to most students.  They have difficulty imagining that computers could have developed a different way or with an alternate mode of interaction.  Which concerns me about how they may imagine their own future–as a series of inevitabilities rather than as dynamic and evolving threads of occurrences on a canvas that they can manipulate and shape to their liking.

 

April 25, 2014
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mary mondaypoetry

Mary Monday: renewal

Returning to my “Mary Monday” poetry series, from oh-so-long ago….

How I wish that I’d read this poem before I spent three hours at the DMV last week, getting my stolen Driver’s License replaced:

(from the Writer’s Almanac):

Renewal

by Jeffrey Harrison

At the Department of Motor Vehicles
to renew my driver’s license, I had to wait
two hours on one of those wooden benches
like pews in the church of Latter Day
Meaninglessness, where there is no
stained glass (no windows at all, in fact),
no incense other than stale cigarette smoke
emanating from the clothes of those around me,
and no sermon, just an automated female voice
calling numbers over a loudspeaker.
And one by one the members of our sorry
congregation shuffled meekly up to the pitted
altar to have our vision tested or to seek
redemption for whatever wrong turn we’d taken,
or pay indulgences, or else be turned away
as unworthy of piloting our own journey.
But when I paused to look around, using my numbered
ticket as a bookmark, it was as if the dim
fluorescent light had been transformed
to incandescence. The face of the Latino guy
in a ripped black sweatshirt glowed with health,
and I could tell that the sulking white girl
accompanied by her mother was brimming
with secret excitement to be getting her first license,
already speeding down the highway, alone,
with all the windows open, singing.

April 21, 2014
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About Me

About Me

Hi there friend, and welcome to my blog. I started writing on the internet two decades ago. Since then I've started and finished a PhD program, left the Mormon church and became a Quaker, got divorced, remarried, found full-time work in academia, took up rock climbing and outrigger canoeing, and traveled across the globe (China! Belgium! Italy! Chicago! Montana! Portland! Gettysburg! and oh-so-many points in-between). This blog is eclectic and random--it has poetry and cooking and books. And cats. And flowers. And the ocean (my ocean). But in that sense it's a good reflection of me and my wide-ranging, far-reaching, magpie curiosity.

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