Five College Event: Film Screening and Discussion with Renowned Filmmaker, Ute Aurand

Where: 

Mount Holyoke College, Location TBA

Screening of the triptych "Here it is very nice at the moment," a collaborative film project that explores the use of media to record personal histories and memory. For more information about the film as well as Ute Aurand, click here. Co-sponsored by the Mount Holyoke College Department of Film Studies.

Past Events

Showcase of Graduate Student Work in the Digital Humanities

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

Come learn about some of the fascinating and groundbreaking work that UMass graduate students are doing in the digital humanities!  

The ‘Public’ in Media and Asian-Americans Online Mediations of Public and Community Imaginaries
Linh Dich, PhD student in the Department of English, UMass
 
Digital Technology and the Practice of Public History: Using Omeka to Create a Walking Tour of Civil War Amherst
Tom Hohenstein, Jaimie Kircklighter, Janiece Blackmon, and Patrick Condon, graduate students in the Department of History, UMass


Myths and Facts about E-Journals

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

How is an e-journal different from a printed periodical? What is involved in the production process of an online publication? Electronic resources have been reshaping significantly the ways in which we conduct research, but how are online publications contributing to changing scholarly practices in the Humanities? Come to this talk to find out! 

A Discussion on New Media Arts and the Digital Humanities

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

Over the past three decades, digital technology has become an important tool for artistic creativity in the different art forms: literature, visual arts, cinema, and music, and it has enabled the creation of new hybrid (and often conceptual) art forms. We invite you to three presentations from the field of New Media Arts that examine a few of the ways that digital technology is changing how people both create and relate to the arts. 

A GIS primer for the Digital Humanities

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

"Where?" is one of the crucial questions in Humanities research. This presentation will introduce Geographical Information Systems software, highlight its basic functions and illustrate the power of data-driving mapping in the Digital Humanities. Participants are encouraged to bring questions about how their own research might utilize GIS. In this workshop, these questions will be addressed at both a theoretical (can it be done? / what is the value?) and practical (what do I need? / how do I build it?) level.

Curating Digital Collections and Exhibits with Omeka: An Introductory Workshop

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

This hands-on workshop will teach participants how to use Omeka, a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions. Omeka can be easily adapted for use by both individuals and groups to publish scholarship, share collections, mount digital exhibits, and build learning modules for use in the classroom.

Preserving our Cultural Heritage: Creating Digital Archives through Collection, Collaboration, and Curation

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

Kristine Hanna's work focuses on developing collaborative and long lasting relationships with partners to further the mission of the Internet Archive. She works with institutions and foundations to fund and implement existing and/or new projects and programs; including Archive-It, a web archiving service first deployed in 2006 and currently used by over 150 institutions in 44 states.

Five College Event: New Media in Feminist Scholarship, Teaching, and Activism

Where: 

The FCWSRC, 83 College Street, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley

Women, Water and Waterwheel
Suzon Fuks will introduce Waterwheel, a collaborative online venue she created for streaming, mixing and sharing media & ideas about water. The platform aims to raise awareness, celebration, care & accessibility of water everywhere.
 
Sexual/Digital Revolution: Women Directors, Alternative Relationships, and 21st Century Independent Filmmaking
Maria San Filippo looks at new technologies in digital filming and distribution have forged a DIY, politicized production culture generative of new and unconventional ways of screening and perceiving sexuality. San Filippo's talk focuses on the recent work by independent women filmmakers to contemplate alternative approaches to sex and relationships, including bisexuality, polyamory, nonmonogamy, and BDSM. 

Five College Event: Digital Humanities Colloquium

Where: 

Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, Smith College

Public symposium that brings together three key scholars in the field to describe their work and discuss intellectual questions that have shaped their approach to digital humanities. The visiting speakers for this opening event will be Jeffrey Schnapp, Professor of Romance Languages & Literature and Director of the metaLAB at Harvard University; Tara McPherson, Associate Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California; and Joan Saab, Associate Professor of Art History and Visual and Cultural Studies and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Rochester.

Five College Event: Of Roman Walls and Lace Shawls, iPads and Interactive Maps: Technologies and Humanities in the Five Colleges

Where: 

Room 102 Webster Hall, Amherst College

Members of the public and the Five-College digital humanities community are invited to this showcase of new and ongoing digital humanities work by Five College faculty and staff. Click for a full schedule of the day's events.

Five College Event: A Public Talk with Virginia Eubanks

Where: 

Five Colleges, Incorporated, 97 Spring Street, Amherst

Eubanks is the cofounder of Our Knowledge, Our Power (OKOP), a grassroots anti-poverty and welfare rights organization, and teaches in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. She edited the cyberfeminist ‘zine Brillo and was active in the community technology center movements in the San Francisco Bay Area and Troy, NY.

Five College Event: Security in the Digital Age: Are Women at Risk? Building Resilience for Challenging Circumstances

Where: 

New York Room, Mary Woolley Hall, Mount Holyoke College

As part of a year-long series on gender issues and new media at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, this panel of distinguished speakers from the fields of journalism, security, and leadership development will explore the multiple ways in which questions of physical and virtual security play out for women using media for public engagement, social networking, and journalism. 

Five College Event: New Media in Feminist Scholarship, Teaching, and Activism

Where: 

The FCWSRC, 83 College Street, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley

Her Zimbabwe: Exploring the Heterogeneity of the Female Zimbabwean Experience through a New Women's Web-Based Platform
Fungai Machirori  focuses on findings from a three-month pilot of Her Zimbabwe, a web-based platform that has encouraged Zimbabwean women to explore, celebrate and articulate the heterogeneity of their lives and identities.
 
Feminist Cloud Protesting
Sophie Toupin explores the ways in which feminist activists of the occupy phenomenon have helped shape what appear to be new social practices using online and face to face (F2F) interactions, or what Toupin terms "feminist cloud protesting." The project seeks to establish the emergence of a feminist cloud protesting approach through collected data on new media by academics and activists.

Five College Event: New Media in Feminist Scholarship, Teaching, and Activism

Where: 

The FCWSRC, 83 College Street, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley

The Zine Project
Pax Chmara's project is a collection of works documenting the stories, creativity, written and visual expression of young women in New England. Guiding principles of the project are freedom of expression for all at low or no monetary cost. A book created from the collection will be comprised of zines developed within high school, university and independent women's working groups in Western Massachusetts.

The Role of Social Media in Women Out-of-School Learning in Nigeria
Evelyn Caleb's presentation explores the role which social media plays in women's out-of-school learning in Nigeria. Caleb will examine the state of women's education, the extent of social media usage and the hazards associated with it.

Five College Event: New Media in Feminist Scholarship, Teaching, and Activism

Where: 

The FCWSRC, 83 College Street, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley

Perfectly Transparent: Will the Promise of a "Perfect" World Render Us the Vessels for Surveillance?
Salome Kahiu's presentation looks at the fundamental change in human sovereignty that is assumed to be a main characteristic of the perceived Transhuman future. It explores the idea that technology is using us as agents through which a new Transhuman society will be birthed. In dissecting the inevitable technological evolution, Salome will look at the cultural and social ethics surrounding this aspect of futurism.

Fan Video and the Queerness of Media Convergence
Julie Russo's  presentation takes the production of pop culture remixes within female fan communities as one example of the stakes of new media's transformations. Today, those of us who are Internet users are also media creators, and Russo argues that we need new conceptions of labor to understand our negotiations with centralized commercial websites that profit from the data we contribute.

Five College Event: New Media in Feminist Scholarship, Teaching, and Activism

Where: 

The FCWSRC, 83 College Street, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley

Flashback to Sultana's Dream: Rural Women Journalists using New Media in India 
Disha Mullick draws from the experience of a group of rural women journalists from marginalised communities in Uttar Pradesh in northern India. This presentation looks at whether access to information and new media technology has informed the specific, situated voices of these journalists, as well as the ways reporters represent themselves and their worlds using such technology.  

Considering Some Transnational Aspects of LGBT Digital Media
Eve Ng's presentation touches on the recent study of LGBT media has centered on the media of the U.S. and other Western countries, which have been the source of many well-known films and television programs.  Yet there has been little research on how digital technologies facilitate the production of LGBT media outside of the global North, or how the circulation of LGBT texts globally is informing the production of queer communities and identities in culturally specific spaces. In this talk, Ng draws on interview data and site analyses to examine the production and consumption of LGBT digital media in the global South. In engaging new media research with postcolonial sexuality studies, she considers  questions around media and globalization, the politics of visibility, and sexual citizenship.

Data Sharing in the Humanities

Where: 

WEB Du Bois Library, 26th Floor

“Data in the Humanities” is an Open Access Week event to discuss the varieties of research data in the Humanities and the merits of and concerns about sharing that data. The Panel includes three UMass Amherst Humanities faculty members who will present their perspectives on data and data sharing.

Watchers of Metamorphosis or Explorers of the Abyss? Digital Humanities at the Threshold of Cybertextuality

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

Domingo Sánchez-Mesa, Professor at the University of Grenada and Visiting Professor of Spanish at UMass, will present some of the highlights of his research on digital literature and cyberculture, intermediality / transmediality (literature-cinema-videogames) and the didactic application of it in several projects and e-learning courses during the last decade.

Copyright Futures for the Humanities

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

Digital humanities work raises questions around digitization, search, and non-consumptive uses of texts, as well as distribution and access. But traditional humanities work is also confronting copyright questions, simply in terms of publishing, using, and accessing humanities research. This discussion, facilitated by Laura Quilter, UMass Copyright and Information Policy Librarian, will address the issues raised in copyright litigation, particularly the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust case and the "digital humanities" amicus brief, and consider the possible Open Access future presented by the Open Library of Humanities and other initiatives. 
 

It Didn't Happen Here?: Working Class Mobilization and the Impact of Institutional Change in the United States

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

Dr. Amhed's work seeks to shed light on an enduring question of American political development: Why no workers' party in the United States? Scholars have attributed this to a variety of structural conditions associated with the nature of nation-state formation. However historical evidence reveals that at least one of these structural conditions - the single member plurality (SMP) electoral system - was not an originary feature of the American political system as many have assumed, but rather was deliberately adopted in 1842 to undermine nascent working class mobilization. In this project Ahmed explores the consequences of the move to SMP during this critical period of labor party formation.

Bending the Horizon. A Pompeian Photogrammetry (PhotoScan) Primer.

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

Join us as Professor Eric Poehler demonstrates photogrammetry. As a burgeoning tool for the humanities, the importance of photogrammetry - computer programs that transform a series of digital images into a precise three dimensional model - cannot be overstated. Being able to capture not only the visual aspects of place, but also being able to replicate the experience of their dimensional qualities with only a point-and-shot digital camera, is revolutionizing how archaeologists conduct their fieldwork, interpret their data, and share their results.

Publishing Your Dissertations: Open Access / Embargo / Other Options? What’s in Your Best Interest? A Panel Discussion.

Where: 

Herter Hall 601

Heated discussion erupted over the American Historical Association statement urging universities to allow PhD recipients to embargo their electronic dissertation for up to six years while they pursue a book contract. Harvard University Press responded with a blog post that made a convincing case that immediate open access could be advantageous. Some institutions have recently changed their open access and embargo policies. This panel will provide faculty, librarian, University Press, and graduate student views on this timely topic followed by Q&A.

Digital Writing: Interactivity, Subjectivity, and Big Data. A showcase of graduate student work in the digital humanities.

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

Come learn about some of the fascinating and groundbreaking work that UMass graduate students John Gallagher, Leslie Bradshaw, and Christian Pulver are doing in the digital humanities!  

The University of Facebook: Social Media and the Humanities

Where: 

The Digital Humanities Lab, Herter Hall 19G

Claire Potter joined the New School for Public Engagement in 2012. She is the author of War on Crime: Bandits, G-Men and the Politics of Mass Culture (Rutgers, 1998) and co-editor of Doing Recent History: On Privacy, Copyright, Video Games, Institutional Review Boards, Activist Scholarship, and History That Talks Back (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012.) She teaches courses in social sciences and humanities in the School of Undergraduate Studies and is also a member of the university history department.

Sure, it’s cool, but is it scholarship? Building a case for computer modeling as knowledge production

Where: 

Herter Hall 601

Please join us for a presentation by Dr. Lisa Snyder from UCLA on Thursday, April 23 at 4pm in Herter Hall, Room 601.

Sure, it’s cool, but is it scholarship?
Building a case for computer modeling as knowledge production

Encounters with the digital are increasingly pushing the boundaries of academic knowledge production. For traditionalists, the most palatable concession to technology is surely the print-like online journal, if only for convenience’s sake. At the other end of the spectrum of the ever-expanding range of digital tools and methods, sits the three-dimensional computer model. Decidedly not print-like. Interactive. Non-linear. More visual than textual. Confounding in approach and dissemination. Sure, it’s cool, but is it scholarship?