A Baker-Nord Digital Humanities Event
Allison Schifani, Baker-Nord Center Postdoctoral Scholar in the Digital Humanities, presents an informal introduction to the field. This talk will provide a broad overview of emerging methodologies for research and teaching across the humanities. In addition to offering new ways to help answer central research questions and alternative means to explore texts, digital technologies can aid in collaboration between scholars and institutions, augment and distribute scholarly writing and enliven classroom discussions and scholarly debate. Digital Humanities practitioners use a broad variety of tools to deepen access to the objects of their study and sharpen the analysis they offer in their work. Digital tools are by no means an end in and of themselves: they help scholars refine their existing knowledge base and add to the methodological approaches available for both research and writing. The Digital Humanities initiatives at the Baker-Nord Center are also helping to meet the goals of CWRU’s strategic plan; they encourage collaboration, interdisciplinarity and innovation both inside the classroom and in the world. Allison will outline some of the basic, easy-to-use tools and offer a few example projects that have come from the Digital Humanities camp.
About the speaker
Allison Schifani
Allison Schifani received her PhD from the Graduate Program in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work explores literatures, media art, and urban intervention in the 20th and 21st Century Americas. Her dissertation, Biotechnical Ecologies: Urban Practice and Play in Buenos Aires and Los Angeles focused on extra-institutional ways of shaping the experience of the city and speculating on its digital futures. She is currently writing on emerging DIY media and art practices in Cleveland.
Additional Resources
Registry of digital research tools for scholarly use
Matt Kirschenbaum’s article “What Is Digital humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?”
Peek into an ongoing, real-time, collaboration for the creation of a DH Taxonomy