Browse Month: November 2012

Upcoming Event: Dr. Eileen Gardiner and Dr. Ronald Musto, Executive Directors of the Medieval Academy of America, to speak on Issues and Debates in the Digital Humanities

Please join us on Friday, December 7, at 6pm, for a talk by Drs. Eileen Gardiner and Ronald Musto on Digital Humanities and Medieval Studies: Issues and Debates. The event will take place in McGinley Center Faculty Lounge, Fordham University, Rose Hill Campus. Drs. Eileen Gardiner and Ronald Musto will address two major questions: what are the digital humanities and why do they matter? 

Dr. Eileen Gardiner
Dr. Ronald Musto

An array of platforms, applications, disciplinary approaches, tools and online collections in the humanities all come under the rubric of “digital.” But are the digital humanities simply another methodological approach to scholarly research and communication in the traditional humanities, are they an add-on to current disciplinary research questions and agendas, or are they a specialized subset within the structure of current humanities departments and institutes? Are all humanists now “digital” to the extent of their acculturation to the new technologies and use of digital resources, or are digital humanists a small circle of cutting-edge theoreticians and practitioners? Where is the work of digital humanities best performed? How is it funded, sustained and evaluated? Is the capital and monetization necessary to digitization dramatically changing the very nature of humanistic discourse? Can we even find a common definition of the humanities in the current academic and technological environment? The answers — though argued by some with great certitude and vigor — are still far from certain.

As publishers of Italica Press and past co-directors of the ACLS Humanities E-Book Project, Drs. Eileen Gardiner and Ronald Musto have considerable experience with new digital media. Dr. Gardiner is the editor of The Holy Land on Disk, and curator of two  websites: one on the history of Hell (www.hell-on-line.org) and the other on a medieval Irish pilgrimage route (http://www.pilgrimswaytopurgatory.org). In addition, she is the author of Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante (2008) and a variety of articles, including “Visions and Journeys,” in Dante in Context (CUP, forthcoming). Dr. Musto is the editor www.peacedocs.com and the co-author (with Gardiner) of “The Electronic Book” in The Oxford Companion to the Book (2009) and The Digital Humanities: A Primer to Students and Scholars (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press). Dr. Musto is also the general editor of the five-volume Documentary History of Naples, and co-author of Medieval Naples, 400-1400.  

Gardiner and Musto met at Fordham University while undergraduates. Dr. Gardiner went on to do a Ph.D. in medieval English literature at Fordham while Dr. Musto completed a Ph.D. in medieval history at Columbia University.  
This event is was organized by Fordham University’s Center for Medieval Studies with co-sponsorship from the Digital Humanities Working Group. A reception will follow the talk.

Patrick Burns and Jon Stanfill named as Fordham’s 2012-13 HASTAC Scholars

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with the Digital Humanities Working Group, is pleased to announce the second year of Fordham’s GSAS-sponsored HASTAC Scholars with awards to Patrick J. Burns, a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Classics, and Jon Stanfill, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Theology.

Patrick Burns (Classics)
2012-13 HASTAC Scholar

Burns’ digital research focuses on the application of corpus-linguistics methodologies, such as tree banking, annotation, and the use of the Python Natural Language Toolkit in the study of Latin literature.  Burns participated in the NEH-sponsored Summer Institute on the Perseus Project held at Tufts University last summer that explored many of these topics. He has also been at work on a digital teaching resource, the Tin Latin Reader, which he uses in the Latin courses he teaches.

Jon Stanfill (Theology)
2012-13 HASTAC Scholar

Stanfill will be investigating both the pedagogical possibilities of experiencing the world of Byzantium in the virtual realm, and the promise of cladistic analysis, which uses evolutionary biological algorithms for the editing of medieval manuscripts. Stanfill traces his interest in cladistic analysis to a seminar taught by Center for Teaching Excellence Director and medieval studies scholar Erick Keleman.

HASTAC (an acronym for Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, pronounced “haystack”) is an international network of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, librarians, archivists, museum curators, publishers, and IT specialists. Members of the HASTAC community blog, host forums, organize events, and discuss new ideas, projects, and technologies that reconceive teaching, learning, research, writing and structuring knowledge.

The HASTAC Scholars program fosters an innovative community of graduate students nominated and sponsored by their institutions to participate in an online community focused on digital scholarship, pedagogy, and publishing. The award comes with a modest honorarium and access to campus digital humanities mentorship, as well as the opportunity to participate in the dynamic online community that includes HASTAC Scholars from more than 75 universities from around the world.

The 2011-2012 Fordham HASTAC scholarship, which marked the university’s inaugural year participating in the program, went to Elizabeth Cornell, a pre-doctoral fellow in the Department of English, for her work on the Keywords Collaboratory, an interactive project directed by Fordham English professor Glenn Hendler and University of Washington professor Bruce Burgett.

The Digital Humanities Working Group and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences plan to make the HASTAC Scholars program an annual award, with application deadlines in early September 2013. Stay tuned for more information.

You Online: Developing Your Online Academic Presence

We are happy to report that You Online: Developing Your Online Academic Presence led by Michael Mandiberg is still on for Wednesday, November 7, 11:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. despite the disruptions of the Hurricane Sandy disaster. The lecture and workshop will take place at the Flom Auditorium of the Walsh Library at Fordham Rose Hill.

Professor Michael Mandiberg

Michael Mandiberg is a interdisciplinary artist, designer and scholar whose work employs each of these methodologies, in part to investigate the significance of their overlap. He creates conceptual art projects, design objects, and publications that explore themes that include environmentalism, systems of exchange, pedagogy, software art, collaboration, Free Culture, and appropriation. Among his projects: He sold all of his possessions online on Shop Mandiberg, made perfect copies of copies on AfterSherrieLevine.com, and created Firefox plugins that highlight the real environmental costs of a global economy online at TheRealCosts.com. He is co-author of Digital Foundations Collaborative Futures and the editor of The Social Media Reader.

A recipient of residencies and commissions from Eyebeam, Rhizome.org, and Turbulence.org, his work has been exhibited at the New Museum, Ars Electronica, ZKM, and Transmediale. A former Senior Fellow at Eyebeam, he is currently Director of the New York Arts Practicum, Associate Professor at the College of Staten Island/CUNY; and a member of the Doctoral Faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. He lives in, and rides his bicycle around, Brooklyn. His work lives at Mandiberg.com

Program Details: This faculty and graduate student development program will have two parts.  Part I is an hour-long presentation by Professor Mandiberg on the importance of cultivating an online presence and ways to establish one, including the steps for building a basic website using WordPress. This part will be held in Flom Auditorium of Walsh Library and open to anyone in the Fordham community and their guests. Part II will be a hands-on workshop for thirty graduate students and faculty members. Due to the hands-on nature of this workshop, space is limited and pre-registration for the workshop section was required. Participants will learn to create pages and posts in WordPress, and they will leave with a working site framework. Lunch will be served to the thirty workshop participants.

This event is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Fordham Graduate Student Digital Humanities Group, the Digital Humanities Working Group with support from the Arts and Sciences Deans of Fordham University, the Medieval Studies Program, the American Studies Program, and the Department of Communications and Media Studies, the Department of English, the Department of History, the Department of Theology, and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

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