Announcing our Speaker Lineup for “CUNY DHI: Building a Digital Humanities Community”

We are delighted to share our speaker lineup for next Tuesday at a CUNY-wide panel of lightning talks:

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“CUNY DHI: Building a Digital Humanities Community at The City University of New York,”

Tuesday, November 10th, from 6:30-8:30pm

Room C197 at The Graduate Center

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We will be welcoming undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff to speak on a variety of topics–from Queens Memory to Yoknapedia, Jailbreak My Life to Volumetric Cinema.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Digital Projects as Community Resource

Jill Belli, Jody R. Rosen; New York City College of Technology: The OpenLab

Stephen Zweibel, Patrick Smyth; The Graduate Center: DH Box

Lori Wallach; Queens College: Queens Memory

GC Digital Fellows et al.; The Graduate Center: GC Digital Initiatives

Nyvia DeJesus, Marta Orlowska, Evan Misshula; John Jay College of Criminal Justice: Jailbreak My Life

Communities of Pedagogy

Danica Savonick, Kalle Westerling; The Graduate Center: Building a Student-Centered (Digital) Learning Community

Jeff Allred; Hunter College: Introducing Yoknapedia

Bret Maney; Lehman College: Teaching DH in and beyond the English Classroom

Andie Silva; York College: Intro to Shakespeare Course (ENG 318) with Scalar

Eric Metcalf; York College: Archives & Invention: A Course in Archival Technology and Public Address; Faculty in the arts and the humanities don’t read etexts, so why is CUNY buying them?

Digital Communities of Text + Image

Julie Van Peteghem; Hunter College: Intertextual Dante

Kalle Westerling; The Graduate Center: The Roots and Routes of Boylesque

Sean Scanlan; New York City College of Technology: NANO: New American Notes Online

Erin Glass; The Graduate Center: Social Paper

Kevin L. Ferguson; Queens College: Volumetric Cinema

Lev Manovich; The Graduate Center: Measuring Inequality in Social Media Use in NYC

Alise Tifentale; The Graduate Center: “Find your own filter”: The aesthetics of Instagram Photography

Michael Mandiberg; College of Staten Island, The Graduate Center: Print Wikipedia

Matt Garley; York College: Digital Humanities Data Repository in an English Department

Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis; The Graduate Center: Manar Al-Athar

Fall 2015 Speaker Series

CUNY DHI and GC Digital Initiatives and are pleased to announce our Fall 2015 Speaker Series. We look forward to seeing you there!

CUNY DHI: Building a Digital Humanities Community at the City University of New York 
Tuesday, November 10th,  6:30-8:30pm. Room C197. The Graduate Center. #cunydhi

We invite you to The Graduate Center for this CUNY-wide event, which will feature a series of lightning talks on current and recent digital humanities work at our institutions. All disciplines, all research, and all students, faculty, and staff are welcome and we encourage you to attend and present.

We are still accepting presentation proposals, which may be submitted through the following form:  http://goo.gl/forms/TCAchwnIw6. Once you have completed the form, we will contact the email address provided with further details. Thank you for your interest in participating!

Sponsored by CUNY DHI and GC Digital Initiatives.

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“TBD:” A Talk by Professor Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Wednesday, November 18th, 6:30-8:30pm. The Skylight Room. The Graduate Center.

Increasingly, it would seem, the future is already known, determined by algorithms that analyze, predict and pre-empt actions.  Privacy is dead, and so is consent, because regardless of our own actions, we are betrayed by people “like us.”  To what extent, though, does this situation offer new possibilities for action and modes of identification?  This talk explores what it means “to be determined,” by framing users as characters in a universe of dramas putatively called Big Data.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, and Chair of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.

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“Digging Deep: Ecosystems, Institutions, and Processes for Critical Making”
December 1st, 12:30-2:30pm; 3-5:30pm. ARC Seminar Room 5318.05, The Graduate Center. Advanced registration required for each session.

Join Patrik Svensson, Matt Ratto, and Anne Balsamo for a highly anticipated day of sessions that explore the field of critical making in its institutional context. Sponsored by the Advanced Research Collaborative, with co-sponsorship from GC Digital Initiatives and Umeå University, the program includes two parts. The first session foregrounds institutional perspectives on critical making and materiality, and the second engages situated practices and processes of critical making in its varied sites. For more information and advance registration (required), please visit: <http://tinyurl.com/ps5x69w>

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“The Art of Seeing: Aesthetics at the Intersection of Art and Science”
December 10th, 4:15-6:15p. Room C197, The Graduate Center.

In this two-part presentation, art historian Emily L. Spratt and computer scientist Ahmed Elgammal explore the uses of vision technology for the analysis of art and its philosophical implications for both aesthetic theory and artificial intelligence. Through an investigation of the most fundamental questions computer scientists are confronted with in giving a machine the capacity to see, we demonstrate the value in utilizing methodologies from art history as the field of computer vision has already, in fact, predicted certain categories of interpretation that aid in the analysis of art. Returning to the aesthetic debates inspired by Kant and renewing focus to the art historical theories of iconography and iconology that were prominent in the first half of the twentieth century, basic issues of object classification are examined in relation to vision technology. In this presentation, we hope to demonstrate the merit of bridging the fields of art history and computer science, and to underscore the new challenges aesthetics, in the age of artificial intelligence, face.

This event is hosted by the Computer Science Colloquium, and co-sponsored by GC Digital Initiatives.

Streamlined Sign-up Available: Call for Lightning Talk Presentations

We are still accepting presentation proposals for “CUNY DHI: Building a Digital Humanities Community at the City University of New York,” and would like to share that we have simplified our sign-up process.

The new, streamlined sign-up sheet only requires name, email, project title, and CUNY affiliation, with optional space to describe your project, team, or additional requests.

Please sign up here: http://goo.gl/forms/TCAchwnIw6. Once you have completed the form, we will contact the email address provided with further details.

This event is designed to highlight ongoing, current, and recent digital humanities work across The City University of New York, and all disciplines, all research, and all students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend and present.

The event is scheduled for Tuesday, November 10th, 6:30-8:30pm at Room C197 at The Graduate Center. Please plan to speak for no more than five minutes. Groups may present collaboratively or with a representative.

Thank you for your interest in participating, and we look forward to seeing you there.

Call for Lightning Talk Presentations at CUNY DHI: Building a Digital Humanities Community at the City University of New York

Call for Lightning Talk Presentations at CUNY DHI: Building a Digital Humanities Community at the City University of New York

We are now accepting presentation proposals that highlight ongoing, current, and recent digital humanities work across The City University of New York, and would like to encourage you to consider participating. All disciplines, all research, and all students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend and present.

The event is scheduled for Tuesday, November 10th, 6:30-8:30pm at The Graduate Center. Please plan to speak for no more than five minutes. Groups may present collaboratively or with a representative. Proposals may be submitted through the following form: http://goo.gl/forms/mF6oPcEqfs. Once you have completed the form, we will contact the email address provided with further details. Thank you for your interest in participating, and we look forward to seeing you there.

For specific questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at mgold@gc.cuny.edu or mckinniburgh@gmail.com.

Sponsored by CUNY DHI and GC Digital Initiatives.

Tags | call for participants, cunydhi, digitalhumanities, events

Program for MEDIA RES #1: lightning talks by NYC graduate students on DH projects

2:00 – 3:30 pm, Friday, May 8th, 2015

CUNY Graduate Center, Room C415A

 HASHTAG: #NYCDH

SPEAKERS:

ROUND ONE

Jeffrey Binder

English – Graduate Center

The Distance Machine: Expectation and Surprise in the Navigation of Digital Collections

Julia Fuller

English – Graduate Center

Recovering Victorian Iconography, Reframing the Dissertation: A DH Project in Progress

Erin Glass

English – Graduate Center

Affordances of Writing Technologies

Collin Jennings

NYU – English

Too Big a Tale: Old and New Forms of Magnitude for Representing the Past

Jojo Karlin

MALS/English – Graduate Center

TwitterBot Thoughts

ROUND TWO

Mary Catherine Kinniburgh

English – Graduate Center

Mapping the Deep and the Digital: Place Names in the Icelandic Outlaw Sagas

Grace Afsari-Mamagani

English – NYU

Digital Spatiality and the Politics of Blackness

Jesse Merandy

English – Graduate Center

TBA

Aaron Plasek

English/History – NYU/Columbia

Fail Better: On Algorithmic “Transparency” as Critical Procedure

ROUND THREE

Christy Pottroff

English – Fordham

Mapping the Mail: from Archive to Neatline

Jonathan Reeve

English – NYU / Columbia

MACRO-ETYMOLOGICAL TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

an application of language history to literary criticism

Patrick Smyth

English – Graduate Center

DH Box: A Digital Humanities Laboratory in the Cloud

Chris Vitale

MALS – Graduate Center

TANDEM

MEDIA RES #1: lightning talks by NYC graduate students on DH projects

 TIME: 2:00 – 3:30 pm, Friday, May 8th, 2015

ROOM: CUNY Graduate Center, Room C415A

FOCUS: English & Literary Studies

NYC has more graduate students executing projects in the digital humanities than perhaps anywhere else in the world. Even so, few venues exist that make visible the diverse set of methods, philosophies, and inquiries that drive this graduate student work in English Studies. Media Res #1 will present a wide array of approaches to theoretically-informed questions through a series of 12 five-minute lightning talks by graduate students doing student-driven digital humanities research in NYC. These talks and the subsequent discussions the talks engender will serve as a useful entry to point into DH for students who might otherwise not know where to start. Equally important, Media Res #1 will foster a burgeoning network of graduate student scholars working across academic institutions to collaborate on intellectual inquiry, share knowledge and practical expertise in DH, and inspire confidence and mutual support. This event will conclude with a moderated discussion inviting speakers and audience alike to explore how universities might better support and promote ongoing student-driven DH work.

While Media Res #1 highlights student DH projects in English and literature, future Media Res events will explore DH work in different disciplines, formats, and venues. Any questions or suggestions for future Media Res events should be directed to Erin Glass (erin.glass@gmail.com) or Aaron Plasek (aaronplasek@gmail.com).

Panelists include: Jeffrey Binder (Graduate Center), Mary Catherine Kinniburgh (Graduate Center), Patrick Smyth (Graduate Center), Jojo Karlin (Graduate Center), Erin Glass (Graduate Center), Julia Fuller (Graduate Center), Chris Vitale (Graduate Center), Jesse Merandy (Graduate Center), Collin Jennings (NYU), Grace Afsari-Mamagani (NYU), Jon Reeve (NYU), Aaron Plasek (NYU & Columbia), and Christy Pottroff (Fordham).

Evaluating, Valuing, and Promoting Digital Scholarship

The GC Digital Initiatives, CUNY DHI, and the GC Digital Fellows invite you to join us for a panel and discussion on Evaluating, Valuing, and Promoting Digital Scholarship.

It will be on April 21, 2015 at The Graduate Center in Room 9204 from 6:30-8:30 pm. Note: the event will be livestreamed.

Digital resources and methods are deeply embedded in academic research. However, processes for evaluation, peer review, and assessment projects that include digital scholarship have not kept pace with the technological and methodological changes that have altered research practices in many academic disciplines. Often, those not directly involved in digital projects are hesitant to use and assess them, especially if they are not familiar with the theoretical basis for a particular digital undertaking. In addition, digital work tends to be collaborative and interdisciplinary, offering new challenges for measuring the contributions of individuals. This panel is for both the enthusiastic and the skeptical, speaking both to those interested in creating and presenting digital work and those wishing to better understand and assess the digital scholarship of their colleagues.

Steven Jones, Professor of English and Co-Director, and Co-Director of the Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, Loyola University Chicago, “Welcome to the Interdiscipline”

Sonia K. González, MPH, DPH candidate in the CUNY School of Public Health, and Assistant Program Officer, Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate, “There’s an App for That, But Does It Work? Development of the Evaluation of a Sexual Health Mobile-Based App”

Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis, Visiting Assistant Professor and Deputy Executive Officer, MA in Liberal Studies, The Graduate Center, CUNY, “Digital Digs: Training Archaeologists and Evaluating Digital Archaeology in the 21st Century”

Chris Allen Sula, Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute, School of Information & Library Science, “Methods, Disciplines, and Evaluating Scholarly Work in the Digital Humanities”

Amanda Visconti, PhD, University of Maryland, Literature and Digital Dissertation Fellow at Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), “Assessing Digital Humanities Dissertations: How to Plan, Track Progress, and Evaluate Work that Doesn’t Develop in Chapters”

A.L. McMichael, PhD candidate in Art History and GC Digital Fellow at The Graduate Center, CUNY, will be panel moderator. The panel will include brief talks by the digital scholars followed by discussion and audience questions.

This event will be Livestreamed! Click here for more information.

This event is co-sponsored by the the Futures Initiative, the New Media Lab, the ITP Certificate Program, and the Futures Initiative. It is free and open to the public. The Graduate Center is located at 365 Fifth Avenue, NYC.

Books Matter: Circulating Digital and Printed Texts (3/27/15)

Please join the Ph.D. Program in English, GC Digital Initiatives, and CUNY DHI on Friday, March 27 2015 from 4pm-6pm (Room 4406, Graduate Center, CUNY):

Books Matter: Circulating Digital and Printed Texts

“Bookshelf spectrum 2.0 – mission accomplished!” by flickr user Pietro Bellini

What is the place of the printed book in an era of digital reading devices and web-based publishing, and how have digital workflows changed academic publishing? How are digital texts circulating in new and varied forms? This roundtable will explore how the growth of digital media has altered the material form of the printed book and posed new challenges for institutions, such as libraries, that are focused on providing access to them.

Jeffrey Binder, Graduate Center, CUNY
Erin Glass, Graduate Center, CUNY
Matthew K. Gold, Graduate Center, CUNY
Steve Jones, Loyola University Chicago
Andrew Stauffer, University of Virginia
Marion Thain, New York University

Reception to follow

Should We Fear Intelligent Machines?

Please join the GC Digital Initiatives, the GC Digital Fellows, the PhD program in Computer Science and the CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative in welcoming Dr. Gerald J Sussman, who will present on the problems created by intelligent agents whose governing are purposefully obscured but whose actions are designed to benefit or harm humans.

Gerald Jay Sussman

This event will take place Tuesday, March 24th, at 6pm in the Mina Rees Library Concourse (C.197) at the Graduate Center, CUNY. This event will be live tweeted (follow @cunydhi and use #cunydhi).

Recently there has been a new round of concern about the possibility that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could get out of control and become an existential threat to humanity.” With the recent explosive application of AI technology we are faced with a problem: a technology so powerful and pervasive whose benefits accrue to private entities (Microsoft, Oracle, Google, facebook, Cigna, FICO, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs) yet with both unexamined and unregulated consequences for private citizens.

How can we ensure that applications of this technology are constrained to provide benefits without excessive risk of harm? This is primarily a social, political, and economic issue, there are also significant technical challenges that we should address.

Sussman argues that intelligent agents must be able to explain their decisions and actions with stories that can be understood by other intelligent agents, including humans. Sussman goes further, adding that these programs must be capable of being held accountable for those activities in adversarial proceedings. For citizens to have confidence in these measures the software base for such agents must be open and free to be examined by all and modified, if necessary, to enhance good behaviors and to ameliorate harmful behaviors.

Biographical sketch of Gerald Jay Sussman

Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic (formerly Matsushita) Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received the S.B. and the Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968 and 1973, respectively. He has been involved in artificial intelligence research at M.I.T. since 1964. Sussman’s contributions to Artificial Intelligence include problem solving by debugging almost-right plans and various language structures for expressing problem-solving strategies. His work with Richard Stallman developed propagation of constraints for application to electrical circuit analysis and synthesis, and dependency-based explanation and backtracking. Sussman and his former student, Guy L. Steele Jr., invented the Scheme programming language in 1975.

Sussman pioneered the use of computational descriptions to communicate methodological ideas in teaching subjects in Electrical Circuits and in Signals and Systems. Over the past decade Sussman and Jack Wisdom  worked across disciplines to develope a subject that uses computational techniques to communicate a deeper understanding of advanced Classical Mechanics. The task of formulating a method as a computer-executable program and debugging that program is a powerful exercise in the learning process. Also, once formalized procedurally, a mathematical idea becomes a tool that can be used directly to compute results. Sussman and Wisdom, with Meinhard Mayer, have produced a textbook, “Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics,” to capture these novel ideas.

Sussman is a coauthor (with Hal Abelson and Julie Sussman) of the introductory computer science textbook used at MIT and many other universities. The textbook, “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs,” has been translated into French, German, Chinese, Polish, and Japanese. As a result of this and other contributions to computer-science education, Sussman received the ACM’s Karl Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award in 1990, and the Amar G. Bose award for teaching in 1992.

Sussman is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). Sussman is a founding director of the Free Software Foundation.

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