Month: April 2016

I will be honest: at this point, my digital start-up project is rough around the edges. Ideas came to me easily, but deciding how these ideas could be truly innovative, or innovative at all, was a whole different story. Over the past few weeks, this has caused me a great deal of brain-ache. Basically, I have found myself gripping my lunch tray in the academic cafeteria, staring longingly at the DHers table. When it comes to even pretending to be in the Digital Humanities, I don’t fit in. I am still trying, though, and I will share with you what I am working on.

My plan for my project is to create an Anti-Canon. It will be a continually updated database of alternative texts to those that comprise what we traditionally call the literary canon. The goal of this database will be to not only provide alternative texts to students and teachers of literature, but also to question the very idea of a solid, permanent canon. Read more about my plans…

Hi, everyone.

I have to say, the CMS evaluation has been one of my favorite assignments so far. The platform I chose was Mukurtu, which is geared toward archival and cultural preservation work. I found it very interesting and I encourage you all to take a look at it if you have a chance.

The best part: while I was exploring Mukurtu for the assignment, I got inspiration and ideas for my digital start-up proposal. I’d been struggling to come up with a worthwhile idea for that project, and in the process of doing this evaluation, it made me consider things like how “culture” and “heritage” may be defined, and the different communities we all belong to. I now have fresh ideas and renewed energy, and am excited to dig back in to the proposal.

Hi everyone I wanted to alert you to a problem with one of our Content Management Systems.  Scalar is no longer working and redirects to a dead website. If you haven’t started the assignment yet or were like me and wrote half the paper earlier in the week you might be out of luck.  If anyone finds a way to access the website or if it goes back up let me know.

Our readings this week focus on the database and how it conflicts with narrative, its “natural enemy” (Manovich). Both of the readings fascinated me, so I’m not exactly sure where to start. Perhaps the readings inspired me to embrace the seemingly disjointed nature of the database in the writing of this post. Continue reading “Some Musings on the Database”

In the readings this week, I had a strong occurrence of deja vu. I’m sure it is due to the fact that each part we read deals with the debate of digital humanities. It also has something to do with the interconnectivity of this theme to everything I am doing. Each book I read, each lecture I participate in my other classes, each serious conversation I have at work or with friends, returns in some way to this on going debate of what is digital humanities and how does it fit in the world. I can take that a step further and wonder how it works its mystical magic in my world.

Continue reading “Dh is the means not the end”