I’m currently in the process of re-designing this site, hence the lack of content as of late. Check back in late September / early October for a new look, and thank you for your patience!

The final installment in the “What does digital scholarship do?” HASTAC Scholars series at the University of Washington is scheduled for tomorrow on the Seattle campus.

The conversation—”‘You Have One Identity’: Facebook, Twitter, and the (Alleged) Death of Privacy”—happens on Thursday, June 3rd, at 4:30 p.m., in Communications 202 (in the Simpson Center for the Humanities).  It is open to the public.

Deen Freelon (PhD Candidate, Dept. of Communication) will be facilitating.  Below is a description of the event, and here is the flier (in PNG).  Looking forward!

Online privacy, one of the longest-running topics of interest in digital  scholarship (with references dating back to the early 1980s), has recently taken center stage in the public consciousness. Far-reaching decisions by the upper managements of Facebook, Twitter, and other services that accumulate user information as a business practice have gone further than provoking the ire of the usual scholarly suspects: they have sparked a public controversy over the fundamental meaning of privacy in the 21st century. The aim of this colloquium is to bring  together a diverse set of scholarly perspectives to discuss the implications of the recent changes, which include Facebook’s exposure of an unprecedented amount of personal information to the entire internet and Twitter’s agreement to allow the Library of Congress to permanently archive every public tweet—past, present, and future. While all relevant theories will be admissible, the colloquium will revolve around three conceptual foci: the alleged death of privacy, the politics of technological design choices, and the normative question of how the burden of safeguarding user privacy should be distributed between the user and the data-holding entity. It is recommended, though not required, that attendees read in advance the recent essay by danah boyd on the implications of Facebook’s assumptions about privacy.

Check out the first six installments of the series, too!: “Engaging the Networked Domestic,” “Pink Noises,” “Digital Fabrication and the Database,” “Evaluating Digital Scholarship,” “Queer/ing/s Online” and “Designing Discoverability.”

Thanks to the Simpson Center for sponsoring the conversation series this year.  It’s been a fantastic opportunity to listen to folks share their ideas and learn from them.

This coming week (from May 20th to the 23rd), I’ll be attending my third Computers and Writing conference, this year at Purdue University.  (The last two I attended were at Wayne State and UC-Davis.)

I’ll be involved in a few conference invents, including a Friday panel titled, “Tinkering with Rhetorical Expertise: Reappraising Functional Literacy,” with Derek Van Ittersum, Annette Vee, and Kory Lawson Ching.  Here’s a quick description of what we’ll be discussing:

This panel responds to efforts in the field to rearticulate functional literacy by turning to the trope of tinkering.  Rather than imagining tinkering as mending an imperfect text, we instead seek to reframe tinkering to focus on the experimental or clever solutions to technological and rhetorical questions.

I’m really looking forward to it, especially since I’ll be in most brill company.  During my portion of the panel, I’ll be speaking to the roles that code, prototyping, and making stuff might play in computers and comp.

On Sunday, with six other folks I’m also contributing to the conference’s final town hall, “Articulating New Configurations for Virtual Scholarship.”  Michael J. Salvo is moderating:

Technology artifacts age poorly, yet underlying promises, concerns, and pedagogies endure in a variety of digital spaces.  The development of literacy technology will not slow or stop.  Seven emergent scholars will speak at Town Hall 2, articulating new challenges and artifacts by reflecting on their conference experience.  Their goal is to forecast possible futures of Computers and Writing research, teaching, and environments: the trajectories, directions, explorers, homesteaders, and indigenous populations that already reside in these spaces.  What metaphors and practices are just now being articulated, and how might they develop in our immediate, middle, and long-term future visions and begin the conversation for our next Computers and Writing Conference?

But, on Thursday, I’ll begin the event with the Graduate Research Network, acting as a table moderator for conversations about the job market and digital scholarship.  Should be fun, and perhaps I’ll see you there!

A big thanks to Rebecca Collins for her story in the new issue of Perspectives, the UW’s College of Arts & Sciences newsletter.

Also a big thanks to Fiona Barnett (Women’s Studies, Duke) and Herb Blau (English and Comp Lit., UW) for their kind and supportive words.

Check out the story.

Good news!  The next installment in the “What does digital scholarship do?” HASTAC Scholars series at the University of Washington is scheduled for this week.

The conversation—”Virtual Life Is Problematic: Engaging the Networked Domestic” —happens on Friday, April 30th, at 12:30 p.m., in Communications 202 (in the Simpson Center for the Humanities).  It is open to the public.

Amelia Abreu (PhD student, UW’s Information School) will be facilitating.  Below is a description of the event, and here is the flier (in PNG).  Looking forward!

The growth of broadband capability has significantly advanced the integration of networked technologies into the home, turning domestic spaces into interactive environments. Functional practices such as crafts, cooking and shopping have been transformed by such technology impacting the cultural economy of the home, but also shifting the relations of residents to these practices to the public sphere. As a result, the knowledges developed in the domestic are now traced and tracked in unprecedented volume and detail.

Looking at environments such as blogs, Twitter, and consumer forums, this discussion will explore identity, group dynamics, and document genres as they relate to the relationship between bodies, cultures, and knowledges. How do networked environments conflate and complicate our ideas of domestic across race, class, gender, and sexual modalities? What shape does the archive of this world take? Engaging with both the physical (spatial and embodied) and virtual dynamics of these communities, we will examine identity, performance and interaction in virtual domestic environments.

Check out the first five installments of the series, too!: “Pink Noises,” “Digital Fabrication and the Database,” “Evaluating Digital Scholarship,” “Queer/ing/s Online” and “Designing Discoverability.” Our seventh installment will occur in May.  More soon!

In the meantime, thanks again to the Simpson Center for sponsoring this event.

A piece, titled “Teaching and Learning through the Digital Humanities,” that I wrote for English Matters (the UW English Department’s newsletter) is now online.

Give it a gander.  There are also some print versions finding their way into the mailboxes of alumni.

A big thanks to Jen Gonyer-Donohue for being a fantastic editor and conversationalist.

I’m happy to announce that during the next academic year (2010-11), I’ll be designing and teaching courses in Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (IAS) at the University of Washington, Bothell.

The first course I’m teaching, “Technologies of Expression: Sound Reproduction Studies,” is a 200-level course scheduled for Autumn 2010.  It’s part of the new Media and Communication Studies emphasis in IAS.  More below.

Course Description

Since the 1850s, sound reproduction technologies have changed over time.  As some were rendered obsolete, others became cutting edge.  In one sense, this course is an opportunity for students to trace the history of those technological shifts by attending to everything from the phonograph and magnetic tape to the turntable and the computer.  Yet in another sense, the course is a chance to explore how those technologies are culturally embedded.  For example, how have artists and writers integrated sound reproduction technologies into their work, and to what effects on other media, such as print?  Through advertisements and film, how were certain technologies marketed, to whom, and for what purposes?  And when, where, and for whom does a sound seem pleasant, a recording appear high fidelity, or an environment feel noisy?

No doubt, these questions will keep us busy and curious throughout the quarter.   And during our conversations, we will also tap into some theories related to listening and seeing.  More specifically, we will unpack how those two sensory modalities are often situated in opposition to each other, as well as how they are frequently attached to particular value systems.  We will determine how to critically respond to such tendencies by conducting in-class listening sessions, which will focus on various media (e.g., vinyl records, phonograph cylinders, cassette tapes, film, CDs, and MP3s).

The ultimate aim of the course, then, is for students to walk away with competencies in how to approach sound as a historical, aesthetic, and political object of inquiry.  To put those competencies into tangible practice, each student will gather several sound sources over the course of the quarter and mix them into a digital audio essay intended for academic audiences.

Student Learning Goals

Become familiar with key moments in the history of sound reproduction.

Evaluate how settings and material conditions influence human perception.

Examine the intersections of various media, be they audio, visual, or audiovisual.

Understand how to historicize technologies as cultural artifacts.

Practice critical listening through several collaborative and individual exercises.

Produce a persuasive, academic essay through the use of digital audio.

Come September, I’ll post more info on the course, including a link to the course website.

I’m happy to announce that my UW English colleague, Paige Morgan, and I recently finished the THATCamp PNW website, including a Call for Participants for the October 2010 event, which will be held on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus.

A big thanks to Julie Meloni for all of her help.

The call’s copied below, and you can visit the site for more info.  If you are interested in applying, then please note the deadline.  Thanks!

THATCamp PNW 2010 Call for Participants / (The Humanities and Technology Camp Pacific Northwest)

Deadline for applications is Monday, June 7^th, 2010.

Following successful regional events around the world, including the first annual THATCamp Pacific Northwest at Washington State University in 2009, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the University of Washington Libraries, and the Henry Art Gallery are pleased to announce the return of THATCamp PNW in 2010.

The second annual THATCamp PNW will occur on Saturday, October 23^rd and Sunday, October 24^th, on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus.

On Friday, October 22^nd, THATCamp PNW will be preceded by two exciting public events:

• An workshop facilitated by Dave Lester, Assistant Director at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), on web-based publishing and digital curation, and
• A talk by Johanna Drucker, book artist, visual theorist, and Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor of Information Studies at UCLA.

The Humanities and Technology Camp, or THATCamp, is a user-generated “unconference” in the digital humanities. Instead of being constructed around a specific theme or discipline, the program is based on attendee interests and is agreed upon at the beginning of the event.  An unconference relies heavily on interaction and face-to-face conversations. THATCamp participants present their work, share their knowledge, and actively collaborate with fellow participants.

THATCamp is open to anyone with an interest in the digital humanities: faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students, teachers, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, university staff and administrators, educational technologists, designers, developers, hackers, public historians, artists, writers, and more.

During THATCamp PNW, sessions will likely range from discussions of current issues in digital scholarship, pedagogy, and curation to software demos, training sessions, and lightning talks.  In other words, participants are neither expected nor encouraged to present formally arranged talks, papers, or panels.

For this particular THATCamp, we especially encourage participants to facilitate sessions on content management systems or platforms (e.g., Drupal) and their role in collaborative humanities scholarship.

Prior to the event, participants will be invited to contribute to the THATCamp PNW blog and share their ideas for potential THATCamp conversations.  Once at the event, they will collectively agree on the sessions where those conversations will take place.  One added benefit of the unconference is that participants will meet people with investments similar to their own and can organize joint sessions accordingly.

Unfortunately, there is only space for approximately 80 participants at THATCamp PNW.  To apply, please complete the application by telling us a little about yourself, your interests in the digital humanities, and your expectations for THATCamp PNW.  There’s no need to write extensively: brief answers for each section will suffice, and the details can unfold at the event itself.

Note: there are no application or registration fees for THATCamp.

The Noise for the Needy Kickoff is next Saturday, April 17th.  Noise For The Needy (NftN) is a Seattle-based non-profit organization that raises money for charitable causes through the production of live music shows.

Funds raised from this kickoff event will cover expenses for the June festival. The more NftN raises, the bigger and better the festival will be. And that means more cash for this year’s beneficiary, Teen Feed.

Purchase tickets. Or check the Facebook event page.  Hope to see you there! Mostly Dimes is on the bill.

I’m happy to announce that the next installment in the “What does digital scholarship do?” HASTAC Scholars series at the University of Washington is a go, and we are extremely fortunate to have Tara Rodgers (Analog Tara), from McGill University, joining us.  She will facilitate a conversation related to her website and book, Pink Noises.

The conversation—”Pink Noises: Feminist Ethnographic and Historiographic Research on Audio Technologies and Cultures”—happens on Friday, April 16th, at 11 a.m., in Communications 202 (in the Simpson Center for the Humanities).  It is open to the public.

Below is a description of the event, and here is the flier (in PNG).  Looking forward!

How are histories of audio technologies and cultures conceived and written? How does the circulation of these historical accounts affect relevant communities of practice? How does technical language itself, often thought to be neutral, produce normative subjects of histories? In this informal talk, I will introduce two of my research projects which adopt different feminist approaches to these questions.

Pink Noises, a website and book, engages ethnographic research with women who are DJs, electronic music producers, and sound artists as an intervention in histories and cultures which typically marginalize women’s contributions. My current research is on the history of synthesized sound; it examines metaphors in audio-technical language as sites for the representation of identity and difference. We will discuss these projects and other strategies for doing feminist work at the intersections of sound/music/performance studies, ethnography, and historiography of technology.

Check out the first four installments of the series, too!: “Digital Fabrication and the Database,” “Evaluating Digital Scholarship,” “Queer/ing/s Online” and “Designing Discoverability.” Our sixth installment will occur in late April / early May.  More soon!

In the meantime, thank you to the Simpson Center for sponsoring this event.

[Cross-post at HASTAC.org.]

click to enlarge

Mostly Dimes is playing a show with some good friends in Seattle this Saturday, April 3rd.

The line-up goes like so: Final Spins + Mostly Dimes + Like Lightning + Lonesome Shack.

The show’s at the Comet Tavern.

Seven dollars, 21+

If you are in town, then I hope to see you there!

This Thursday, March 18th, I’ll be participating in a Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities 2010 with a number of other folks.

Day of DH is a community publication project that will bring together digital humanists from around the world to document what they do on one day. The goal of the project is to create a web site that weaves together the journals of the participants into a picture that answers the question, “Just what do computing humanists really do?” Participants will document their day through photographs and commentary in a blog-like journal. The collection of these journals with links, tags, and comments will make up the final work which will be published online.

On March 18th, participants will document and share the events of their day. However participants will also become co-authors, and the direction of the entire project will be influenced by their choices, both before and after the day of documentation. Eventually, the data will be grouped together, undergo some light semantic editing, and released for others to study. We hope that, beyond the original online publication, the raw data will be of use to those interested in further visualization or ethnographic experiments.

Here’s my “Day of Jentery Sayers” blog.  If you get a chance, then check in with me and others on Thursday.  I’m looking forward!

Just a quick announcement as the deadline nears: With Dene Grigar (Washington State University), I am co-proposing a MLA 2011 special session, entitled “Sound Reproduction and the Literary.”

This panel will explore the role of digital/analog audio when composing literature and criticism by emphasizing storage, fidelity, and sound design; audiovisual synchronicity; and audio recording histories and literature.

Please submit a 300-word abstract with a CV by March 15, 2010 to both jentery@uw.edu and dgrigar@vancouver.wsu.edu. Please reference the session name in the subject of your email.

Queries welcome. All panel participants must be members of the MLA before April 1, 2010.

This year, the annual MLA convention will take place in Los Angeles, between January 6th and 9th.

It’s been a good weekend.  Today, a red-tailed hawk kept watch over my house as I  drafted the press kit for the new Mostly Dimes recording.  The bird perched for about an hour, remaining steady with a pigeon in its talons—regal, yet beautifully paranoid (and apparently quite hungry).  I tried to get his/her attention by playing some recordings of red-tails from the computer speakers on my windowsill.  No luck.  That hawk could not be faked.  Such an audiophile immediately recognizes a reproduced sound.  Either that, or the red tail’s an analog type.

Here are two photographs.  I love the vinyl siding in the background.

In the Ecotone

And, of course, a good weekend almost always = some snowboarding.  Here are some shots from my first trip to Stevens this season.  B&I went on Saturday, and the morning conditions were incredible.

Just another quick announcement for the next installment in the “What does digital scholarship do?” HASTAC Scholars series at the University of Washington:

On Monday, March 8th at 3:30 p.m, Meghan Trainor (DXARTS) will be facilitating our next meeting, on “Digital Fabrication and the Database: 3D Printing Metadata Models in Digital Research,” which is open to the public at the Simpson Center for the Humanities.  Below is a description of what to expect, and here is the flier (in PNG).  Looking forward!

The Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library (KMODDL) is an online resource for learning and teaching about kinematics and the history and theory of machines.  Their database includes a collection of mechanical models and related metadata, including models that can be downloaded and fabricated by scholars.

What impact does the availability of information that can be used to fabricate physical objects have on digital scholarship? In this informal talk I will begin with an overview of 3D printing technology and current resources like KMODDL as well as my own hypothesis on the trajectory of metadata fabrication in humanities research.  We will examine best practices and how different academic disciplines might design, use and share metadata models.

Check out the first three installments of the series, too!: “Evaluating Digital Scholarship,” “Queer/ing/s Online” and “Designing Discoverability.” Our fifth installment will occur on April 13th.  More soon!

[Cross-post at HASTAC.]