Continue reading »]]>

Hello, THATCampers! In the spirit of one session/one tool THATCamp production, this document is the outcome of a discussion about how to prep data and choose a visualization tool for humanists who don’t have direct access to high-level database and programming skills.

We welcome your comments, suggestions and feedback. Hopefully, you’ll find this step-by-step planning document useful as a hand-out to communicate with colleagues and/or students who are just getting started in the research process for projects that include data visualization. Additionally, there is a list of visualization tools collected in the Google Doc that this session’s attendees produced.

Thanks to all of the session attendees for lively discussion and great contributions!

Steps to take for managing data to make visualization easier:

1. Start with the argument you’re making and how that argument could look on paper
   1. Start thinking about the visualization before you start taking notes
   2. Find visualization tools to match your paper mockup
   3. Determine feasibility of collecting data for that visualization tool/type of visualization
      1. This will depend on your skill level and comfort with technology.
   4. Understand the limitations of the visualization tool (e.g. single date required when data is often in date ranges)
2. Consider end result
   1. Data exploration? Out of the box software is best used for exploring data
   2. Data presentation in argument form? Building an argument in graphic form will probably require (but check with @tjowens about facets in Recollection)
   3. There will be a $0, $1,000, $10,000, $50,000, $100,000 and $1,000,000 version of this. First make the one that costs nothing and think about how you would scale up if it turned out to be particularly interesting.
      1. If you compromise and go a low-cost version, don’t forget the idealized version you wanted in the first place.
3. Find the least complex tool you need for the job of data collection
   1. Excel is a useful tool, but data with a lot of repetition is ideally expressed in a relational database.
      1. Excel can auto-complete entries, but auto-complete can also create inaccurate data
4. Start with small data sets, and iterate often
   1. Simplify data w/ data dictionary
   2. Use visualization as data remediation

Continue reading »]]>

Reading through the proposals, I realize that my interests in DH intersect three related areas: research, teaching, and advocacy.

Issues of advocacy and research have been raised here (for instance, Katy Meyers, jbecker) in terms of how to deal with faculty who are suspicious of–or outright hostile to–colleagues working in the digital humanities. As the newly-minted digital humanities faculty liaison for our humanities center, I need to advocate for those engaged in digital humanities-related research. One issue we are already confronting is how to deal with tenure and promotion criteria for digital humanities work. In my experience, faculty wary of digital humanities scholarship are often attached to two long-held assumptions abut the nature of humanities scholarship: 1) that it is or should be the work of one brilliant author laboring alone, and 2) that this work, to be considered significant scholarship, must be peer-reviewed in traditional ways (university press or journal manuscript reviewers). For some, digital humanities seems to be about collaborative work thrown up on the Web without any apparent vetting. So, what systems of review could be established that would recognize collaborative work and how might that work be peer-reviewed? These questions are also closely related to Roger Whitson’s UnPress proposal and Cassie Good’s ideas about Web sites created in support of traditional print publications.

My other interest is in the use of digital humanities technologies in teaching and student research. Like sarah.werner, jeffrey mcclurken, and others, I want my students to participate in the creation of knowledge through the manipulation and presentation of data. Some of this might be formal work, such as the Omeka research project idea of thowe, or more informal dialogue both in the classroom (Mark Sample’s better backchannel might be very useful here) and outside. Learning outside the formal classroom is of special interest to me: I want learning and thinking about course content to continue beyond the classroom context. So, where might I/we start to implement these ideas in teaching undergraduates? What skills do students need? When does learning to use technology run headlong into the requirement to teach specific content? Could a course project be crowdsourced to the students in the class? I expect students to be able to use a word processing program — can I expect them to be able to build a basic Web site? Or does this just take precious time away from teaching content? (I’d like to think the use of digital tools enhances the content and its comprehension, but maybe I’m wrong.)

And now, I ask myself, is there a specific proposal embedded in my verbiage? Looks like I might be proposing two sessions:

1) a session in which those interested in DH and research/advocacy issues describe and discuss their experiences with how their DH projects have been received by colleagues, how various institutions incorporate (or not) specific tenure and promotion guidelines related to DH projects, and other related areas of concern.

2) a session in which those interested in DH and teaching describe and discuss what they’ve tried with students, what they might want to try, what has worked with students and what hasn’t, and why.

Continue reading »]]>

According to Urban Dictionary (most credible source EVER!), the phrase “speak truth to power” means:

A phrase coined by the Quakers during in the mid-1950s. It was a call for the United States to stand firm against fascism and other forms of totalitarianism; it is a phrase that seems to unnerve political right, with reason.

or

A vacuous phrase used by some on the political Left, especially the denizens of the Democratic Underground website. Ostensibly, it means to verbally confront or challenge conservative politicians and conservative ideals using the overwhelmingly logical and moral arguments of liberalism. Doing so would, naturally of course, devastate the target individual, leaving them a stuttering, stammering bowl of defeated jelly. That or cause them to experience an epiphany that would have such a profound, worldview-changing effect that they would immediately go out and buy a Che t-shirt and start reading Noam Chomsky. Unfortunately, the individuals who would use this phrase have little or no understanding of either liberalism or conservatism, and the “truth” that they speak consists mainly of epithets and talking points, memorized by rote, which they learned from other, equally vapid liberals. As such “speak truth to power” joins other feel-good but ultimately meaningless gems from Leftist history such as “right on”, “up against the wall”. “question everything” and the ever-popular “fuck you, pig”.

(Well, OK, then…)

Seeking out slightly more credible sources for the origin of the phrase leads one to a Quaker pamphlet from the 1950s. As a “trained” political scientist, I think of Aaron Wildavsky’s book and, more recently, a book by Manning Marable. Across these sources, I believe the phrase is about questioning reasoning of “the state;” it’s about bringing information (maybe evidence?) to the table with those who are in formal positions of power who may not want to “hear” it.

I suspect other THATCamp attendees find themselves in positions like those that I find myself in where I have opportunities to “speak truth to power.” I get coded as “the technology guy” and “volunteered” onto any/all task forces and/or committees (let’s call them task committees) that have any connection at all to technology. Often, those task committees are led by someone with formal decision-making authority who may or may not *really* want to hear what you say.

We all know the perils of committee work, but there are obvious advocacy opportunities presented by this work as well. So, I’m proposing a session where we share advocacy strategies. We might discuss our “tactics” within the realm of formal committee work, but even outside of it. There, the overlap with Mark Sample’s ideas around “tactical collaboration” are obvious, so perhaps we can convince Mark to grace us with his presence (and his ideas) as part of the session.