DHMS

Publishing NOW: Book Traces & Getting Published

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If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057.

 

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute presents:

 

Publishing NOW!

 

Book Traces

with Kristin Jensen (University of Virginia Library) and Michael Rodriguez (UConn Library)

March 26th, 2PM

Heritage Room, Babbidge Library, 4th Floor

Co-sponsored by UConn Libraries, English Department, and the UCHI Digital Humanities and Medial Studies (DHMS) initiatives.

How to Get Published

with Ilene Kalish (NYU Press)

April 16th, 2PM

UCHI Conference Room, Babbidge Library, 4th Floor South

Co-sponsored by the Sociology Department

 

 

 

UCHI Hosts Microsoft’s Nancy Baym Talk on Social Media and Human Interactions

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The Relational Affordances of Platforms

By Nancy K. Baym

 

People have been socializing on the internet for nearly fifty years. In recent years, online social life has become increasingly concentrated in a relatively small number of commercial platforms. How can we make sense of the impacts they are having on our relational lives? How can we theorize platforms when they are constantly changing and used in so many different ways? In this talk, Nancy Baym draws on a range of her recent research on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to articulate a model for understanding platforms as the dynamic, unstable entities they are, and to explore their roles in shaping, constraining and opening up new possibilities for relationships in contexts ranging from close romantic bonds to online communities and the ties that connect musicians to their audiences. The talk further considers how these platforms commodify the relational interactions that take place through them, and how their design choices have fostered environments in which relationships become tools for profit.

Join us on Wednesday, February 5 2020, at 4PM at the UCHI Conference Room, Babbidge Library, Fourth Floor.

Co-Sponsored by UConn Department of Communication, and UCHI’s Digital Humanities and Media Studies (DHMS) and The Future of Truth (TFOT) initiatives.

Through the generous gift of her honorarium, Nancy K. Baym is supporting the Humanities Institute’s Digital Toolbox Working Group for the 2019–20 academic year.

 

Nancy Baym headshotNancy Baym

Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research New England
Research Affiliate, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, MIT

Nancy Baym is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, where she conducts basic research into how people understand and act with new communication technologies in their relationships. A pioneer in the field of internet research, Baym wrote some of the first articles about online community in the early 1990s. With Jean Burgess, she is the author of Twitter: A Biography (forthcoming 2020, NYU). Other books include Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection(2018, NYU), Personal Connections in the Digital Age (2010, Second Edition 2014, Polity), Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Method (co-edited with Annette Markham, 2010, Sage), and Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom and Online Community (2000, Sage). She was a co-founder of the Association of Internet Researchers and served as its second president. She has been recognized with the Frederick Williams Prize for Contributions to the Study of Communication and Technology awarded by the International Communication Association, the naming of the Nancy Baym Book Award by the Association of Internet Researchers, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg. Most of her papers and more information are available at nancybaym.com.

Digital Humanities & Media Studies Launches Website, Speaker Series

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The Digital Humanities and Media Studies (DHMS) initiative of the Humanities Institute officially launched its new website last week. According to this website, “DHMS seeks to engage the UConn community in explorations and exchange about all aspects related to the digital humanities and media studies, particularly as they pertain to knowledge production in the humanities.” DHMS was founded in 2016 and began its work under the directorship of Anke Finger, professor of German Studies at the University of Connecticut (UConn).  In 2019 Yohei Igarashi, associate professor of English at UConn, became its new director. This initiative, which also offers a Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities and Media Studies, is a unique interdisciplinary resource at UConn as it brings together faculty and students already working in either or both fields of digital humanities and media studies.

DHMS has also launched a speaker series this year beginning with three invited guests. On October 2nd, UCHI played host to Annette Vee from University of Pittsburgh for a talked entitled Algorithmic Writers and Implications for Literacy, co-sponsored by the Aetna Chair of Writing and the Neag School of Education’s Reading and Language Arts Center. DHMS is also co-sponsoring talks by Nancy Baym of Microsoft and Hal Roberts of The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society in the Winter and Spring of 2020, respectively, 

For more information or to subscribe to the DHMS mailing list, please contact Yohei Igarashi.

DHMS speakers poster

UCHI Co-Sponsors Annette Vee Lecture on Algorithmic Writers

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Annette Vee headshotThe Digital Humanities & Media Studies initiative of the The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) will co-sponsor a lecture by Annette Vee, associate professor of English at University of Pittsburg, entitled “Algorithmic Writers and Implications for Literacy.” Her talk will take place on Wednesday, October 2 at 2 PM in the UCHI Conference Room (Babbidge Library, 4th Floor). Annette Vee is also the director of the Composition Program at Pitt, and is involved in various initiatives that connect the humanities, digital media, and computation. She is also the author of Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing (MIT Press, 2017). Other co-sponsors of this event are the Aetna Chair of Writing and the Neag School of Eductation’s Reading and Language Arts Center. Below you will find the abstract for Vee’s talk.

 

“Algorithmic Writers and Implications for Literacy”

Writing today is inextricable from computation: we write on and for computers. But computers are no longer just word processors or distributors of our writing. Algorithms, which enter our lives through computers and crowd our writing spaces, affect what we write, who reads it, and how. Algorithms read our emails in order to write our emails. They correct our grammar, they can summarize and simplify texts, and they choose what we read online. If you write on or with computers (and you do), your algorithmic coauthors influence what you write and how you write it. Algorithms are more active agents than pencils or coffeeshops—other materialities that affect our writing processes—and they have complex relationships to the humans who produce and use them. What is literacy when it’s learned, performed, and subjected to algorithmic writers? And how should literacy be taught in the context of ubiquitous algorithmic writing? In this talk, Annette Vee will describe contemporary scenes of algorithmic writing, place them in the history of literacy and computation, and present some implications and applications for literacy learning now.