Notes from Network Analysis session

Thanks to Dani Picard for sharing her notes from the Network Analysis breakout session!

 

Things one can do with network analysis

Dani Picard: Using network analysis in dissertation to examine how women’s research in the 1920s and 30s is engaging in specific domains of scientific inquiry yet not getting cited .

Abby Broughton: Interested in how network analysis can be used for a pedagogical end

 

Questions

Nathan Dize: What is Network Analysis? What can it do for me/us?

Suellen: What can Network Analysis do for us? Network as graphs; interrelationships between things; better able to see the things that were already there

Lu Sun: Network analysis useful in examining interlocking relationships and teaching students how to deal with complex systems and relations.

Mona Frederick: Network analysis of who RPW talked to; show connections between who he interviewed. Graphs and visualizations give us a different way of assessing material.

Elizabeth Meadows: In class on Victorian Literature. How many different themes used over time. Also, visual relationships Curb Center has. Expanding beyond disciplinary boundaries

Maryann: Network analysis a great way to visualize artistic genealogies and incorporate lots more information.

Graph is how the data is encoded, NOT just the visualization.

Suellen: We use neo4J as our graphing tool, and then their graphgist, an engine that converts code into visualization of graph.  Neo4J is a great tool for visual thinkers.

Heardlibrary.github.io

Project on artist books at Heard Library: Using Network Analysis to answer interesting questions → turned into exhibit in library; not just about a visualization, about answering questions. Looking at one-of-a-kind books, made by small presses.

Codify and quantify properties that were once implicit: where did people study?

Nathan asks: Does network analysis constitute another project or does it enhance a project? Is it too labor intensive? Is it a new iteration? Do the questions shift? What does it do behind the scenes? How is it (un)productive?

Suellen: Views it with approaching it from the little data perspective; feels that is where it can enhance the research/project.

Tiny Data — Using big data tools to engage with small data objects.

Elizabeth Meadows: Long form Victorian novel is network analysis; same characters showing up. Why this tool is the right tool for this class?

Mona Frederick: Overcoming Stereotypes — especially the women who are often written out or minimized. Strategic moves of historical actors. Tremendous amount of action between lesser known(?) written about(?) actors.

Suellen: Start with a data model — make connections with bubbles; It’s not about the network, it’s about your data model.

Time and Network Analysis: Neo4J,

Blank Nodes: reinserting minimized people into the network

Wikidata Query Service: Query.wikidata.org

“Another layer of data curation”

  • Looking at what the data told us. Stricter parameters with the artist book series
  • Blog post on the project?

Next Steps:

  • Contact Suellen to learn coding
  • Session for teaching coding basics?

 

Notes from Marketing as a Digital Humanist session

Thanks to Dani Picard for sharing her notes from the Marketing as a Digital Humanist breakout session!

 

Marketing as a Digital Humanist

 

Brand

  • How do you define yourself as a brand?
  • Are there disciplinary parameters? Sub-field parameters?
  • Is there pushback when talking to people outside of the humanities? In industry? Pushback from IT friends/colleagues?
  • Interconnected nature of work: Connect to teaching; help us understand new ways to teach, to display information.
  • Developing a deeper understanding
  • Does a hestitancy come from how you want to consider your career:
    • Alt-ac: make broader appeal to skills
    • Academic route: associated with traditional academic realm,
    • If it’s too much enthusiasm for the technology, it harms your ability to show certain aspects of yourself as an academic (rather than alt-ac). Don’t lose the ability to talk about larger concepts.
  • Thinking about audience: Institutionally specific? Small liberal arts colleges are interested in DH (but want its connection to students/classroom). Who do you scare off people if you talk about coding? Too heavy on tech and it alienates parts of your audience.
  • Interdisciplinary aspect of DH
  • Flexibility and Vision

 

Sharing/Display

  • What do you take into account?
  • Website
    • Do I need two websites for the different brands? (Like you might have two CVs)
    • Hub for everything else (then the viewer can decide what they want)
    • Website possibilities: WordPress, SquareSpace, Jekyll
  • Links to projects (in academic job apps)
  • CV? → Heading for Research Experience, DH Experience, Programming Skills
  • Github
  • HASTAC

 

Publish

  • Blogs (HASTAC)
  • Peer-Reviewed Journals
  • Centers
  • Presentations/Conferences
  • Video Tapping
  • Tweet-storms with appropriate hashtags (know what communities would be important!)
  • Moderating email lists or Reddit
  • Websites like HybridPegagogy, media commons, Editing

 

Networking

  • Using work to connect with community
  • Github
  • HASTAC
  • Twitter

 

What are people currently doing?

  • It’s good to have your own intellectual work/research questions/scholarly questions as a way to market yourself. More to offer the DH community broadly.

 

A lot of this is about networking, how are we talking about our projects? How do we tell the story about our teaching/research? (ask for input from others on this!) Articulating self-knowledge is difficult, but writing statements (teaching statements, research statements) help! There isn’t ONE specific way to talk about digital pedagogy — instead, what are your beliefs about what it is and how does it affect what you do on the ground?

 

Links to Good CVs/Digital Presences

Overview of Schedule

Friday, October 28 in Buttrick Hall Atrium – www.vanderbilt.edu/map/

4:30 p.m. Reception and sign up for Dork Shorts

5:00 p.m. Dork Shorts presentations

5:30 p.m. Choose topics for breakout sessions (book giveaway for first 10 to suggest a topic)

6:00 p.m. Tour the Center for Digital Humanities

Saturday, October 29 at the Curb Center – www.vanderbilt.edu/map/

9:30 a.m. Coffee/breakfast

10:00 a.m. Keynote speaker Amanda Visconti

11:00 a.m. Breakout session1

11:45 a.m. Lunch

12:30 p.m. Breakout session 2

1:15 p.m. Breakout session 3

2:00 p.m. Breakout session 4 (if needed)

 

Keynote Speaker: Amanda Visconti

Bio: Dr. Amanda Visconti is a digital humanities assistant professor and librarian at Purdue University Libraries. Her 2015 literature dissertation, Dr.AmandaVisconti.com, produced the AmandaViscontiImageInfiniteUlysses.com participatory digital edition by combining literary studies and textual scholarship with digital methodologies (design, code, usertesting) and publication forms (regular blog posts, whitepaper written during the month before her defense). She serves as an executive council member for the ACH, and as an editor and ombudsperson for The Programming Historian DH lesson platform. You can follow her @Literature_Geek, read her regular DH blogging at LiteratureGeek.com, or join her and others in the discussions on the Digital Humanities Slack (tinyurl.com/DHslack).

Title: Public + Participatory: Infinite Ulysses and a more open humanities

Abstract: We need more digital humanities projects that aren’t just hypothetically accessible to the public (“we put it on the web: everyone can now use it”), but are designed for supporting, valuing, and growing from participation by multiple publics. From a grounding of DH meaningful crowdsourcing and participatory design, this talk describes a pragmatic approach to a speculative experiment: What if we build a digital literary edition and invite everyone? What if millions of not just scholars, but also first-time readers, book clubs, teachers and their students, and literary enthusiasts show up and annotate a complex literary text with their “infinite” interpretations, questions, and contextualizations?

InfiniteUlysses.com, a participatory platform for reading and socially annotating James Joyce’s challenging novel Ulysses, uses design, coding, and user testing to investigate how digital humanities interfaces can better support and value public participation. We’ll examine how these activities function as critical humanities methods. The ways public participation can be richly meaningful to both the public and scholars are under-acknowledged, so we’ll also explore the ways a project like Infinite Ulysses can create new knowledge for both audiences.