Adjuncts –> The Glenn Beck-ification of Cultural Commentary

Posted by Brian in Reading on August 16, 2010

One of the Big Issue books to hit academia this year is Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas. The book got some notice at the close of 2009 when an excerpt–”The Ph.D. Problem“–was published in Harvard Magazine. In this article, Menand argues that the production of people holding the doctorate is broken due to the length of time required to complete the degree and the lack of job prospects facing those who emerge. Menand’s solution to the problem is to admit fewer people to doctoral programs and to shorten the time to degree.

I haven’t had the opportunity to read the rest of Menand’s book, but in connection with the recent 10-day seminar for CLIR Postdoctoral Fellows, I did read two different reviews of it. And it’s on one of those reviews–Anthony Grafton’s “Humanities and Inhumanities” in The New Republic–that I want to comment. These comments originate in something I briefly wrote for the CLIR seminar and in kinship with Mark Sample’s assertion that such informal writing is “the first drafts of scholarship,” I’m not going to clean them up that much. I’d rather circulate the ideas and revise as I get input.
——
After reading Grafton’s review of Menand’s book, I’m a bit puzzled. I don’t really take issue with his characterization of Menand’s argument as “curiously apathetic, and almost complacent.” But I don’t really see Grafton making much of an impact himself. After all, Menand makes a suggestion for changing something in the system (to wit, shortening graduate school). Grafton offers nothing except to say that (1) graduate school should be difficult, as “it is designed–badly, and clumsily, but not insanely [sic]–to attract and then to test people who think they have this sort of calling”–with his reference to a sense of a “call” and “conviction” sounding suspiciously close to the “love” that is supposed to motivate humanists and which Thomas H. Benton has skewered in The Chronicle; (2) that humanists must work to collaborate with others to try to create new pathways for knowledge–although he is remarkably (and admittedly) short on the details as to how this should happen; and that humanists “must learn how to use–and to create–new digital tools.” This last point is absolutely correct, but again he’s got no details to work on except for a vague notion of what we should all do and the recognition that including these tools in graduate education is going to make things “harder, since it will require even more skills than before.”

Forgive me if I sound defeated, Mr. Grafton, but I think I prefer Menand’s solution. At least he has the guts to offer us something we haven’t tried in a while. There’s been plenty done to make the humanities Ph.D. as difficult as possible, and it hasn’t really effected change. That being said, I don’t really believe that Menand’s answer is correct. But Grafton seems emblematic of what frequently plagues the humanities: we are far too good at being critics and far too unpracticed in the work of (artistic / tool) creation.

What seems to be called for at this moment of professional and personal destruction created by graduate school in the humanities is a real revision to how things have been done. Unfortunately, I too am a better critic than I am creator. But I know other people with good ideas, and one of them is Ian Bogost, who wrote a fantastic essay in January of this year that posited the problem with the humanities is the humanists themselves. Grafton should read “The Turtlenecked Hairshirt“; it’s shorter than Menand, and it ends with a solution to our increasing irrelevance (i.e., detachment) from the world around us: stop trying to be separate from (read, “above”) most of the rest of humanity.

But Bogost’s piece isn’t a very specific answer to how we’re going to fix things either. For that, perhaps we should turn to Marc Bousquet, who has written about how the university works (blog and book) and has suggested that the problems of the contingent faculty class could simply be done away with if we made all adjuncts into “real” faculty. It’s obvious that there is a great need for teachers since more than 70% of undergrads in the US are taught by contingent faculty. If we would pay people equitably (and then either subsidized or charged students for the real cost of an education), we would solve the problem facing the humanities at the present. No more cannibalizing the young.

I believe that this employment balance has a lot to do with how we are perceived by the nation as a whole. How, in other words, can we expect the nation at large to take us seriously as people who are able to comment on the acts of humans in context of a broader cultural moment if we outsource the teaching of this cultural critique to underpaid non-faculty? If we are outsourcing the teaching and interpretation of this context and history, why shouldn’t the rest of the nation outsource the role that humanists have traditionally played? Talk radio and shout television are, in part, the products of this outsourcing. We have Glenn Beck, in other words, because we have too many adjuncts.

I realize that such a comment may open me up to Bogost’s critique–and in truth, I don’t believe that only Ph.D.s are uniquely endowed to comment on culture. But is it any coincidence that the cultural role of the humanist has become marginzalized as those who teach the humanities become invisible and impermanent? Why should students or anyone else listen to someone whose own institution will not give her a job?

Perhaps neither Menand’s nor Grafton’s solutions (shorter graduate school or persistently lengthy graduate school) will fix this impasse. But it were a far, far better thing to do something than to do that nothing which we have already done.

, , , , , ,

12 Comments

Whither Technology in the Graduate English Seminar?

Posted by Brian in Research, Teaching, Technology on July 6, 2010

This week I was asked to take part in a meeting about some improvements to the classroom where Emory’s English department teaches its graduate courses. Specifically, the department has decided to make the space “smart” by adding a computer and a projector to the space. As far as I know, this classroom has been one of the last holdouts on this campus–and certainly in its building–for adding these tools. Up until this point, the technology of this space has been limited to a blackboard, a whiteboard, and a 27-inch, CRT television that hangs precariously in one corner of the room. So the improvements are certainly welcome.

But this meeting wasn’t about debating the technology that would be added. Instead, we were there to think about how the faculty in the English department could use the new technology effectively in graduate seminars. Our group met to brainstorm before giving a presentation to the department on different strategies they could use, and it represented people heading up a humanities digital scholarship initiative, librarians, and instructional technologists.

We had a lively discussion, but at the end we felt a bit stumped. What was getting in our way was the format in which the English graduate seminar tends to be taught. Speaking from my own experience–at Emory, no less–English graduate seminars tend to follow a pretty predictable pattern.[1] Students are assigned to read a primary text–a novel, a volume of poetry, etc.–and one or more secondary texts–articles, chapters from one or more books, or a monograph (although this last one is shockingly rare, as Cathy Davidson has recently discussed in the ADE Bulletin). The seminar sessions themselves varied on the faculty member. It wasn’t uncommon for the faculty member to walk in and say, “Well, what did you think?” (What did I think about reading the complete Wallace Stevens in one week? Plus two articles? I don’t know. I really don’t.) Others would begin by discussing the secondary texts and then move on to the primary texts. Still others would encourage individual students to take the lead for a portion of the class, either giving an oral presentation or speaking about a paper that he or she had written and distributed ahead of time. Seldom did any of my professors start with anything resembling a presentation or lecture that covered concepts or history. Any way you take it, the result is that much of the seminar’s time ends up being devoted to discussion that is centered around a couple of texts.

But if the discussion is around a few texts, around their close reading and their discussion by what can often be very small groups of people, what role is there for classroom technology, even if it is something basic like a podium computer and a projector? Obviously, one can use these tools for displaying films or images. These are certainly germane to the work and pedagogy of some of the department’s faculty members. And if one is working on electronic literature, then having a computer in the classroom is certainly advantageous. But what else is there?

This is the question that our group found itself wrestling with, as we tried to think of some approaches that faculty members could find useful. Here’s some of the ideas that we came up with:

  • Skype-ing in guest speakers: If grad students are reading a couple of current articles, imagine how interesting it would be to invite the authors of those articles to participate in a discussion with the class. Not only do students get a different perspective on the article (although still being wary of authorial intention), but they would have a chance to make real connections with people in the field that are outside the institution. In addition to the authors of secondary material, faculty could also invite experts on various topics to engage the class in additional dialog.
  • Co-teaching / co-learning across institutions: Extending the previous point to perhaps its logical conclusion, one could ask whether it would be possible to co-teach an entire class with someone at another institution and to have students enroll from each institution. Connecting budding scholars not only with advanced persons in the field but also other budding scholars could only do wonders for the profession, in my opinion.
  • Enhanced student presentations: Given the increasing emphasis on professionalization in the last decade within graduate school, students are more and more aware that they are enrolling in a PhD program as a stepping stone to having a particular career. Instead of simply giving an oral presentation in class, students could practice presentation skills that will be useful in conferences, classrooms, and job talks. Becoming familiar with tools such as PowerPoint or Prezi or formats such as Pecha Kucha will help the students polish what they will need to do on larger stages. As anyone who has been to an academic conference or attended college can attest, presentation skills are not bundled with the Ph.D. The more time students spend speaking in the front of a room and hearing from their audience, the better they will be at crafting engaging (and therefore successful) presentations and classes.
  • Social media in the classroom: Those who know me know that I am very enthusiastic about the use of Twitter and other social media tools in the undergraduate classroom. My experience shows that such tools increase participation in class due to the students’ knowing one another better. Once you know what someone eats for breakfast, it really does become easier to talk with her about Faulkner. There isn’t any reason that graduate students couldn’t make use of similar backchannels within and without the seminar. Doing the former provides another venue for presenting ideas and furthering discussion outside the classroom with the inclusion of what David Siver calls “thick tweets.” There are two potential limitations to this approach. First, my experience in seminars (which is, admittedly, five years old at this point) suggests that most English graduate students don’t bring their own computers, opting instead to take hand-written notes. A cultural shift can alter this, however. Second, since many seminars are so small (I took one with only the professor, one other student and myself), there is not necessarily the adequate numbers required nor the dynamic in place to sustain social media interactions.
  • Crowdsourcing notes: Those who know me know that I am even more enthusiastic about Jason Jones’s wiki-notes assignment than I am about Twitter. I think there’s great value in asking students to collectively decide what was important about the day’s work in the classroom. And I would argue that this might be even more important in the graduate classroom. Since the faculty members from whom I took classes tended not to present/lecture in the beginning of the seminar, I often left the seminars not sure if I’d latched onto the most important concepts. Having to put into writing what I’d learned that day would have been a very useful exercise. Doing it in conjunction with my classmates would have been still better. Of course, one need not have classroom technology in place for this assignment. But bold faculty members could experiment with allowing students to take collaborative notes about the class within Google Wave or a wiki. Potential problems with live note-taking could occur if, again, the seminar is small and/or if the note-taking got in the way of discussions. That being said, becoming conscious of the “text” of the classroom could be instructive (it has always been so for me) and provide another text to analyze.
  • Re-thinking the secondary reading assignment: If, as mentioned previously, Cathy Davidson is right that we do not assign enough monographs in our graduate seminars, one might rethink how the secondary reading is assigned with a class. A faculty member could assign an entire monograph to the class to be read in conjunction with the primary text. To lighten the load on the students, however, the faculty member could ask each student to be in charge of individual chapters and to write summaries of those chapters. These summaries could be collected in a class wiki that could be referred to throughout the class. If a professor was worried that there wouldn’t be enough common ground for a discussion, she could ask all the students to read one chapter and then assign the rest.
  • Doing the work of the class: While graduate seminars in English tend to be focused on discussions of the texts at hand, this is not the only activity that takes place, as mentioned above. Consequently, other uses of technology within the graduate seminar could include examination of primary materials (images), facsimile editions (displayed on a document camera), film, doing text mining analysis, or marking up texts in with TEI’s XML standards. Some classes, such as University of Maryland, College Park’s Matt Kirschenbaum’s Spring 2008 seminar on simulations, might go so “far” as to use Second Life or games within the classroom and others, such as Yale’s Pericles Lewis’s “Moderns, 1914-1926,” is in part devoted to creating an electronic resource for the study of modernism. Todd Presner of UCLA has his students contribute to geospatial archive and publishing platform Hypercities. Doing the work of the class, in other words, can be dependent upon particular technologies, especially when particular technologies (not always the same as those in the previous clause) are the subject of the course.

Apart from this last point, in which the technology is explicitly a part of the work of the class–albeit classes that stray from the standard model of the graduate seminar [1]–I’m willing to bet that each of these ideas will seem radical and disruptive to how English seminars are normally taught. But why is that?

I believe that English seminars are taught not so much to convey information (stuff the professor knows that the students don’t) as they are to teach the methodologies of literary studies. The most important methodology of literary studies is the manner of thinking about literature, since it is this thinking that spurs us on to ask particular questions. The give and take of the seminar, then, is an exercise in training graduate students not in particular information but in a particular thinking method. And since thinking method is the primary research method for literature students, the seminar room becomes a de facto space for teaching research methodologies. Using technology in unexpected ways in a graduate seminar becomes a challenge to the traditions of the discipline’s research methodology.

The integration of technology into an English graduate seminar classroom, in other words, poses questions about how we’re training the next group of scholars, about our pedagogy, and about how we’ve done things for the last X-number of years. This is not to say that it’s a bad thing. In fact, it might be a very, very good thing. But I think it underscores why we had such a hard time coming up with this list and why it will be difficult for faculty to integrate the new tools into their graduate seminars.

But I also know that my experiences in the English graduate seminar are not universal.[1] And I’m willing to bet that many of you have thought of or seen other ways to integrate technology–even on a very small scale–into the English graduate seminar. I’d like to collect as many of these possibilities as I can in the comments. Both our discussion group and the English department believe that faculty best learn and innovate by seeing examples of other things that other faculty are doing.

So. How have you imagined or seen technology transform the English graduate classroom experience? Please share.

[1] It’s worth noting that my portrayal of what an English graduate seminar is and looks like is obviously influenced by my own experiences. Conversations with those who attended other institutions tend to confirm these experiences. But I’m sure that there are also plenty of places where the structures are very much different from what I perceive to be the “norm.”

, , , , , ,

27 Comments

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-05

Posted by Brian in Tweets on July 5, 2010

Powered by Twitter Tools

,

No Comments

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-06-27

Posted by Brian in Tweets on June 27, 2010

Powered by Twitter Tools

,

No Comments

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-06-20

Posted by Brian in Tweets on June 20, 2010

Powered by Twitter Tools

,

No Comments

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-06-13

Posted by Brian in Tweets on June 13, 2010

  • @johnmjones And apparently I *really* want to know the answer to that question… #
  • @patrickgmj @johnmjones It might be early, but how else are you going to read hundreds of essays a day? #
  • Dreamt last night that @dancohen and I went to 5 Guys to talk about our favorite board games. #
  • @johnmjones Are you at the downtown convention center with the lit people? #
  • gah! just saw the old guy who's at every show i go to. thought he wasnt here for once. (and no, it wasn't a mirror) #
  • Whoa. Haven't seen that many people dancing at a concert since I was going to ska shows. #
  • @billiehara They'll probably never invite me again. in reply to billiehara #
  • @billiehara That would have been tomorrow, but I canceled to get more writing time. in reply to billiehara #
  • 8 effects peddles, and untold number of boxes on the keyboards. One VHS tape. #uninterestingtweets #
  • Also: one American Apparel hoodie, one prom dress, and one leather vest. #
  • For the curious, I count 3 keyboards, 2 mixing boards, one MacBook, and one maraca on Neon Indian's stage. #
  • @parezcoydigo At least you're close. Congrats on that, then. in reply to parezcoydigo #
  • @xentahl Especially live. The Passion Pit guy's voice only works in a studio. in reply to xentahl #
  • @drewbrittain Crystal Castles in ATL on 8 Sept. #
  • Wild Nothing is amazing. I'd totally buy their album if I hadn't bought it last week. #music #snob #
  • I actually saw someone else wearing ear protection. I'm not the only old person here. #
  • Off to see Neon Indian and Wild Nothing. #music #
  • In writing this piece, I just mentioned that it's 2010. Which made me realize I'm living in the future. #
  • @DrewBrittain Are you coming to see Neon Indian tonight? #
  • Great piece by @doctorow on the ironies of Glee being on Fox: http://bit.ly/bgYZUx. #
  • @cscannella I haven't used Instapaper, but I know many people that like it. RIL works for me, so I didn't feel need to evaluate both. in reply to cscannella #
  • Just bought @readitlater's Digest version. My favorite app just keeps on getting better, and I'm happy to support @IdeaShower's work. #
  • So Twitter is basically unusable at the moment. Sigh. #
  • @cscannella I've got Metroid Prime for Game Cube somewhere around. Have never played it. in reply to cscannella #
  • @cscannella We've got kids & I love Nintendo's classics, so: Zelda, Mario Kart, Mario Party 8, Mario Galaxy 1, Sports, and Sports Resort. in reply to cscannella #
  • It's the return of the Fail Whale! #
  • @mattthomas Now there's something I hadn't known. Would have gotten a line in my dissertation too. in reply to mattthomas #
  • @cscannella It *is* awesome. Although it made us stay up too late. #
  • Setting up the Wii. #bleedingedge #
  • Someone outside keeps screaming. But it's not a Kitty Genovese situation. Instead, it's someone being annoying. #
  • @barbarahui Thanks for the rec.You're one more person I know I can trust. I've been hearing tons of praise for Coda today. SoI'll chk it out #
  • @mattthomas Freud was one of the first Austrians, IIRC. in reply to mattthomas #
  • @mattthomas Excellent! Thanks. in reply to mattthomas #
  • @ryancordell @GeorgeOnline How do you like Espresso and Acorn? #
  • Now I'm being asked if I need more than 4 GB RAM and 1 TB hard drive. How future-proof should I make this? #
  • @samplereality You'd think #thatcamp would have better guest artists then. in reply to samplereality #
  • RT @ryancordell: RT @marcparry: http://bit.ly/9mQm8Q Interesting WashPost story on how NPR has become a big player in Indie music scene #
  • RT @kfitz: My newest post at ProfHacker: @kfitz offers "Impressions after Two Months of Using an iPad": http://bit.ly/d7Bp7k #
  • @jessicacm Sweet. Now I can get an incident room! in reply to jessicacm #
  • @johnmjones Winner! in reply to johnmjones #
  • @JenHoward Not that I've discovered yet. Feel like I'm writing it in every sentence of this durn introduction. in reply to JenHoward #
  • @aeguerson Oh. It worked. It worked like a charm. Squeee! in reply to aeguerson #
  • In case you didn't know, there aren't many good synonyms for "steampunk." #
  • @ibogost It's a ready-made course on advertising though. in reply to ibogost #
  • In this @ProfHacker post, I discuss using Twitter, wikis, Google Wave, and @Zotero: http://bit.ly/967zSy. #
  • My newest on @ProfHacker is a "Reflection on Teaching with Social Media" this semester: http://bit.ly/967zSy. #
  • Just realized that I better download my student evaluations from the most recent semester before I lose access to them. #
  • @jbj My copies of Watchmen and other such things are on the highest shelves in our house for the same reason. in reply to jbj #
  • Many thanks to everyone on suggestions for new work computer, especially @aeguerson without whom I wouldn't have thought to score an iPad. #
  • @jbj It's "research," son. It's "research"! in reply to jbj #
  • @aeguerson Fortunately I'd written up final comments/grades in a separate document, so I didn't lose the work. But 'twas embarrassing. in reply to aeguerson #
  • @cforster There is in the future. Just not the immediate future. 3 kids are pets enough for us until they're all potty-trained. in reply to cforster #
  • @billwolff I gave them a couple of options. Looks like I'm getting a 27" iMac and iPad. That's a win. in reply to billwolff #
  • I'm about to make some #eng465 students *so* happy now that I found their final papers that I thought got recycled. #

Powered by Twitter Tools

,

No Comments

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-06-06

Posted by Brian in Tweets on June 6, 2010

Powered by Twitter Tools

,

No Comments

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-30

Posted by Brian in Tweets on May 30, 2010

  • #ebz The streets of London were bent into a labyrinth with the Bazaar at the labyrinth's heart. Findin… http://fallenlondon.com/c/97833 #
  • #ebz Never mention the Second City to the Masters of the Bazaar. Mr Wines will look at you narrowly an… http://fallenlondon.com/c/96269 #
  • Apparently the guy next to me on this flight has a wide stance. #
  • @barbarahui We're at the far end of the building. The Southern end, I think. Gate 2. in reply to barbarahui #
  • @magpie Glad I wasn't the only one. in reply to magpie #
  • @reyjunco It should be part of #hackacad eventually. But I don't know if the videos will be published or just audio. #geoinst in reply to reyjunco #
  • At the airport with @amyeetx waiting for our flight home from #geoinst Charlottesville airport free wi-fi FTW. #
  • Like the n00b that I am, I just discovered how to travel in Echo Bazaar. This explains why it had become so boring. #
  • Many thanks to @nowviskie, @joegilbert, Ann Knowles, and the rest of the #geoinst instructional team! My brain has been fed. #
  • #ebz In a city where death can be temporary, lunatic murderers are not treated with especial respect. … http://fallenlondon.com/c/94474 #
  • I think #overtweeting is my new extreme sport. #geoinst #
  • .@MattKnutzen is going to send us off with an ode that he wrote in #geoinst #039;s honor. #
  • And I think that I'm actually done with the tweeting now. Lightning talks are OVER! #geoinst #
  • @.dfg9w: Give tools of self-representation to local communities. Ontology is annotated map of area of human knowledge. #geoinst #
  • .@dfg9w: Gazetteers as Complex as Communities. Maps and Self-representation. Oral history of site layered on map and data. #geoinst #
  • Ginny White (U of Oregan): continues talking about @WiredHumanities Mapas project: http://bit.ly/aXzaRm. #geoinst #
  • .@WiredHumanities: Mapping pre-Columbian pictorial traditions. Place-based ethnic identity. Intersections of quincunx w/ cardinals. #geoinst #
  • .@psaliga: Multimedia online edition of journal, JASH (http://bit.ly/aVLFR9) #geoinst Thanks Mellon. #
  • .@amwhisnant talks about the importance of collaboration. Driving through Time. Map overlays. #geoinst #
  • .@amwhisnant: Creating the Digital Blue Ridge Parkway. How to show the landscape that's been overwritten IRL. #geoinst #
  • @jtheibault Ah…If only. #geoinst in reply to jtheibault #
  • Jennifer Purtle (U of Toronto): even lowliest place is quite connected via art trade in ancient China/Orient. #geoinst #
  • @jtheibault Actually, I think it was @muziejus or @historying who kindly took my keyboard to do it for me. #geoinst in reply to jtheibault #
  • Kris Manjapra (Tufts): Bengali Intellecuals & Decolonization (http://bit.ly/bjAsqQ). Vis oral histories. #geoinst #
  • .@amyeetx: Mapping constructions and transitions of race in this important town. Impacts lit. production. Text to viz and vice versa #geoins #
  • .@amyeetx: 19th-century Concord Digital Archive (http://www.digitalconcord.org/). Mapping more than Transcendentalists #geoinst #
  • Heather Richards-Rissetto (U of NM): Digital Documentation and Reconstruction of Ancient Mayan Temple in Copan, Honduras. #geoinst #
  • Susmann: assessing Urban Encroachment Near the Great Pyramids from 1984-2001. Grace cluster analysis in UK. #geoinst #
  • Natalie Susmann (Tufts): How many snails did it take alexander to dye his 5000 talents? 76,136 snails! #geoinst #
  • .@ehoran: Mapping the work of Gabriela Mistral, queer feminist writer. #geoinst #
  • Timeline that my #eng399 students made and that I showed at #geoinst http://bit.ly/9jWNSn. #
  • For @ryancordell's work see http://bit.ly/9Um0Gv. #geoinst #
  • .@ryancordell: Talking about how Hawthorne story changes as it moves across country. 3 stories: textual shifts, time, territory. #geoinst #
  • 19 seconds to spare! #geoinst #
  • .@briancroxall also has students crowdsource timelines and geotag locations they talk about #geoinst #
  • .@briancroxall (Emory lib.) teaching students usable, transferable skills, like mapping Lahiri's story "Sexy" #geoinst #
  • I'm next. #geoinst #
  • Markus Wust (NC State): The WalfWalk project (http://bit.ly/aK69wK). Awesome geo-tour of campus. #geoinst #
  • .@footnotesrising: Mapping Philadelphia Quaker Exiles in Winchester, VA. Subjective experiences represented on map. #geoinst #
  • Lillian Larsen (U of Redlands): Shows Mapping Ancient Texts in LENS (http://bit.ly/bO2jEp). Visualizing loc of religious artifacts. #geoinst #
  • @surlyF It's a two-minute lightning talk. But principally, teaching people how to read maps. That maps can lie. #geoinst in reply to surlyF #
  • .@joguldi: maps help us combine much information at once. Spatial turn. Franz Boas map as slide. First person to map a worldview. #geoinst #
  • Bunin: Mapped how Virginia voted (against the south!). Classroom strengths: teaches understanding and the ethics of maps #geoinst #
  • Chris Bunin (UVa): working with K12 teachers to help them think about America on the World Stage (http://bit.ly/9EIjBP). #geoinst #
  • Laura Ruby (U of Hawaii Manoa): mapping Japanese Cemetery at Moiliili. Collecting data observed on gravestones. #geoinst #
  • Eliabeth Bollwerk (UVa): spatial distribution of tobacco smoking pipes in Native American groups; shows new social boundaries. #geoinst #
  • .@brettttt: Civil War Washington (http://bit.ly/8ZwdJk). Interpretation, maps, data, text & image. Awarded NEH grant for more data #geoinst #
  • @ralphie1 Not sure. But it's also not *mine*. Was developed at MIT. But lots of others use it, so probably yes. in reply to ralphie1 #
  • .@jtheibault: Early Modern Euro Social History Geospaital Bibliography Project (EMESHGBP!!). Use map to show local social history. #geoinst #
  • Max Edelson (UVa): Cartography of American Colonization Database. Better metadata needed. Using VisualEyes #geoinst #
  • .@nowviskie bringing the smack done on hurrying people onto the stage. #geoinst #
  • @HannahRabon We're doing 2-minute lightning talks on our research. I'm trying to cover it for the outside. And yeah. Intense. in reply to HannahRabon #
  • Carroll Blue (U of Houston): Virtual Houston project. Creating dialog with city planners and politicians. #geoinst #
  • First person kicked off the stage at #geoinst lightning talk. #
  • William Tronzo (UCSD): 12th-century church in Palermo, Byzantine and Islamic architecture. Specifics of landscape #geoinst #
  • @HannahRabon It's a conference that I'm at. http://bit.ly/aLl6jB in reply to HannahRabon #
  • @HannahRabon But believe it or not, I get brought places to do this. in reply to HannahRabon #
  • @HannahRabon Sorry. I'll be done with this in about one hour. It's crazy, I know. in reply to HannahRabon #
  • .@barbarahui: Google Maps mashup with MySQL underneath. Wants to make it post-GIS, have more than points and OSM support. #geoinst #
  • .@barbarahui Showing us Litmap (http://bit.ly/9pS3hp) that she designed to plot books: walking tour in The Rings of Saturn. #geoinst #
  • .@muziejus showing us characters spatial relationships that are not strictly tied to geographic space. #geoinst #
  • Realizing the I should have included my contact info on my #geoinst slides. #ohwell #
  • .@muziejus: Where characters in Dos Passos's USA find themselves on USA? Maps where action stops. Distribution of chars' movement #geoinst #
  • .@Jean_Bauer: how 2 conceptually group places in space: http://bit.ly/ddA603. Her work made nec. due to Napoleon's "redrawing" maps #geoinst #
  • .@FionaABlack: potential data layers in a "Geography of the book." Developing historical GIS for Canada. #geoinst #
  • .@AngelDNieves discusses "Mapping Soweto '76". How to represent personal narratives spatially? How to improve tools? #geoinst #
  • Koptiuch: Uncanny transformation of DQ into Mexican restaurant: border-crossings. The subaltern vs. the sublime. #geoinst #
  • Kristin Koptiuch (AZ State U) discusses the urban imaginary in Phoenix: racial-spatial minoritization. Conversion of landscape. #geoinst #
  • .@victoriaszabo Model of Crystal Palace combined with map of what was actually in it, where stuff came from, and who looked at it. #geoinst #
  • .@victoriaszabo discusses multimedia mapping in Kenya: health space, how maps can make difference. #geoinst #
  • .@historying discusses Spatial History Project (http://bit.ly/9Xn3UM). Looks at historic post offices.How to get around census data #geoinst #
  • .@KellyGJohnston has mapped life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Life expectancy, freedom to move, # of art per capita #geoinst #
  • .@KellyGJohnston says,"God bless polygons!" Talks about redrawing state boundaries so each point in state is closer to its capital. #geoinst #
  • See http://bit.ly/dkXWZp for how to crowd source and participate in contributing to NYPL map project. #geoinst #
  • .@MattKnutzen from NYPL. 10k+ maps digitized. Users can import many of the images into Neatline, Hypercities, and more #geoinst #
  • Ben Ray shows us death warrant (one of only 2 that survive) from the Salem Witch Trial. #geoinst #
  • Ben Ray from UVa shows us the latitude and longitude of where the devil manifested himself. (Salem Witch trials.) #geoinst #
  • Martyn Jessop discusses PASE and Domesday book. #geoinst #
  • My biggest take-away from #geoinst -I think–will be the concept of graphesis. Thanks, @nowviskie! #
  • .@nowviskie is first and talking about http://neatline.org again.#geoinst #
  • .@nowviskie: You don't get closer to hacking the academy's concept of keynote speech than by asking the audience to do it #geoinst #hackacad #
  • .@nowviskie: You don't get closer to hacking the academy's concept of keynote speech than by asking the audience to do it.#geoinst #hackacad #
  • RT @footnotesrising: capacious applause to @nowviskie & SLab for putting #geoinst together. also anne knowles who shaped curriculum. #
  • We're going to have approx. 30 two-minute lightning talks. #geoinst #
  • Time for the #geoinst crowdsourced keynote, "Frontiers in Spatial Humanities." It's being recorded for potential inclusion in #hackacad #
  • Babies are full of win: http://flic.kr/p/85s6YK. #
  • I've been so much more agile with searching at #thatcamp and #geoinst thanks to following my own advice: http://bit.ly/c66dZG. #
  • RT @kfitz: RT @zota: BP lied about the size of the spill. Arco is a BP brand. Just throwing that info out there, west coast gas buyers. #
  • Retreating to my room of requirement: the McGregor Room. #geoinst #
  • @mlaconvention It's a hotel made famous in Frederic Jameson's intro to *Postmodernism*, among others. in reply to mlaconvention #
  • Madelyn Wessel recommends Susan Bielstein's *Permissions, A Survival Guide*: http://amzn.to/9ojJOO. #geoinst #
  • Two articles on Georgia State's e-reserve copyright case: http://bit.ly/9bM2VF and http://bit.ly/dylUGT. #geoinst #
  • Madelyn Wessel's document for fair use and tech: http://bit.ly/a5h04u. Hosted by UVa's SHANTI. #geoinst #
  • @barbarahui When I was considering law school, it would have been for copyright law. Missed #jobmarket opportunity again. #geoinst in reply to barbarahui #
  • @victoriaszabo I dealt with this with Samuel Beckett letters as well. But the owner of the letter has other rights. #geoinst in reply to victoriaszabo #
  • Wessel did *not* tell us to go ahead & put something up & wait for a takedown notice if we've done all we can re: due diligence. #geoinst #
  • @amyeetx OHHHH oh-oh! You're changing your heart / OhHHH oh-oh I can't sing in pa–ar-arts! #geoinst in reply to amyeetx #
  • IP lawyers need to have technology explained to them clearly before can advise us effectively.Lesson to learn re: audience again. #geoinst #
  • @amyeetx "1,2,3,4,5,6,9, or 10 / Money can't buy you back the copyright you had then…" #geoinst in reply to amyeetx #
  • Now that #geoinst is *almost* over, I've just about stopped typing #thatcamp for the hashtag. Figures. #
  • Arriba v. Kelly suggests that creating a different purpose for same materail can be transformative use. #geoinst #
  • RT @ProfHacker: New at ProfHacker: @drnels writes an "Open Letter to 2010-11's Newly-Tenured Faculty": http://bit.ly/bItS0F #
  • @kfitz Do you mean that it's hard to navigate? ;-) Will make it a stop for sure. in reply to kfitz #
  • @sramsay @amyeetx It's how we build coders for the future. #
  • @ehoran That's true. I haven't had the online teaching experience yet. #geoinst in reply to ehoran #
  • @mlaconvention @kfitz Too bad. My postmodern brain was going to implode over the idea of #mla11 at the Bonaventure. #
  • @barbarahui And that's hte justification for Girl Talk's work: http://bit.ly/cljwc8. #geoinst in reply to barbarahui #
  • @sramsay @amyeetx Monkey game? http://bit.ly/9ffDyk #
  • Face to face teaching relaxes image use. Which makes me feel better about my lecture slides for #eng399 #geoinst #
  • @sramsay So if you don't have a TV…what is the Wii hooked to? Or did I miss something? (I ask b/c our TV is broken.) in reply to sramsay #
  • @ryancordell @sramsay And if you buy SMB Wii at Amazon, you get $10 toward next game purchase. FWIW. in reply to ryancordell #
  • @sramsay Please publish the list when you get recs. Someone in our house needs help selling a Wii purchase to the other person in the house. in reply to sramsay #
  • @footnotesrising Yes. She gave @muziejus and I a crash course on her new tools yesterday. #geoinst in reply to footnotesrising #
  • Peter Hirtle's chart for helping to identify copyright terms: http://bit.ly/bfVDWf. #geoinst #
  • @jschneider Glad that they've proven useful. I've been learning a ton from seeing what others are doing. #geoinst in reply to jschneider #
  • Every time technology invents a way to capture expression, Congress is encouraged to lock it down within copyright law. #geoinst #
  • .@mlaconvention The new Android software allows turning 3g devices into wireless hotspots. We could crowd-source a solution. #mla11 #
  • The earliest protected items (in 1790 copyright law) *only* protected maps, charts and books. (Bad news for #geoinst #
  • @mlaconvention I wonder if 3g is accessible in most conference hotel spaces. Most people's iPhones don't work in my past experience. in reply to mlaconvention #
  • Now #geoinst will hear about "Data Acquisition, Fair Use, and Copyright" from UVa general counsel Madelyn Wessel. #
  • @kfitz <font=small> Weight loss goals ftw? </font> Glad you're feeling better. in reply to kfitz #
  • @mlaconvention But I always choose hotels that have free wireless. And my AT&T DSL lets me use Starbucks wi-fi for free. in reply to mlaconvention #
  • @mlaconvention I depend on wireless. I don't travel enough (although this last week belies that) to warrant anything more. in reply to mlaconvention #
  • @foundhistory #dhhugz in reply to foundhistory #
  • @iangadd For some reason Tweetie (the new Twitter app) doesn't pick it up. Haven't figured that out. in reply to iangadd #
  • @barbarahui Yes. I think that it is. And I was wanting to come back to things like that. #geoinst in reply to barbarahui #
  • RT @amwhisnant: "Spatial" humanities, not "geospatial" necessarily. #geoinst #
  • .@joegilbert Are the slides for the #geoinst lightning talks going to be timed at 40-seconds apiece? Or do we click when we want? #
  • @footnotesrising Good point. in reply to footnotesrising #
  • .@joguldi Or what would it mean to map a world that lacks similar shape to our own? What about Discworld: http://bit.ly/aZNci5 ? #geoinst #
  • @joguldi Perhaps it would be similar to the floating plane that we saw yesterday in ArcGIS/Google Earth? in reply to joguldi #
  • @joguldi Or simply Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. #geoinst in reply to joguldi #
  • @footnotesrising It's certainly worth sharing those things. I was trying to make sure that we weren't *excluding* a particular type of space in reply to footnotesrising #
  • @joegilbert And fictional space is really different from real space. How do we represent that effectively? cf. Temporal Modeling. #geoinst in reply to joegilbert #
  • @joegilbert No. What I meant was that "field work" seems to suggest that geospatial work must necessarily be linked to real space. #geoinst in reply to joegilbert #
  • .@amyeetx So would it be worth discussing this? I'm not going to try broaching it now. ;-) #geoinst #
  • .@amyeetx makes great point that we need to not get stuck in a single dataviz rut w/ our (geospatial) tech-humanities projects. #geoinst #
  • Must reconsider tactic because I undermined my own point re: need to focus on what @nowviskie called graphesis. #geoinst #
  • Was trying to gesture by saying "no" not to exclusion but to another side that hadn't yet been considered. Must reconsider tactic. #geoinst #
  • Really touched a nerve there. Apparently I'm not being "nice" enough in this DH setting (see @foundhistory's http://bit.ly/aaZm8b). #geoinst #
  • Really touched a nerve there. Apparently I'm not being "nice" enough in this DH setting (see @foundhistory's http://bit.ly/aaZm8b). #
  • .@footnotesrising It's not that there is no fieldwork. It's that the concept of fieldwork as discussed thus far is @ real space. #geoinst #
  • .@amyeetx I think such a service would be even more useful to get grad students working on projects #geoinst #
  • @amyeetx It'd be like etsy's Alchemy service: http://bit.ly/dAyuEC. in reply to amyeetx #
  • Ann Knowles suggesting that we need to give ourselves permission to be solo scholars as well as collaborators. #geoinst #
  • RT @WiredHumanities: Ginny suggests "sharinghouse" if we are not happy with "clearinghouse" #geohist #
  • Now we're discussing having a connecting/matchmaking/personals (?) service for the not-quite-a-clearinghouse. #geoinst #
  • .@nowviskie is talking about the "not-quite-a-clearinghouse"; the #geoinst secret project. #
  • Now the #geoinst is going to think about what we need as a community of scholars. #
  • My appreciation for Vampire Weekend just hit a new level: Hey haters! You want rich kids? You got rich kids. http://bit.ly/apUHYP #
  • Germano: organizing knowledge & large projects might be "service" but it's also scholarship. It reqs. intellectual background. #geoinst #
  • What Germano is talking about is a completely different model.It's putting self in social network dedicated to knowledge production.#geoinst #
  • Germano talking about the problems of promotion. He didn't go up for full for 10 years because he didn't have time. #geoinst #
  • RT @barbarahui:Germano:use an existing project like THL, Hypercities, AfricaMap, (NYPL Warper!).Creating these things is $$ & pain! #geoinst #
  • I stand corrected. Germano has been raising $500k per year for last ten years. #geoinst #
  • I believe that Germano just said that he's had to raise 2.5 million per year for the last 10 years for Tibetan Library. #geoinst #
  • Germano discusses SHANTI (http://bit.ly/aXjHUZ) has the goal of mainstreaming technology at UVa. #geoinst #
  • @mlaconvention http://bit.ly/aXjHUZ in reply to mlaconvention #
  • The Tibetan Library's system was actually designed for US history. IOW, it's designed to be portable as a stack/interface. #geoinst #
  • Germano discusses SHANTI (http://bit.ly/bo85rD) has the goal of mainstreaming technology at UVa. #geoinst #
  • @brettbobley It really is. And so persuasive. Everyone here is under a spell. #geoinst in reply to brettbobley #
  • @jschneider Sorry. Didn't keep the file. It was simply an exercise that the Scholars' Lab designed. #geoinst in reply to jschneider #
  • Germano:"Most people don't read documentation.I write thousands of pages, but never read it.But you've got to get people to do so." #geoinst #
  • Lot of questions for Germano on how he pulls this all off. #geoinst #
  • Gemano gives some love to spreadsheets and database backends. (hear that, @barbarahui and @jcmeloni?) #geoinst #
  • People that aren't at #geoinst simply can't believe the rate at which Germano gave this talk. 2.5-hour presentation in 35 minutes. #
  • Germano used the girlfriend/partner test to vet the design of the site. Need to think about multiple audiences. #geoinst #
  • @ryancordell @eviedc I think you need a Movers' Lab. in reply to ryancordell #
  • @nowviskie Merely assembled it in an hour, huh? ;-) #geoinst in reply to nowviskie #
  • IOW: If this system was designed for the West, would there have been more limited categories due to our familiarity. #geoinst [2/2] #
  • I wonder if the flexibility of Germano's system comes from the need to translate across cultures. #geoinst [1/2] #
  • Multitude of calendars in Tibetan/Himalayan Library because the calendrical systems/experience differs radically. #geoinst #
  • Germano: *All* GIS is historical GIS because everything except the now is historical. And now just moved on. #geoinst #
  • The Buddhist law of impermanence: everything in the system must be dated because nothing ever stays the same. #geoinst #
  • .@ryancordell Yes. I think that they are just asking us to reverse the standard hierarchy. #geoinst #
  • @jtheibault It was pre-recorded. Screencast. in reply to jtheibault #
  • Germano has decided to do a lightning talk for all 45 minutes. Pretty mind-boggling. #geoinst #
  • Germano: no one knows what a gazetteer is. Rename it "Place Dictionary" and no one asks what it is ever again. #geoinst #
  • Germano is brave: he's talking up against a screencast to give us a tour of Tibetan Library. #geoinst #
  • How do we get system to express deep interconnected relationships we experience in real life: facts, narratives, stats, maps, etc. #geoinst #
  • @ralphie1 http://bit.ly/9ABlnQ in reply to ralphie1 #
  • Germano: Open GIS is a lovely thing (and so is Scholars' Lab). #geoinst #
  • Germano advocating for breaking down boudaries between faculty, staff, and students and see that we're all working together. #geoinst #
  • Germano: Services(s) are good in every sense of the wor(l)d. Don't worry @ websites (AKA personal fetishes). Worry about services. #geoinst #
  • Germano: Participatory knowledge leads to better knowledge and better ethics. #geoinst #
  • Germano: Ontologies are a fundamental key to place and time. #geoinst (These are Germano's "Essentials, btw). #
  • Germano: Gazetteers are Glorious & Good. We don't just need to map. #geoinst #
  • Germano: Google is not the academic answer and never will be. #geoinst #
  • Germano: The nuances and play of our thought and experience vastly exceed the strictures of our rigid technologies. #geoinst #
  • Germano: The data set in the humanities is incredibly complex. Thumbs nose at scientists. #geoinst #
  • Germano: complexities of the human record vastly exceed the complexity of our impoverished technologies. #geoinst #
  • @academicdave But was it jailbroken *ethically*? in reply to academicdave #
  • Now up at #geoinst David Germano (@dfg9w), who will talk about the Tibetan & Himalayan Library: http://www.thlib.org/. #
  • What's really great about @nowviskie's talk is that she told me on Monday that she still wasn't sure what she was going to say. #geoinst #
  • .@nowviskie is now talking about the work of the SpecLab at UVa: http://bit.ly/cF18YL. #geoinst #
  • RT @WiredHumanities: Chk out: "visualizing time" website, graphesis with time and space: http://www.icastic.com/time/visualize.php #geoinst #
  • The Scholars' Lab has a Google-like 80/20 time policy for encouraging play. #geoinst #
  • RT @joguldi: hey #geoinst – re: collaboration – join me making master bibliography of interdiscipl Landscapey thinking http://bit.ly/d0RjAr #
  • .@jcmeloni Not at all. But it's such a welcome contrast from standard academic presentations that it deserves pushing out from #geoinst #
  • RT @historying: Link to the fascinating Frances Henshaw journal @davidrumseymaps: http://bit.ly/bjOEmu #geoinst #
  • Graphesis as a way of thinking. Not necessarily as what will be the finished project. It's to get our ideas moving. #geoinst #
  • #geoinst @nowviskie asks us to be more playful and joyful with/about our interpretive work. #
  • #geoinst @nowviskie defines "graphesis" as the iterative process of graphical representation to help us understand whatever we're working on #
  • #geoinst Talks about amazing 19th-century journal: the Henshaw book. #
  • #geoinst How about a real demo of Ivanhoe? I've never had time to figure it out. #
  • #geoinst and now she's on to the Temporal Modeling Project: http://bit.ly/arTs0z. #
  • #geoinst .@nowviskie Now discussing the Ivanhoe game. http://bit.ly/9U6oFA #
  • Ah. But they're not yet ready to be demo'd. Give Neatline a few months. #geoinst #
  • I'm wanting a live demo of how Neatline works more than just a description. #geoinst #
  • Neatline emphasizes interpretive agency of the scholar. It allows you to draw based on your iterative analysis of your text. #geoinst #
  • .@nowviskie has spent most of her time talking about what the Scholars' Lab team does, rather than what *she* does. #geoinst #
  • #geoinst @nowviskie now discussing Neatline, a set of methodologies to manuscripts & their spatial/temporal relations: http://neatline.org/. #
  • The Scholars' Lab was also aimed especially at humanities scholars. IOW, know your audience and design for them. #geoinst #
  • .@nowviskie Giving well-deserved props to @joegilbert and Adam Soroka for their work on http://bit.ly/cxEDtZ. #geoinst #
  • Scholars Lab takes county shape files and converts them to KML, PDF, and other portable formats. #geoinst #
  • . @nowviskie: The importance of getting all an institution's GIS resources into one place and discoverable. #geoinst #
  • @ryancordell I don't know about the whole of #geoinst But *I'm* willing to come and help lift stuff. Srsly. in reply to ryancordell #
  • #geoinst @Nowviskie tells us that she wants to be both administrator and scholar. #
  • Ready to get started with the final day of #geoinst @nowviskie is going to start with "GIS, graphesis, and the gift of screws". #
  • @Scrivenings Would, but I'm not in town. in reply to Scrivenings #
  • @jbj Congratulate him from us! #
  • Mapped 5 out of 10 of the gardens in the UVa academical village. #geoinst #
  • @eetempleton Touché. The shoes *would* be moving. Imagine them drifting in and out, then. in reply to eetempleton #
  • @HannahRabon Glad to hear that it *was* useful. I've always thought it was, but haven't previously heard that it was. Hope it's going well. in reply to HannahRabon #
  • @samplereality quoth the chief clown. in reply to samplereality #
  • @fearv I'd probably have to ask Adam Soroka for the whereabouts of the pipe vending machine. in reply to fearv #
  • @captain_primate It's what Harry would do, I think. in reply to captain_primate #
  • RT @nowviskie: Also come see our Scholars' Lab "ThinkTank:" a cross betw. George Jetson's living-room and a Victorian opium den. #geoinst #
  • @chellebelle13 Roadrunners are also pretty small. My wife's from ABQ, and I don't think I've ever seen one in 10 years. in reply to chellebelle13 #
  • For @captain_primate, @magpie, and others, here is the UVa "Harry Potter Room." #geoinst http://tweetphoto.com/24078348 #
  • @magpie Well, it's really called the McGregor Room in the UVa library. But it looks like Gryffindor Commons. in reply to magpie #
  • @captain_primate Well, it's really called the McGregor Room. But it looks like Gryffindor Commons. in reply to captain_primate #
  • I'm going to rest for 20 minutes before the Open Street Map party in the @UVa Harry Potter room. #geoinst #
  • @barbarahui Boo. But you're among friends! I'll buy you a yogurt! #geoinst in reply to barbarahui #
  • RT @muziejus: "If you have fewer than 300 data points, you don't need GIS," explains A. K. Knowles #geoinst #
  • @amyeetx Can't wait to read it! in reply to amyeetx #
  • @historying Very good point. This is the tail end of a lot of work that's been done for us already. #geoinst in reply to historying #
  • http://Batchgeo.com is an amazing tool. #geoinst #
  • RT @doctorow: RT @3S_stories: Hey @wiswell: #BEA10 on Vimeo http://bit.ly/ciVNVc w/ @ScottWesterfeld @Doctorow @cmpriest, Karen Grenke, NYPL #
  • @ryancordell …And it looks like it's going on now. So that's a bust. I thought it was in Mexico, but it's in Germany. in reply to ryancordell #
  • It's so interesting that these old phone directories included job title. #geoinst #
  • @ryancordell Grrr! Soccer!! in reply to ryancordell #
  • @barbarahui is going to go bonkers on that website. You've provided a second gift now!! #geoinst in reply to barbarahui #
  • When using the Editor function in ArcMap, we've entered the Danger Zone, quoth @KellyGJohnston. #geoinst #
  • My inability to sleep on this trip is really starting to catch up with me. #
  • Now to digitize GIS data with @KellyGJohnston. #geoinst #
  • RT @CodyBrown: "Apple Surpasses Microsoft as Most Valuable Technology Company." Wow. http://nyti.ms/9u1HtT #
  • @joguldi Love that particular strip. Not quite sure how it relates to collaboration. in reply to joguldi #
  • @ryancordell Good call. I'll read it for tonight and hope I sleep better than I have since I started traveling. in reply to ryancordell #
  • @chellebelle13 Check out the Georgia O'Keefe museum in Santa Fe! in reply to chellebelle13 #
  • @coffee001 It's also worth observing that @AlxJrvs and I were roommates. Correlation = causation? in reply to coffee001 #
  • RT @muziejus: we rapped about @ScrivenerApp, @devontech, @zotero and @mendeley_com. #geoinst [Don't forget Clips: http://bit.ly/dB0QmQ #
  • @samplereality @coffee001 No recounts. I'm taking this to the very top! in reply to samplereality #
  • I wonder how many #geoinst have seen the Eye Fi Explorer card: http://bit.ly/bkLHhi. #
  • RT @footnotesrising: lawnmower drawings! http://bit.ly/cEJuPe #geoinst #
  • RT @amwhisnant: @KellyGJohnston is a great presenter on GIS and georeferencing. So enthusiastic, good at explaining. #geoinst #
  • Spent the end of lunch talking with @joguldi and @muziejus about the different software we use to manage work flow. 'Twas awesome. #geoinst #
  • .@coffee001 WINNAR!!! #thatcamp in reply to coffee001 #
  • Kicking off the afternoon of #geoinst with @mattknutzen. #
  • @zotero If I annotate or highlight a snapshot, is it possible to search those highlights or annotations? #
  • @mkirschenbaum That can be painful. Practice, practice, practice. Plus side: take a dramamine and sleep through the talk! in reply to mkirschenbaum #
  • Another #geoinst win! RT @ryancordell: Just had a flood of ideas for Celestial Railroad project; maps are suddenly more than a supplement #
  • Google Lip Trips getting props in #geoinst Website: http://bit.ly/dnGBy5. #
  • We're making maps of Civil War battles with representations proportional to total casualties. #geoinst #
  • @joguldi I'm in! #geoinst in reply to joguldi #
  • RT @muziejus: #geoinst ArcGIS design critics / haters: remember this is the *best* software available & costs $$$$$$. Set minds to *boggle*. #
  • I'm being reminded how important it is to be fluent in both Windows and Mac OS. #geoinst #
  • But to be fair, I'm not a software designer. #geoinst #
  • One of the design decisions that I question in ArcGIS is the 18 different tools rather than a single one. #geoinst #
  • Lots of different ways to use maps. There's a lot to learn. #geoinst #
  • Scholars Lab's Dave Richardson and Middlebury's Ann Knowles talking to one half of #geoinst about scale, level of detail, and shapes. #
  • @nowviskie That's what we've done. But getting everyone on the physical network is still not quite done. Dave is bearing up tho! #geoinst in reply to nowviskie #
  • The baby steps #geoinst class is still trying to get logged into virtualization network. #
  • @nowviskie You're just following Ann's instructions to embrace risk. #geoinst #
  • Rocking the baby-steps GIS session with @jtheibault, @joguldi, @ryancordell, and @amwhisnant. @Wayne_graham is here as hired gun. #geoinst #
  • @markhlong I think his responses to what responses he's received suggest the dialog isn't worth entering into. in reply to markhlong #
  • @inactinique Francophones unite! in reply to inactinique #
  • @hcayless Clown! #thatcamp in reply to hcayless #
  • I found a great new digital humanities program! This fall I'll be starting a neurobiology program at the Université de Montréal. #thatcamp #
  • For all #geoinst ers looking for breakfast, I'm at Little John's on the corner. #
  • Here's my #geoinst haiku: GIS timelines / Mapping novels; I teach stu- / -dents digital skills. #
  • Haiku is done. Now to see if they still let me in for dinner. #geoinst #
  • Crud. My phone didn't wake me up. Just a bit late for #geoinst dinner now. #
  • .@ryancordell Does that really work for a tenure-track person rather than staff? TT all play must be work. #geoinst #
  • .@nowviskie is *not* joking about the haikus. You must haiku for your supper. #geoinst #
  • @farman I'll send you $15! in reply to farman #
  • @footnotesrising WIN! in reply to footnotesrising #
  • RT @muziejus: Haiku generator: http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/haikugen/framset1.htm #geoinst #
  • @nprmusic It's *not* the opening track of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's debut album. in reply to nprmusic #
  • @nowviskie As well you should be. I think I'm feeling tired. I'll chat with you later about it all. #geoinst in reply to nowviskie #
  • @wayne_graham You've been working on a haiku auto-generator for all of us, right? #geoinst #
  • @jtheibault True. But they *are* learning skills that I want them to learn. I think I'm just feeling feisty at the moment. #geoinst in reply to jtheibault #
  • @nowviskie Oh, I understand that. But if we're going to include #alt ac folk, we need to include the students in the reward system. #geoinst in reply to nowviskie #
  • @footnotesrising Agreed. We need to get all #thatcamp up in this thang! in reply to footnotesrising #
  • RT @brettttt: Humanists need to be more involved with development of the tools that Google et al. are creating. #geoinst #
  • I'm glad we're getting students involved and teaching them transferable skills. I'm also nervous about their absent presence here. #geoinst #
  • Hopefully we can end this discussion of collaboration with some more collaboration than we've done thus far. #geoinst #
  • Presner: Narrative can be cartographic rather than linear. [Me: But isn't basing a story on a street's path linear?] #geoinst #
  • Collaboration in geospatial work can build on previous DH projects, like the UCLA/UVa Roman Forum project. #geoinst #
  • Walking tours of LA's Filipinotown based on information that the students have worked on. Linked to different characters. #geoinst #
  • Presner: Collaborative networks is a form of civic engagement. #geoinst #
  • I think it's awesome that we've got people who are simultaneously tweeting and knitting at #geoinst #
  • Todd Presner taking the stage again for talking about the collaborative model of geospatial scholarship. #geoinst #
  • RT @joguldi: those of you tuning in from offsite to #geoinst check out the Scholars' Lab podcast! http://is.gd/coUkY #
  • Have to find time to think about my #geoinst haiku. #
  • NYPL has just received funding from NEH to digitzie 8,000 more maps (have already done 10k). #geoinst #
  • RT @nowviskie: #geoinst Great concept: could you tie georectification to CAPTCHA? [Get more people working quickly] #
  • .@nowviskie And that's really before we start thinking about experiential data. #geoinst #
  • You're seeing less tweets out of #geoinst right now as we're all slack-jawed at the NYPL work @mattknutzen is showing us. #
  • Fascinating integration of wikipedia and other resources within Google Earth layers. #geoinst #
  • @billiehara May I suggest @ProfHacker? in reply to billiehara #
  • @ryancordell @ehoran Good point. Limited fluency in a machine language is perhaps more valuable than in a human one. #geoinst in reply to ryancordell #
  • @ehoran Knowing it all would be ideal; it's either/or because there's limited time. But I'm also playing devil's advocate here. #geoinst in reply to ehoran #
  • @ehoran But some schools require multiple languages. A machine language is arguably more useful to an Americanist than French. #geoinst in reply to ehoran #
  • How do we get people's interesting involved in crowdsourcing geo-rectification, asks @mattknutzen. #geoinst #
  • @JenHoward The lightning talks on Thursday should be recorded. But the others aren't being recorded. Thoughts, @nowviskie? #geoinst in reply to JenHoward #
  • @koptiuch Welcome! in reply to koptiuch #
  • @ryancordell Gotcha. I'll have to get some tips from you after the next break. in reply to ryancordell #
  • @JenHoward It's all gorgeous. I'm green with envy for not having thought of all of it. #geoinst in reply to JenHoward #
  • @erinsells Who cares about that? Look at this amazing bookshelf/staircase: http://bit.ly/9oF2t5. in reply to erinsells #
  • @ryancordell Are there multiple columns in @echofon? #
  • @ehoran Why not? I know English lit people that can use programming languages to fulfill that requirement. #geoinst in reply to ehoran #
  • Going to try out @echofon on @ryancordell's recommendation. #
  • Ann Knowles mentions @dianamaps as a good resource for thinking about teaching geospatial in classes. #geoinst #
  • .@muziejus I'm wondering if grad students should be allowed to use GIS to fulfill language requirements. #geoinst #
  • @erinsells Can't wait to see the sorts of ads Zuckerberg starts sending you now. in reply to erinsells #
  • RT @jtheibault: Background on Geographies of the Holocaust project here: http://bit.ly/cNnNiK #geoinst #
  • @footnotesrising Yes that's right. What struck me is that these projects shifted from mapping to visualization. in reply to footnotesrising #
  • @erinsells I read a history of this at one point. Can't remember the name right now. Ask Lisa Schneider though. She'll know all this. in reply to erinsells #
  • RT @muziejus: principles: 1. Start w/paper, 2. Get to know yr sources 3. emph stories over maps 4. inc. all detail 5. mult. designs #geoinst #
  • New at @ProfHacker: Guest author @jenterysayers on "Integrating Digital Audio Composition into Humanities Courses": http://bit.ly/c0J9eV #
  • @nowviskie @barbarahui Are you going to post that photo you took? #geoinst in reply to nowviskie #
  • These are examples of visualization more than GIS What we learn is that geospatial work in the humanities is really visualization. #geoinst #
  • Emotional mapping: looking at feelings of imprisonment and transcendence. #geoinst (See @barbaragui or @nowviskie) for pics. #geoinst #
  • Beautiful map of the Oswiecim-Wodizislaw Slaski Evacuation March, done by Ann Knowles students. Colors, shading, topography. #geoinst #
  • Animated maps show that holocaust deaths and work of shock troops (Einsatzkommando) was not ordered; instead it's chaotic. #geoinst #
  • We're now looking at "Mapping the Massacre": maps of the holocaust. #geoinst #
  • RT @historying: #geoinst "Voila" moment of finally being able to map her historical data was actually half a sabbatical's worth of work #
  • Historical source -> extract textual & numerical data; -> determine location; -> do geospatial analysis. #geoinst #
  • STEAMPUNK!!! #geoinst #
  • It's important to have established nomenclature for your files so you can follow their transformation through project development. #geoinst #
  • @caffeneko I think that the problem is also figuring out how to use this crowdsourced work; if there's so much, it's hard to evaluate. in reply to caffeneko #
  • I was talking about this importance of making your own map to learn the data over lunch with Martyn Jessop and @amwhisnant. #geoinst #
  • Going through making a map allows you to learn the data. Do the work yourself to get that learning. #geoinst #
  • GIS good at analyzing many layers of information, but still poorly analyzes events over time. Spatial depth, temporal shallowness. #geoinst #
  • The language of GIS expresses ideas in more absolute way than any verbal language does. Info in GIS is a 0 or 1. #geoinst #
  • RT @amwhisnant: Afternoon session. Knowles: History traditionally verbal; spatial thinking fundamentally visual. #geoinst #
  • Ann Knowles asks reviewers to comment on the maps/illustrations as they are part of the argument. #geoinst #
  • @retius Right. So how can we determine who's providing valuable layers and who's not? #geoinst in reply to retius #
  • Work on something like Hypercities gives undergraduates the transferable skills I was talking about at #thatcamp #geoinst #
  • For the role of the expert, one wonders how much of an "expert" Benjamin was when doing the Arcades Project. #geoinst #
  • Street art project would of course be problematic vis a vis my insistence on letting some things erase themselves (like Agrippa). #geoinst #
  • Me: It would be a great layer for Hypercities/Google Earth to track street art (a la Banksy or taggers) in Berlin, London, LA. #geoinst #
  • Ann Knowles asks Presner if it's possible to have a map be an argument unto itself. #geoinst #
  • Hypercities as platform for making arguments with visuals and with text.Allows you to incorporate others' data to enrich your work. #geoinst #
  • Geotemporal curation allows us to compare public-recorded experience of Tehran protests vs. official channels. #geoinst #
  • Hypercities allows you to pull data in from other locations. It's a connective tissue of geodata, using KML as standard. #geoinst #
  • Presner showing us how his German students use Hypercities as a platform for making rhetocial arguments. #geoinst #
  • Historical maps, satellite maps, and memory maps live side-by-side in Hypercities.#geoinst #
  • Presner showing us the list of Hypercities team members. Glad to see so much sharing of the credit here. #geoinst #
  • Hypermedia Berlin (http://bit.ly/aN9YfL) is *not* a GIS project. It's linking representations to representations. #geoinst #
  • @amwhisnant I'm not sure. If it's about stories, then it's a public history/literature project. #geoinst in reply to amwhisnant #
  • RT @nowviskie: #geoinst Presner began Hypercities by thinking not so much about layers as about narratives through space and time. #
  • Paul Gilroy, Frederic Jameson, Franco Moretti cited as other people in spacial turn in humanities. #geoinst #
  • RT @victoriaszabo: older new media to explore spatial dimensions of "urban modernity" – to be "conducted downward in time" #geoinst #
  • Presner: there have been many spatial turns in the humanities. He cites Benjamin's Arcades Project as one. #geoinst #
  • @barbarahui Holla! in reply to barbarahui #
  • Presner: Hypercities as GIS Lite. #geoinst #
  • Hypercities is a Google Earth mashup built on their APIs. #geoinst #
  • Todd Presner is about to start talking to us about Hypercities: http://bit.ly/cB6yfa. #geoinst #
  • Lots of questions when we've seen two projects that have been brought to their completion. #geoinst #
  • @dukeisis @wayne_graham True. But it would also cost much more than $5000. #geoinst in reply to dukeisis #
  • @barbarahui I couldn't find it online any place. #geoinst in reply to barbarahui #
  • @joguldi Those, and can you *know* what questions will matter before you start? It's a big investment. #geoinst in reply to joguldi #
  • @JawsdeLine Yeah. Sorry about that. I'll be done on Thursday evening with these conferences. in reply to JawsdeLine #
  • Ann Knowles acknowledgment page begs the question of why all these people's names aren't on the final, published piece. #geoinst #
  • In order to make a accurate map, you might build on the work of the many (enthusiast) historians. #geoinst #
  • .@nowviskie And those are the new questions that geospatial work makes possible. #geoinst #
  • Knowing how tall Lee was, where he stood, and having an accurate map of the are helps us know for sure what he saw. #geoinst #
  • 80-95% of project time should be planned for preparing the data, quoth Knowles. #geoinst #
  • These maps of Gettysburg are making the argument for the importance of beautiful final maps. #geoinst #
  • Knowles: discussing "What Lee Could See at Gettysburg" in http://bit.ly/dhYfsm. #geoinst #
  • Ann Knowles: Maps need to be much more than illustrations if you want to think spatially. #geoinst #
  • RT @barbarahui: @muziejus thing i'm thinking of is essentially like css for maps [Now there's a *great* idea!] #geoinst #
  • @DrewBrittain Sorry. I'm doing this until Thursday, I think. This is why people bring me to conferences though. in reply to DrewBrittain #
  • @muziejus Part of the issue is hard it is to work in ArcGIS though, right? #geoinst in reply to muziejus #
  • @historying Glad it made sense to someone. #geoinst in reply to historying #
  • Wonder how an epidemiologist would build this map. Salem witch trials as epidemic. #geoinst #
  • It's a case of needing to educate the viewer but also exciting to show us we can mix metaphors w/geospatial work. #geoinst #
  • Didn't express myself very well. I think map shows us the problems of representations. Not exactly what you think you're getting. #geoinst #
  • @sramsay Feel free to creepy-uncle your way in at times! #geoinst in reply to sramsay #
  • RT @nowviskie: #geoinst Knowles: GIS forces you to grapple, for better or worse, with new metrics of "accuracy and precision." #
  • We're looking at http://bit.ly/c3xWFG : a map of Salem Witch accusations. #geoinst #
  • @footnotesrising Philistine! in reply to footnotesrising #
  • RT @joguldi: #geoinst feeling like discussion could really use a humanist reflecting on the "spatial turn" to put us on the same page first #
  • Ann Knowles starting presentation on "Enhanced Interrogation" #geoinst #
  • @adamclyde Yes. I'm at an NEH-sponsored institute on geospatial work in the humanities: http://bit.ly/aLl6jB. #geoinst #
  • RT @barbarahui: Also check out mapnik, which is specifically for making beautiful maps: http://bit.ly/bd28hg #foss #geoinst #
  • @amandafrench @buzzdad It seems strange that it took Google so long to think about getting into this space. in reply to amandafrench #
  • @mlaconvention That's true. And I was happy to pass mine on to someone else when I couldn't. in reply to mlaconvention #
  • New at @ProfHacker: @captain_primate on "Using Open Atrium to Manage Collaborative Academic Projects": http://bit.ly/awAKm6 #
  • .@footnotesrising True. Begs the question tho: will institutions see "just maps" as kindly as GIS? Latter seems more "scholarly." #geoinst #
  • My thought: One thing that could be useful for geospatial scholars are personal narratives on steps taken to reach projects' end. #geoinst #
  • .@muziejus And that's useful in historical project. But what if you don't need precision.Starting prettier might get more starting. #geoinst #
  • #geoinst My thought: simply making a map can be a great way to root information more completely in our minds. Preps us to do more analysis. #
  • .@muziejus @jean_bauer The aesthetics of this map are also one of the constraints of the tool he's using. #geoinst #
  • @footnotesrising Well, ambiguity in historical data can also depend on who is doing the reporting, right? #geoinst in reply to footnotesrising #
  • @jean_bauer Just using something like Kuler would help tremendously. #geoinst in reply to jean_bauer #
  • Jessop: Anglosaxons defined space by text, not be geographical representations. #geoinst #
  • @NewFacMajority @mlaconvention There *is* funding for adjuncts. I was awarded it this last year. in reply to NewFacMajority #
  • Jessop talking about the PASE project: http://bit.ly/d0DtP4. #geoinst #
  • .@amwhisnant Right. But if we make the work relevant to one another, then we practice making it relevant to skeptical public. #geoinst #
  • @footnotesrising It depends: can you make the one-stop shop virtual rather than physical? #geoinst in reply to footnotesrising #
  • RT @historying: Thinking spatially is a lot harder than learning GIS tech skills #geoinst #
  • @nowviskie He wants a non-stop shop and exemplar projects? Boy do we have a pitch for him! #geoinst #
  • @amwhisnant But he's talking about collaboration between project members, right? The GIS librarian + programmer + researcher. #geoinst in reply to amwhisnant #
  • @amyeetx That's almost a haiku. Keep massaging. #geoinst in reply to amyeetx #
  • #geoinst Problems of geospatial research: limited publication chances; few peer reviewers; funding mechanisms don't support. It's not TEXT. #
  • #geoinst Jessop discussing the importance of humanities research learning how to acknowledge the contributions of all partners. #
  • Jessop: A problem with any DH work is that available tools constrain how one works. Me: Building out your own needs to be option. #geoinst #
  • @jtheibault Thats' the one. in reply to jtheibault #
  • Metadata matters so we can find data sets that we can use within our own work. #geoinst #
  • Humanities data is ambiguous. And GIS tends not to represent that well. But the ambiguity is where humanists bread and butter is. #geoinst #
  • Let me know if you want the full text of Jessop's paper. #geoinst #
  • Jessop's talk is based on his 2008 paper in LLC: http://bit.ly/afj0fY. #geoinst #
  • Hmm. How to effectively tweet #geoinst where we don't all tell you the exact same tidbit of information. #
  • @footnotesrising Yes. I need to figure out who you are! #geoinst in reply to footnotesrising #
  • Jessop: Spatial work in the sciences tends to be quantitative. In the humanities it can be that, but tends to be more qualitative. #geoinst #
  • Jessop: "I need a map" does not mean "I need to use a GIS." #geoinst #
  • Spatial work in the humanities needs to consider temporality, which science doesn't as much. #geoinst #
  • Jessop: "As digital scholarship has developed, the use of space has fallen behind. Use of space in humanities =/= use in science." #geoinst #
  • Twapper Keeper for #geoinst is at http://bit.ly/dqHLhR. #
  • Martyn Jessop has taken the stage at #geoinst Talk is "Obstacles and Opportunities for Spatial Thinking in the Humanities." #
  • @barbarahui I'm totally going to tell @joegilbert about that. #geoinst in reply to barbarahui #
  • .@nowviskie compares #hackacad to Ezra Pound's guiding principle: "Make it new!" #geoinst #
  • Everyone at #geoinst will introduce themselves by haiku. Beware the wrath of keyboard cat! #
  • I'm getting to watch @joguldi go crazy with PersonalBrain at #geoinst Wonder how close it is to @evernote or DevonThink. #
  • .@nowviskie summarizing the #geoinst program to this point and telling us we have free rein to tweet about how awesome NEH ODH is. #
  • Starting #geoinst with @joguldi, @ryancordell, @barbarahui, and @muziejus. @nowviskie is at the mic. #
  • @samplereality @nowviskie To keep #thatcamp weird we could hold an underconference during it. And read 20-minute papers. #
  • @samplereality But when you only get to one or two conferences per year…But I also think I could have jived with *anyone* there. #thatcamp in reply to samplereality #
  • @samplereality I understand the point completely. I felt badly going to panels where I tended to know everyone already. #thatcamp in reply to samplereality #
  • @jeffrey_harris Great. Thanks for watching and letting me know. I didn't want to give up the live typing. in reply to jeffrey_harris #
  • Now that @barbarahui has arrived for #geoinst we can start scaring up some dinner. #
  • @LookBackMaps Huh. I didn't even catch that. Quelle coincidence! in reply to LookBackMaps #
  • @jcmeloni I thought about it, but wasn't quite sure how to work it in and still get people to take us seriously. in reply to jcmeloni #
  • @jcmeloni The links *did* get a bit out of control with this one. in reply to jcmeloni #
  • My newest on @ProfHacker reports on delivarables of #thatcamp http://bit.ly/aYRD7H. "Attending THATCamp makes me feel I've found my tribe." #
  • @nataliebinder Will keep you in mind. Talk to @micahvandegrift for a #thatcamp Florida as well. in reply to nataliebinder #
  • @shermandorn Dates are still up in the air. Will probably be Spring 2011, however. in reply to shermandorn #
  • @shermandorn Announcing @thatcamp_SE. #
  • Announcing the arrival of @thatcamp_SE on Twitter. Follow for details about the upcoming THATCamp South East. #thatcamp #
  • @parezcoydigo @nataliebinder Yes. Please watch @thatcamp_SE for more details to emerge! #thatcamp in reply to parezcoydigo #
  • @BGCDML Gotcha. I *can* FTP from home to Emory. in reply to BGCDML #
  • @BGCDML Not sure I follow. I can FTP to Emory with client of my choice when I'm wired. Not when wireless though. in reply to BGCDML #
  • Finished some prelim ARG plotting with @ronda_at_uva and friends for library instruction at UVa and Emory. Feeling excited. #thatcamp #
  • Why does every hotel triangulate the first piece of toilet paper these days? Knowing your hands were on it doesn't make me feel welcome. #
  • @samplereality Got them. Thanks! in reply to samplereality #
  • Nominating @samplereality's "Open Source Professor" for #hackacad http://bit.ly/9LnQxM. #cv #tenure #class #
  • @zachwhalen Good to know. I think the new GooDocs editor has been giving me trouble. in reply to zachwhalen #
  • @zachwhalen @amandafrench Here are five docs I have: http://bit.ly/cCQwxc. Let me know if you can't view them.I'm having problems. #thatcamp #
  • @ronda_at_uva Are you going to delicious those for the rest of us to use? #thatcamp in reply to ronda_at_uva #
  • @amandafrench @zachwhalen I'm having trouble with the new version of GooDocs not publishing the links in an easy to use format. in reply to amandafrench #
  • @foundhistory I was just talking about this on Saturday evening. Seems strange that they've not gotten into the market previously. in reply to foundhistory #
  • @zachwhalen I've got a lot of them and will be linking to them in my @ProfHacker post tonight. But a better list is desirable. #thatcamp in reply to zachwhalen #
  • Between the new Google Docs link fubar-ing and the @Chronicle blog backend, I've spent *far* too much time on this post. #
  • A reminder to all #thatcamp ers to donate to @CHNM! http://chnm.gmu.edu/donate/ #
  • Hmm. New version of Google Docs is proving frustrating to author @ProfHacker posts as it seriously tweaks all of the links. #
  • @dancohen All right. I'll lay off and see if I can write something new instead. in reply to dancohen #
  • @dancohen @foundhistory Is it worthwhile for me to RT #hackacad submissions with category tags? Or am I just making more work for you? #
  • @foundhistory You could just make a Twitter list for all of that work. in reply to foundhistory #
  • I'm going to keep things mellow today with @club8music. #
  • RT @amandafrench: @foundhistory http://bit.ly/aXTgMX #hackacad #conf #cv #
  • Hanging out today in the @UVa Scholars Lab, getting work done, and prepping for tomorrow's opening of #geoinst #
  • @GeorgeOnline It's that whole Archimedes water displacement thing. in reply to GeorgeOnline #
  • @wayne_graham Got it. Thanks. in reply to wayne_graham #

Powered by Twitter Tools

,

No Comments

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-23

Posted by Brian in Tweets on May 23, 2010

Powered by Twitter Tools

,

No Comments

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-16

Posted by Brian in Tweets on May 16, 2010

  • Tonight's gyros at our favorite place are 60% off thanks to @scoutmob. #
  • @windwardskies Looks like life's been good to you as well. Imagine catching up on Twitter rather than that other place. in reply to windwardskies #
  • So…I've been offline for more or less a full week. It appears Twitter and Facebook both screwed up this week. Anything else happen? #
  • @boonebgorges @samplereality Win. in reply to boonebgorges #
  • @acavender @captain_primate I'm contemplating a @jbj-like assignment around formatting next time I teach. #
  • I love the fact that there apps to tell me the times of the tides. #
  • While the rest of family is getting lunch, Gwen and I are at beach house, eating bagels, playing ball, and listening to Hot Chip. I win. #
  • @erinsells That's what being an academic is all about. Hope you and family go back to the buffet. It's worth it. in reply to erinsells #
  • @windwardskies Junior high and high school, yes. in reply to windwardskies #

Powered by Twitter Tools

,

No Comments