You can download a full program of the conference sessions here, You can also see Sessions by Track, or click here for an overview of the Conference Schedule, including the Keynote Event, receptions and Cultural Programming.
8:45-10:15 AM Saturday, April 21, 2018 Session Block 1
Bethlehem Arts & Culture Roundtable
Moderator: Mary Foltz, Lehigh University, Associate Professor of English
Panel with Discussion
Our Voices, Our Valley, Our Stories Track
Maginnes 101
Dave Fry, Godfrey Daniels, archivist and founder
Doug Roysdon, Artistic Director of Mock Turtle Theater, Programmer for Ice House Tonight
William George, co-Founder, Touchstone Theater
Mary Foltz, Lehigh University, Co-Director of the South Side Initiative
Sam Sorensen, Lehigh University, Graduate Student
Adam Heidebrink-Bruno, Lehigh University, Graduate Student
Ava Bertone, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Panelists from area arts and culture organizations will discuss how arts programming in Bethlehem helps to shape civic identity. In particular, we will discuss archiving local musicians work, designing theatrical events to help residents imagine the future of Bethlehem, and creating structures to support local artists. Dave Fry, founder and archivist at Godfrey Daniels, will explore his efforts to tell the story of folk music in the Lehigh Valley. With the help of Lehigh University Archives, he has been working on a book as well as archiving audio shows for WDIY radio broadcasts. He will be joined by Doug Roysdon, Artistic Director of Mock Turtle Theater and Programmer for Ice House Tonight; Doug will discuss his recent work on collecting stories from local artists and essays about creating civic structures to support local artists. A third panelist, co-founder of Touchstone theater, William George will discuss Touchstone Theater’s work and vision for the (Un)Bound Festival- “ten days of music, theatre, dance, community dialogue, forging a vision forward– through art– for Bethlehem, our home by the river.” The panel will be moderated by Mary Foltz, co-director of the Southside Initiative and project adviser of the MDHI-supported Southsider website (www.thesouthsider.org). With the decrease in funding to regional newspapers that has resulted in less coverage of civic affairs, the Southsider is produced by a group of undergraduate writers, graduate student managing editors, advisers and community partners who have collaborated on a succession of articles about the Southside’s lively arts and culture scene.
Off the Grid: Justice at the Margins
Moderator: Mauve Y. Perle, publisher, writer, PhD candidate in the Literature and Criticism dept. at Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Panel with Discussion
Digital Scholarship Track
Maginnes 102
Off Country: Resisting Nuclear Armament in the 21st Century
Taylor Dunne, Off Country, Co-Director
Eric Stewart, Off Country, Co-Director
Off Country is a multimedia project that examines, through first person accounts and oral histories, the legacy of the nuclear weapons industry embedded in the landscape of the American Southwest. In this session we will explore how Off Country’s digital platforms (podcasts, digital archive, documentary and social media) can be used as a tool to preserve untold histories from underrepresented communities and to communicate ideas of social and environmental justice. The goal is to use digital media to advocate for responsible nuclear stewardship, empower and educate local communities and connect activists, community members and generations.
Designing Digital Projects About Hyperlocal Histories: Creating Collaborations Between Communities, Archivists, and Academics
Strategy Session
Public Humanities Track
Maginnes 112
Jim McGrath, Brown University, Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Public Humanities
Julia Renaud, Brown University, MA Student in Public Humanities
In this session, representatives from an ongoing collaboration between Brown University, the Providence Public Library, and Providence community members on hyperlocal histories of Providence will discuss the challenges of designing digital projects that highlight the values and interests of local audiences and their relationship to archives of recent history. We will discuss the questions, methodologies, and digital contexts graduate students at Brown’s Center for Public Humanities have explored while working with materials collected by PPL’s Special Collections: photographs and other records of Providence’s Cape Verdean community, the 30+ year history of AS220 (a local community arts center), and a large collection of type specimen books that have many potential local uses in educational and artistic contexts. Using these experiences as context, we will collaborate with session attendees interested in digital contexts for local histories to discuss best practices for ethical approaches to community collaboration, digital project development, and audience engagement.
Locals Speak! Participatory media and scholarship in a tourism zone
Film Screening/Perormance
Vidas Digitales Track
Maginnes 111
Katie Beck, Founder of The Rich Coast Project and Director of Experiential Education at The Media School at Indiana University
David Dávila González, The Rich Coast Project and Matixando
Erin Adamson, University of Kansas
This session explores how local Afro-Caribbean and Indigenous Costa Ricans can preserve and participate in creating their story and their space in a developing tourist zone. In this session we show a participatory documentary, two short fiction films by school children, and interviews and talk about the importance of local voices in activism and academic scholarship. Participants will leave with information about how The Rich Coast Project runs its participatory programs and ideas for incorporating local voices in academic research.
Oral History and Storytelling as Tools for Community Activism and Movement Building
Film Screening/Performance
Documentary Storymaking Track
STEPS 101
Jin Zhu, Video producer
We would like to explore the ways in which an oral history approach to video production may act as a tool for storytelling and activism in grassroots housing justice movements. We will present our online map platform which hosts short films made in collaboration with and for Bay Area tenants and activists as examples of how narrative can both sway political stakeholders to make legislative change as well as form connections of power within local movements built by those most impacted by these issues. After our presentation, we hope participants will share their own experiences of movement-building in an informal skillshare and walk away with a sense of how these approaches and media tools can be applied within their own communities to build networks of resistance and allies.
Play: The Technology of Humanities and Social Justice
Game-based or Experimental
Digital Futures: Kids & Youth Track
Maginnes 113
Mark McKenna, The Gilrain-McKenna Family, Father/Husband, Theater Artist/Educator
Jennie Gilrain, The Gilrain-McKenna Family, Mother/Wife, Teacher/Artist
Aidan Gilrain-McKenna, The Gilrain-McKenna Family, Son, Actor/Filmmaker
Liam McKenna, The Gilrain-McKenna Family, Son, Musician
How can we use play (our fundamental technology for connecting with others) to facilitate individual and institutional change toward just and creative practices? We will briefly define the roots and principals of play so that participants can share a series of experiences to explore play dynamics. Play promotes engagement characterized by listening, equity, inclusion, collaboration and justice. Participants will walk away with a strengthened awareness of their own capacity to play and a tool kit for assessing and developing their powerful capacity to apply “play strategies” to influence positive change.
Start Up Your Devices: Videomaking, editing, and blogging on a budget and for public audiences
Hands on
How-to workshops and trainings Track
DMS
Alison Diefenderfer, Northampton Community College
As a trained social scientist working in educational technology and online learning, I will help participants learn the ins and outs of free of charge or low-cost means of producing, editing, and releasing quality videos and blogs to engage online communities and audiences in their social justice causes and/or digital humanities initiatives. I will provide the helpful tips to making a phone or tablet a self-recording device, and walk you through the various options and things to consider from both the technical and social science perspectives. I will also promote inclusive video making with closed captioning and discuss ways to ensure that users regardless of internet speed or personal device have access to your content, and so after this session, participants can produce and share their videos and blogs with ease.
10:30-12:00 PM Saturday, April 21, 2018 Session Block 2
Digital Maps, Retelling Suppressed History
Moderator: Elizabeth Dolan, Lehigh University, Assoc. Prof. of English
Panel with Discussion
Digital Scholarship Track
Maginnes 102
Mapping the Story of an Eighteenth-Century Woman’s Life: The Charlotte Smith Story Map
Elizabeth Dolan, Lehigh University, Assoc. Prof. of English
Gillian Andrews, Lehigh University, English MA ’17
Sofia Gracias, Lehigh University, English BA ’19
Our MDHI funded faculty/grad student/undergrad team has created a Story Map illustrating British Romantic-era author Charlotte Smith’s life. In this session we will share ideas and promote discussion about how the digital humanities in general, and Story Map in particular, help us see and learn about women’s lives differently than “real life” modes of memorialization. What is gained? What is lost? We will present our Story Map, which includes both an embedded digital map that is time synced to represent the frequency of Smith’s moves and a Timeline that offers more academic source information. Participants will gain insight into the process of creating a Story Map with embedded features, and into broader questions about how digital platforms can represent life experience and “space” in a way that real world museums, author houses, etc. cannot.
The University of the Movement: Mapping the 1964 Freedom Summer
David Busch, Carnegie Mellon University, PhD Student
While the 1964 Freedom Summer has been the subject of extensive scholarship, my digital humanities project broadens the way we think about its impact in the 1960s and post-1960s legacy. Planned and coordinated by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the 1964 Summer Project brought down lawyers, teachers, medical professionals, and college students to work in voter registration, community centers and Freedom Schools throughout Mississippi. The first iteration of this project focuses on college students, who made up close to three-quarters of all the volunteers. SNCC’s grassroots organizing approach served as a liberating form of education that influenced the political outlooks and values of this cohort of students. Many of these students went on to play key roles in other social movements at the end of the 1960s and later embarked on long careers in public service, law, education, and community organizing.Using Arc GIS, a digital mapping tool, this project contextualizes the Freedom Summer by: 1) collating census data on race and social economics in the United States and in Mississippi on the heels of the 1964 summer 2) integrating digitized documents on approaches to training college students for social action 3) visualizing the WATs line that tracked threats, violence, and other acts during the summer 4) tracking post-summer movements of select volunteers. In combination with other digitized archival documents and select secondary sources, these maps offer users a digital lens and space to examine the 1964 Freedom Summer, its successes and failures.
Funding Arts, Culture and Social Justice in the Lehigh Valley
Information Session
Our Voices, Our Valley, Our Stories Track
Maginnes 101
Kate Pitts – Lafayette College – LVEHC Mellon Grant Coordinator
Charlotte Nunes – Lafayette College – Director, Digital Scholarship Services
Tyrone Russell, Coordinator for Racial and Ethnic Justice, Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley
Marci Ronald-Lesko, United Way, Executive Vice President
How do we fund arts, culture and social justice work in the Lehigh Valley? Learn about funding strategies as well as funding opportunities in the Lehigh Valley. This panel includes information on the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium Mellon Grant – exploring themes of diversity, the changing nature of work, the process of story-making and sense of place in the Lehigh Valley over the past 50 year. They are currently accepting applications for mini-grants.
Atrévete: Building a Community Television Show
Film Screening/Performance
Vidas Digitales Track
Maginnes 111
Gabriela Watson Aurazo, PhillyCAM, Atrévete Show Producer
Laura Deutch, PhillyCAM Education & Production Director
Franklin Guzman, Atrévete Member/Producer
Leticia Roa Nixon, PhillyCAM, Atrévete Member/Producer
Antonio Arroniz, PhillyCAM Atrévete Member/Producer
Atrévete a pensar diferente un programa a la vez. Atrévete dares you to think differently one show at a time. Show producers will present segments from their monthly show and discuss the community driven production process that informs each episode. During the session, we will explore how community produced media can expand and shift perceptions of Latino communities among each other, and present more diverse representations within the media and the public sphere. We will present examples from our monthly television show, Atrévete and discuss our methodology and production model. We will invite participants to contribute a short video segment using their mobile phone and discuss ways that we could expand our program to include more regional and national collaboration.
Bike Life: It’s More Than Knuckleheads Disrupting Traffic
Film Screening/Performance
Digital Futures: Kids & Youth Track
Maginnes 113
Trey Barrett, Youth Leader, Community Bike Works
Hannah Miller, Student and Family Engagement Manager, Community Bike Works
What is Bike Life; why do kids ride bikes and do tricks in the street? In this session, we will view a short documentary on Bike Life and hear from local riders. Participants will have a deeper understanding of why groups like Bike Life exist and a new perspective on kids in their neighborhoods riding in the street.
Free Young Blood: The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Black Males in America
Film Screening/Performance
Documentary Storymaking Track
STEPS 101
Bobby Marvin Holmes, Son of a Dream, Founder
The film, “Free Young Blood Combating the Mass Incarceration of Black Males,” seeks to explore how the criminal justice system perpetuates policies and practices that disproportionately impact Black men. Filmmaker Bobby Marvin Holmes will facilitate a discussion on ways the criminal justice system marginalizes people of color. Participants will gain more insight into ways to identify and address racial disparities within the criminal justice system.
Kiss my bot: Let’s make bots and hack digital narratives on twitter
Hands-On Session
How-to workshops and trainings Track
DMS
Ana Martina, Radicante Media member
Dave Onion, Radicante Media Member
Twitter has become a space that now shapes our political reality and opinions in society.
In this session we will explore how governments and agents of repression and power have used bots to impact society for the worse. We’ll look at some examples from Syria to Latin America to the US and Europe as well as efforts to use bots for liberation.
Participants will have the opportunity to create their own bots and will walk away with tools to be mischievous anti-colonial feminist tech protagonists as well as more conscious readers of social media.
Newest Americans: Stories From The Global City
Film Screening/Performance
Public Humanities Track
Maginnes 112
Dr. Tim Raphael, Newest Americans, Associte Professor of Arts, Culture and Media, Rutgers University-Newark; Director
Dr. Sahar Hossein, Newest Americans, Project Manager for Urban Landscape Research
Dr. Samantha Boardman, Newest Americans, Project Manager for Research and Community Partnerships
Julie Winokur, Talking Eyes Media, Director; Newest Americans, Media Director
This digital media presentation explores how oral histories can serve as source material for a variety of curricular and public history applications that allow for toggling between the virtual and material worlds as well as the past and present. We will screen a series of digital shorts inspired by and using material from two (im)migrant oral history archives and look at web-based projects developed from the digitized archival audio. This media was developed by the Newest Americans project, an initiative that is studying and documenting the impact of post-1965 immigrant communities from the perspective of the most diverse university in the country. Participants will walk away with ideas for projects they can develop at their own institutions and resources for activating oral history collections by sharing the stories they contain and the insights they provide for addressing the issues, challenges and opportunities ahead as we become an increasingly multicultural society.
12:15-1:15 PM Saturday, April 21, 2018 Lunch Caucus
Audio Video Fundamentals Skills Share
How-to workshops and trainings Track
Maginnes 110
Antoine Haywood, PhillyCAM Membership & Outreach Director
This lunch-time caucus is an opportunity for people to exchange experienced-based tips about audio and video production best practices. This gathering is ideal for people who are interested in sharing accessible media-making resources, gaining technical advice, and learning effective approaches to making media in community settings.
Expressive Cultures/Multimodal Scholarship
Digital Scholarship Track
Maginnes 270
A.D. Carson, University of Virginia, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop
Hip Hop scholar and artist A.D. Carson will talk about his unique dissertation, a 34-song rap album. Emerging scholars and interested students considering, and/or engaging, multimodal forms of expression will have the opportunity to discuss process and strategies for undertaking and promoting their work within their respective areas of study.
Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change Meet up
Public Humanities Track
Maginnes 112
Amy Starecheski, Columbia University Oral History MA Program, Co-Director
Nissa Tzun, Project Founder, Forced Trajectory Project
This lunch caucus will provide a space for people interested in oral history to meet each other, build connections, and share strategies.
How Storytelling Impacts Social Justice: Learning from the past to inform the present
*Please be advised that this session may deal with themes of violence*
Our Voices, Our Valley, Our Stories Track
Maginnes 101
Robin Reichert, Lehigh Valley Storytelling Guild, Board member
Robin Reichert will present a brief storytelling performance of “A Woman Called Polly” the life story of Johanna Maria “Polly” Heckewelder (1781-1868) a noted local Moravian humanitarian, founder of an evolving aid society still in existence today. Discussion afterward will include group mapping of how the story relates to social justice challenges past and present, and how oral storytelling teaches social justice and moves toward societal change via historical stories, folktales, and personal stories. You will learn the difference between written story and the art of oral storytelling plus oral storytelling tips and resources; valuable for teachers and presenters who wish to improve stories they share school settings, college classrooms, senior centers, and social justice groups, and individuals who wish to use story in personal communication and on social media to reach larger groups.
Making the (Digital) Ask: Using Digital Storytelling, Social Networking, and Crowdfunding to Inspire Financial Support
Strategy Session
How-to workshops and trainings Track
Maginnes 260
Adam Copeland, Luther Seminary, Center for Stewardship Leaders, Director
Keith Anderson, Upper Dublin Lutheran Church, Pastor
How do organizations, non-profits, and justice-minded individuals leverage digital technologies to tell their story in a way that activates financial gifts? This session, led by two scholar-practitioners, will consider the best digital strategies and tools to help galvanize potential funders and raise money for the cause. Participants will leave with up-to-date knowledge of digital fundraising strategies, links to model crowdfunding sites, and action steps towards helping build an inspiring digital invitation to give.
The Power of Complex Stories with Sujatha Fernandes and the Media Mobilizing Project
Documentary Storymaking Track
STEPS 101
Sujatha Fernandes, Professor, University of Sydney
Bryan Mercer, Executive Director, Media Mobilizing Project
This session will explore how telling complex and layered stories can be more effective at achieving social change than curated stories with cookie cutter stereotypes. We will present ideas from research and experience and then open to discussion. Participants will be able to think about what kinds of stories they use and how they use them in advancing social change.
Hip-Hop and Immigration
Participation
Vidas Digitales Track
Digital Futures: Kids & Youth Track
Maginnes 111
Rebel Diaz
This multimedia workshop focuses on the historical and current intersections between the struggle for immigrant rights and the socio-political concerns of the Hip-Hop generation. By exploring the historic role of immigrant communities in the creation of Hip-Hop culture, as well as the parallels between the continued criminalization of immigrants and young people of color, this workshop posits that it is the Hip Hop’s generation’s responsibility to defend immigrant rights.
1:30-3:00 PM Saturday, April 21, 2018 Session Block 3
A walking tour of art and culture on the southside
Walking Tour
STEPS Registration Lobby
Jane Gilrain, Bethlehem Area School District
Karen Beck Pooley, Professor of Practice, Lehigh University
Jane Gilrain, who has lived and worked on the South Side for more than 30 years, and Karen Beck Pooley, a Professor of Practice at Lehigh, will co-lead a walking tour highlighting arts and culture resources, independent and locally-owned businesses, and student-led improvement projects made possible with MDHI support. The tour will include 3rd and 4th Streets, the South Side Greenway, and key north-south streets including Polk, Taylor and Adams.
Above, Over and Below: Emerging Media as a tool for Place Making and Social Engagement
Panel with Discussion
Public Humanities Track
STEPS 280
Laura Chipley, Assistant Professor / Media & Communications SUNY College at Old Westbury
Sarah Nelson Wright, Assistant Professor / Communication and Media Arts, Marymount Manhattan College
Nathan Kensinger, Photographer / Artist
Three media artists will present recent and ongoing works that use surveillance technology, emerging media and collaborative storytelling to reveal the hidden layers in public and community space and illuminate connections to larger systems social and environmental issues. Laura Chipley will present Appalachian Mountaintop Patrol (AMP), a community storytelling initiative that uses drones, sensors and surveillance cameras to fight mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia. Sarah Nelson Wright will present Invisible Seams, a sound walk of SoHo NYC using augmented reality to explore globalization of the garment industry. Nathan Kensinger will present The Newtown Creek Armada, a public model boat pond collectively documenting an NYC Superfund site. This session aims to discuss concrete tools and techniques and raise questions about potentials for embodied participation and emerging / repurposed technology in enacting concrete social change.
Collaborative Digital Story-Telling in the Queer Archives Project at Lafayette College
Panel with Discussion
Digital Scholarship Track
Maginnes 102
Mary Armstrong, Chair of Women’s & Gender Studies
Elaine Stomber, College Archivist
Jennifer Wellnitz, student researcher
Charlotte Nunes, Director of Digital Scholarship Services
This session will feature student, librarian, and faculty perspectives on the experience of building the Queer Archives Project at Lafayette College. Our project uses the platform Scalar to create multi-linear narratives anchored in oral histories about the LGBTQ+ experience at Lafayette from the 1950s to the present. We will discuss the QAP in the broader context of student-generated “queer archives” projects emerging at institutions nationwide to produce new knowledge attuned to the gaps, absences, and silences that exist within campus institutional archives.
Creating Public Digital Archives & Exhibits with Omeka
Hands-On Session
How-to workshops and trainings Track
DMS
Victoria Szabo | Duke University | Associate Research Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies
Hannah L. Jacobs | Duke University | Digital Humanities Specialist, Wired! Lab for digital art history & visual culture
This hands-on workshop introduces Omeka, a platform for creating public online archives and digital narratives. Omeka is an easy to learn, open source, content management and exhibition system (http://omeka.org/ and http://omeka.net). It is used by/for cultural heritage institutions, collaborative scholarship, community organizations, and individuals to organize and describe images, audio, video, text, and other media. These materials can then be structured narratively into engaging interactive exhibits that can integrate external visual storytelling tools such as maps and timelines.
No experience in web content management, development, or design is necessary to learn Omeka. Sample historical materials on the history of the Lehigh Valley will be provided, and participants may incorporate their own digital materials. Participants will leave the workshop with their own Omeka.net site and the beginnings of a digital archive and exhibition. Additional instruction materials will be provided for further learning after the workshop.
From the Ground Up: Growing Healthy Communities through Grassroots Art
Film Screening/Performance
Our Voices, Our Valley, Our Stories Track
Maginnes 101
Anna Russell, Allentown Public Theatre, Artistic Director
Aidan Gilrain-McKenna, Make Art Local, Co-Director
We (co-directors Anna Russell and Aidan Gilrain-McKenna) will share and talk about clips from our upcoming documentary film about Bethlehem’s arts scene. We aim to give audiences a deeper understanding of what it means to practice the arts in a way that truly sustains and enriches the surrounding community. By interviewing experienced and emerging local artists, the film provides an intimate look into the lives and sacrifices of independent and mission-driven small-town artists – and asks what is needed for this kind of community-engaged art to survive and thrive into the future.
Let’s Pull Together: Using art, music, and our stories to build, celebrate, and improve our communities
Hands-On Session
Digital Futures: Kids & Youth Track
Maginnes 113
Yuriko de la Cruz, Resurrected Community Development Corporation, Board Member
Alisha Tatem, Resurrected Community Development Corporation, James Lawson Freedom School (2016 Coordinator)
Darian Colbert, James Lawson Freedom School (2015 Coordinator)
Youth Co-presenters: James Lawson Freedom School Scholar Alumni
The question we seek to explore in this session is: How do we use our stories to build community across diverse groups in order to create change? During this session, participants will learn about the history of the Freedom School movement, experience a portion of the Freedom School by participating in the Harambe circle, reflect and share their stories through art/poetry, and create a collective poem that serves as a reminder of how we each contribute to our community to bring about positive change and build bridges across diverse groups. By participating in “Harambe”, intergenerational story-sharing, and the creation of an individual/collective poem, participants will: experience the power and learn the importance of coming together and using our voice to tell our story and connect with others; and, experience various tools that use art, music, digital media and storytelling to build community that can be used in other settings.
Storytelling and Movement Building: Collaborative Mediamaking Across Prison Walls
Panel with Discussion
Documentary Storymaking Track
STEPS 101
Mike Lyons. co-Founder, The Redemption Project and assistant professor, Communication studies, Saint Joseph’s University
Layne Mullett, co-founder LifeLlines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty
Emily Abendroth, co-founder: LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty
John Pace, co-founder The Redemption Project
Kempis Songster, co-founder, The Redemption Project
AbdAllah Lateef, co-founder, The Redemption Project
This session focuses on bringing the voices of incarcerated men and women into the public sphere to help disrupt mainstream media narratives of incarceration, violence, and the criminal legal system. The creators of two multimedia projects from Philadelphia “LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty and The Redemption Project” will present examples of their work and discuss the importance of inside voices and organizing strategies in the movement to end mass incarceration. The panel will feature formerly incarcerated people who participated in the projects while inside, as well as the projects’ creators and co-collaborators on the outside. Attendees will leave with an understanding of the power of individual stories to affect change, and the logistical and ethical challenges of collaborative efforts across the prison walls.
3:00-3:45 PM Saturday, April 21, 2018 Poster & Tabling Session
Location: STEPS CONCOURSE
Documentary Storymaking: Greater than the Sum of Our Parts
Lora Taub-Pervizpour, Muhlenberg College, Professor
Andy Smith, Lafayette College, Associate Professor
Nandini Sikand, Lafayette College, Associate Professor
Aggie Ebrahimi-Bazaz, Muhlenberg College, Assistant Professor
Digital storytelling can be a meaningful catalyst for collaboration and connection across boundaries, campuses, communities. In 2013, colleagues from Lafayette College, Lehigh University, and Muhlenberg College began exploring a shared interest in community-based digital storytelling. Across the next three years, a shared belief in the value of digital storytelling expanded and gave shape to the valley’s first collaborative academic minor: Documentary Storymaking. This panel brings together the minor’s founders, offers a glimpse at the process organizing around documentary storymaking, and shares short documentary works produced by the program’s first students.
Funding Opportunities through the Lehigh Valley Engaged Humanities Consortium Mellon Grant
Kate Pitts – Lafayette College – LVEHC Mellon Grant Coordinator
This information session will explain the funding opportunities and proposal process of the LVEHC Mellon Grant. We will review Calls for Proposals, funding options and introduce the website to attendees and field any questions. Participants will leave with an understanding of the different opportunities and appropriate audiences and knowledge about how to apply for grant funding.
Our (Digital) Humanity: Leading Lives Online
Isaac Campoverde-Ayala, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Ben Quan, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Dylan Milonas, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Priyokti Rana, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Greg Reihman, Lehigh University, Associate Vice Provost, Director of Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning
This poster will offer an overview of the many different ways we are being challenged and changed by the internet. Topics will include Social Media; Internet-knowing; and Online Learning.
Our (Diminished) Humanity: The Dangers of New Digital Technologies
Erica Dougherty, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Daniel Gibbs, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Kianna Lauck, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Kyle Sparks, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Greg Reihman, Lehigh University, Associate Vice Provost, Director of Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning
This poster will explore some of the ways our humanity is being negatively impacted by recent technological developments and address unique ethical questions that arise when considering technologies that might diminish our humanity.
Our (Enhanced) Humanity: The Promise of New Digital Technologies
Robert Borowski, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Sydney Dougherty, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Grace Rountry, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Cole Tomlinson, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Greg Reihman, Lehigh University, Associate Vice Provost, Director of Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning
This poster will explore various technologies that promise to enhance humans in one way or another, address ethical questions raised by the possibility of such enhancements, and share perspectives on which of these technologies promise to change our humanity for the better.
Our (Virtual) Humanity: The Human Experience of Virtual Reality
Max Bonzulak, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Christine Gelotte, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Ethan Holmgren, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Rachel Kneessi, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Greg Reihman, Lehigh University, Associate Vice Provost, Director of Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning
This poster will offer an overview of the many different ways we are being challenged and changed by Virtual Reality. Topics will include the ontology of VR; ethical questions in VR; and VR and human values
Promoting eportfolios through digital media
Jennifer Swann, Lehigh University, College of Arts and Sciences, Director of Student Success,
Jocelin Gregorio Alarcon, Lehigh University, Gryphon, AS/Earth and Environmental Science
Luis Villegas, Lehigh University, Information Specialist, Development and Alumni Relations
Recognition of achievement is a key aspect of student academic success. While grades are most frequently used, an electronic portfolio (e-portfolio) provides a deeper assessment. To prepare the eportfolio students must collect and curate artifacts from their educational experiences and, in doing so, obtain a broader and more accurate picture of their skills, strengths and accomplishments. Lehigh’s Library and Technology Services is poised to assist. Yet few students have created one.
The Advising Center in the College of Arts and Sciences is working with the CITL to create a series of instructional videos to guide and encourage students to build their own eportfolio. Our presentation will allow you to evaluate and critique our work as you consider building an eportfolio of your own. Our work provides a deeper understanding of how eportfolios are constructed and the power of their use as interactive resumes in the digital age.
The Making of Sketchlehem
Ashley Omoma, Lehigh University, Undergraduate Student
Sitting only blocks away from the ivory-clad Lehigh University lies Sketchlehem. The misnomer describes the area of Southside Bethlehem through passed down perspectives of members of Lehigh University for whom Bethlehem is “sketchy”. Why does this land of immigrants inspire such language from those inhabiting its loose borders and who really is to fear in this so called Sketchlehem?
How Are We Free
Mike Lyons. co-Founder, The Redemption Project and assistant professor, Communication studies, Saint Joseph’s University
Layne Mullett, co-founder LifeLlines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty
Emily Abendroth, co-founder: LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty
John Pace, co-founder The Redemption Project
Kempis Songster, co-founder, The Redemption Project
A visual art exhibit that explores the nature of freedom and confinement through creative collaboration between people who have been sentenced to die in prison and visual artists outside the prison walls. Visual economies and regimes of power have been massively employed by the state and the media in order to criminalize people. This exhibit interrupts those regimes and instead invites viewers to investigate what actually creates conditions for safety, healing, justice, transformation, and liberation.
LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty
Layne Mullett, co-founder LifeLlines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty
Emily Abendroth, co-founder: LifeLines: Voices Against the Other Death Penalty
A multimedia project conducted in collaboration with people serving Death By Incarceration (also known as Life Without Parole) sentences in Pennsylvania. The project uses interviews, creative media interventions, and visual art to support a statewide campaign to end the practice of sentencing people to die in prison.
3:45-5:15 PM Saturday, April 21, 2018 Session Block 4
Narratives in Confinement
*Please be advised that this session may deal with themes of violence*
Panel with Disussion/Hands-On Component
Digital Scholarship Track
Maginnes 102
“To Achieve the Breakdown of Prisons:” Narrative Hegemonies and Transgressions to Carceral Logics in Texas
aems (they/them); Inside Books Project; project archivist
This presentation explores how censorship of certain materials by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) points to the elision of physical bodies- particularly Black, brown, queer, crip, indigenous and trans- in the carceral state. I will unpack how censorship is enacted in TX and how incarcerated folks provide a counter-talk to this violence with their own narrative materials, chronicling both the mundane realities of incarceration and horizons of abolition. I will engage with some of these materials on the Omeka digital archive I’m building, and hope to have a conversation around uses and limitations of digital tools for chronicling narratives around carceral violence. Folks will ideally consider how community-based and university affiliated archivists can be in solidarity with incarcerated people to resist silencing, disposability, and annihilation.
American Prison Writing Archive
Doran Larson, Hamilton College, Wolcott-Bartlett Professor of Literature & Creative Writing
Janet T. Simons, Hamilton College, Director of the Digital Humanities Initiative
This session questions what happens when people sit together, in the common task of transcribing essays by incarcerated people (IP) “who have no internet and rare computer access”and then discuss the experience of translating IP’s writing into a searchable digital form? The session will guide participants in choosing scanned, handwritten essays from The American Prison Writing Archive (the largest prison-witness archive in existence), and then transcribing these essays (in whole or in part) into texts that can be searched by author state, ethnicity, religion, etc., as well as key words and phrases. Participants will come away with, first, the experience of having subordinated their hands to the writing of people experiencing incarceration in the US today (a step away from the hostile, pitying, or patronizing attitudes we typically assume toward IP); second, they will have made a concrete, hands-on contribution to expanding the number of range of essays available to APWA users with specific interests that can only be filled by faceted searches; third, they will have had the opportunity to speak to one another about this experience as one that literally frees the voices of incarcerated people for reception by a global public. Finally, participants will leave with the means to arrange transcription sessions at their home campuses, community centers, or wherever else they feel that visitors might benefit from this real-time, on-line experience -possibly leading to the creation of regional sites for essay solicitation and intake.
Twine Games: Using interactive storytelling to empower students and connect with underrepresented identities
Hands-On Session
How-to workshops and trainings Track
DMS
Laura Moeller, PhD Candidate in Texts and Technology, University of Central Florida
Eric Arthur Murnane, PhD Candidate in Texts and Technology, University of Central Florida
Valorie K. Ruiz, MFA Candidate in Poetry, San Diego State University
How can we engage interactive storytelling platforms such as Twine to empower students and create a socially just classroom space? In this interactive workshop, we will showcase one creative projects in Twine through a lens of critical pedagogy and one project with an emphasis in showcasing Twine’s flexibility in language and personalization; in the second part of the workshop, participants engage in activities such as storyboarding to explore using digital creative non-fiction as a vehicle for change. We’ll be exploring the use of Twine as a pathway for creating media that caters to identities not adequately represented in literature and digital humanities. This platform is especially beneficial for those who have no experience with coding, but seek to find a more accessible entryway to digital literature.
Documentary collaborations between students and community org’s: human trafficking on Long Island (LI-ARC & ECLI) as example
Film Screening/Performance
Documentary Storymaking Track
STEPS 101
Benjamin Gerdes, Artist/Filmmaker, Assistant Professor, Long Island University, Post, Department of Communications and Film
Dr. Heather Parrott, Associate Professor, LIU, Sociology, Founding Director, LI-ARC
Ferida Castillo or Jennifer Hernandez, Empowerment Collaborative of Long Island
A workshop/dialogue on the successes and challenges of experimental collaborations between university media production courses and community organizations, using a student and faculty-led discussion of a short video as a point of entry. This video, a portrait of human trafficking on Long Island, emerged from a fall 2016 collaboration between students at Long Island University (Intermediate Video: Field Production) and Empowerment Collaborative of Long Island (ECLI), facilitated by LI-ARC (Long Island Applied Research Center). The session will use the students’ experience of producing the video as a template for discussions, ideally with similar initiatives in other places, about how student media courses, humanities and social science faculty, and community organizations can effectively collaborate. This conversations may focus on the sharing of solutions to practical considerations- miniscule budgets, varied skill levels, and the timeframe of a semester- and strategies about circulating youth-centered media on issues that matter.
The Most Egalitarian Place in Colonial America? A Walking Tour of Moravian Bethlehem
Bus Tour
STEPS Registration Lobby
Seth Moglen, Lehigh University, Associate Professor of English
Seth Moglen will provide an interpretive walking-tour of the majestic communal architecture and public spaces created by Bethlehem’s Moravian founders in the middle of the 18th century. He will describe the extraordinary egalitarian accomplishments of the founding generation: the communal sharing of wealth; the socialized provision of universal education, healthcare, child-care and elder-care; the emancipation of women; and the racial integration of social life and worship. He will also describe the process by which these egalitarian accomplishments were betrayed by slave-holding, theft of native land, and the abandonment of city’s successful communal economy after one generation.
Queering University-Community Partnerships
Panel with Discussion
Our Voices, Our Valley, Our Stories Track
Maginnes 101
Adrian Shanker, Executive Director, Bradbury-Sullivan
Chelsea Fullerton, Director of the Pride Center, Lehigh University, cef215@lehigh.edu
Mary Foltz, Co-Director of the South Side Initiative, Associate Professor of English
Susan Kahlenberg, Professor of Communications and Media, Muhlenberg College
Nia Baker, undergraduate student, Lehigh University
Panelists from Lehigh University, Muhlenberg College and Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center will discuss successful University-community partnerships. Through a collaborative university-community digital humanities grant, Lehigh University’s Chelsea Fullerton, Mary Foltz, and Nia Baker partnered with Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center to enhance the center’s LGBT Library through updates to the collection, bringing the catalog online, and developing a series of web-videos to promote the library. The project also launched on-going collaboration through community book events focused on discussions of LGBTQ memoirs in informal reading groups. Through a separate service learning partnership between Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and Muhlenberg College, students developed an evidence-based radio ad to promote HIV testing services at the center and negotiated for six weeks of free air time. In this session, students, faculty, staff, and community members involved in these projects will share insights and best practices gleaned from our university-community partnerships. We hope that participants will come away with a broader understanding of the needs of LGBT community members and the ways in which universities and community-based organizations can partner in an empowering, mutually-beneficial, and collaborative manner.
The Wizard of OD: Staged Reading of a Play about Living in the Digital Age
*Please be advised that this session may not be suitable for children due to profanity and adult themes of sexual identity*
Film Screening/Performance
Public Humanities Track
Maginnes 112
Martha McCaughey, Professor of Sociology, Appalachian State University
Wyatt Galusky, Professor of Science, Technology, & Society, Morrisville State College
Directed by Suzanne Westfall, Lafayette College Department of Theatre
To raise questions about how living in the digital age changes our conceptions of home, family, friendship, sexuality, and magic, this session would offer a staged reading of our 90-minute original multimedia play, The Wizard of OD: Being Not a Children’s Story or a Musical but an Original Derivative Work about a Small-Town Girl’s Journey through the Omnipresent Dataverse. Participants will see a model of engaging the public in scholarly debates about information and communication technologies today, through the humor and creativity of theatrical performance.
Today’s Hieroglyphics: Communicating emotions with Emojis
Hands-On Session
Digital Futures: Kids & Youth Track
Maginnes 113
Chloe Cole Wilson, youth Educator, poet
We use images to communicate digitally. Come to this workshop to reflect on communicating with emojis. We will discuss the strengths, limitations and possibilities of using emojis to communicate our feelings and we will have a chance to design our own emojis.
9:00-10:30AM Sunday, April 22, 2018 Session Block 5
Justice? (What Justice?) Voices and Stories
Moderator: Ziad Munson, Lehigh University, Associate Professor of Sociology
Panel with Discussion
Digital Scholarship Track
Maginnes 102
Lynching In Virginia: Using Digital Tools To Tell Almost Forgotten Stories
Kevin Hegg, James Madison University, Director, Digital Projects, Libraries & Educational Technologies
The Digital Projects team, located within Carrier Library at JMU, partnered with Gianluca De Fazio, a Justice Studies professor, and his upper-level undergraduate students to create a website that tells the almost forgotten and neglected stories of 104 known lynching victims who were killed in Virginia between 1877 and 1927. The website is a WordPress site connected to a relational database using an inexpensive plugin and two custom shortcodes. Students in Gianluca’s advanced research course collected more than 500 related articles from historical Virginia newspapers using the Library of Congress Chronicling America database. Links to these articles are stored in the relational database and presented through the website. The website, which is a work in progress, also contains a map of lynching events and a clickable word cloud representing lynching counts by county.
Stories of Work and the Struggle for Solidarity: Increasing Access to Temple University Press Labor Studies Titles
Annie Johnson, Temple University, Library Publishing and Scholarly Communication Specialist
In the spring of 2017, Temple University Press and Libraries were awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to digitize and make openly available thirty of our outstanding out-of-print titles in labor studies. The books in our collection take a range of disciplinary approaches, including history, sociology, political science, and education. They were written by a diverse group of authors, from well-known academics such as Philip S. Foner, to labor activists such as Joyce L. Kornbluh.
As important as these books are, from the beginning, we recognized that digitization alone was not enough. In order to make sure that these titles are discovered and read by a new generation of labor organizers, labor educators, union members, and workers, we are planning an ambitious series of public programming in different venues across Philadelphia. We also intend to work closely with local constituency groups, such as the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO, an organization of 100 local labor unions representing 200,000 workers in the region, to promote their availability. This presentation will describe these efforts, and argue that libraries and presses involved in digitization projects need to focus more on the social and political aspects of their work.
Voices- The Diverse Faces of Homelessness, Poverty, and Hunger
Ziad Munson, Lehigh University, Associate Professor of Sociology
This session will explore the opportunities and limitations of digital scholarship for breaking down stereotypes of stigmatized groups such as the homeless. The session will screen a student produced 15-minute documentary film the portrays the diverse lives of clients of New Bethany Ministries who suffer from homelessness, hunger, and poverty, followed by a discussion of how the film was made, and how such work by students and scholars can be improved in the future. Participants will leave the session with both a better appreciation for how stereotypes of poverty impede our ability to tackle social problems. They will also leave with ideas for how to expand the repertoire of methods available to scholars for exploring such topics.
Communities on Display: Ethical and Practical Considerations for Public Humanities & Documentary Storymaking
Strategy Session
Public Humanities Track
Maginnes 112
Jordana Dym, SKidmore College, Professor and Director, John B. Moore Doc Studies Collaborative
Sarah Friedland, Skidmore College, Director, MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute
Margarita Sánchez, Wagner College, Professor
In colleges and universities, collaborative and community-centered projects with public-facing liberal arts classes are increasingly part of the regular curricular landscape. Projects take many forms, but tend to share a common denominator: the past or present of the home community is put on display in an exhibit or media project. For example, a public history class partners with an area museum or archive to create an exhibit commemorating a key moment or figure (Skidmore College) or a documentary studies class works with immigrants in Staten Island to share their present situation with their communities of origin in films and public fora and to document the temporary reunification of families divided by migration(Wagner College). What ties media based and exhibition projects together is that faculty and students routinely rely on individual connections and institutional partnerships as part of pedagogy. This kind of “humanities in practice”pedagogy, often identified as “experiential learning” or “civic engagement,” has both risks and rewards, costs and benefits for all concerned. But are the risks and rewards or costs and benefits equally distributed among community and academic participants? Is failure an option? This session invites participants to share ethical and practical approaches and lessons learned, with the goal of sharing recommendations in a Googledoc for collective use. Participants willing to share syllabi and assignments before the session can email mdocs@skidmore.edu.
DACA is ending but the movement is not
Panel with Discussion
Vidas Digitales Track
Maginnes 111
Mariana De Maio, San Diego State University, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies
Nathian Shae Rodriguez, San Diego State University, Assistant Professor
With the announcement on Sept. 2017 of the Trump administration’s intention to phase out DACA, social media exploded. As protests and walkouts began taking place around the country, social media was on top of it. This session will explore the use of social media to promote social justice and to enhance advocacy efforts. Presenters will discuss the use of social media in the context of DACA students’ advocacy. Attendees will leave with a broader sense of the advantages and limitations of social media as an advocacy tool, in general, and as at it pertains to DACA students, in particular.
Good Girls Don’t Tell: The Journeys of Survivors in Five Acts
*Please be advised that this session may deal with themes of violence*
Film Screening/Performance
Documentary Storymaking Track
STEPS 280
Jennifer Huemmer, Ithaca College, Assistant Professor
This session seeks to examine the lived experiences of non-reporting rape survivors on a college campus in the southwest. The session will include the screening of a 45 minute performance documentary along with a Q&A session with one of the creators of the film. Participants will walk away with deeper insight into the lives of survivors whose stories we rarely hear due to their decision not to report to any formal institutions.
Media & Mobilization: Documentary Filmmaking as a Space for Community Action
Panel with Discussion
Our Voices, Our Valley, Our Stories Track
Maginnes 101
Drew Swedberg, Muhlenberg College, filmmaker
Emmia Newman, Muhlenberg College, student filmmaker
Hasshan Batts, Former Reentry Coordinator, Power Northeast
Sydney Trek Mckenzie, filmmaker
Aggie Bazaz, Muhlenberg College, professor
Jude-Laure Denis, Former Executive Director, Power Northeast
How can documentary create a sustainable media landscape that engages with the community and reciprocates the goals of existing centers of empowerment? This session will explore the opportunity of documentary as a practice that engages with the community and represents voices that are not being covered by the mainstream press. Participants will walk away with thoughts on how documentary processes can be as much a mode of mobilization as are documentary products.
Oral History Workshop with Suzanne Snider
How-to workshops and trainings Track
Maginnes 260
Suzanne Snider, Writer, Educator, Artist & Founder of Oral History Summer School
This 90-minute workshop will serve as an interactive, hands-on introduction to oral history, using a series of short exercises and prompts. What makes oral history different from other interview styles and traditions? Oral History Summer School founder/director Suzanne Snider will guide participants through some essential principles of this ethical interview practice that seeks to integrate concepts—in the very act of conversation––from fields including psychoanalysis, trauma studies and feminist theory.
People Powered Media: Produce and Distribute Your Own Audio Content
Hands-On session
How-to workshops and trainings Track
DMS
Vanessa Maria Graber, PhillyCAM, WPPM Station Manager
Anthony Mazza, PhillyCAM, WPPM producer – The Elevated
Tia Whitfield,PhillyCAM, WPPM producer – Millenial High
Lorne Peart, PhillyCAM, WPPM producer – Magz FM
Phil Charles,PhillyCAM, WPPM producer – Fully Baked Radio
WPPM producers will lead a workshop on producing audio content for online and FM platforms where they play examples of their work (Feature stories, podcasts, DJ mixes, etc) and offer DIY resources for producing similar content. Workshop leaders will also show participants how to market and distribute their content.
The Future is Now
Hands-On Session
Digital Futures: Kids & Youth Track
Maginnes 113
Jenna Azar, Muhlenberg College, HYPE Youth Media Co-Director
Lora Taub- Pervizpour, Muhlenberg College, HYPE Youth Media Co-Director
This interactive workshop will engage young people in media-making that encourages them to name, place, and picture their future goals and aspirations. Growing from a highly successful project at a local Allentown High School, Building 21, a team of high school students will encourage participants in this session to bring into vision their life 10 years from now. Participants will be guided through a free-write, small story circle process to refine their writing, and then support one another in taking a personal photograph that captures their vision.
10:45-12:15PM Sunday, April 22, 2018 Session Block 6
Documentary Storymaking and Community Media
Strategy Session
Documentary Storymaking Track
STEPS 101
HYPE Retrospective: Youth Media Makers a Decade Later
Jenna Azar, Muhlenberg College, HYPE Youth Media Co-Director
Lora Taub-Pervizpour, MUhlenberg College, HYPE Youth Media Co-Director
Gracie Santana, Temple University Student, HYPE Alumni
Jalal Khan, Muhlenberg College recent grad, HYPE Alumni
Rashid Keita, HYPE Alumni
Engaging young people in media-making and documentary film production supports often under-represented and silenced teens to step forward and begin leading the conversation–What does a healthy community for young people really look like? What are the barriers and obstacles to youth success? Creating space for young people to raise their own voices and bring forward their own issues transforms young people’s sense of agency, voice, and power in their communities. But what happens as they grow into adulthood? Does the power and possibility that young media-makers found as teenagers transform who they become as adults? This panel session will invite HYPE Youth Media teens to come back together, share their docs made as teens from 2006 forward, and invite the now young adults to share the ways media-making and documentary film experience as youth has shaped and impacted their lives well into adulthood.
Working with/for Community Media
Joel Neville Anderson, University of Rochester, PhD Candidate, Visual and Cultural Studies
Almudena Escobar López, University of Rochester, PhD Student, Visual and Cultural Studies
Tara Merenda Nelson, Visual Studies Workshop, Curator of Moving Image Collections
Maiko Tanaka, Squeaky Wheel, Executive Director
How do researchers and contemporary curators and archivists advance, interpret, preserve, or adapt the original mission and history of organizations engaged in media-based organizing and community media in the face of today’s political climate and institutional challenges? This will be a strategy session to define productive methods for engaging with community media organizations and long term goals for collaboration. Participants will discuss the historical and ongoing roles of community media with presenters, sharing experiences and case studies. In facilitating this workshop, presenters with various experience as researchers, curators, and archivists will reciprocally share leadership with the symposium’s community of organizers and artists. We will collaboratively rethink how community media spaces and collectives can address political struggles of today from deindustrialization, systemic racism and media representation, to gentrification, developing common strategies for the future. Participants will leave with shared historical examples and create new collective strategies and possibilities for collaboration.
Inclusion and Representation: Negotiating Cultures and Identities
Moderator: Amardeep Singh, Lehigh University, Associate Professor of English
Panel with Discussion
Digital Scholarship Track
Maginnes 102
Chinese Legacy at Lehigh
DongNing Wang, Department of MLL, Lehigh University, Adjunct Professor
We would like to use this unique opportunity to share the digital videos created by Lehigh Students with MDHI grant from 2016-2017 that highlight the footprints of Chinese students legacy at Lehigh in late 19th century to early 20th century.
This presentation is the outcome of the storytelling course in 2017 of CHIN298 collaborated with DMS team at LTS. The presentation will cover not only the complex historical connection between US and China in earth 20th century but also tell the individual stories created by digital media tools. This students’ work will be the first shared Chinese legacy storytelling in a digital movie format.
We hope this presentation can reflect Lehigh’s commitment to diversity and interdisciplinary experience in the past, and can increase public’s awareness of the remarkable historical events that had not been organized and shared before.
The Culture of #Coco: Examining Digital Communication of Mexican Culture on Twitter
Nathian Shae Rodriguez, San Diego State University, Assistant Professor
Disney-Pixar’s Coco is based on Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and focuses on 12-year-old Miguel in Mexico. In Mexico, the film grossed over $43 million in its first month and became the highest grossing film in Mexican history, while in the United States, the film grossed over $18.6 million on Black Friday alone and over $40.8 million in its first three days. The current study uses the hashtag “#Coco” as a way to aggregate data on how individuals reacted to the film in the digital space of Twitter. A qualitative analysis was performed on a random sample (n = 2000) of tweets from October 27, 2017 through November 26, 2017. Preliminary analysis reveals Latinx viewers exhibited feelings of representation, national and cultural pride, death and its acceptance, culture, co-option, and social justice. For example, in regards to social justice, some individuals used Twitter as a space to critique Trump, his wall, and racist rhetoric. @Andrespreneur wrote, “Now imagine building a wall around the little town of Santa Cecelia and making Miguel pay for it. You must be not #Coco but #Coocoo to think like that!” Others praised Disney-Pixar for their effort to unite rather than separate. @mdaviles1 writes “While Trump tries to build a wall, Pixar built a bridge #Coco” and @sarahpaez23 writes “Mientras trump crea el muro, Disney y Pixar crean #Coco, una pelicula hecha con el <3 ejemplificando el arte y tradiciones de los mexicanos.”
Visualizing the Experiences and Attitudes of Mixed-race Individuals
Aurora Tsai, PhD Candidate, Carnegie Mellon University
Tevis Tsai, Lecturer, Towson University
This project uses interactive data visualizations to uncover patterns among the experiences and sentiments of 197 mixed-race individuals, who answered a questionnaire about their feelings towards being multi-racial. Establishing a racial identity is important for mixed race heritage individuals, Researchers in sociology, as it serves as a semiotic tool for empowerment, allowing individuals to engage in dialogue on the social, psychological, economic, and political level (Root, 1997; Poston, 1990). Unfortunately, mixed-race individuals’ access to this semiotic tool is threatened by social expectations that people should fit neatly into a single category. Previous case studies of mixed-race individuals indicate that physical appearance, environment, and ability to speak heritage languages are factors that influence mixed-race individuals’ construction of identity (e.g., Kamada, 2010; Pao, Wong, & Teuben-Rowe, 1997; Shin, 2010). To observe how these factors play out among a large number of individuals, this project uses R shiny to present, summarize and explore the negative and positive experiences of mixed-race individuals based on their racial make-up, environment, and ability to speak their heritage languages. Findings reveal some of the unique challenges faced by mixed-race individuals, particularly in regards to constructing a positive identity. However, despite experiences of marginalization, most participants expressed positive attitudes towards being multiracial and having more privilege than “mono-racial” minority members of their heritage. By uncovering these issues, this study hopes to provide mixed-race individuals with another tool for empowerment, while raising societal awareness.
Issues in Digital Humanities Scholarship & Theory
Moderator: Edward Whitley, Lehigh University, Associate Professor of English and Director of Mellon Digital Humanities Initiative
Panel with Discussion
Digital Scholarship Track
Maginnes 270
Digital Ethnography and Inclusiveness in DS
Jeffrey A. Tolbert, Bucknell University, Digital Pedagogy and Scholarship Specialist
Digital scholarship is a broad category that cuts across all disciplines; it is not limited to humanistic fields. This paper will advocate for a holistic, inclusive approach to digital scholarship, emphasizing the capacities of digital tools to enable interdisciplinary collaboration as never before. As a case in point, it will argue that methods and theoretical orientations from digital ethnography can benefit the types of inquiry often undertaken by scholars in the digital humanities. Ultimately, all forms of scholarship can benefit from digital tools and approaches; they can also benefit from engaging in cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration. Digital storytelling, for example, is nearly coterminous with digital ethnography, and yet there seems to be relatively little cross-fertilization between these areas. Presenting examples of digital ethnographic work, I argue that humanist scholars interested in digital storytelling, local culture, and public advocacy would be well-served to adopt ethnographic methods and connecting with ethnographers working in related areas. The fields of anthropology and folklore, in particular, are centrally concerned with these topics and approaches, and the work they have already produced could provide useful models for humanists interested in engaging in similar studies and public-facing projects.
Epistemic normativity and how to avoid it: The “one-shoe-fits-all” assumption’s danger in digital projects
Sayan Bhattacharyya, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Price Lab for Digital Humanities, University of Pennsylvania
Cultural and literary studies have long been cognizant that apparatuses for knowledge production can render certain kinds of texts “illegible.” The relationships between knowledge, power and episteme that produce this occlusion have traditionally been explored and analyzed at the level of engagement with specific social and literary texts. This paper describes how a similar problem can arise in the context of the analysis of large-scale bodies of text. Our example is an analytical tool, intended for discovering trends and patterns in large text corpora. By describing what happens when the tool is applied to a large, heterogeneous and diverse textual corpus, we show how textual inscriptions that stand in a relationship of subalternity to structuring normativities of the text corpus could become invisible unless they already conform to the epistemic assumptions underlying those normativities.
Opposing the Binary in Digital Scholarship
Jason Slipp, Lehigh University History Department
Chris Brockman, Lehigh University History Department
Why has historical scholarship come to be seen as a binary rooted in either traditional methods of research and writing or composed with revolutionary digital techniques, and can we make the construction, interaction, and critique of digital scholarship more fluid between these two poles? Our session will discuss the use of digital sources, Graphical User Interface (GUI) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as examples of how historians might blend the traditional model of historical scholarship with digital tools and methods to produce scholarship that capitalizes on both schools of academic composition. This session will provide an entry point through which attendees can evaluate the impact digital tools can have on the historical discipline as well as combine with traditional modes and standards to create enhanced scholarship.
Latinx Voices, Culture and Literature
Moderator: Sarah Fouts, Lehigh University, Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American and Latinx Studies
Panel with Discussion
Vidas Digitales Track
Maginnes 111
Amplifying Latin@ voices: Ohio Habla Podcast
Elena Foulis, Ph.D. The Ohio State University
Kelly Di Lullo, The Ohio State University, Undergraduate Student
Adriana Ponce De Leon, The Ohio State University, Undergraduate Student
Creating university based podcast like, Ohio Habla, allows us to connect and learn more the Latin@/Hispanic experiences locally, while amplifying the voices of the community everywhere. Language and cultural studies are in a unique position to utilize this medium to advance the understanding of how culture and language is both transmitted and analyzed.
Latinx Culture and Literature
Roberto Vargas, Swarthmore College, Research Librarian for Humanities & Interdisciplinary Studies
DÉsirÉe DÍaz, Swarthmore College Assistant Professor Spanish
During this session, we will show the result of a DH grant applied to the First-Year Seminar “Introduction to Latinx Lit and Culture”. Students in this course collaborated with the library to create a digital exhibit of research projects related to the representation of Latinx in contemporary media, including digital media. The session will include presentations from the Humanities Librarian, the professor of the course and possibly, by some of the students that participated in the project, trying to offer a reflection on the process and results from different perspectives. We will explore if the collaboration was successful and if the students were able to engage in the conversation of Latinx identity, digital agency and who controls either. We will describe how the DH platforms and research methods supported the development of student’s research skills and enriched their individual projects.
Immigration and Digital Storytelling
Panel with Discussion
Public Humanities Track
Maginnes 112
Janneken Smucker, West Chester University, Associate Professor
Charles Hardy, West Chester University, Professor
In this session, West Chester University professors and students will share the experiences and outcomes of the first semester of their course “Immigration and Digital Storytelling,” which centers on an archive/classroom partnership to explore early twentieth-century immigration to Philadelphia as a means of creating empathy toward the current generation of immigrants to the region. Students will demonstrate the digital storytelling tools and strategies in use through a listening/watching session and reflect on how working with archival oral histories elucidates history while impacting public understandings of this important current social and political policy issue. The team will invite feedback on the project, as well as assistance in imagining the second semester of the course, in which students will engage directly with recent immigrants and community organizations.
Storytelling – Voices of Survivors of Violence & Fear in Relationships
*Please be advised that this session may deal with themes of violence*
Film Screening/Performance
Our Voices, Our Valley, Our Stories Track
Maginnes 101
Stephanie Richards Lawrence, Ripe Crop Performing Arts and Productions, Creative Director/Founder
Joianne Payne – Digital Media Collorative Guest
Turning Point of Lehigh Valley
Christa Spence, Counselor, Life Coach
In this session, we will present the full theatrical multi-media piece, “Him: Episode One,” written and directed by Stef Richards Lawrence. This story deals with the issues of violence and emotional control in relationships. The multi-media piece examines the psychosis of an abuser, as well as the trauma post-escape for victims, including the impact on children who grow up in an environment where physical, emotional or verbal abuse is exists. In collaboration with digital media artist, Joianne Payne, the voice of the abused in the Lehigh Valley area will be heard. Counselors from Lehigh Valley-based agencies, such as Turning Point of Lehigh Valley and other connected counselors will be available to educate attendees on this vital issue and to answer questions. A panel discussion will occur immediately following the theatrical piece consisting of court advocates, counselors trained to handle domestic violence issues, the writer/director of “Him,” and the actors. Participants will walk away with an awareness of this very vital and deadly issue.
Those attending the session will be educated as to how to appropriately and successfully handle a family member, co-worker, or friend who is caught in the deadly web of domestic abuse. A creative network of voices will expose the secret held by abusers, while empowering the victims in our community who suffer silently.
What’s Colonialism Gotta Do With It?: Integrating Anti-Colonial Analysis in Media Trainings
Hands-On Session
How-to workshops and trainings Track
Maginnes 260
Sharmeen Khan, No One Is Illegal – Toronto, Organizer
How to media activists integrate an anti-colonial analysis in their work? This session will look at examples and stories of anti-colonial analysis in media. Participants will to discuss how to keep anti-colonial analysis present without using rhetoric or jargon in their work.
Youth and Social Media: Strategizing Change
Hands-On Session
Digital Futures: Kids & Youth Track
Maginnes 113
Katherine Salas, Bloomfield College, Undergraduate Student
Diana Sanchez Marcelo, Bloomfield College, Undergraduate Student
Nora McCook, Bloomfield College, Assistant Professor of Writing
What strategies can youth develop to become media-literate and engaged citizens through social media? Our session explores how aware the youth of this generation are. In this session we will be doing interactive activities and engaging with the audience on ways to benefit from social media but also how to prevent from heavily relying on it to be informed. Activities include using phones to search a recent event on social media, reflecting on these results and on a survey we conducted of college students, assessing credible social media posts, and proposing changes for social media practices today. We hope that participants leave the session seeing a different aspect of social media when they log back on and encouraged to be more involved and informed with real-world situations going on right now.