Faculty Grant Projects for 2008-2009
John Cayley, Literary Arts
EBR migration John Cayley has been in communication with the editors of the Electronic Book Review (http://www.electronicbookreview.com/) to host the journal at Brown. ebr is an established and important web journal on electronic writing, and it makes sense to it house it at Brown, where a curriculum exists for the field that the journal addresses. This project will assist in the migration of the journal, and, together with the journal editors, invesitgate ways to introduce new features, such as peer-review, to the journal without harmful alteration to its now highly developed if still newly mediated culture of open scholarly exchange.
Carole DeBoer-Langworthy, English
Neith Boyce "Union Catalog" Carol DeBoer-Langworthy's research has focused on the American author Neith Boyce. She wrote her dissertation on Boyce, published an edition of her writing and is currently working on a biography. Her research is uncovering new materials about Boyce, and she would like to create a "Union Catalog" of Boyce materials. Her goal is to collect references to print and digital Boyce materials in one place, and to start sorting and classifying them.
Ann Dill, Sociology
Digital Ethnography Ann Dill has been researching the development of health care and social welfare non-profits in Yugoslavia, and the republics of the former Yugoslavia since the 1990s. Most of her work uses qualitative methods and is based on interviews and other sources. She wants to publish the information that she has collected and present it in several different contexts such as the global economy, organizational life, and the individual experience. Dill has experimented with alternate forms of ethnography, and would like to develop an appropriate digital format for presenting her research in a ways not possible in print.
Meida Teresa McNeal, Theater, Speech and Dance, Cogut Center
Intersections between Critical Ethnography & Digital Humanities: From Househedz to Consuming Blackness Diasporically Meida McNeal is working on an ethnography project which studies musical and dance traditions across Black diaspora. The project has a traditional scholarly component and a performance component. McNeal plans to use several types of collaborative technology to allow scholars and performers in different locations such as Chicago, Trinidad, and Brazil to communicate, and, in her words, to "present, exchange and produce their experiences of and reflections on blackness, identity, citizenship and belonging through a virtually-mediated critical/creative exchange." STG's role is to support her as she puts the collaboration in place, by providing advice on what to use, and researching what has been learned from similar activities have at Brown and elsewhere.
Bob Scholes, Modern Culture and Media
Modernist Journals Project Support Bob Scholes began the Modernist Journals Project over a decade ago to digitize and make available periodicals in English from the late 19th and early 20th century that are significant to the development of Modernism. The project funded by a grant from the NEH, and is housed at and supported by the Center for Digital Initiatives in the University Library. It now comprises a large number of periodicals, supporting material and some sophisticated indexing and searching for exploring them. STG will work with the new project manager, and provide technical information and expertise as he becomes familiar with the project. Also, STG will work with the CDI and the new project manager to identify and, if there is time, implement a more effective full text search in the pdf documents. STG has worked with the MJP in the past, and expects to continue to support it with a greater or lesser degree of involvement, as funding and development needs require.
Todd Winkler, Music
Digital Performance Websites Todd Winkler plans to create a digital video archive of exemplary work in digital performance and installation art that he has collected from his own performances and ones he has attended. Once the materials are digitized and catalogued, they will be accessible through several contexts, in the form of separate websites. One site will mainly contain videos, essays, research and related materials that are relevant to Todd's own work. Two other sites are intended to provide materials for different courses. Since all three contexts draw on the same information, Todd would like STG to develop a flexible architecture so they can all draw on a shared pool of resources. Todd has also received a BIT grant from the Student Technology Assistant program to digitize his materials, and we anticipate working with the STA program on this project. If it's appropriate, this material may be housed in the digital repository.
Joukowsky Institute for Art in the Ancient World faculty
Archaeotechnics :: Archaeographics :: Creative information design for archaeology This project seeks to design, develop and evaluate a digital interface for creatively combining and visualizing diverse media in the documentation of the material past. Archaeology deploys a range of documentary modes: narrative, data sheets, maps, plans, diagrams, photography, video and more. The JIAAW, with STG, aims to co-create an agile and flexible digital architecture that will allow archaeologists to combine such rich and diverse media for the focused recording and archiving of archaeological features, contexts and interactions.