The Association for Computers and the Humanities

The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) is a major professional society for the digital humanities. It supports and disseminates research and cultivates a vibrant professional community through conferences, publications, and outreach activities. ACH is based in the US, but boasts an international membership (as of May 2012, representing 21 countries worldwide).

What is DH?

Digital humanities is a broad term encompassing a wide range of subject domains and communities of practice, including computer-assisted research, pedagogy, and software and content development in humanistic disciplines like literature and language studies, history, or philosophy. DH also engages with the critical relationship between digital technologies and humanities methods, and the ways they may influence each other.

The question “What is digital humanities?” has stimulated much discussion and remains open for debate—this thread on the ACH-hosted DHAnswers Q&A board may be a useful starting point.

For more information about ACH, continue reading over on their website.

Learn more about the benefits of membership and what your contribution supports, and join ACH or all the ADHO organizations here.

Upcoming CSWS Research Grant Deadline

Thinking about applying for a research grant? UO faculty and graduate students from any academic discipline are eligible to apply for CSWS research grants—so long as your research is related to women and gender.

The application deadline is 5 p.m. Tuesday,  January 20, 2015, for research expenses incurred from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016.

Grant guidelines and applications can be accessed online.

Graduate Student Research Grant guidelines

Faculty Research Grant guidelines

Jane Grant Dissertation Fellowship guidelines

Applications

Questions: (541) 346-2262 or email our accountant, Peggy McConnell.

Since 1984, CSWS has awarded more than $2 million in faculty and graduate research grants and Jane Grant dissertation fellowships.

CFP: Feminist Pedagogy Conference — “Transformations”

Hosted by the Feminist Studies Group and the Center for the Study of Women and Society, April 17, 2015

The Feminist Pedagogy Conference seeks participants for a day-long conference entitled “Feminist Pedagogy: Transformations.” The conference will be held on April 17, 2015 at the CUNY Graduate Center, in New York, NY.

The Feminist Pedagogy Conference is a venue for conversation between scholars and activists across the disciplines around the present state of feminist pedagogy and work on gender, both within and beyond the academy. Building on previous work, this is a forum to share pedagogical methods and ideas for teaching in women and gender studies and/or feminist approaches to learning and classroom strategies in various disciplines. The aim is to address issues of gender and sexuality, in conjunction with race and class, both inside and outside of the academy.

They invite proposals related to the theory and practice of feminist pedagogy in a rapidly transforming university context. For example, proposals might address new forms of pedagogy given the increasing adjunctification of the university, the translation of radical redistributive demands into symbolic gestures of recognition and inclusion, and the increasing reliance upon and exploitation of the affective labor disproportionately performed by marginalized subjects.

They also seek proposals for feminist pedagogical practices that respond to and resist new and old forms of colonial, carceral, racist, or neoliberal feminist thought. How can feminist teachers respond effectively to practices and ideologies of mass incarceration, settler colonialism, homonationalism, pink washing/watching, and the neoliberal rhetoric of personal responsibility and choice that obscures the elimination of the welfare state?

They invite proposals on any of these, or the following topics:

  • The effect of adjunctification on the practice and theory of feminist pedagogy
  • Feminist pedagogies of writing, composition, and research methods
  • Teaching the politics of affective labor
  • Trans* men and women at gender segregated schools or other institutions
  • Trans*feminist action and pedagogy
  • Pedagogies of decentering whiteness, cisgender experiences, or heterosexuality
  • Anti-racist pedagogies in a “post-racial” age
  • Decolonizing feminist pedagogy
  • Teaching global feminisms
  • Feminist pedagogies for and of the precariat (students, teachers, administrators)
  • Feminist pedagogy in the era of standardized testing
  • Technologies of feminist pedagogy
  • Activism and service-oriented learning
  • Addressing campus rape culture in the classroom
  • “Leadership” and feminist pedagogy
  • Politics of “assessment”
  • Negative affect and feminist pedagogy
  • Politics of hope
  • Feminism in general education
  • Online/distance learning and feminist pedagogy
  • Strategies for the feminist classroom

To Apply:

Submissions for panels, roundtables, workshops, and creative and/or multimedia presentations are welcome. Those interested should submit abstracts (250-300) briefly describing their intended presentations. Please also specify what type of submission: paper (approx. 20 minutes), roundtable (larger group of 5-10 minute presentations followed by conversation), or creative. Individual submissions and pre-formed panels or roundtables are both welcome. They are actively seeking contributions from historically marginalized or underrepresented groups. With your abstract, please include a brief biography

Please submit abstracts to feministpedagogyconference@gmail.com no later than January 15, 2015.

Information about the conference will be available at:http://feministstudies.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

 

Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Digital Media

 

 

 


The Humanities Department at Michigan Technological University invites candidates for a Tenure Track Assistant Professor Position in Digital Media.

Candidates should have a record of excellent teaching and scholarly work in new media and visual studies with a critical and interdisciplinary approach to the history and theory of digital media. Areas of expertise might include: social media; digital literacies; new media and social advocacy; information design; publishing systems; graphic design and typography; design and technology studies; media and communication theory.

Candidates will be expected to contribute to curriculum development in the undergraduate and graduate programs, which afford faculty unique opportunities to teach and engage in research that both shapes and benefits from a rich multi-disciplinary environment. The usual tenure-track teaching load is 2 courses (6 hrs) per semester.

PhD in hand by August 15, 2015 strongly preferred.

Professional experience in graphic design, publishing, or other digital media development is desirable.

Full consideration will be given to applications received by January 20, 2015.

To apply, visit https://www.jobs.mtu.edu/postings/2472

Required Documents

1.  Letter of Application

2.  Curriculum Vitae

3. Evidence of Teaching Effectiveness

Ada Initiative seeking its next chief executive

Are you not afraid to say the f-word, feminism? You may be the next ED of the Ada Initiative!

The Ada Initiative is looking for an Executive Director (ED). The Ada Initiative works to increase the participation and status of women in open technology and culture through an explicitly intersectional feminist approach. They are a growing and financially healthy nonprofit with 3 staff members. The three most important responsibilities of the ED will be leading the organization, fundraising, and managing people.

The position is full-time salaried, in the San Francisco Bay Area,
$120K – $160K/year (plus relocation if necessary).The current ED, Valerie Aurora, is excited to immediately transition to a clearly defined role as the Director of Training Programs, reporting to the new ED.

If this appeals to you, please consider applying, and please feel free
to forward, or send your suggestion to jobs@adainitiative.org! Ada is
open to candidates of all genders and of a variety of backgrounds and
experience levels, from highly experienced career executives to people
with limited formal management experience but a great deal of
experience with open tech/culture communities and/or feminist activism.

Application:
To apply, please contact jobs@adainitiative.org with a short introduction and your résumé (any format, linked or attached). A representative from the ED search committee, composed of members of the Board of Directors and Advisory Board, will reply within 2 weeks.

Click here for the full job posting on Ada’s website, as well as to read more about benefits, desired qualifications, and what TAI does.

ACS Seeks Director of Faculty Programs

The Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) seeks a Director of Faculty Programs. ACS is a consortium of sixteen nationally recognized liberal arts institutions. The Faculty programs support the members’ faculty in the areas of Blended Learning, Interdisciplinary Study, Learning Based Pedagogy, Undergraduate Research and Engaged Learning.

Job Description

The director’s duties include managing multiple grant initiatives, designing and promoting programmatic initiatives for a wide range of constituents at member institutions, contributing to consortial communications, and articulating and evaluating the aims of the consortial programs to multiple audiences.

More specifically, the director will: 

· Manage the Blended Learning programs, stimulating the consortium to take advantage of opportunities

· Orchestrate all related Faculty Advancement program opportunities available to the member institutions

 .Collaborate with individual faculty and staff in developing specific educational projects —providing encouragement, advice and support

· Collaborate with technology staff on member campuses who provide support for academic and operational functions

· Research and communicate developments in online learning at member institutions and seek opportunities to increase the impact of these projects through inter­institutional collaboration

· Actively engage faculty and staff in thorough and on­going assessments of all faculty projects·

. Help oversee financial aspects of these initiatives

·  Work in concert with other ACS staff in creating and implementing a strategic plan for ACS

· Lend support to and participate in all ACS programs and initiatives

Qualifications

The consortium seeks a director who can bring to this effort the energy, creativity, expertise and skills that these programs require. Ph.D. or terminal degree, with some experience as a faculty member in higher education, is strongly preferred.

Additional qualifications include:

· Outstanding communication skills (oral and written), interpersonal skills, attention to detail, and organization; capacity to facilitate communication between ACS office and member campuses

· Creativity, flexibility, conscientiousness and a high degree of motivation to work in a fast­paced and highly collaborative environment; ability to balance multiple tasks and priorities

·  Experience with on­line course development

·  Experience in planning and overseeing academic programming, with the interest andability to stimulate faculty to create productive blends of in­ person and online instruction

· Experience working with groups of faculty and collaborating institutions

Additional Information

The director will be asked to travel somewhat frequently to member campuses and will report to the President of ACS.

Compensation

Compensation will depend on the relevant experience of the selected candidate.

Deadline and Application Process

Position is now open and will remain open until filled. To apply, send a letter of interest and a resume to Jesse Lexow, (404) 636­9533 xt. 12.

Call for Papers: Critical Studies in Media Communication

Critical Studies in Media Communication
Special Issue: Digital Labor, Below-the-Line
Submission deadline: January 12, 2015
Final drafts due: March 12, 2015

The work required to produce the web and to fill the media devices that increasingly occupy 21st century life is often difficult to see. With a click content appears, images proliferate, and text, sound and video streams across our screens. However, behind the screen exists a globally distributed network of people who toil to create, manage, distribute, promote and update digital content. Their labor reflects new modes of production and shifting divisions of labor that characterize media production in a digital economy.

For this special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication, issue editor Nina Huntemann seeks papers that explore digital media workers “behind the screen.” Submissions should advance scholarship about invisible labor in the digital media industries, and should principally consider the labor produced by those engaged in below-the-line work. Cultural producers in such positions might include social media interns, web content editors and copywriters, online community managers, video game playtesters, 3D animation modelers and riggers, texture artists, video loggers, and digital content asset managers.

In addition to workers involved in cultural production, this special issue also invites papers that consider the labor of those working to create and maintain the digital media infrastructure, such as hardware assembly line workers, miners in raw materials extraction, technical support staff (e.g. Genius Bar/Geek Squad), and security personnel at data centers.

The editor is particularly interested in manuscripts that consider the special issue theme at the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, nation/region, sexual orientation, class, and ability.

To discuss possible submissions, please email the issue editor Nina Huntemann

About the Journal:

Critical Studies in Media Communication (CSMC) publishes scholarship in media and mass communication written from a Cultural Studies and critical perspective. Research articles selected for publication make a substantial contribution to existing literature in media studies, provide novel theoretical insights that have the potential to stimulate further research, and serve as foundational contributions for debates within and beyond the field of communication. While each essay is well researched, primary emphasis is on the theoretical contribution the essay makes through the development of concepts, terms, and ideas that move the field in new and exciting directions.

Submission Details:

All manuscripts must conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition, 2010) and should not exceed 7,000 words including references, notes, figures, and tables. Shorter pieces will be considered. Essays significantly longer than 7,000 words may be returned.

All submissions should be made online at Critical Studies in Media Communication’s ScholarOne Manuscripts site. When submitting your manuscript, please indicate in the Cover Letter that your piece is intended for the Digital Labor special issue. Thank you.

A PDF of this call for papers available here

Special Issue of the Journal of Visual Culture: Internet Memes

The Journal of Visual Culture has released a special themed issue on internet memes! You can read and download the entire issue here.

The Journal of Visual Culture offers astute, informative and dynamic thought on the visual. The journal publishes work from a range of methodological positions on various historical moments and across diverse geographical locations. It is the leading interdisciplinary forum for visual culture studies scholars in film, media and television studies; art, design, fashion and architecture history; cultural studies and critical theory; philosophy and aesthetics; and across the social sciences.

Table of Contents:

Laine Nooney and Laura Portwood-Stacer
One Does Not Simply: An Introduction to the Special Issue on
Internet Memes 248

Peter Lunenfeld
Barking at Memetics: The Rant That Wasn’t 253

Lisa Nakamura
‘I WILL DO EVERYthing That Am Asked’: Scambaiting, Digital Show-Space,
and the Racial Violence of Social Media 257

Patrick Davison
Because of the Pixels: On the History, Form, and Influence of MS Paint 275

Jason Eppink
A brief history of the GIF (so far) 298

Kate Brideau and Charles Berret
A Brief Introduction to Impact: ‘The Meme Font’ 307

Nick Douglas
It’s Supposed to Look Like Shit: The Internet Ugly Aesthetic 314

Limor Shifman
The Cultural Logic of Photo-Based Meme Genres 340

An Xiao Mina
Batman, Pandaman and the Blind Man: A Case Study in Social
Change Memes and Internet Censorship in China 359

Tim Hwang and Christina Xu
‘Lurk More’: An Interview with the Founders of ROFLCon 376

Jonathan Zittrain
Reflections on Internet Culture 388

NMCC Meet-and-Greet with Wendy Chun

Current NMCC students are invited to a catered reception to meet media scholar Wendy Hui Kyong Chun.

Wednesday, January 7
4:30 to 5:30 pm
Digital Scholarship Center, Room 142 Knight Library

 

Wendy Chun (Brown University) is the 2014-15 Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics. She will be in residence at UO during the Winter quarter 2015 as the anchor scholar for the center’s inquiry on Media and Democracy. She will also be teaching the Habitual New Media course alongside Colin Koopman, in which they will provide graduate students from a range of disciplines with an introduction to, and deeper engagement with, some of the major theoretical approaches to new media as an object of critical inquiry.

Control and Freedom Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics

She has an interesting background in comparative literature and systems engineering (see a brief article here). Professor Chun has become a world-renowned scholar on the internet, culture and digital media. She is the author of Programmed Visions, Habitual New Media, and Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics among other books and articles.

To attend the reception please RSVP to Margaret Hallock at hallock@uoregon.edu

Introducing Prof Picks: Professor John Fenn

Our new Prof Picks section features selected new media resource “picks” selected by NMCC faculty affiliates. Our first Prof Picks feature is Professor John Fenn, Assistant Professor in Arts & Administration.

John Fenn Prof Picks
Professor John Fenn, Assistant Professor, Arts & Administration
“As a social bookmarking tool, it enables users to gather, annotate, and share web-based resources across multiple devices and platforms.” 

“As any student who’s been in one of my classes can attest to, I use Diigo quite a bit. As a social bookmarking tool, it enables users to gather, annotate, and share web-based resources across multiple devices and platforms.

My initial attraction to Diigo stemmed from the fact that it is decoupled from a specific browser or computer/device. By using it, I no longer had to be sitting in front of a particular computer using a particular instance of a particular browser to recall a link I had saved.

 

Furthermore, Diigo enabled me to tag resources and annotate them—both within the Diigo site as well as directly at the URL I had saved.

Diigo’s “Group Feature”allows for the sharing and annotating of links with multiple viewers.

At first I used Diigo to prep for courses and in my own research, but then I expanded my use of it by building the platform into courses. Drawing on the “group” feature, I started generating course-based groups through which students would gather and annotate links.

Some of these groups were informal, meaning I did not require participation, but others were tied directly to assignments (depending on the course and learning objectives I had crafted). No matter how I have used it in a course, though, I try to introduce all students to the service so that they can explore it on their own and find fit with their own web-based pursuits, academic or otherwise.”

 

Interested in learning more about how you can use Diigo in your own research? Please contact John Fenn for more information. You can also read more about Professor Fenn’s  research interests here.

Are you a UO faculty member interested in getting involved with NMCC and/or being our next Prof Picks feature? Please contact us.