I attended an interesting dicussion today on the (controversial) MLA report advocating significant structural changes in humanities PhD programs. Don Bialostosky, chair of English, moderated, and the two featured speakers were Dennis Looney (now working for MLA) and John Stevenson (Grad Dean, Univ Colorado Boulder).
I am asked many questions on a weekly basis about what it takes to start using digital methods in the humanities. I enjoy answering the questions, but often feel frustrated by my inability to convey precisely what is needed.
In the coming weeks, I will be producing a new set of standardized instructions for entering data into Itinera, as well as updating the older data to comply with these new insructions. Key changes include the way we will handle agents, tours, and tour stops going forward.
The first panel of the DVK Symposium is currently underway in the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater, an attractive lecture space on the ground floor of the Museum. Although physically situated in an institution committed to the display and collection of fine art, the symposium promises to address visual knowledge in a variety of realms.
For those of you who weren't at the Agency meeting on Sept 28, we decided that we would take up the challenge offered by Barbara to help create a "signature" event for the Constellations to be held in Spring 2016. The basic goal of the event is to bring national/international attention to our constellations model here and to forge possible collaborations with scholars and others outside our university.
In thinking about a possible exhibition on Decomising Bodies, I hope to create an interactive exhibit that recreates the Bertillion furniture. Visitors could meausure themselves and fill out Berthillon cards for themsevles and their companions, thus transcribing their own bodies into the system of measurement and identification. This concept has important implications for concepts of the agency.
Some examples of the objects on display at S&S, objects within a hyper- or encompassing object that is itself part of a larger set of phenomena and practices that both transfer and transform individual objects and give them efficacy and power.
Ben's Screenshots:
