Day of Digital Humanities

The University of Texas Libraries, Antiracist Tech Club, Good Systems, and LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections present: Day of Digital Humanities, a celebration of digital humanities at The University of Texas at Austin. 

Register here.

 

Schedule Overview

1-1:50 p.m., Keynote

2-2:50 p.m., Humanities Data Panel

3-3:50 p.m., Article Discussion

4-5 p.m., Happy Hour

 

Event Descriptions

Keynote: Through the Tourist's Lens: Using Social Media and Machine Learning to Understand Visual Experiences at Peruvian Archaeological Heritage Sites

1-1:50 p.m.

The intersection of social media and heritage tourism in recent decades has created an abundance of open-source imagery that remains underutilized by the archaeological heritage community and digital scholars. When paired with machine learning algorithms, photographs produced by tourists – as well as historic images in museum collections – can provide researchers with new opportunities to understand how historic site representations and visual expectations drive travel narratives and heritage perceptions that are curated on media-sharing platforms. Using Cuzco, Peru as a case study, I compare how modern tourists perpetuate the visual perspectives of 19th and 20th century explorers through scene and object-based feature extraction – a process that would be impossible to replicate through manual labor.

Speaker: Nicole D. Payntar

Nicole D. Payntar is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on heritage tourism, machine learning, and archaeology in Peru. She received her M.A. in Archaeology from Durham University in 2012 and has previously served on the Antiquities Coalition’s #CultureUnderThreat Task Force and as the former Assistant Director of Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE).  

 

Humanities Data Panel 

2-2:50 p.m.

The University of Texas Libraries is delighted to present a panel on humanities data for the Day of DH. Developments in digital humanities, particularly concerning the manipulation of data for humanities projects, are taking place rapidly and with increasing momentum. As scholars engaged in the creation, management, analysis, and development of pedagogy around “humanities data,” the three presenters on this panel will focus on questions of the definition of humanities data; tools and methodologies for working with humanities data; and collections as data for the digital humanist. This panel hopes to offer reflections on progress with humanities data management and curation, as well as to invite the larger academic community to consider the implications––for cultural heritage management, research, and teaching––of creating space for humanities data.

Moderator: Dale J. Correa, Middle Eastern Studies Librarian & History Coordinator, The University of Texas at Austin

Presenters:

Erika Bsumek, Associate Professor of History, The University of Texas at Austin

Catherine A. Nichols, Advanced Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology and Museum Studies, Loyola University Chicago

Joel Zapata, Assistant Professor of History, Oregon State University

 

Article Discussion

3-3:50 p.m.

Join the Anti-Racist Tech (ART) Club in a facilitated discussion about Jessica Marie Johnson’s 2018 article “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads.” ART Club is a group of faculty, students, and staff on campus dedicated to data sovereignty, algorithmic justice, and creating new futures for our engagement with technology. The article “Markup Bodies” can be accessed through the University of Texas Libraries here

Facilitators: 

Adrienne Sockwell is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at The University of Texas at Austin.  Her interests include 19th century Native American history, slavery and the history of capitalism, archival studies and public humanities.

Rachel E. Winston is the inaugural Black Diaspora Archivist at The University of Texas at Austin. In this role, she leads the effort to build a library special collection documenting the Black experience across the Americas and Caribbean.

 

Happy Hour

4-5 p.m.

The Anti-Racist Tech (ART) Club  is a group of faculty, students, and staff on campus dedicated to data sovereignty, algorithmic justice, and creating new futures for our engagement with technology. Good Systems, comprised of researchers across UT’s campus, works to better understand what changes new technologies will bring, predict how those changes will unfold, and mitigate the harms or unintended consequences they could cause while still leveraging the benefits AI provides. ART Club and Good Systems invite you to a happy hour session of mingling, networking, and interest sharing. All are welcome!

Dial-In Information

Register here.

Wednesday, October 21, 2020 at 1:00pm to 5:00pm

Virtual Event

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