lovehistory.net

So far I think this week’s readings have left me feeling more outside the circle than any other course readings so far – and whether or not that’s an apt spatial analogy according to Franco Moretti, I have no idea.

I read Graphs Maps Tress. I thought about it. I even think I agree with parts of it. For example, I think I was most plugged into the section with Maps. Graphs always feel like a loss to me, whether presented in typical or novel usage. I see numbers and something in my brain (or my psyche) just refuses to participate. But visually mapping concepts in a novel then comparing these maps to show change in literature over time was pretty impressive. Similarly, I appreciated the way Moretti used “genetic” or “evolutionary” trees to investigate how genre conventions are determined over time. Working in a used bookstore I got real up close and personal with the unbelievable horde of books that didn’t pass whatever test is set for success. After you finish crying because you have to alphabetize and shelve ten flats (roughly 400-500 mass market paperbacks) in 2 hours, you wonder what it is exactly that allows so few books to pass the test. What Moretti has done here is try to answer that question, and in doing so, tried to nail down successful genre conventions. It was interesting that Moretti chose the genre of mystery to put into a tree because it was one of the genres we were always most bloated with.

In my view, Moretti’s model doesn’t necessarily provide for explanations of those changes, but simply tracks and displays them. The afterward got into this a little bit, and I suppose this is where the historian comes in: our job is to contextualize and interpret the data. What Moretti is doing is extracting it and presenting it in such a way that makes it easier find, read, and study.

As I write this evaluation of Moretti’s book I’m trying to decide how it can be tied to our other course readings and class discussions as a whole. For this week, the other readings discuss the creation of tools that can aggregate and display day in ways useful to historians, as Moretti has done. Graphs, Maps, and Trees are all tools (that he proposes), and similarly Dan or Google are working on ways to collect, mine, and display existing data in a way that makes it more accessible to researchers.

My question then becomes: what are the limitations of these presentations? The authors of our readings themselves struggle with this question. Dan Cohen breaks down the pros and cons of the Google N-Gram Viewer. I think he suggests that this tool is struggling with quantity vs. quality – it is a great way to find frequency of terms but it doesn’t contextualize them for us. When I was browsing the tools and sites for this week I was dismayed by how difficult it was to figure out how to use some of the tools (thought in many cases that might be more of a reflection on me). Toolmakers then also struggle with useability, and in this brave new world of digital humanities, user knowledge probably hasn’t caught up yet to the level of digital literacy necessary to operate a useable tool.

So our goal as researchers and explorers as we use these new tools is always to remember the limitations of the forms the tools come to us in, and the way they choose to present data. Because this presentation will shape our research and conclusions just as much as the data.

I will start my discussion of today’s readings by saying I wish they had come a bit earlier in the course sequence so that they’d fallen before we handed in our proposals. I felt there was a lot to be learned here about why digital humanities are important, and how scholars address each other when discussing this issue. I found the ACLS reading to be especially pertinent to many of our class discussions, but especially to the proposal because to me it read like one giant pitch for “cyberinfrastucture” or the importance of the new digital age/knowledge economy to humanities. It was a good a lesson in how to write such a paper, even if it did not necessarily have as focused a purpose as our proposals did. But it gave me a better idea of the language and structure that scholars use when making such a “pitch,” as it were. The article also addressed issues very relevant to my own project when it went over in fairly thorough detail the difficulties that copyright laws present when trying to build digital history projects. Because I’m building an archive that will gather resources generated in or around the 1960s and 70s, I am likely to run into copyright issues, and this article answered questions for me in a way that may allow me to be a bit more articulate about my plan in the future. The article also discussed how important building a community is for all digital humanities projects, and the repetitive manner in which the authors emphasized this point really drove it home to me in a way previous readings hadn’t quite managed.

Similarly, the report and white paper on how digital and public history is treated within academia in terms of employment and tenure revealed just how these new trends toward collaboration are redefining not only the way we do history, but are forcing us to re-think how we institutionalize it. I couldn’t help but feel, as I read through these three articles, that I was the intended audience of each of them. I say that because I am constantly being urged or forced to rethink my own conceptions of history and academic history, and I have only just barely begun to pursue it as a career.

As to the article on writing a digital history article, I was fascinated to read about the difference between writing an article specifically for a digital medium versus simply digitizing a traditional article. Most interesting was the fact that the authors had to find a balance between integrating the functions and structure of a traditional article with the new structural possibilities of a digital medium in order to make their project palatable to their peer review audience. I would have liked to have read more about how the article is being used, and perhaps even some direct feedback from those using it out in the field as a way to further evaluate the effectiveness of their project, and to investigate how far the actual use of their article might have deviated from its intended purpose or audience.

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I will begin by saying that any book that uses the word “reified” has automatically found a place very dear in my heart. I like that word in all its forms and all its meanings because I think it says something very fundamental about how we human beings construct the world around us, and it always startles me that it does not enjoy wider use among us all, which perhaps may have something to do with revealing the man behind the curtain.

Detaching myself from vocabulary fetishism, I really enjoyed The Language of New Media. Books of this type, with an almost esoteric focus on theory bolstered by constructing narratives (buzz word!) from the historical record and cultural consciousness, are some of my favorites to read, though I feel it’s impossible to fully enjoy them or benefit from them without the aide of discussing them with fellow readers. As is such, my comments won’t be too lengthy (I say now) because I an looking forward to picking this book apart in class tonight. I will, however, throw out some random observations or thoughts I had while reading this book, or in some cases, questions that arose for me while reading that I wasn’t able to answer alone:

1. It is interesting to me that this book is almost necessarily an example of how quickly technological innovations die or are replaced. Much of the software Manovich mentions is outdated, i.e. has become defunct or replaced my many different stages of upgrades. It made me wonder how different this work would be in some cases if Manovich was writing to different software developments. For example, Google: how would he treat it? Would it just be another database? He doesn’t spend very much time at all talking about search engines and keyword culture, but I think Google may have profoundly effected the way we interact with computers and culture/the world at large over the past decade. It would be interesting to see if Google would play a similar cursory role to Yahoo or if Manovich would restructure his work. In that line, what would he say about things like Facebook and Twitter?
2. Does Manovich spend too much time focusing on cinema as his lens or lifeline for exploring new media? Do you buy his argument that sees the dialog between cinema and new media as an endless feedback loop between two competing/sympathetic modes of production/interactivity/creation/visualization, etc? Why didn’t he spend more time talking about books? For me this was a “new media” investigation in more than one sense – I am so used to reading about how important the printing press is/was, it was really fascinating to read about the role of cinema in developing how we conceptualize ourselves/interact with the world, etc. As this phenomenon is being contextualized it is already being linked by Manovich to perhaps the next information/technological “revolution.”
3. How would Manovich react to a show like Boardwalk Empire and why doesn’t he talk about Pixar more? To speak to Pixar first, it seems to me that Manovich greatly underplays the importance of animation to both cinema and new media, and only brings it back to reprivilege it at the end of his book. Toy Story came out in 1995, and while I was only 10, even I remember how huge of a deal that movie was, especially because of its very nature as a piece of computer animation. I kept waiting and waiting for the chapter on how important Pixar/the computer animated film is to new media, but it never came. Was it an oversight, or do you think Manovich didn’t need to include it? Also, in relation to Boardwalk Empire, Manovich speaks about new media’s valiant efforts to obtain photo-realism, only privileging the fantastic in sci-fiction or fantasy movies, where the premise allows visuals to be otherwordly. I wonder how he would react to shows like Boardwalk Empire, set in our historical past and visually imagined to resemble that era as “realistically” as possible which necessitates the use of amazing special effects just to create sets. It took me several episodes to understand why the coloring on the outdoor shots bothered me so much: everything, the air, the light, was way too clean. Then I remembered the show is set in the 1920s, before “modern” pollution, and this brightness of color may be an attempt on the producer’s part to convey the idea of the show as being literally physically shot in a past reality where even the air has a different color. How is this different from any other filtering effect, then? This show and its use of new media may not contradict Manovich, but it is interesting to think about.

Okay, I have many more thoughts and questions, but I will wait for tonight and will perhaps post a follow up blog to elaborate. Ideally, anyway.

Here is my final proposal:

Radical Feminism History Project Grant Proposal
Appendix 1

• What is your inquiry question?
How have memories and artifacts of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the United States in the 1960s and 70s survived to the present day? Is it possible to gather and collect them in one place so that they can be presented to both a scholarly and lay community in the interests of cataloging the history of that movement, as well as complicating the existing historical narrative of that movement?

• What do you want your users to learn?
Initially the site will allow users to evaluate sources so as to construct their own narrative of Second Wave feminism based on historical evidence, however, at later stages the site itself will expand to include exhibits, based on the archive, which provide a scholarly interpretation of the evidence for users. It is impossible to find or develop the “real story” of Second Wave feminism, but I feel it is important for users to remember or “learn” that it happened, and through interacting with artifacts and oral histories, to read and understand how those who participated in or observed the movement itself felt about the event they were creating or watching.

• What is your methodological stance?
Though an archive may lack explicit narrative, I believe my methodological stance is definitely cultural and feminist. Cultural because I am seeking sources beyond print media in order to contextualize them and read them for their own historical significance as texts and symbols unto themselves. The feminist approach to historiography may seem self-evident, as the archive positions feminism and women’s history at the center of the narrative. Indeed, those are its feature components. The archive, because of its subject matter, will naturally focus on questions of gender that are essential to feminist scholarship.

It will be important for the archive to also attempt a multi-cultural, and perhaps post-colonial and global approach to collecting material as well, as feminism in the United States did not operate in an isolationist vacuum, but instead learned from and informed other women’s and social movements around the globe. Also, it is important to remember that feminism was not a white, middle-class female movement, though it is often portrayed that way, and very often acted that way, consciously or not. Other ethnicities inside the United States also participated in Women’s Liberation, and their stories/resources must be included in the archive as well.

Also, the site will use digital history methods that seek to build an online community and to encourage user participation in the creation of the archive. Users will be sought out and solicited both in the real world and online to submit their memories and their memorabilia. The site will build connections with other feminist history projects online and in the real world, and well develop a blog and a discussion board to facilitate the growth of a community related to the site that will not only contribute to the archives but will begin a dialog between users (and between users and builders) that will shape the nature of the archive and future exhibits, as well as work to build a consciousness about feminism and feminist history.

• How does your design work to support these goals?
The design of the site is incredibly simple and privileges access to the archives as well as the archive submission page. Omeka’s simple and easy to use interface will make submitting to the archive easy. The blog will provide users with an informal narrative structure of the archive for curious users, and the discussion board will allow for questions to be aired publically. The user will therefore have many forums to express themselves and contact site maintainers, and will also have easy access to the archive whether submitting, researching, or browsing. The builders themselves will also, therefore, have easy access and direct connections to their users as well, allowing a continuous and productive feedback loop.

• What new things do you need to learn?
Collecting data for this project will present many challenges, which may be one reason why a project of this scale has yet to be attempted. First of all, especially in regards to print media, much of the primary source material (i.e pamphlets, flyers, posters, etc.) created about this event was self-published and highly ephemeral. It was not meant to be kept but was created to rapidly disseminate information among members of the movement. Tracking it down may prove difficult, and it is hard to predict its level of decay, as much of it may exist in private holdings that the original owners took no steps to adequately preserve.

Secondly, because this was a recent movement with many political dimensions, this site will present challenges in relation to privacy concerns, and valid fears of harassment or retribution as people share their stories. How will we filter through posts that may contain bias or threats? How can we create an environment where our participants feel safe to share openly and honestly?

Another important point is that many women and men who interacted with Second Wave feminism did not identify themselves as feminists. Many had a consciousness of the movement and its goals at the time, and may even have lived its principles, but neither then nor now would they label themselves as feminists. This experience is actually considered by some to be the dominant narrative of women’s experience in entering public life in the 1960s, with the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left as catalysts and everyday women capitalizing on the Civil Rights Act and following old trends flooding the workplace while feminists pushed the boundaries of intellectual conceptions of gender that were not always reflected in public consciousness. How do we entice and solicit the important stories from participants who acted from the sidelines? Will they be turned off by the overtly feminist focus of the site? How can we engage them as well as our pre-existing and at first glance easily labeled user base?

• How will you go about learning these things?
A simple and complex solution seems to be we will learn by doing. In terms of answering all of these questions the most important tool seems to be community building, especially in reaching our last goal. If we start through personal connections and connections with pre-existing communities we can create a credible environment where people feel safe to share with us. We can solicit submissions from people who have sources cataloged in other archives or buried in their attics as advertising and word-of-mouth spread. And through building these networks, hopefully we can reach those sideline participants who may have stories to tell us as well, and in privileging their narrative in the archive along with explicitly feminist narratives, they may feel included and therefore more likely to share their version of events. To reiterate, for this purposes creating an inclusive environment will be key.

• What is the rational for the decisions you’re making about source choices (by type, collection, time period, etc.)?
Sources will be collected that relate to the Women’s Liberation Movement in the United States in the 1960s and 70s, or what is also known as Second Wave Feminism. Many of the materials collected will have been created during these two decades, however, we will also archive any material related to these decades, whenever their creation date may be. This will allow us to include oral history resources created after the time period specified, for example. Historical “events” are often isolated by historians as a means of categorization or a type of narrative shorthand, however, no event can truly be isolated from the time periods surrounding it/narratives preceding and following it. Though this archive seeks to feature materials that tell the story of Second Wave feminism in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, it will do so by collecting all sources related to this time period no matter their date of creation in order to place this occurrence within the narrative, or contextualize it, as well as reconstruct or re-create the narrative of the events themselves.

Because this is a recent movement that occurred in tandem with the explosion of mass media and mass culture in the United States, I expect to be able to collect all types of media beyond traditional print sources, including ephemera, memorabilia, video recordings, and audio recordings that catalog the history of Second Wave feminism. Because it is a recent event, I also expect to be able to collect a sizeable number of oral histories created by participants and observers that recreate the event. All these types of media will be collected in the interests of presenting the most complete picture possible or the most sizeable database possible of historical sources concerning this movement. We “lose” history every day, and this archive will work to preserve these artifacts and memories, no matter what form, before they too are completely lost to the passage of time.

• What questions remain for you to provide a convincing grant application?
Just answering these questions has made me feel like my application may become more convincing, though they also seem to have raised so many more challenges! Sharon and others have pointed out that my work plan needs attention, and I think in viewing their comments on this plan as well as my own thoughts above, my greatest challenge will be in writing convincingly of how to envision building this “community” that is so crucial to my archive’s existence. I believe this means I have to ponder my audience a bit more. I want it to be a scholarly source, yes, but it seems like many of users are likely to not be academics, especially those who I anticipate will end up submitting sources. How can I target these two communities simultaneously? What is the degree of overlap?

“Design Criticism and the Creative Process” had rules that I think can be applied across the board for giving (and receiving) critiques, even if what you are evaluating/presenting is not a digital history project. This article took a very interesting approach in that it did not detail how to give critique (advice on that involved reading between the lines), or how to react (passively) to it, but instead it advised its readers on how to participate actively with the critique they are receiving in order to make it most useful to their project.

At this stage in our academic careers, it seems to me that many of us have adopted at least some of these tactics, whether through direct inculcation of instruction or through trial and error in our own creative processes, but it was nice to see them laid out here, and there are a few important ones I will keep in mind while receiving oral criticism on my project presentation.

For example, the point that most caught my eye was the bit on “Taking it personally.” I believe McDaniel’s suggestion to bring it back to the question of audience, i.e. “Will the audience like purple?” to be a very effective and relevant way to deal with this kind of design issue (or critique). At the end of the day we are producing a product for users whose needs and opinions might end up surprising us, but it is still their projected needs that we are attempting to address with our projects and in our designs. Reminding those critiquing and being critiqued of this fact strikes me as a good way to bring everyone back into the room and to refocus on the functionality of the site from user-driven perspective. These personal observations can still be useful, however, which McDaniel doesn’t delve into in this paragraph. Another tactic might be to ask the “critiquer” why the purple is so distracting – is it truly that they just loathe the color, or do they find it distracting in some sense that might also repel your users or make your site less navigable?

I also liked the idea of attempting to “put the other person in your shoes.” Most of this article seemed to have a subtext that sought to advise on how to avoid becoming defensive or disheartened in the face of criticism. Asking someone to evaluate your design from their perspective strikes at the heart of collaboration, and I’ve also found it’s when people become most responsive and generate the most useful insights while participating in a creative dialog.

Another point McDaniel’s makes when speaking of a indecisive critique is to back up your argument with good logic. I think it’s important to remember that in a process of critique, part of the role of those offering criticism is for them to flag parts of your project where you might not necessarily have good logic, or a logic that seems inherent and/or clearly expressed to you may not be so obvious to those critiquing your project, and therefore, may also be lost on the user. This lack of clarity does not make your project invalid, but it is important for others to point out their own confusion when it arises in order to help you strengthen and clarify whatever is lacking. This insight can provoke new lines and of thought and reasoning that may never have occurred to you, or allow you to re-articulate/re-design something in a way that allows you to get your point across more clearly.

Of course, in certain cases it is okay to simply decide that a critique is not something you are going to incorporate in your project (which may be more difficult if it is coming from a client or boss as opposed to a peer). But I think we all know how important the process is, no matter how nervous it might make us. I think the point of this article was to give creators tips for handling the stress that arises from situations involving presentation and critique by demonstrating that the presenter can control or direct the critique and does not simply have to be subject to it.

Hey guys, I was just reading Reddit and found this picture of some hard drives arranged chronologically from 1979 to present:

Thought it was neat to look at in light of our discussion last week!

(via Reddit.)

As I worked my way through the readings this week and spent time interacting with the example websites, especially the September 11 Digital Archive and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, all I could think of was something my (awesome) professor told my senior seminar class as we were preparing to write out first synthetic research paper: if it happened after you were born then it’s not history.

Now, I was an undergrad, and sometimes undergrads (who also at the time are 21 years old) get oversimplified constraints or definitions so that they can spend time actually working within the foundation that they will need to build in order to eventually have the estate full of weird and exotic time periods and methodologies that they will eventually reside in (also, I wanted to write on what Saved by the Bell said about collective notions of feminism, which may or may not have something to do with it). But still, the temporal space these archives/projects occupy, and how quickly historians and other cultural institutions/actors leaped to begin collecting and preserving these memories seemed new to me, in a way. They, unlike myself, realized how important and ephemeral internet created content can be, even when related to an event as huge as 9/11. It was an interesting contrast to include discussions of Pearl Harbor, another event people knew would be historically remembered and worked to preserve. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m shocked at how quickly these historians not only realized the events of September 11th were historic (we all did) but they then immediately acted to preserve that memory for future generations. And, in a way luckily for them, national memory has absorbed and lionized (or demonized), if not understood, the event just as quickly, and interest has continued to remain high, which aids the efforts of the archivists in their interests of expanding their knowledge base and promoting the site as a useful tool. It will be interesting to see how the archive is used by those scholars born after 9/11.

In contrast again, the historians involved in the Hurricane Katrina project similarly tapped into the sense that Katrina was a unique historical moment and moved to catalog it online, but what they failed to anticipate was how the seeds of memory of that event would germinate and be effected by the cultural response that participants (and potential users) were subjected to. I read through a few of the narrations provided in the archive, and the first one I read struck me because the woman recalled she had no idea how bad Katrina would be until she saw it on the TV the night before it hit – somehow the physical representation of the hurricane on the TV screen shocked her into action and she escaped with her life, but her livelihood was lost and she still hasn’t returned to New Orleans. As in the article, this narrative imparts a sense that survivors are still stuck in that moment of loss and have been abandoned to it by culture at large, which did not put in place structures of grieving and aid (for both the physical and mental realms) that were present in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (remember all those people lining up to give blood that unfortunately wasn’t needed?). Katrina, in a way, was forgotten.

I suppose what I’m trying to get at is the interesting disconnect between what a historian decides is worth remembering and society at large does. “Never Forget” is one of 9/11’s rallying cries, but what is it, exactly, that we are supposed to remember about it, assuming we should remember at all? Struggles over that narrative have played themselves out very openly in politics and culture. In contrast, I would argue Katrina’s most notable memory project is the HBO show Treme, which uses a blend of dramatization and fictionalization, actors playing characters and real people playing themselves, to attempt to sort out in this imagined version of what exactly a post-Katrina identity means for New Orleans. The show, a work of fiction at the end of the day, has been lavishly praised by New Orleans natives as a very realistic portrayal, but Treme exists in a world where, while people are grappling with the legacy of Katrina, the event itself has ended, and at the end of the day, while the city is still physically present in the show, those populating it are dreams of its residents or pastiches of the real things played by the real things. The show creators combine these elements in an attempt to formulate a new identity for the city, but it’s one formulated from the outside looking in, presented as an insider’s love affair.

The Hurricane Katrina project was also created by outsiders, but involved a great deal of community outreach, however, it does not provide an overarching narrative for users to tap into (like Treme, for example, which may explain part of its popularity among residents/participants) but instead invites them to share their own narrative. I was so taken by the passage where Brennan and Kelly explained “maintaining control over their personal story turned out to be much more important for our contributors than we had expected. Following the hurricanes, many residents of the Gulf Coast felt that their lives had been taken over by others acting on their behalf and so it was very important to many of them that they retained ownership over their personal histories.” The narratives I read did strike me as very visceral, and I can see why it would be hard to overcome sharing such a vulnerable personal history when you feel that A) You are still living the event and B) External forces are trying, actively or indirectly, to suppress or interfere with the narrative of the event that you are trying to construct for yourself out of your own experience. The questions expands from that of the individual level “What story to I want to tell myself? To others” to the larger question the archivists as “What of our findings to we share, and how?”

The idea that history is a current thing, that it’s being built now, is really important to keep in mind. These two projects themselves might not seek actively to transform their holdings into a more overt historical narrative, but in the future, because these historians realized the historiocity of the moments they document, scholars will be able to mine these archives for a wealth of sources to complete who knows how many different projects. So history IS now.

As to the other readings, the one that most captured my attention was the digital forensics reading. I won’t go into it at length other than to say I had never conceived how difficult authenticating a digital-born source might be, let own preserving it. I knew CDs decayed but I had never thought about how changing hardware and software technology might render sources obsolete and forever unavailable to future use. I am completely of two minds about digitizing sources. I think it’s great, and I think it should be done. Also, well, the future IS now. Most sources ARE digital born and now we must put together a framework to preserve these things for posterity. I’m glad to see this community already exists, even though it may never catch up to technology. But I also hope we are remembering to have some sort of analog equivalent for when the lights go out. That then begs that question as to what should be made physical again. This debate, it seems, can be circular and is never ending. The most important take away is that digital born sources are just as subjective and bound by physical laws of existence (i.e. they decay, become obsolete, etc.) as traditional sources are.

Here it is!

Project Proposal Draft
Appendix 1

I will have blog posts and comments etc. for everyone after I get some sleep, but I will say I’ve looked over several of the proposals already and thought they were really great, both in terms of the amazingly creative ideas everyone is coming up with and the in the way you all are presenting them. Also, I’m glad this week’s readings were…this week’s readings. I originally wasn’t planning on doing a user-driven project but something just clicked for me and I realized that with my topic I almost have to include a user-submission component in some way if I my site to be truly new and dynamic. The readings and example websites also made taking on such a task seem much less scary. Also, digital forensics are awesome. For me, I run into trouble with digital media when it becomes to math-like. Something about the digital forensics readings made this kind of technologically and the way I am interacting with it feel very esoteric in a way I hadn’t quite been able to access before intellectually. I found it to be really engaging. Anyway, more later!

Edit: I am also a 2!