At a few recent meetings we’ve talked about the new digital projects and resources being developed at UC Riverside, as well as other opportunities for graduate students and faculty interested in digital humanities.
Digital Scholars Lab
The UCR Rivera Library will be opening a new Digital Scholars Lab in the coming months. Over the Summer and Fall quarters, I’ve been working for the library as an advisor on digital scholarship projects and digital humanities in general. Once the Lab is open it will be a meeting place for graduate students, researchers, and faculty to start new digital scholarship projects or get help with existing ones. In the meantime if you need assistance with a project or would like more information on digital scholarship and digital humanities, please send me (Steve Anderson) an email: sande010@ucr.edu Although the Lab isn’t officially open at the moment, the Library is still happy to work with scholars and has many resources available. I’ve also made a website as a place to keep my notes for the development of the Lab. The website is a work in progress and it is not the official Lab website, but it does list many resources on digital scholarship and digital humanities: scholarslab.net
Critical Digital Humanities
For the past few years Critical Digital Humanities has been holding discussions on critical theory, reading groups on technoculture and digital media, and hosting invited speakers from a wide array of fields and subjects concerning the digital humanities. These workshops have been made possible by generous funding from the Center for Ideas and Society and Mellon workshop grants. For the 2014-2015 academic year CDH is working on pedagogy and production with Sergei Eisenstein’s unfinished film Que Viva Mexico! as our focus.
DHSocal
In Southern California the digital humanities community stays up to date on recent projects and opportunities through the DHSocal website: http://dhsocal.blogspot.com The calendar is up to date and active, there are lists of resources, and also CFPs and job opportunities. DHSocal is also on Twitter (@dhsocal and #dhsocal), but most of the activity takes place within individual accounts. If you’re just getting started with Twitter and DH, Miriam Posner (@miriamkp) over at UCLA has a very active Twitter feed, and don’t miss her weekly newsletter on DH happenings, tools, and opportunities: http://tinyletter.com/miriamposner
Digital Humanities Summer Programs
If you’re interested in digital humanities, week-long summer workshops are a great way to hone your skills and make new friends. Newcomers to the digital humanities are welcome, and most workshops do not require any technical programming skills or equipment. Over the summer I attended two of these workshops, and they were quite extraordinary experiences. HILT is the Humanities Intensive Learning and Teaching workshop, which was held at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, or MITH, at the University of Maryland. This coming summer in 2015, HILT will be held at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in Indianapolis, with registration beginning soon. The other workshop I attended was the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, or DHSI, at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. DHSI offers three separate weeks of instruction now and registration is currently open. Both HILT and DHSI have many opportunities to offset the cost of travel and tuition, as well as on-campus housing. DHSI is also offering a Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities which I hope to finish this year. There are other summer programs in Europe as well, the Joint Culture & Technology and CLARIN-D Summer School in Germany, and the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School in England.
