I spent the last two weeks of June at Beautiful Data, a workshop funded by the Getty Foundation and run by Harvard’s MetaLab. I’m not sure why the name, “Beautiful Data”: but it seems fair, given that the workshop address both data about beautiful things and data made beautiful by its utility. The question for the workshop was what we might do with the newly available data about the collections in art museums. The workshop was pretty intense. Twenty two…
If we want the humanities to be more than academic—if we want them to make a difference in the world—we need to change the way we work. We need to rethink some of the traditional assumptions of the humanities. I suggest here seven rules of thumb for doing public humanities. 1. It’s not about you Start not by looking at what you, your discipline, or the university needs and wants, but by what individuals and communities outside the university need…
How do the humanities change when we take engaged public scholarship seriously? Considering five adjectives that are being put in front of the word “humanities”—applied, translational, open, digital, and public humanities—helps us consider the possibilities of humanities beyond the academy. This essay considers the way these adjectives modify the humanities. It considers their history, the different emphases they bring to bear. How much are they about new kinds of outreach for traditional work, how much about changing the nature of…
Trying out Medium. Here’s a version of the talk I gave to graduating seniors before they set out on a tour of the campus. My hope was to get them to see the campus in a new way. The presence of the past: Landscapes of history and tradition at Brown University.
Yesterday I participated in a roundtable discussion on “Student Work for Public Audiences” at Brown’s Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. I talked about last year’s AMST1550, “Methods in Public Humanities.” I teach courses for students who want to learn how to work with the public. Many of my courses are for graduate students in a professional program, or more precisely, a program that’s a cross between professional and academic: the MA in public humanities program. The students in the class are graduate…
I’ve been blogging over at the Jenks Society for Lost Museums. You can see my thoughts on curatorial poetry and “Report on the food of the robin” and on taxidermy workshops, as well as reflections on the legacy of Prof. Jenks. And also many other reflections and considerations by fellow fellows of the Jenks Society. And a Medium post, now that the installation is complete.
Here’s the paper I would have given at the American Historical Association conference, had it not been for about a foot of snow and a cancelled flight.
Some thoughts, kindly published by Oronte Churm at Inside Higher Education.
Here’s the talk presented at Bryant University’s Applied Analytics in Humanities and Social Sciences conference today. Paul Margrave, Nate Storring and I presented work done by the three of us, Allison Roberts, Mark Motte of Rhode Island College, and students in his GEOG339 class. Two parts to the presentation. The first is a very general overview of some of the types of work that might be called humanities analytics: a lot of it is digital humanities, but it also includes other…
Just back from my trip to the University of Glasgow. A delight to meet with faculty and students there and to learn more about their extensive community engagement programs. I gave a talk about public humanities programs in the United States, focusing on Brown’s program. Here’s the slides from my talk. When I have time to rewrite it, I’ll post the written-out version here. Any comments welcome.
