THATCamp New England is pleased to offer a series of digital humanities workshops both concurrently with the main THATCamp on Saturday, October 22, and on the Friday afternoon before, October 21. For times, please see the schedule. These workshops were formerly known as BootCamps. The workshops are intended to introduce the basic skills, tools, and concepts of the digital humanities. Absolutely no prior experience is required or assumed.
Micro-Fellowships
We are also pleased to offer a number of micro-fellowships to support people who wish to attend the workshops. These funds are intended to cover travel expenses. They carry with them the obligation to attend the workshops on Friday and the main THATCamp on Saturday, as well as to write a brief summary on what you learned and how it will help you. Everyone who applies to THATCamp NE will be considered for appropriate fellowships. The following fellowships are available for a wide array of people within the academy:
- For graduate students and pre-tenure faculty in the humanities: four micro-fellowships at $250 apiece (for people closer to Boston/Waltham) and four micro-fellowships at $500 apiece. (These fellowships have been generously funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation via the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.)
- For professionals in the museum, public history, and public art fields: five micro-fellowships at $200 apiece. (These fellowships have been generously funded by the John Nicholas Brown Center.)
- For librarians: One micro-fellowship at $250 apiece. (This fellowship has been generously funded by the Brandeis University Library and Technology Services.)
- For educational technologists: One micro-fellowship at $250 apiece. (This fellowship has been generously funded by NERCOMP.)
- For archivists: One micro-fellowship at $250 apiece. (This fellowship has been generously funded by NERCOMP.)
Workshop Topics and Instructors
The following workshops will be offered at THATCamp New England. Additional details will be available about each as we get closer to the event.
Tona Hangen — Digital Humanities in the Classroom: Simple Steps
Description: This session envisions, models, and invites participation in how to integrate digital humanities tools into intro-level classes, or into courses that don’t explicitly have technical skills as a course goal. Drawing from my experience as a history professor at a public university with a student population whose abilities vary widely, I plan to showcase and have session participants use some of the tools I have successfully employed in introductory courses, including developing an Omeka database, Google mapping, and creating historical content for the web.
Bio: Tona Hangen is Assistant Professor of US History at Worcester State University. She earned her PhD in American history from Brandeis University. Along with her students, she is the creator of the online archive Digital Worcester.
Amanda French — Superhero Search and Replace: A Very Basic Introduction to Regular Expressions
Description: In this workshop, you’ll learn the rudiments of regular expressions, a textual method of finding and manipulating textual patterns. Let’s say that you have a plain-text copy of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets: with regular expressions, you can count all the lines that rhyme with ‘ear’; find ‘O!,’ ‘O cruel!,’ and ‘O cunning Love!’ with a single search; and replace all personifications (including ‘Love’ ‘Death’ and ‘Fortune’) with ‘Millicent’ at a stroke. Regular expressions are a necessary tool in the utility belt of any beginning coder, and they also come in handy in situations like this. Note: I have also shared the lesson plan with key links at j.mp/tcne2011regex.
Requirements: No prerequisite knowledge at all. Please download and install the regexp-enabled plain text editor EditRocket at editrocket.com (free trial for 30 days) before the workshop.
Bio: Amanda French is currently the THATCamp Coordinator at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, but she got her start in all things digital working on the Rossetti Archive at the University of Virginia in the mid-nineties, where she also earned a PhD in English literature with a specialty in the nineteenth-century British poetry and poetic form.
Jeremy Boggs — Taming Templates with HTML and CSS
Description: The websites that digital humanists use are often run on popular software such as WordPress for course websites and Omeka for digital archives. The way that websites look is controlled by a template system. In this workshop, you will learn about the basic tools for putting a website together: HTML and CSS. What you learn about those two tools will be applicable for virtually any project with a web-presence. Then, you will learn how to apply your knowledge of HTML and CSS to edit templates for the WordPress and Omeka.
Bio: Jeremy Boggs is the Humanities Design Architect at the University of Virginia Library, and a PhD candidate in History at George Mason University. He has a great deal of experience designing websites for digital humanities projects, and is a coder for Omeka and WordPress plugins for scholarship. He is also one of the founders of the original THATCamp.
Konrad Lawson — Simple Maps with GIS
Description: This session will explain how to use the open-source software Quantum GIS to make simple maps. The ability to make maps is of use to authors writing books, dissertations, and journal articles, for teachers making map quizzes and lecture maps, and for many other uses. The session will cover how to display basic geographic information such as a coast or border, how to get the latitudes and longitudes for a list of points (such as cities or countries), and how to import labels for a set of points.
Bio: Konrad Lawson is a PhD candidate in history at Harvard University, working on a dissertation on modern East Asian history. He is a regular contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education blog ProfHacker.
Tom Scheinfeldt — Managing a Digital Humanities Project
Description: This session will consider both the practical, day-to-day work and intangible aspects of managing digital projects in the humanities. Pragmatic lessons will include picking a project, building partnerships and engaging stakeholders, attracting funding, budgeting and staffing, setting milestones and meeting deliverables, managing staff, publicity and marketing, user support, sustainability, and the range of tools available to support this work. The session will also consider several intangible, but no less important, aspects of project management, including communication, decision making, and leadership.
Bio: Tom Scheinfeldt is the Managing Director of the Center for History and New Media and Research Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University. He is a THATCamp veteran, and offered a workshop at THATCamp New England 2010. He is currently based in Connecticut.
Sharon Leon — Digital Public History with Omeka
Bio: Sharon Leon is the Director of Public Projects at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, where she manages the Center’s digital exhibit and archiving projects, as well as research and tool development for public history.
Description: Omeka was designed and developed to serve the needs of cultural heritage organizations. During this workshop you will learn not only the basics of building an Omeka site, but also how to effectively use a range of Omeka plugins and theming techniques to reach your online audience. We will cover strategies for developing and organizing an archive of Omeka items, ways to showcase expert knowledge, and methods for capitalizing on user generated content
Jason B. Jones — TBD
Bio: Jason B. Jones is an associate professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, where he is currently president of the faculty union. He is a founding editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education blog ProfHacker.
