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Genevieve Carpio's Pedagogical Portfolio: Teaching, Digital Humanities, and Diversity

Syllabus: Digital Humanities

DIGITAL HUMANITIES

A. COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course provides an introduction to digital media and its impact on the humanities. Students will be introduced to issues such as intellectual property, collaborative work, and building an audience for public history projects. Students will build technological skills by using blog, curatorial, and documentary tools. We will collaboratively design a digital exhibit around the collection of a community partner for a general audience.

B. ASSIGNMENTS

10% Attendance and Participation

20% Digital Source Review: During Week 4, chose three public history sites to review. Create an assessment rubric to measure the effectiveness of each site and submit a 3-5 page paper describing how you chose your measurements, the organization of each site, and its effectiveness. See the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media for resources, http://chnm.gmu.edu/teaching-and-learning/.

20% Personal Blog and Comments: Each week, you will post a short blog reflecting on your choice of the week’s a) reading, b) assignment, or c) a current topic related to the digital humanities. In your last blog post, reflect on the use of blogging for humanities work. You are also responsible for following your classmates’ blogs and commenting or linking to their posts.

30% Final Site: During this course, we will collectively curate a webpage based on either a university collection or a community partner’s holdings. Examples include a an online exhibit of images with metadata, a podcast, map, or short documentary video using the collection. You will present your exhibit for feedback from your classmates, a campus librarian, and our archival partner. In a short reflection paper (1-2 pgs), you will outline the feedback you received and how you addressed suggestions.

C. REQUIRED TEXTS

Course Reader

Bauerlein, Mark (ed.). The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. Tarcher, 2011.

Cohen, David and Rosenzweig. Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. EBook available at http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/book.php.

Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books, 2012.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. NYU Press, 2008.

Knowles, Anne Kelly. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship. ESRI Press, 2008.

D. READING SCHEDULE

WEEK ONE. INTRODUCTION

Introductions, course overview, wiki page set-up.

Grove, Tim. “New Media and the Challenges for Public History.” Perspectives on History. May 2009. http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2009/0905/0905for4.cfm

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. “What is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin, Number 150, 2010. 1-7.

Cohen, Daniel et al. “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History.” Journal of American History. Vol. 95 No. 2. September 2008.

Case Studies: George Mason’s Center for History and New Media, and the University of Virginia’s Virginia Center for Digital History.

WEEK TWO. CONVERGENCE CULTURE

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. NYU Press, 2008.

WEEK THREE. “CAN WE USE WIKIPEDIA?”

Currie, Morgan. “The Feminist Critique: Mapping Controversy in Wikipedia.” Understanding Digital Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Corley, Julie. “Can the Web Really Do It All? Perceptions of Historical Research on the Internet.” The Public Historian, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Winter, 1998), 49-57.

Drucker, Johanna. “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display.” Digital Humanities Quarterly. Volume 5, Number 1, 2011.

Kirk, Elizabeth. "Evaluating Information Found on the Internet.” John Hopkins University, 1996. http://guides.library.jhu.edu/print_content.php?pid=198142&sid=1657518&mode=g

Pariser, Eli. Beware Online “Filter Bubbles.” TED Talk. March 2011. http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

WEEK FOUR. DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Gutterman, Lauren Jae. “Outhistory.org: An Experiment in LGBTQ Community History-Making.” The Public Historian, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Fall 2010), 96-109.

WEEK FIVE. REPRESENTATION AND CURATION

Knowles, Anne Kelly. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship. ESRI Press, 2008.

Optional Podcast: http://www.virginiaexperiment.com/podcast/speakerSeries041708.mp3

Case Study: http://www.pastmapper.com/map/1853/

WEEK SIX. WEB PUBLISHING

Cummings, Alex Sayf and Jarrett, Jonathan. “Only Typing? Informal Writing, Blogging, and the Academy.” Writing History in the Digital Age. Spring 2012,

Cohen, D. (2008, February 20). Introducing Omeka. Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities Blog. Retrieved September 22, 2009, from http://www.dancohen.org/2008/02/20/introducing-omeka/.

Kucsma, Jason, Reiss, Kevin, and Sidman, Angela. “Using Omeka to Build Digital Collections: The METRO Case Study.” D-Lib Magazine: The Magazine of Digital Library Research. Volume 16, Number 3/4. March/ April 2010.

Review: http://omeka.org/codex/Documentation

Case Study: OMEKA http://omeka.org/showcase/

WEEK SEVEN. METADATA AND ORAL HISTORY

“Metadata Basics.” Dublin Core Metadata Initiatives. University Of Tsukuba, Japan, 2012.

“Metadata Dictionary.” Bracero Oral History Project. Center for History and New Media, 2012 http://braceroarchive.org/resources. View video tutorials.

Case Study: Bracero Oral History Project.

WEEK EIGHT. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND COPYRIGHT

Herman, Gerald. “Intellectual Property and the Historian in the New Millennium.” The Public Historian, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Spring 2004), 23-48.

Boyle, James and Jenkins, Jennifer. “Tales from the Public Domain: Bound By Law?” Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Duke University.

Howard, Jennifer. “What you Don’t Know About Copyrights, but Should.” Chronicle of Higher Education. May 29, 2011.

Case Study: Creative Commons, Sound Cloud, Zotero

WEEK NINE. SOCIAL NETWORKING

Bauerlein, Mark (ed.). The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. Tarcher, 2011.

Whitson, Roger T. “The Ins and Outs of a Professional Academic Website.” Blog post February 7, 2012.

Case Study: What is your web presence? Personal Academic Website

WEEK TEN. BUILDING AN AUDIENCE WITH MEDIA

iMovie Educast 9 Video Series. KQED. March 12, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL34C869C5559DFD8B

Case Study: Building a Trailer, Twitter, and Facebook

WEEK ELEVEN. COLLABORATION

Bennet, Nuala, Sandore, Beth, and Pianfetti, Evangeline. “Illinois Digital Cultural Heritage Community—Collaborative Interactions Among Libraries, Museums, and Elementary Schools. D-Lib Magazine: The Magazine of Digital Library Research. Volume 8 Number 1, 2002.

Carpio, Genevieve, Luk, Sharon and Bush, Adam. “Building People’s Histories: Graduate Student Teaching and Undergraduate Education.” Journal of American History. Forthcoming March 2013.

Bunker, Geri and Zick, Greg. “Collaboration as a Key to Digital Library Development: High Performance Image Management at the University of Washington.” D-Lib Magazine: The Magazine of Digital Library Research. Volume 5 Issue 3. March 1999.

Spiro, Lisa. “This is Why We Fight? Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities.” Debates in the Digital Humanities. 2012. 16-35

WEEK TWELVE. WORKSHOP AND TROUBLE SHOOTING

Theimer, Kate. “Chapter 1 Web 2.0 Basics.” Web 2.0 Strategies for Archives and Local History Collections, 2010.

Case Study: Your site! Today you will have time to workshop your portion of our shared site. Bring your materials, questions, and tips.

WEEK THIRTEEN. PRESENTATIONS

This week, you will have an opportunity to present your exhibit for feedback. In a short presentation (5-8 minutes), you will guide your fellow classmates and community partners through your project. They will then be given time to comment on your site and offer suggestions for improvement. You are required to consider their suggestions, but you have final say over how you do or do not incorporate them.

WEEK FOURTEEN. CONCLUSIONS

Reflections, next steps, and course evaluations.

WEEK FIFTEEN

No Class! Looking forward to seeing your exhibits.

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Teaching Portfolio 8 plain 2013-04-29T20:19:40-07:00
My work seeks to render historical questions, perspectives, and stories socially meaningful for present populations. The opportunity to engage students in this process is an integral part of my work. Towards this end, my primary objective as a teacher is to provide students with a critical lens towards American studies so that they may better locate themselves as agents of social change. The toolkit I use to do so emphasizes experiential learning, diversity, and community partnerships.
Experiential learning offers a powerful tool for engaging students with the practice of comparative ethnic studies. Because of my own professionalization within archival and preservation based organizations, these activities have centered on providing students with opportunities for primary historical analysis, including:
- Conducting on-site architectural analysis of “the Mexican Village” in Los Angeles
- Discussing historical methods with archivists at the Seaver Center for Western History
- Analyzing the content of exhibits at the Natural History Museum
Rather than finding a “correct” answer, I ask students to consider the various ways groups have worked to create historical narratives that shape the ways we understand racial difference. Recognizing the production of history as a process with material consequences challenges passive-learning approaches to education and can spark debate regarding the stakes involved when making sense of the past.
I find that opportunities to move the classroom beyond campus resonate particularly strongly with underrepresented students, for whom the communities surrounding urban universities more closely represents their own ethnic or class identifications. For instance, in my coordination of the Building People’s History project, a semester long community partnership intended to draw public attention to a politically-active archive in south Los Angeles, students from diverse backgrounds became active participants in discussion, stayed after class, and expressed interest in becoming majors. The visible presence of leaders sharing a similar background helped them connect with class materials, take an active role in the discussion, and envision a place for themselves in the production of history.
Experiential learning and community partnerships contribute to an active-learning environment within the classroom. They provide opportunities for student reflection within writing assignments, common experiences to draw upon during small-group work, and material references for lectures. Based on iterations in my discussion section at USC, I plan for student-led discussion to be a signature part of each class. While lecture and assignments also hold a central role in my classroom, I believe that fostering students’ responsibility for themselves and their classmates helps them hone a sense of self-awareness and accountability as social agents whose ideas and actions affect others. I am also interested in integrating digital media to the classroom in sustainable ways, evident by my current training through the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at USC.

In closing, as a scholar with a commitment to the public humanities, I seek to make ethnic studies meaningful to students by applying its lessons to the analysis of contemporary landscapes. It is my goal to realize visions of liberatory praxis in the local times and places of people’s lives, both within and beyond the classroom.