Programming is notoriously goal-oriented: if there is a problem you work to solve it. Creative coding is different. Rather than look for a solution, creative coding asks, what happens if coding is a tool to explore and play. In this episode, Dr. Mark Sample discusses his approach to creative coding. Hint- it includes twitter bots and Walt Whitman!
We’re all familiar with tidying up our living spaces, but how can data be tidied up? Matt Lincoln is a research software engineer and Digital Humanities developer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. His class, Tidy Data focuses on combating data anxiety in the humanities by teaching humanists how to handle complex relationships and uncertainty in data, and format their information tidily so it that can be reshaped to drive databases, websites, analyses, and visualizations.
In our first episode, Managing Director of the Price Lab, Stewart Varner, spoke to Dot Porter, Curator of Digital Research Services in the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. They talked about the course she would have taught at Dream Lab, Digital Surrogates, her background as a medievalist, and the considerations of digitization projects as they relate to paid and unpaid labor.
In this episode, not one, but two former Price Lab Fellows teamed up to talk about digital humanities! Price Lab Research Fellow Emily Hammer (Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities, Archaeology and Anthropology of the Ancient World in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations), spoke with Price Lab Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Lisa Poggiali about the ways digital tools have informed her anthropological research in Eastern Africa. They also discuss how Lisa combined digital mapmaking and social justice in her pedagogical work.
The Price Lab podcast was delighted to welcome the founding faculty director of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, Dr. Jim English (John Welsh Centennial Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania). A specialist in modern and contemporary British fiction, his essays have appeared in PMLA, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harpers, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Jim discusses the creation of the Price Lab and his forays into incorporating digital humanities tools and methods into his own research and pedagogy.
In collaboration with former Mellon Graduate Fellow (2018-2019), Orchid Tierney, our guest Julie Beth Napolin narrates the story of her work as a sound scholar, radio journalist, and digital humanist. She discusses the power of oral history, biases built into audio technology, and the importance of investigating how we hear and listen and who is the "we" who is doing the hearing and listening.
Managing Director of the Price Lab, Stewart Varner, welcomes Jessica Marie Johnson (Assistant Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University) to the Price Lab Podcast to talk about her work as a Historian and Black Studies scholar. In this episode, Johnson discusses her commitment to black feminist thought, the need for scholars to stay aware of how the general public discusses histories of slavery and ideas about enslaved people on social media, and the ways in which Black Studies has long been interested in harnessing data for social justice.
Katie Rawson (Director of Learning Innovation, Penn Libraries) discusses her journey into the digital humanities, her thoughts on digital tools and resources in pedagogical spaces, and the exciting conceptual possibilities of virtual reality.
Price Lab fellow Julie Napolin interviews scholar, author, and “data visionary” Wendy Chun (Canada 150 Chair in New Media, School of Communication at Simon Fraser University). Chun’s current work on digital media draws from her study of Systems Design Engineering and English Literature. She is the author of several books, most recently, Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media, published by MIT in 2016.
