Author Archives: Will Bosley

DIL recognized by UNC College of Arts & Sciences

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Digital archive captures mill town’s heyday

When Gastonia’s iconic Loray/Firestone mill was being redeveloped, UNC’s Digital Innovation Lab was on hand to help preserve and present the history of the mill and the people associated with it.  Digital Loray is the largest digital humanities project ever undertaken by the University, and comprises a digital and site-based public history project that documents and interprets the complex history of the mill and the surrounding village.

Video by Kristen Chavez ’13

WE APOLOGIZE, BUT DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, WE ARE TEMPORARILY UNABLE TO POST THE ACCOMPANYING VIDEO.

PLEASE GO TO THE ORIGINAL POST TO SEE THE VIDEO.

See the original post HERE.

2016 DIL/IAH Faculty Fellowships: Accepting Applications through September 30

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Part of the Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative the DIL/IAH Faculty Fellowships support UNC faculty who are interested in developing digital approaches as a significant dimension of their academic practice in the humanities; putting into practice digital methods related to the arts and performance; exploring how data and data studies are transforming intellectual work in the arts and humanities; pursuing an interdisciplinary, collaborative digital humanities project arising from their research, pedagogy, or engaged scholarship that is likely to be of interest to users beyond academic specialists and which raises larger social, historical, literary, or artistic issues; reflecting upon and discussing with colleagues the implications of digital humanities for their own academic practice; and applying what they have learned as DIL/IAH Faculty Fellows to their graduate and/or undergraduate teaching and mentoring.

Applications are due Wednesday, September 30, 2015. Please review the 2016 Guidelinesthoroughly. Apply online at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities website.

Applicants are strongly advised to attend an information session/workshop on either Tuesday, August 25, 3:30-5pm or Wednesday, September 2, 3:30-5pm in the Digital Innovation Lab (Greenlaw 431). If you have any questions, please contact Malina Chavez, CDHI Programs Coordinator.

“Seeing Ourselves”: New DH Press Prototype

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The challenge for first-year American Studies PHD student and DIL graduate associate Charlotte Fryar: build a prototype interface in DH Press for interacting with historical film footage that could be used online and on touchscreen tablets.  Oh, and can you do it in six weeks while you’re assisting for an undergraduate class, working on other lab projects, and taking a full load of classes?

The specs: display, index, and geo-tag identified individuals, places, and events from a film shot in 1942; locate them on interactive map (include contemporary street views); and create a space for streamed audio and transcripts of comments about and memories of the film and the people/places/events it depicts.

The answer: a resounding “yes, I can!”  Here is what she (working under the guidance of Michael Newton and with the latest version of DH Press) came up with.

The film chosen for this use-case is H. Lee Waters’s “Gastonia, 1942,” preserved and shared on YouTube by the Duke University Special Collections Library.  Charlotte used two brief scenes from the film as test content: a shift change at the mill, and workers and their families gathering at the neighborhood movie theater, the Carolina, where they would be able to “see themselves as others saw them” a few weeks later.

The prototype will be further developed this summer in conjunction with the DIL’s Digital Loray project and the Loray Mill’s planned history center.  “Seeing Ourselves” also grows out of discussions with UNC Folklore grad, Martin Johnson (Catholic University) about developing tools to reveal the remarkable work of the hundreds of local and itinerant filmmakers in the US and around the world.

Charlotte’s prototype also points to many other materials and use-cases that could take advantage of these features of DH Press: oral history, folklore, and ethnographic interviews;  home movies; and family history come to mind immediately–and to other settings in which DH Press can be deployed: historic sites, museums, K-12 learning units, college-level classes, online learning. 

“Seeing Ourselves” debuted as a part of Robert Allen’s presentation at the Arclight Symposium on the application of digital technologies to cinema and media history at Concordia University in Montreal the week of May 11th.

Congratulations, Charlotte!