DIL’s Lebanese Migration Project Opens at Museum of History

Mapping Early NC Lebanese HouseholdsThe Digital Innovation Lab has created a new project which opens February 22 at the North Carolina Museum of History as part of the “Cedars in the Pines – The Lebanese in North Carolina: 130 Years of History” exhibit. Mapping Early NC Lebanese Households uses DH Press to visualize Lebanese households in select North Carolina cities from 1900 to 1930, allowing visitors to explore the geography of Lebanese communities and learn more about Lebanese immigrants, their families, and others — such as boarders — with whom they lived. Additional features — including Household Spotlights — delve deeper into the stories of particular families, providing narratives of their experiences as immigrants in North Carolina in the early twentieth century.

Mapping Early NC Lebanese Households was created in collaboration with the Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies at North Carolina State University and RENCI. It is both a website and an interactive digital component of the “Cedar in the Pines” exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History. The exhibit will from from February 22, 2014 through August 31, 2014.

Special thanks to everyone who made this possible, especially:
Stephanie Barnwell, Project Manager
Joe Hope (RENCI), Web Developer
Michael Newton, DH Press Lead Developer
And all of our undergraduate and graduate practicum students who have contributed to the project over the years.

Check out the digital project |  Learn more about the exhibit

Postscript: The project team was on hand for the Opening Reception on Friday, February 21. We had the opportunity to talk to members of the Lebanese-American community, guide them through the project, and help them find their ancestors among the many maps in our project. It was an incredible honor to be included in the evening, and we learned a lot about how to make the project even better.

 

DH Press Recognized in the 2013 DH Awards

I am thrilled to announce that DH Press came in as Second Runner Up in the “Best DH Tool or Suite of Tools” category for the 2013 Digital Humanities Awards. 511 votes were cast in our favor. This public recognition reflects the hard work and dedication of the entire DH Press Team, past and present, without whom the we would not have gotten this far.

DH Press Project Team
Project Manager: Pam Lach
Developers: Joe Hope (RENCI), Michael Newton (DIL/CDHI)
Current Project Team: Stephanie Barnwell
Past Members of Project Team: Jade Davis, Bryan Gaston, Chien-Yi Hou, with contributions from Joe Ryan (ITS Research Computing)
DIL Director: Robert Allen

And a big thanks to our Clients and Partners: Renee Alexander Craft (Communication Studies and DIL/IAH Faculty Fellow), Seth Kotch (Southern Oral History Program), Michelle Robinson (American Studies), Anne Whisnant (History/American Studies), and the Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies at NCSU. Check out their projects!

Look for more good things to come with the upcoming release of DH Press 2.0!

DIL-linked First Year Seminar featured on UNC Homepage

DIL Director Robert C. Allen’s First Year Seminar, AMST 53H: The Family and Social Change in America, was featured on the UNC Homepage this week. This DIL-linked undergraduate course is the first on campus to take advantage of newly-digitized pre-1923 newspapers from the North Carolina Collection, digitized in partnership with Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com.

This offering of the course is the first to fully incorporate the methods and materials of digital history in the teaching of and learning about family history, and the first to use the digital resources developed for genealogical research as a way of documenting and illuminating the experience of other families, particularly those who have lived in North Carolina since the mid-19th century.

Read the full article.

DIL Seeks a Graduate Research Associate

Feb 20 Update: We are no longer accepting applications for this semester, but graduate students interested in working with us in the future may submit a letter of interest and CV/Resume to Lab Manager Pam Lach.


The Digital Innovation Lab (DIL) at UNC-Chapel Hill seeks a graduate student (masters or PhD level) to join our team in the Spring 2014 semester. This individual will work 15 hours per week in the spring semester, and will be expected to continue in the position over the summer (additional summer hours may be possible), and beyond. He/she will contribute to our growing portfolio of public digital humanities projects, including contributing to the ongoing development of DH Press, a WordPress-based digital humanities visualization toolkit.

Anticipated job duties include:

  • Updating and reformatting existing DH Press user documentation
  • Management of ongoing and new DH Press projects
  • Working with and coordinating DIL staff, including
    • Undergraduate student workers
    • Graduate Practicum students

Qualifications

Candidates must be graduate students currently enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Candidates must have experience working in WordPress and a demonstrated interest in digital humanities. Project management experience, as well as a working knowledge of one or several programming languages (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and Ajax, Python) is desired.

Preference for candidates who can commit beyond Summer 2014.

About the DIL

Launched in July 2011, the DIL is a project-focused hub for collaborative, interdisciplinary discovery, experimentation, implementation, and assessment in the use of digital technologies to advance the work of the University in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. The DIL’s work seeks to lower the barriers of access (time, money, and technological) for humanists and cultural heritage organizations to create digital humanities projects. The DIL contributes heavily to the Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI), funded in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

To Apply

Please send cover letter and resume/CV to Pam Lach, Lab Manager. Inquiries should be directed via email to Dr. Lach.

Seeking Applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities

The CDHI is please to announce the availability of a two year post-doctoral position in digital humanities with a concentration in the development of online learning opportunities beginning July 1, 2014. The fellowship is co-hosted by the Digital Innovation Lab and the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education. The fellow will also hold a teaching appointment in an appropriate department of the College of Arts and Sciences.

We seek a scholar with (1) a commitment to further developing his/her own digital humanities research practice through project-based work that extends humanistic scholarship to audiences within and beyond the academy; (2) subject expertise in a humanities discipline reflected by a department or curriculum in the College of Arts and Sciences; (3) desire to apply and develop his/her expertise and research interests as a contributor to the ongoing work of the Digital Innovation Lab in such areas as database creation and management, data visualization, digital mapping, text mining and mark-up, website design, plug-in development, mobile and location-aware applications, and augmented reality; and (4) a commitment to applying his/her research and technological skills and interest to curriculum development and the teaching of digital humanities methods and materials, particularly in an online environment, and for both on-campus and geographically dispersed audiences.

Read a full job description and apply at https://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/35801.

Michael Newton Joins DIL/CDHI as Technology Lead

The Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative and the Digital Innovation Lab are pleased to welcome Michael Newton to our team as the Technology Lead.

Michael Newton comes to digital humanities work with strong qualifications in both information technology and the humanities. Newton graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a B.A. in Computer Science, which he earned while working at a popular computer game company. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Celtic Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and has published extensively in that field. In 2007 he was awarded a Digital Humanities Initiative grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a digital collaboratory for Celtic Studies which was hosted for several years by iBiblio.

As the Technology Lead, Newton will use his experience in information technology and the humanities to provide technological support for a wide range of digital humanities projects. We are thrilled to have him as a member of our team.

CFP: Digital Humanities Curricular Development Grants

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI) is soliciting proposals for digital humanities course development grants to support a new graduate certificate in digital humanities (CDH) and to further the mission of teaching through and about digital developments in humanities courses at UNC. Current funds are geared toward graduate courses that support the CDH, but applicants are encouraged to develop course at mixed, graduate/undergraduate levels as well.

Grants may be used for developing full courses focused on some aspect of the digital humanities or for integrating digital humanities approaches and materials into a course–e.g., as a unit or module. Funds are available for the development of new courses or for revising existing courses. Applicants may apply for up to $6,000 funding. Awards will typically consist of a stipend ($5,000 for full course development, $2,500 for integrating a unit or module). Note that stipends are subject to reductions related to university benefits, taxes, etc. Applicants may request up to an additional $1,000 for professional development pertaining to developing the course. Applicants should include a budget detailing how any requested professional development funds will be used (e.g., for specific workshops or training).

CDHI Curricular grants might be used to:

  • Develop or revise any course focused on activities or topics associated with the digital humanities
  • Extend the reach of digital humanities course offerings beyond campus to non-degree seeking students–e.g., through hybrid or online options or through summer school
  • Explore and implement pedagogical innovation in a course through digital affordances
  • Implement digital activities to facilitate team teaching and/or interdisciplinary exchange
  • Integrate experiential work with digital materials and activities into a course
  • Develop course that explore multiple modalities of digital activities–e.g., the visual, aural, video, performance.
  • Engage the transformative potentials for digital humanities–political, social, cultural, scholarly.

ELIGIBILITY

All tenure track and fixed term faculty at the University who are eligible to teach graduate level courses may apply.

EXPECTATIONS

Award recipients commit to

  •  Create a new or revising an existing course that can be taken for graduate credit
  • Consult with the CDHI Curriculum Committee and Director regarding the development of the course
  • Work as advisors (as appropriate) with course participants pursuing the graduate certificate in digital humanities.
  • Deliver a report to the CDHI Curriculum Committee detailing the course development activities, the disbursement of funds, and the outcomes of the grant-supported efforts during the grant cycle.
  • Obtain Chair’s approval, and agree to offer the course at least three times in the five years following the receipt of the funds, starting with the 2014-15 academic year.

 APPLYING

Submit a current cv and proposal of no more than two pages to Stephanie Barnwell (stephanie.barnwell@unc.edu) with a copy sent to (iamdan@unc.edu) no later than 11:59 PM on December 6th.

For questions related to the proposal process, contact Daniel Anderson (iamdan@unc.edu)

Announcing a New Faculty Learning Community in Digital Humanities

The Digital Innovation Lab and the Center for Faculty Excellence are proud to announce a new opportunity for UNC faculty: The Faculty Learning Community in Digital Humanities (DH FLC).

The DH FLC is intended for faculty who are interested in incorporating digital technologies and approaches into their humanities teaching and research. Over the course of about 12 months, the DH FLC will learn together and from one another about digital humanities approaches and methodologies, study exemplar projects, and be exposed to a range of open-source tools for creating digital humanities projects. Participants will apply what they learn toward developing a digital humanities project to be used for hands-on, undergraduate learning.

The DH FLC will be comprised of an interdisciplinary and diverse group of participants representing a broad range and extent of DH knowledge and experience. Faculty with little/no technical knowledge are equally encouraged to apply as those with DH experience. There are no technical or experiential prerequisites for joining the DH FLC beyond an interest and curiosity in DH teaching and research. Faculty at all ranks (tenure, tenure-track, fixed-term, adjunct, research or clinical rank, lecturers, or instructors) are invited to apply.

The DH FLC is part of the Curricular Innovation and Professional Development program of the Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI), an effort supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a sustainable and scalable model of digital humanities at UNC.

Learn more about the DH FLC and how to apply. Applications are due Monday, January 6, 2014. Questions should be directed to DIL Manager Pam Lach.

Graduate Student Digital History Project Featured

Lorraine Ahearn, a Journalism PhD student who took the DIL’s AMST 890: Digital Humanities/Digital History: Recovering and Representing the Past (Fall 2011), is featured in the most recent issue of Endeavors Magazine for her work on Windows to the Past, a digital history project about downtown Greensboro.

The project was built with a group of public history graduate students at The University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Lorraine and a classmate worked on building a web-based walking tour of Greensboro history using our Main Street, Carolina platform. You can see the project here.

Lorraine was recently awarded a Graduate Education Advancement Board Impact Award for her work on the project.

Read more about Lorraine.

 

 

DH Press and the Long Women’s Movement Attract Attention

Since the official launch of “Mapping the Long Women’s Movement,” DH Press has begun attracting attention in the media, which is attracting more users. This blog post will serve as a running list of the ongoing news coverage.

  • For starters, WUNC posted a short piece about the project on their website (21 August 2013).
  • UNC’s University Gazette featured our work in their 21 August issue, as well. Read the full story.
  • UNC’s School of Information and Library Science published a nice piece on August 26.

Look for more to come soon!