conferences
Deep LA Conference at The Huntington
I’ll be presenting a paper at the “Deep L.A.” graduate history conference taking place at The Huntington on October 3rd.
The conference is sponsored by UCLA and USC, with a focus on Los Angeles and Southern California regional history: http://lahistoryconference.tumblr.com
I’m presenting a portion of a chapter in my dissertation, which focuses on mainframes, paperwork, and the electrical utility company Southern California Edison during the postwar era.
(Revised and republished March 28th, 2025)
Digital Imaginaries at AoIR
Something tells me I should have applied to the Association of Internet Researchers annual conference this year – the theme is “Digital Imaginaries.” The CFP has already passed, but the conference itself is coming up in late October, 21–24th, in Phoenix, Arizona. http://aoir.org/ir16/
The 16th annual Internet Research conference will provide an opportunity to question the ways that networked technologies are imagined and enter into collective imaginaries. In what ways do we culturally apprehend and make sense of digital media? These imaginaries influence our actual and potential uses of technology, as well as how we constrain, encourage, and dream about those uses.
(Revised and republished March 29th, 2025)
I’ll See You Online: Teaching Assistants, Google Hangouts, and the Online Classroom
This paper was presented at the Cultural Studies Association annual conference in Riverside, CA in May of 2015.
When asked to be a teaching assistant for a fully online class at UC Riverside, my initial response was “of course…but what do I do?” The transition for teaching assistants into the digital world is an often overlooked aspect of online education, with little attention paid to issues of digital preparation, social media training, shifting labor demands, and digital pedagogy. In the physical classroom, teaching assistants play a vital role by grading papers, leading discussion sections, and most importantly, interacting with students. In the virtual classroom, however, TAs can easily become readers or aides that only grade papers and have little connection with students, or even the professor. In order to remedy this situation, in three online courses over the last two years in which I was a TA, the video conferencing service Google Hangouts was used for synchronous class discussions.
Project poster and talk last October
Last October I gave a “brown bag” talk (Wayback Machine link) over lunch in the History Department Library at the University of California, Riverside. I spoke for about 40 minutes and gave a wide overview of my project, using images and video clips to help illustrate my research. It was a great turnout of both professors and graduate students, and I received some terrific feedback that I was able to use for future talks.
At the top is the poster I created for the talk at UCR, and the images come from a variety of primary source materials. The inspiration for the color scheme comes the brochure cover just above, which is featured in the online exhibit, “Selling the Computer Revolution,” at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.
The brochure is for an IBM 705 EDPM (Electronic Data Processing Machine), a mainframe computer produced in the mid 1950s. Mainframes like the IBM 705 were powerful workhorses in the business world during the postwar era, handling payroll for thousands of employees. The brochure’s cover features a computer processing unit at the center, with punched cards and magnetic tape for data storage.
(Revised and republished April 6th, 2025)
Cultural Studies Association - Critical DH Roundtable call for participants
Critical Digital Humanities is putting together a roundtable for this year’s Cultural Studies Association. The conference will be held from May 21-24, 2015 in Riverside, California at the Riverside Convention Center. This year’s theme is Another University Is Possible: Praxis, Activism, and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy. In keeping with this year’s theme, we would like to explore the question “What does critical digital humanities look like?” The goal of this roundtable is to open a dialogue about critical approaches to digital humanities. Each participant will give a brief 5-7 minute provocation followed by a discussion.
Some topics for consideration, but not limitation:
- critical approaches to digital pedagogy, big data projects, data visualization, and digital scholarship
- specific campus initiatives, classes or programs that fall under the category of “critical digital humanities”
- limitations of critical digital humanities
- theory vs. practice in DH
- cultural studies and DH
- public scholarship, public humanities, and public history
Building off of the terrific energy from THATCamp, we would like to invite the DHSoCal community to consider having a role in this conversation! If you are interested, please contact http://cdh.ucr.edu/ and let us know what you are interested in discussing by Dec 1, 2014.
(Revised and republished April 23rd, 2025)
THATCamp DHSoCal
THATCamp DHSoCal: Diving into Digital Humanities
October 24th and 25th, 2014
San Diego State University
THATCamp is “The Humanities and Technology Camp,” and it is an “un-conference” meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot.
THATCamp DHSoCal: Diving into Digital Humanities will be held at San Diego State University, but it is organized through a unique digital humanities-style collaboration between 4 regional institutions: San Diego State University (SDSU), University of California at San Diego (UCSD), California State University at San Marcos (CSUSM), and University of San Diego (USD).
Visit http://dhsocal2014.thatcamp.org/ for more information and to register online. It is free and open to the public.
The spirit is inclusive, so, please send this email far and wide—to anyone (colleagues, students, friends) interested in learning about the digital humanities, getting involved in regional collaborations, and geeking out on the intersection between traditional humanities and digital technologies.
Join us to dive into the digital humanities!
More information on the DHSoCal digital humanities group can be found at: http://dhsocal.blogspot.com
(Revised and republished April 19th, 2025)
Presenting in Seattle
I just returned from a history conference in Seattle. It was the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (Wayback Machine link). It was a great conference, well run, and very friendly.
I presented, "Processing the Suburbs: Gender, Technology, and Paperwork in Postwar America." At the heart of the paper is the need to provide a historical component to the Digital Humanities, and to better understand the historical foundations of modern digital culture.
(Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)
Remember The Conference
I'm in San Antonio, Texas, today (right down the street from ) to present a paper at the PCA/ACA conference. It's a joint conference of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association: pcaaca.org My paper is on the history of modern consumer culture and digital technology.
(Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)