Calling all BMC bloggers!

Hey everyone!

I am hoping to start a blog next fall to discuss new media/ digital events on Bryn Mawr’s campus. It would be helpful to start a working group of sorts to see who’s interested (especially underclasswomen!) .

So on Wednesday, April 28th at 4pm, there will be a gathering in Lusty for anyone who’s interest is sparked. I’ll provide some delicious snacks, and it will be pretty low-key.

However to generate discussion, there will be an awesome mini-task!

instructions:
1.) read the Digital Humanities Manifesto: http://manifesto.humanities.ucla.edu/2009/05/29/the-digital-humanities-manifesto-20/
2.) find something on campus that represents new media or the new type of thinking about intellectual work that the manifesto asks us to do  and snap a picture.
3.) send me (jrajchel@brynmawr.edu) a jpeg file with anything from a word to a paragraph to describe/explicate on the picture by April 22nd. I’ll compose a blog post of these pictures. If you want your name or a screen name included with picture great! If not, I’ll title them “submission 1, 2, etc”
4.) check out the blog & head over to lusty!

I look forward to hearing and seeing all the creativity!
Feel free to email me with any questions!

Happy hunting,
Jen

re: Review Texts Without Context

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html?ref=books

Just a few, quick thoughts.  Any responses?

Above I’ve posted a link to Michiko Kakutni’s book review for the New York Times, “Texts Without Contexts.” The conceit of the article is a multiple book review of books concerning digital media. What I find particularly intriguing is that books are still being used as a forum to discuss digital media. One of the most provocative inquires for me in digital media is how do we define context? On the web, we are given free reign to explore context. And yet, books remain the media through which context gains legitimacy.

In order for us to regard a study  of digital media as legitimate must a publisher and a review for the New York Times sanction it first?  At the same time, if these investigations claim that  digital media revolutionizes media and writing, how much can they assert if they still seek to be published in a book?

The article questions how fragmentation is distorting our appreciation of context and the full experience of text, play et cetera.  Although citing deconstruction as a literary movement that is almost the mother of our fascination with (de)/(re) contextualizing, what about intertextuality?

Especially working with Moore and her use of citations,  I question: don’t literary citations in poems/works  create  a network of intertextuality that also has a fascination with fragmentation? For example, in the “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S. Eliot plays with multiple texts including The Inferno and Hamlet. ( http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html). Aren’t the urges to (re)framing authority and previous art forms inherent in the nature of art/ creation?

Let us go then, you and I, to (re)mix!

manifesto(tos), oh my!

Thursday , I was really fortunate to visit the Genre class.  The class is really thinking about what it means to classify writing as a particular genre. One of the really great features of the class is the scribe/summary facet. Two students are assigned to post their notes from the class and all of the students are assigned screen names.

Here are the two summaries from the class:
summary 1: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/6468‘
summary 2: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/6418

Through our discussion about the Digital Humanities Manifesto, I began to revisit topics I hadn’t thought about in awhile as well as new questions. I began to think about the language of the Manifesto which I hadn’t done in awhile. The language is what drew me to it in the first place. It challenged me to think about provocative declarations as part of academic writing: “The genre here is all M’s: mix :: match :: mash :: manifest” (paragraph 2 of the Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0).

Do I think writing like this belongs in academia? Yes, I do. I think that like all writing form should fit content. One student in class remarked that the writing of the  Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0  was more interesting and more accessible, but this composition did not lower the intellectual work the manifesto does.

We also discussed authority and authorship. One student thought that Manifesto was written by a graduate student, and I can’t help but acknowledge my own bias to give more authority to the writing of a professor over as student. It is actually co-written by two professors, but to remain true the spirit of the venture, the revision is multi-authored, as it is revised through the comments and annotations of its readers/participants. The question then becomes is the Manifesto asking us as readers to separate content from context?

What are the benefits and limitations of recreating the standards so that rather than entering a text knowing that the demarcations of text of as good or bad have been pre-established, we must take each text into account for what is and what is does?

Perhaps then part of what the Digital Humanities is allowing readers to do by moving to new media,  is challenging readers to question the very basic elements of our reading processes, and how these  elements function/ no longer function.

I’d really love to hear your thoughts.
Also, a huge thanks to the Genre class for allowing me the opportunity to discuss the Manifesto (tos) with them and keeping open minds!

Until next time,
Jen

Moore blogging!

Me reading Becoming Marianne Moore by Robin Schulze

Me reading Becoming Marianne Moore by Robin Schulze

I realize that I’ve been neglecting the blog big time! I think I was a bit intimidated about mixing my blog voice and my thesis. Luckily, I have been been reading Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s blog
http://www.plannedobsolescence.net She’s a professor at Pomona College in CA. Basically, she’s awesome  and doing a lot in the digital humanities.
So I am committed to getting back on the blog bandwagon.
On the agenda:
1.) an update on my Special Collections digging and the secret Bryn Mawr ceremony I uncovered!
2.) On Thursday, I am lucky enough to sit in on Anne Dalke’s genre class, and we are going to discuss The Digital Humanities Manifesto (1.0 and 2.0–if you haven’t checked these out, do so immediately:
(1.0–the original):http://manifesto.humanities.ucla.edu/2008/12/15/digital-humanities-manifesto/
and here is the revision (2.0) http://manifesto.humanities.ucla.edu/2009/05/29/the-digital-humanities-manifesto-20/

Hopefully, I can post some of our awesome discussion and the link to their class blog!

If you have any comments/ questions on the links I posted; comment, comment, comment!

Would Marianne Moore be a good blogger?

I have been accused of substituting appreciation  for criticism , and justly…”
–Marianne Moore “Subject, Predicate, Object”

As I think about the project at hand, I can’t help but wonder if Marianne Moore would have been a good blogger?  For that matter, what would she have thought of  blogs in the first place? My immediate reaction is she would have hated them. But I think that this gut reaction is completely wrong. I think, however, this is symptomatic of mixing new technology with someone considered a canonical poet.

But Moore was not a traditionalist. She developed her own form and collaged with words/sources. I think Moore would have dominated the blogging scene. She was a master at creating identities, and her tags would have ranged from Renaissance poets to Dodgers fanfare to shopping catalogues. Moore understood the concept of (de)contextualizing material in order to both evaluate its content, appreciate its sentiment, and force the reader to question, to communicate.

Perhaps, what I find most intriguing and most relevant as I embark on this blog journey is her ability to be both a presence and an absence. Moore’s poetry articulates a point intimately, intriguingly  but through a voice that is not confessional. Blogs are a hybrid of private and public communication. The struggle is defining a voice for a blog that is personal but still focused on an intellectual project.

Judging from her poetry and essays, Moore would have had no problem.

What author/poet do you think would be the best blogger?