November 2016 Archives

"Don’t Stop Reading": Boris Khersonskii’s Digital Poetry and Politics

Wednesday, November 16 from 4:00-6:00pm in the Hall of Graduate Studies, room 221

Anti-Russian sentiments have been almost omnipresent in the new Ukraine since February 2014. Similar discourses occur on multiple levels: in everyday oral communications about the war in Eastern Ukraine, in popular marketing, or in the anti-Russian yet Russian-language comments on the military campaign in Eastern Ukraine that prominent Russophone poets of Ukraine publish on the Internet.

This talk addresses the performative contradiction inherent in a Russian-language-based “Russophobic” discourse. Russian-language poetry from Ukraine seems to be especially suitable for reflecting, investigating, staging or deconstructing the apparent performative contradiction of “Russophone Russophobia.” This staging of performative contradictions will be explored with special reference to the recent work of Odesa poet Boris Khersonskii, who, on his poetic blogs on Facebook and LiveJournal, often ironically stages the performative tension inherent in “Russophobia” expressed in Russian.

The investigation of Khersonskii’s poetic politics also leads to a methodological conclusion about the application of digital methods to born-digital literary material. Both the analysis of Khersonskii’s digital poetry and his own explicit media ethics inform a moderate approach to digital humanities.

All are welcome to attend!

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Dirk Uffelmann is a Professor of Slavic Literatures and Cultures at the University of Passau.

Radical Media and Social Change: A Digital Humanities Workshop with Jessica Marie Johnson

November 29 from 4:00pm-6:00pm in Sterling Memorial Library, room 218

How can technological platforms connect investigations of the past to transformative justice in the present? How might the digital humanities promote intersectional research and tell the stories of marginalized subjects? This hands-on, interactive workshop offers participants the opportunity to explore these questions under the guidance of Jessica Marie Johnson, professor of Africana Studies and History at Johns Hopkins University and an expert in the digital humanities. Drawing upon Professor Johnson’s areas of expertise, we’ll also discuss incorporating digital and social media into one’s teaching, establishing productive collaborations with other scholars, and using digital platforms to facilitate public engagement. Participants are encouraged to bring examples of their own work (DH projects, websites, etc.), as well as questions for Professor Johnson about how to establish a digital presence as an emerging scholar.

Space for the workshop is limited. To register, please visit the YUL Instruction Calendar. Registration is open to Yale students, faculty, and staff.

Co-organizers: Lucy Caplan (African American Studies and American Studies) and Brandi M. Waters (African American Studies and History)
 

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Jessica Marie Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Center for Africana Studies and Department of History at Johns Hopkins University. She is the founder of African Diaspora, Ph.D., a blog highlighting scholarship in the field of Atlantic African Diaspora history, and collaborates with the LatiNegrxs Project, a Tumblr and community interrogating Afrxlatinidad from the lens of transformative justice, and the Queering Slavery Working Group. Johnson is also a contributor and member of the African American Intellectual Society Blog.She tweets as @jmjafrx.

The Berg Fashion Library is now part of the newly-launched Bloomsbury Fashion Central. Search across a selection of books, reference works, and journals covering fashion history around the world, including the ten-volume Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, the anthology Classic and Modern Writings on Fashion, and titles from Berg Publishers (such as The Latin American Fashion Reader, A History of the Paper Pattern Industry, and Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion). Also search over 13,000 images from the Commercial Pattern Archive, museum collections and exhibitions related to fashion.

On November 17, celebrate mapping innovations with the Yale GIS community from 8:30am-6:00pm in Kroon Hall and at the Center for Science and Social Science Information (CSSSI). The full-day celebration — part of the international GIS Day — will include a GIS Colloquium, a Map Exhibition, training and networking opportunities, and a GIS Day Cake Celebration. Learn what is happening and how you can get involved in the geospatial world at Yale. This day includes a luncheon and MapChat Social.

Speakers include: Theodore R. Holford, Ph.D; Susan Dwight Bliss, Professor of Biostatistics and Professor of Statistics; William Rankin Ph.D, Assistant Professor of the History of Science; Meredith Reba, Lab Manager, Seto Lab; Larry Bonneau, Manager, Yale Center for Earth Observation and Research Associate, Dept. of Geology and Geophysics; and C. Dana Tomlin, Ph.D., Professor (Adjunct) of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Please register in advance here, where more details about each event are also available.

Yale GIS Day 2016 is sponsored by the Center for Science and Social Science Information, the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, the Digital Humanities Lab and the Spatial Collective. All members of the Yale community are welcome. 

We were fortunate to host Thomas Shepard last week for his lecture on recording works by Stephen Sondheim. Shepard, a Grammy Award-winning record producer, composer, arranger, orchestrator, and pianist, has produced numerous recordings of Sondheim productions, including Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday In The Park With George, and Side by Side by Sondheim. Before Shepard launched his career, which has included work at Columbia Records, CBS Masterworks, MCA, and RCA Red Seal, he studied composition with Quincy Porter at the Yale School of Music. A new archival collection of Shepard's papers, including recordings and annotated orchestral scores, is available for research at the Gilmore Music Library. A finding aid for the Thomas Z. Shepard Papers is now available online. To make a research appointment to work with the collection, please contact the Gilmore Music Library's Special Collections unit

Digital Humanities & Russian and East European Studies

Saturday, November 12, 10:00am-8:00pm at 451 College Street

Our workshop explores the intersection of Digital Humanities and Russian and East European Studies: research, pedagogy, dissemination, and archive. We invite participants to join us in considering a list of questions and topics of discussion, ranging from the familiar and unavoidable (labor, ethics, access, funding, training, institutional, and interdisciplinary challenges) to the specific (theoretical continuities and disciplinary embeddedness).

All are welcome to attend! This event is open to the public.

10:00am Digital Humanities and East European Studies, Session I

Marijeta Bozovic (Yale University) • David Birnbaum (University of Pittsburgh) • Elise Thorsen (University of Pittsburgh) • Natalia Ermolaev (Princeton University) • Jessie Labov (Central European University)

12:00pm Catered Lunch

2:00pm Digital Humanities and East European Studies, Session II

Molly Brunson (Yale University) • Ann Komaromi (University of Toronto) •
Joan Neuberger (University of Texas, Austin) • Kelly O’Neill (Harvard University)

4:00pm Black Sea Networks

Marta Figlerowicz (Yale University) • Valentina Izmirlieva (Columbia University) • Alex Gil (Columbia University) • Bradley Gorski (Columbia University) • Dennis Tennen (Columbia University)

7:00pm Conference Reception and Dinner

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Co-organizers: Marijeta Bozovic, Carlotta Chenoweth, Catherine DeRose, Nick Kupensky, Jacob Lassin, Ingrid Nordgaard, Masha Shpolberg

A new exhibit at the Yale Divinity Library features religious tracts over the last two hundred years.

Religious tracts dating from the early 1800s to the present document theological and societal issues of their times. The exhibit begins with 19th century tracts published in Connecticut and China and concludes with the controversial tracts written and illustrated in comic book format by Jack T. Chick since the early 1960s. Tracts were produced in many languages and addressed issues ranging from personal salvation to temperance, anti-Catholicism, and evolution.

The exhibit is on view until May 31, 2017. The Yale Divinity Library is located at 409 Prospect Street.

This semester, the Sterling Memorial Library Exhibits Corridor highlights the research of four extraordinary Yale students. Maria Martinez (Trumbull College ‘16), a recent Yale graduate with a degree in Archaeological Studies, explores how new technology can allow archaeologists to create three-dimensional representations of destroyed historical sites.

Martinez’s display focuses on three monuments destroyed by ISIS in 2015. Located in Palmyra, Syria, these buildings were both historically and culturally significant. Using data and models available in the public domain, Martinez created three-dimensional prints of these structures, revealing details lost in two-dimensional images. Martinez’s project extends beyond archaeological interest, however; rather, she views the new field of digital archaeology as a an opportunity to preserve cultural heritage and provide a path for healing. 

Throughout her research process, Martinez has made extensive use of physical artifacts and archaeological books and periodicals available through the Yale Babylonian Collection. She discovered the collection during a search for a specific book. Martinez explained her project to Ulla Kasten, an Associate Curator in the Babylonian Collection, and Kasten offered her a student position in the Collection. Kasten and Agnete Lassen, another Associate Curator, provided significant support and guidance throughout Martinez’s research process.

Martinez’s research is ongoing. Through the Erasmus Mundus program, Martinez will be continuing her studies in digital archaeology and archaeological sciences at the University of Evora in Portugal, the University of Sapienza in Rome, and the University of Aristotle in Thesaloniki. Learn more about Martinez’s research by visiting her display in the SML Exhibition Corridor!