The Library is pleased to announce the appointment of Clare Kirkpatrick Jones as Assistant Editor of Brown University Digital Publications (BUDP). Reporting to Director Allison Levy, Clare’s first day will be July 10, 2023.
Clare joins an innovative and exciting program expanding the frontiers of scholarly publishing. A collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, launched with generous support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, BUDP creates new possibilities for the production and sharing of knowledge for both scholarly audiences and the wider public. Landmark publications includeFurnace and Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1618) with Scholarly Commentary (University of Virginia Press, 2020), recipient of the 2022 Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History awarded by the American Historical Association;Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World (Stanford University Press, 2022), recipient of the 2023 PROSE Award in the category of eProduct awarded by the Association of American Publishers; andA New Vision forIslamic Pasts and Futures (MIT Press, 2022). Thirteen other works are currently in development and represent a broad disciplinary range. BUDP also partners with the MIT Press on a new multimodal book series,On Seeing, committed to centering under-examined questions at the intersection of visual culture and social justice.
As Assistant Editor, Clare will work as part of a multi-skilled team of experts to develop complex born-digital scholarship intended for publication with leading academic presses. She will play a key role in supporting humanities scholars in the creation of new scholarly forms that present research and advance arguments in ways not achievable in a conventional print format, whether through multimedia enhancements or interactive engagement with research materials. Clare will help administer national training workshops such as Born-Digital Scholarly Publishing: Resources and Roadmaps, an NEH Institute on Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities, and will work in close collaboration with the director to support new initiatives and partnerships.
“I am very excited to join the BUDP team,” shared Clare. “I look forward to contributing to this collaborative, creative endeavor that is setting the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age and developing accessible, intentional, and inclusive scholarship.” Clare brings a decade of publishing experience to Brown. In her current role as an Associate Editor at Cornell University Press, she leads the management of the literary studies list as well as the award-winning Cornell Series on Land: New Perspectives on Territory, Development, and Environment. Clare is the recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Program, Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a graduate of Carleton College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the University of Iowa Center for the Book. Clare received the Keats-Shelley Prize for her essay “Bat, Bat, Come Under My Hat.” She holds the degree of Master of Philosophy in Eighteenth Century and Romantic Studies from Queens’ College, Cambridge.
Join the Brown University Library for “Nicholas Brown and the Roman Revolution of 1848-1849,” a Commencement Forum presented by Professor David Kertzer on Saturday, May 27 from 9 – 10 a.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library.
Video recording of Nicholas Brown and the Roman Revolution of 1848 – 1849 with Author David Kertzer
Nicholas Brown and the Roman Revolution of 1848 – 1849
Nicholas Brown and the Roman Revolutionrevolves around a trove of the titular American diplomat’s recently rediscovered correspondence — one of the most important collections of original manuscripts linked to the Roman Revolution found outside of Italy (Brown was U.S. consul when Pope Pius IX fled Rome). The interactive publication permits a deeper understanding of the historical significance of the Nicholas Brown papers, housed at the John Hay Library.
David Kertzer
David Kertzer joined Brown in 1992 as Paul Dupee, Jr., University Professor of Social Science. A Professor of Anthropology and Italian Studies, he was appointed Provost in 2006, serving in that role until 2011. Kertzer founded and directed the Anthropological Demography program. He was also founding director of the Politics, Culture, and Identity research program of the Watson Institute for International Studies.
A Brown alumnus (A.B., 1969), Kertzer received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brandeis University in 1974. He was William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor at Bowdoin College from 1989 to 1992. Kertzer twice won the Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies for the best book in Italian history. Kertzer co-founded and for a decade co-edited the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. He served as president of the Social Science History Association and the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, and co-edited the book series New Perspectives on Anthropological and Social Demography for Cambridge University Press. His book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997 and is published in 17 languages. In 2005 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His book, The Pope and Mussolini, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2015. His most recent book, The Pope at War (2022), tells the story of Pope Pius XII’s relations with Mussolini and Hitler during the Second World War.
About Brown University Digital Publications
Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.
Join David Kertzer, Paul R. Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science, Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies; Allison Levy, Director of Brown University Digital Publications; Massimo Riva, Professor of Italian Studies; and Deidre Lynch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University, for a born-digital book presentation on Tuesday, April 25 from 4 – 5 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library.
Nicholas Brown and the Roman Revolution of 1848 – 1849
Nicholas Brown and the Roman Revolutionrevolves around a trove of the titular American diplomat’s recently rediscovered correspondence—one of the most important collections of original manuscripts linked to the Roman Revolution found outside of Italy (Brown was U.S. consul when Pope Pius IX fled Rome). The interactive publication permits a deeper understanding of the historical significance of the Nicholas Brown papers, housed at the John Hay Library.
David Kertzer
David Kertzer joined Brown in 1992 as Paul Dupee, Jr., University Professor of Social Science. A Professor of Anthropology and Italian Studies, he was appointed Provost in 2006, serving in that role until 2011. Kertzer founded and directed the Anthropological Demography program. He was also founding director of the Politics, Culture, and Identity research program of the Watson Institute for International Studies.
A Brown alumnus (A.B., 1969), Kertzer received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brandeis University in 1974. He was William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor at Bowdoin College from 1989 to 1992. Kertzer twice won the Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies for the best book in Italian history. Kertzer co-founded and for a decade co-edited the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. He served as president of the Social Science History Association and the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, and co-edited the book series New Perspectives on Anthropological and Social Demography for Cambridge University Press. His book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1997 and is published in 17 languages. In 2005 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His book, The Pope and Mussolini, won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2015. His most recent book, The Pope at War (2022), tells the story of Pope Pius XII’s relations with Mussolini and Hitler during the Second World War.
About Brown University Digital Publications
Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.
We are delighted to announce that Tarika Sankar will be joining the Brown University Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS) team as the Digital Humanities Librarian. Her first day is May 15, 2023. She joins us from the University of Miami’s English Department, where she will shortly receive her Ph.D. with a graduate certificate in the Digital Humanities and a graduate concentration in Caribbean Studies. Her hobbies include running, playing with her kitten, and trying boba tea spots. When asked what she’s most excited about in joining CDS, she wrote:
I’m looking forward to learning as much as I can about CDS projects, staff, and everything the Brown Library’s CDS does!
Tarika brings to Brown a wealth of experience in digital humanities, critical race theory, and Caribbean literature. As the Digital Humanities Librarian, she will work in project development, leading a selection of our projects (i.e., managing the intake process, development process, and preservation of the final product), creating digital humanities instructional materials, teaching digital humanities methods to scholars of all levels across the campus (i.e., faculty, graduate students, undergrads, fellow staff, and the public), and working to develop new, sustainable research projects, instructional materials, and curricular offerings in digital methods in the humanities.
As Digital Humanities Librarian, she will also take on a new role in the Library to research and recommend purchases for new books, journals, and/or databases specifically for digital humanities work (such as text and data mining resources). This work includes continuously looking for ways to integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice into digital humanities practice and projects. Welcome, Tarika!
An open letter from the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation (IPLC), consisting of the directors from thirteen libraries including the Brown University Library, was sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in support of the Nelson Memo, which aims to expand equitable access to federally-funded publications and data. The letter also communicates the directors’ concerns about potential journal expense increases for libraries and other stakeholders.
The Congressionally-established (OSTP) and its Senate-confirmed Director provide advice to the U.S. President and the Executive Office of the President and Executive branch on all matters related to science and technology. In August of 2022, current OSTP Director Dr. Alondra Nelson released an important memorandum to the directors of federal agencies funding scientific research and development, now referred to as the “Nelson Memo.”
More agencies to require free access
The memo outlines significant updates to policies that provide public access to federally-funded publications and data to be made by 2025. One of the major directives within the memo that impacts faculty is the expansion of the OSTP’s former public access directive to cover more federal agencies, including those with $100 million or more or $100 million or less in scientific research and development expenditures. These agencies will now be required to develop plans for grantees to make the published results of federally-funded research freely available to the public and manage and share the digital data resulting from that research.
Eliminating 12-month embargo
Another of the memo’s groundbreaking advances that will impact faculty is that final peer-reviewed manuscripts will be required to be made immediately available, ending the historical practice of permitting a 12-month embargo. The 12-month embargo, required by many publishers, delayed the public’s access to the final peer-reviewed manuscripts, allowing their journals one year of being the sole venue to disseminate the article to their subscribers.
Faculty impact
In general, libraries, including the Brown University Library, are very much in support of the public’s free, equitable, and immediate access to federally-funded research. We want to emphasize that the Nelson Memo does notrequire that faculty publish in an open access journal, and it does not require faculty to publish in a journal that requires authors to pay a fee or article processing charge (APC) for immediate access. It is expected that faculty compliance will be facilitated via deposit of final peer-reviewed manuscripts in agencies’ specific public access repositories, such as NIH’s PMC, NSF-PAR, or DOE PAGES, among others.
Concerns about cost
Over the years the increase in the annual costs to the University’s budget for paying for subscriptions to scholarly journals has severely outpaced inflation; today roughly half of the Library’s collection budget is dedicated to the acquisition of journal databases and other resources to support STEM. Thus, there are serious concerns shared by libraries about how publishers might respond and adapt their business models in advance of losing this 12-month embargo, potentially impacting the cost of already expensive subscriptions and limiting and bundling of titles within packages made available to institutions. Libraries also have significant concerns about some publishers’ APC-based publication models and worry that the industry might take advantage of these changes promoted by the Nelson Memo to promote its expansion.
The Library is delighted to announce that Dr. Khanh Vo will be joining the team in the Center for Digital Scholarship as the Digital Humanities Specialist. She comes to Brown from the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute and Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, where she has served as the 2022-23 Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow. She completed her doctorate in American Studies in 2021 at William and Mary. Khanh brings to Brown a wealth of experience in digital humanities, academic teaching, and museums and libraries. When we asked her what excites her about joining CDS, she shared,
“I’m really looking forward to working with students and faculty on their Digital Humanities projects and ideas. It is always exciting to learn about new topics and approaches to research”
In her free time, Khanh enjoys working with her hands by crafting, modeling, and crocheting. She collects (non)recyclable materials (from broken equipment to ramen containers) and recrafts them into 3D models, mostly to give as gifts. Her current projects are a Harry Potter themed tapestry blanket, a Skyrim Breezehome book end, and a miniature replica of Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle.
As the Digital Humanities Specialist, she will work in project development, leading a selection of our projects (i.e., managing the intake process, development process, and preservation of the final product), creating digital humanities instructional materials, teaching digital humanities methods to scholars of all levels across the campus (i.e., faculty, graduate students, undergrads, fellow staff, and the public), and working to develop new, sustainable research projects, instructional materials, and curricular offerings in digital methods in the humanities. This work includes continuously looking for ways to integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice into digital humanities practice and projects. Welcome, Khan!
Presented by the Association of American Publishers, PROSE awards recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing
The Association of American Publishers has named Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World by Professor of Italian Studies Massimo Riva the category winner in eProduct for the 47th Annual PROSE Awards. PROSE awards recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by celebrating the authors, editors, and publishers whose landmark works have made significant advancements in their respective fields of study each year.
Shadow Plays was published in June 2022 by Stanford University Press. The open access book explores popular forms of entertainment used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to transport viewers to a new world, foreshadowing present-day virtual, augmented, and extended reality experiences (VR, AR, and XR). Typically studied as part of the pre-history of cinema or the archaeology of media, analog technologies such as the mondo nuovo or cosmorama, the magic lantern, the moving panorama, and the stereoscope evoked shadow-copies of our world long before the advent of digital technologies and exercised a powerful pull on minds and imaginations. Through six case histories and eight interactive simulations, Professor Riva explores themes of virtual travel, social surveillance, and utopian imagination, shedding light on illustrious or, in some instances, forgotten figures and inventions from Italy’s past.
Questions about Shadow Plays can be addressed to Allison Levy, Director of Brown University Digital Publications ([email protected]).
About Brown University Digital Publications
Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.
Inspired by a “theory to practice” mindset, the event offers four sessions over two days and is designed to reach beyond discourse and criticism of the current data ethics landscape to offer tangible principles, methodologies, and frameworks for participants to experience what more equitable approaches to technology creation feels like in action.
The structure combines lecture presentations and lab activities which ground theories of contextual technology development through curated learning examples and brings to life how embedded assumptions can distort the structures, interpretations, and impacts of data. Examples of learning material may include case studies, real datasets, dataset imaginaries, schema samples, simulated project environment elements, and hypothetical or gamified scenarios.
Sessions Overview
Keynote: Sonia Gipson-Rankin, “The Details are in the Data: Igniting the Catalyst for Transformative Change”
WORKSHOP #1 Lecture: Architectures of Friction and Flattening Immersive Lab: “Les Deliverables”
WORKSHOP #2 Lecture: Data Constituent Engagement Immersive Lab: “Data-Driven Gaslighting”
Registration is REQUIRED for each session and it is recommended to register early. Capacity for the keynote with Sonia Gipson-Rankin and Architectures of Friction and Flattening is capped at 40 in-person and 100 online participants. Capacity for sessions #2, #3, and #4 and “Les Deliverables,” the workshop portion of session #1, are capped at 25 participants, with additional spots which may be made available via waitlist.
Workshops are designed to be modular, and you may register for one session or attend multiple/all sessions. Lecture attendance is mandatory for participation in the associated lab exercise.
No prerequisites are necessary, and we encourage participation from faculty and graduate students from all disciplines. There will be something to learn for everyone, and the workshop structure provides opportunities for multidisciplinary collaborators to be creatively engaged and challenged in different ways.
9:15 – 9:30 a.m. – Welcome and Opening Remarks from Brown (in-person and live streamed)
9:30 – 10:15 a.m. –Keynote: Sonia Gipson-Rankin, “The Details are in the Data: Igniting the Catalyst for Transformative Change” (S#1 Lecture) (in-person and live streamed)
10:15 – 10:45 a.m. – Catherine Nikolovski,Architectures of Friction and Flattening (in person and live streamed)
In this workshop, participants will learn to shift mindsets from data being objective and neutral to recognizing how cultural and environmental factors impact how we perceive information. We will present strategies to bring attention to what is lost in the gap between reality and what can be captured by information structures, in particular, embracing intersectional representation and lived experience.
We invite participants to imagine (and experience) how processes that center equity and impact not only improve industry-standard models, but are intrinsically necessary to break barriers and achieve the next stage of modern innovation.
“Les Deliverables”
An experiential game that simulates the experience of building and trying to successfully deliver an equity-based software product. The scenarios (dramatic, thrilling, and sometimes treacherous) are based on composites of real case studies and projects.
Session #2
Data Constituent Engagement
This session expands on concepts from traditional human-centered design to include the role of “data constituents” and presents examples and case studies which illustrate how inclusive practices are not a marketing or PR strategy, and can measurably inform data structures, validation cycles, and interpretation of analytics.
“Data-Driven Gaslighting”
Focusing on questions of information provenance, the participants will investigate the culture of confidence in data-driven decision-making with special emphasis on elusive ways that confidence may be misplaced when key constituents are left out of the process and the structures of accountability are not properly in place.
Session #3
Beyond Performative Dashboards
In this session, we will deconstruct how data visualizations are a product of decision-making processes influencing what gets prioritized, obscured, or made hyper-visible—with a special emphasis on how cookie-cutter practices and constraints of the genre can perpetuate harmful distortions without proactive awareness.
“Dashboard Glow Up”
Working in teams, participants will get a chance to work with their hands (paper prototyping: craft kits will be provided) to redesign a real open data dashboard, applying the concepts around key metadata from the earlier presentation. Teams will come together at the end to present their changes “before and after” style and share how their decisions impact the narrative and perceptions of the data.
Session #4
Remediating Bias with Contextual Metadata
Datasets can become distorted by misplaced assumptions or biases, and when overlooked they can compound into larger problems—rendering your data unusable or actively inflicting harm to a constituency. Particularly when those assumptions are deeply rooted in a legacy system and amplify race, gender, or historic marginalization factors, action can feel unclear and overwhelming.
In this session, we will present the CIVIC Contextual Metadata schema as a method to uncover and critically assess datasets, demonstrating how it can be applied to annotate datasets, discover bias, and increase the integrity of future use cases.
“Hansel and Gretel Bias”
Participants will work in teams to navigate a series of questions and prompts in order to author inputs for metadata schema fields. Each team will be assigned a specific scenario and related sample data. Following “breadcrumbs,” the teams will go through a guided investigation as the workshop facilitators role-play data custodians, stakeholders, and/or constituents to aid teams in completing all questions.
The Doctoral Certificate Program in Digital Humanities offers an opportunity to currently enrolled Ph.D. students interested in adding expertise in digital methodologies and techniques to their research portfolio.
Brown University Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities are pleased to partner together to offer the doctoral certificate, which will provide students with a foundation in digital methods and skills for their research, as well as an understanding of the broader theoretical questions that digital approaches to scholarship offer. The certificate is aimed at Ph.D. students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences though Ph.D. students from all disciplines are welcome to apply. Visit the Center for Digital Scholarship’s Doctoral Certificate page for complete information including how to apply.
Spring 2023 workshops that count towards the doctoral certificate:
Where: Online via Zoom Instructor: Karen Bouchard, Scholarly Resources Librarian, Art & Architecture Description: This class will focus on the use of copyrighted images in an academic setting, including teaching, presentations, and publication. We will also discuss how to locate Creative Commons and public domain images and how to obtain permission to publish. Attention will be paid to such topics as dissertations and image use, how to track down copyright owners, and how to make judgement calls based on the principle of fair use.
Intro to GIS with QGIS
REGISTER When: Saturday, February 25 at 10:15 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Where: Digital Scholarship Lab, Rockefeller Library Instructor: Frank Donnelly, Head of the GIS and Data Program Description: This day-long, hands-on workshop provides a thorough introduction to geographic information systems (GIS) using the free and open source software QGIS. You will learn how to navigate a GIS interface, perform geographic analyses, and create thematic maps. Participants must bring a laptop and install the software prior to the workshop day. More details.
Recording, Editing, and Publishing Podcasts
REGISTER When: Tuesday, March 28 at 1 – 2:30 p.m. Where: Digital Studio, Rockefeller Library Instructor: Patrick Rashleigh, Head of Digital Scholarship Technology Services Description: Come to the Library’s digital studio to get an introduction to recording, editing, and publishing a podcast in the Library’s own recording room (which you are free to book for your own projects). It’s not hard to get started, and in 90 minutes we’ll get you up and running, even if (ESPECIALLY if) you are a complete beginner.
Wikidata for Digital Humanities
REGISTER When: Wednesday, April 5 at 1 – 2 p.m. Where: Online via Zoom Instructor: Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, Head of Open Metadata Production and Initiatives Description: The Wikidata for Digital Humanities workshop will offer attendees an opportunity to learn about Wikidata — an open platform of structured linked data. This crowdsourced, language-independent knowledge base stores a wide range of subjects and releases its data under an open license, allowing their reuse. The low barrier for interacting with the Wikidata platform makes it a great candidate for linked open data (LOD) representation and facilitates collaboration from the global community of users. This session will provide an overview of Wikidata as well as selected tools and services that can be used to explore, contribute, and export data.
Gathering and Analyzing Social Media Data for Research
REGISTER When: Wednesday, May 3 at 3 p.m. Where: Online via Zoom Instructor: Ashley Champagne, Director of the Center for Digital Scholarship and Lecturer in Humanities Description: This workshop will offer attendees an overview of scraping social media posts on Twitter and Facebook, as well as how to download the information in csv format, clean it, and do basic analysis such as word frequency.
Applying
Please apply to the Digital Humanities Doctoral Certificate Program using UFunds. To access the application, log in to UFunds, and select Doctoral Certificates, then Digital Humanities. Applications are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis throughout the year. (Deadlines in UFunds are administrative: a new application cycle will open as soon as the previous one comes to end.)
The applicant’s home department DGS approval is required. Please note that the program is open only to Ph.D. students currently enrolled at Brown University. For more information, please contact Professor Steven Lubar.
This illustration featured in the poster above is by Khyati Trehan, an Indian graphic designer and 3D visual artist based in New York. As part of Trehan’s “Digital Biology” series, the illustration “uses scaffolding as a metaphor for AI’s quest in unearthing the underlying logic and structure of complex organic matter” (via Unsplash). For more about this image and to see Trehan’s other work, visit Trehan’s page on the Visualising AI website and Trehan’s website.
On March 3 – 4, 2023, History and Theory,partnering with Brown University Library, will bring the contributors to the December 2022 theme issue, “Digital History and Theory: Changing Narratives, Changing Methods, Changing Narrators,” together for an open exchange inspired by their contributions but focused on the ways to make that change happen now. Digital history has provided us with an incredible array of tools for acquiring and processing data, but critical theoretical reflections have been few and widespread imaginative historical innovations are scarce. The tools have changed, and the possibilities have changed, but the discipline of history is in danger of using them to simply replicate its old ways. Of course, in the end, it is not the tools that will lead to a change; it is ideas and imagination.
At #DigitalHT2023, our contributors will reflect on their past work and offer concrete suggestions as to how the digital can change the way we research, write, and teach about the past—that is, the way we do history.
