Digital Humanities Showcase: Call for Proposals

Submit by December 6, 2013
Showcase on January 29, 2014

In recent years, the interdisciplinary field of digital humanities (DH) has emerged as one of the most exciting new approaches to research, teaching, and public outreach in the humanities. The digital humanities aim to bring humanistic inquiry and digital technologies together, organizing new modes of archival research, developing computer-aided methodologies for answering humanistic questions, curating digitized archives of all kinds, bringing digital platforms into the classroom in creative ways, and engaging critically with the culture of new media.

In order to celebrate the range of DH scholarship already underway at Rutgers, and to promote collaboration among those who are interested in the digital humanities, the Rutgers Digital Humanities Initiative invites contributions to a Digital Humanities Showcase, to be held at the Alexander Library on Wednesday, January 29, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. (followed by a reception).

Rutgers faculty, staff, and graduate students are encouraged to propose short talks presenting work that brings together humanistic inquiry and digital technology. This showcase is based on the broadest possible definition of digital humanities.

Possible rubrics for projects include:

  • digital mediation of humanists’ scholarship (e.g. projects with websites, databases, or apps)
  • digitization of cultural archives
  • development of digitally-based tools or techniques
  • innovations in scholarly communication
  • digital pedagogies in the humanities
  • computational methodologies
  • explorations of legal issues in digital reproduction, fair use, and “piracy”
  • analyses of the role of the digital in humanities teaching or scholarship today
  • the humanities and social media (in the classroom, among researchers, in public)
  • … which is to say, anything drawing substantive connections between humanistic questions and digital platforms

Proposed talks can be in one of the following formats:

  • Medium-length (12 minutes)
  • Short (7 minutes)
  • Very short (3 minutes)

The showcase will also feature spontaneous “flash sessions” open to everyone who wishes to contribute to the discussion of broad themes such as “The tool I can’t live without” or “My dream digital humanities project.”

Please submit proposals by December 6, 2013. Proposals should describe the presentation in no more than 100 words, list participants and their affiliations, and designate the optimum length of the proposed talk (medium, short, or very short).

Send proposals by e-mail to Vishal Kamath at