News and Notes

Digital Audio for Public Historians (3): Microphone Types

We’ve finally gotten to microphones. A quality microphone might be the most important factor in creating a good recording rather than a bad recording.

I have already talked about onboard microphones a bit in the first entry in this series on recording devices. That’s pretty much all I have to say about built-in mics. They’re fine for getting the job done—if content is more important than quality.

For many public history applications, we would much prefer to have great content and a quality recording. To do this, we need good microphones that are set up so that they record what we want them to record and ignore what we want them to ignore.

Digital Audio for Public Historians (2): Mono and Stereo

In this second installment for “Digital Audio for Public Historians,” I want to have a look at one of the basic recording options available on mid-range recorders: the option to have a mono or stereo recording. We will use sample recordings from the 1960s to illustrate a few key principals, including recordings of James Baldwin, The Beach Boys, and The Beatles.

Digital Audio for Public Historians (1): Recording Devices

As we discussed in yesterday’s class, public historians might use audio recordings for a number of different projects: oral histories, podcasts, audio clips for exhibitions, documentaries, among other things.

We were able to play a bit with different recording devices—from smartphones, to computers, to low and and high end voice recorders.

It became obvious very quickly that both the equipment we used and the recording conditions had a huge effect on the quality of our recordings.

Over my next several posts, I am going to review some of the things that we discussed in class as well as go into a little bit more detail about how to use the hardware and software for public history applications.

Today, I want to talk a little bit about recording devices.

Teaching, Public ScholarshipJason KellyFebruary 5, 2020podcasting, audio, multimodal, public history, digital public historyComment

How Podcasting Works

An infographic explaining how podcasts work.

Indiana Invests Less in K-12 Education than Any of Its Neighbors

It may not be coincidental that the same year Indiana ranked #36 in per pupil primary and secondary spending in 2017 it ranked 34 in the percentage of the state population between 24 and 44 with postsecondary degrees.

Blog Posts, EssayJason KellyFebruary 2, 2020education, United States, fundingComment

Some Thoughts about Altering Historical Documents, Governmentality, & the US National Archives (and Michel Foucault)

In effect, the National Archives followed an unwritten, unspoken directive of the state. And, in so doing, they mirrored the politics of the state by presenting an alternative history, undermined public confidence in a governmental institution (in this case, the National Archives itself), and dismissed professional standards to appease the political winds.

Essay, PolicyJason KellyJanuary 19, 2020governmentality, Foucault, archives, exhibition, Women's MarchComment

Field Scan of Exhibitions on the Anthropocene

As part of the publicly engaged research project, Museum of the Anthropocene, this map provides a field scan of exhibitions that attempt to make interventions in our understanding of the concept of the Anthropocene.

Public Scholarship, ResearchJason KellySeptember 24, 2019Museum of the Anthropocene, Anthropocene, art, exhibition, curationComment

I.M. Pei (1917-2019)

Remembering the work of I.M. Pei.

ArchitectureJason KellyMay 16, 2019architecture, Denver, I-M- Pei, modernismComment

Summer Reading: A War and Peace Reading Timeline

A schedule for reading Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace over three months (about 10 pages each day).

Blog PostsJason KellyMay 9, 2019Tolstoy, War and Peace, reading, schedule, timelineComment

Infant Mortality in Indiana

Indiana ranks 43rdfor its infant mortality rate (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). Over the past 5 years in Indiana, an average of 596 babies have died annually, approximately one baby every 14 hours (Indiana State Department of Health, 2017). Twenty-nine of Indiana’s 988 (2.9%) zip codes account for 27% of Indiana’s infant deaths. Major contributors to the persistence of poor birth outcomes in Indiana’s high risk zip codes are racial/ethnic, geographic and socioeconomic disparities in birth outcomes. Clinical interventions alone cannot reduce these disparities because birth outcomes, like overall health, are the product of one’s environment, opportunities and experiences.

Equipping grassroots leaders to be health and social change agents is the first critical step in creating and sustaining a community culture that promotes individual, family and neighborhood health. We train and mentor grassroots maternal and child health leaders (GMCHL) in Indiana zip codes at high risk for infant mortality to help build the capacity of these neighborhoods to foster improved pregnancy and infant development outcomes.

Research, Exhibition, Public ScholarshipJason KellyApril 23, 2019infant mortality, public healthComment

Soft Launch of our IUPUI Public Art Walking Tour Art

For the past year, I have been working with a team of scholars from across the IUPUI Campus to develop a few public art projects. In addition to commissioning two new works of art, we have created a Public Art Walking Tour app. Right now, the app is in beta and focuses exclusively on sculpture on the IUPUI campus. In the next six months, we will be adding architecture and painting to the the app. You can try out the app by clicking here.

Announcements, Public ScholarshipJason KellyApril 19, 2019public art, posterComment

Google Trends Data Shows Increasing Public Interest in the "Anthropocene"

There are numerous indicators that suggest increasing public interest in the Anthropocene—a concept that suggests humanity has transformed the earth to such an extent that we have entered a new biogeophysical age. In this interactive graph, I have pulled data from Google Trends, which shows quantitative evidence of growing interest in the Anthropocene.

Digital Humanities, ResearchJason KellyMarch 25, 2019Anthropocene, infographicComment

John Ruskin on the Tomb of Agostino Sanctucio at the Basilica of Santa Croce

These are a couple photos from the Basilica of S. Croce in Florence that I took while I was there in December. In addition to my Blue Guide, I brought along John Ruskin’s Mornings in Florence, which he published in 1875. Here is his description of the tomb of Agostino Sanctucio, which sits quite neatly with his chapter on the nature of the Gothic from Stones of Venice.

Research, ArtJason KellyFebruary 2, 2019John Ruskin, Gothic, Renaissance, Florence, art historyComment

Aesthetic Categories in the 19th and 20th Centuries: Looking at Neoclassicism, the Renaissance, and the Gothic through Word Frequencies

One of my ongoing projects has been a historiography of the concepts of neoclassicism, the gothic, and the renaissance over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As part of this work, I ran some Google n-grams to chart the emergence of these categories. I don’t think that there is anything surprising in the data, but it’s nevertheless interesting to see it visualized. The first graph looks at the terms “Neoclassical,” “Renaissance,” “Gothic,” and “Arts and Crafts.” The second graph examines four different terms for speaking about the medieval world: “Medieval,” “Middle Ages,” “Gothic,” and “Dark Ages.”

Blog Posts, Digital Humanities, ResearchJason KellyJanuary 31, 2019neoclassicism, gothic, arts and crafts, aesthetics, renaissanceComment

A Multimodal Approach to the Anthropocene

Using An Anthropocene Primer as our case study, this essay is organized into three sections. The first section introduces the primer as a tool that bridges disciplinary boundaries to advance critical and timely sociocultural research examining changing earth systems and the human experience. The second section examines the ways that anthropologists might productively engage with the dominant interdisciplinary debates and metanarratives about the Anthropocene and the role that tools such as the primer might play in this. The final section reflects on how the primer is one model of multimodal pedagogy that answers the needs of formal, informal, traditional, and continuing education in relation to serious play. In part, then, An Anthropocene Primer is one form of anthropological educational practice that might be used to prepare the next generation of researchers and partners with frameworks to pursue ethnography in the Anthropocene that is truly applied, interdisciplinary, and multimodal at the outset.

Research, Teaching, Public ScholarshipJason KellyJanuary 23, 2019Anthropocene, anthropology, open access, peer review, pedagogyComment

The Wrong Question: Is This Higher Education's Golden Age?

In sum, I don't disagree with Brint's data. Rather, I think that his essay unnecessarily rejects valid critiques of the state of higher education. Certainly, by some metrics, the US system of higher education is running on all cylinders. However, this has come at a cost: the increasing commodification of knowledge; cuts in public support and the concurrent rise of private debt; the instrumentalization of public education to serve market demands; and the balooning of the faculty precariat.

Blog Posts, Higher EducationJason KellyJanuary 22, 2019arts, humanities, education, highered, higher education, universityComment

Kennington Common, the Occupy Movement & the Freedom of Assembly (From the Archive)

This essay offers a brief history of the commons and protest through the story of Kennington Common, relating it to contemporary debates over the Occupy Movement and the rights of assembly and protest.

Frankenstein and the Year without a Summer

This year, Indiana Humanities has curated a selection of talks by experts in the sciences and humanities on various themes related to Frankenstein. As one of the individuals on the "Frankenstein Speakers Bureau," I am giving talks on "Frankenstein and the Year without a Summer."