A tradition with origins in the Song Dynasty (906-1279), the Gengzhi tu were woodblock illustrations of Chinese sericulture and rice agriculture, demonstrating the processes from planting to cultivation through market.
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Alessandro Magnasco painted a series of canvases focusing on trained magpies. This short post looks a little closer at one of them.
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This short guide is primarily targeted to students new to oral history, who might not yet feel comfortable reaching out to strangers, or even friends, for an oral history interview. There are a number of tips in here that will make you more effective in the process of oral history interviews, but much of this information is more broadly applicable to public history practice and community engaged scholarship.
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This tutorial walks you through the process of taking your rectified map from MapWarper and connecting it to your ArcGIS StoryMap.
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Kelly, Jason M. “The COVID-19 Oral History Project and the Ethics of Collecting.” Oral History Association of India (7 March 2021).
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We’ve all heard the saying, “never let a good crisis got to waste.” Sadly, we’re living through a convergence of crises, and the architects of our crises are seizing on the opportunity.
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This presentation examines how new theoretical and methodological approaches in the digital humanities can elucidate our understanding of knowledge networks in eighteenth-century Italy and Britain.
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I’ve put together a set of introductory readings on multimodality and thought that others might find it useful and/or interesting,
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I have designed this module to introduce you to historical network analysis using Gephi. The readings will present some of the general frameworks and theories of social network analysis and historical network analysis, but, I would like to emphasize that 1) they are not comprehensive and 2) they tend to emphasize early modern European networks, which is where my research interests tend to be focused. The Gephi section will provide a working knowledge of Gephi, a popular and (relatively) easy-to-use network analysis program. There are a number of tutorials on the internet, so instead of re-creating the wheel, I am assigning a few of these tutorials.
By the end of this module, you will
Have a general knowledge of the basic theories of Social Network Analysis (SNA).
Understand the limits and opportunities for using network analysis in historical contexts.
Have a working knowledge of Gephi and its feature set.
With thousands of people dying every day, it can be difficult to understand the scale of the COVID-19 tragedy. In the graph below, I try to offer some sense of the scale by comparing the pandemic to several of the major wars fought by U.S. forces over the past two-and-a-half centuries. What we see is devastation on par with the bloodiest wars in U.S. history.
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The attack on the Capitol in Washington D.C. on 6 January 2021 did not come out of nowhere. The showdown was the product of deep historical structures, most notably racism and economic inequity, as well as shorter term forces, contingent upon shifting political contexts. This timeline is an attempt to help make some of these forces more visible. It stretches back eight years--two presidential terms--to consider how the 2010s set the stage for the 6 January 2021 insurrection. A recurring theme in this timeline is the way in which anti-government, militaristic groups have been protected, supported, and cultivated by politicians through policy, public statements, and misinformation. Right wing political leaders have been particularly active in offering explicit and implicit support for ideologies and armed groups whose goals align with their own.
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While my blog posts typically focus on research and teaching, I am currently on vacation through the end of the week. So, I thought that I’d switch things up a bit and drop in a Spotify playlist. Here’s a sample of what I’m listening to right now (hint: it’s all jazz—no surprise, I’m sure, to those who know me). I hope you enjoy!
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The average Democratic state has one senator for every 3 million people. The average Republican state has one senator for every 1.8 million people. In other words, Republican states have roughly 1.6 times more proportional power than Democratic states. Purple states lean closer to the average of Democratic states with one senator for every 2.9 million people.
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I’ve put together a little end-of-the-year reading (and watching and listening) list for you.
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In March 2020, the COVID-19 Oral History Project, based at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), teamed up with A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of COVID-19 (JOTPY), based at Arizona State University to create and curate a series of oral histories focused on the lived experience of the pandemic. Among the results of this collaboration has been a focus on research-based pedagogy and learning for undergraduate students, graduate students, and the public at large. This pedagogical emphasis has both shaped the archive and has been shaped by the process of developing the archive.
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I am currently working on an article about the 1747 election in Worcester, which I’m titling "Corruption, Disenfranchisement, and Political Culture: The Worcester Election of 1747.” Linda Colley once recognized this election as the pinnacle of Tory influence and corruption in the provinces. My article offers Worcester as a case study of political culture at mid-century. In it, I link national politics to local affairs by analyzing the practices of enfranchisement and disenfranchisement as well as the cultural objects generated in response to the election, including poems, prints, porcelain, and architecture.
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As public historians in the 21st century, a digital profile is pretty much par-for-the-course. Not only is it essential for navigating the job market, but keeping your digital profile active and updated will allow you to engage with broader publics and become more effective collaborators and communicators.
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If the City of Carmel is sincere about a more representative and equitable public art program, then it needs to better understand the symbolic and the economic contexts in which public art programs operate—and the ways in which their own program reproduces real and symbolic economic, racial, and gender inequities.
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I am currently working with a few colleagues on a white paper that examines the role of arts and humanities at health science oriented campuses. One of the first topics with which we are concerning ourselves is the role that arts and humanities play on campuses with leading health science and medical schools. Is there, for example, a correlation between top-ranked health science and medical programs and top-ranked arts and humanities programs?
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Supplementary materials and a reading list for my introduction to Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh for the 2020-21 Religion, Spirituality, and the Arts Seminar.
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