Networked Humanities: From Within and Without the University

A Digital Humanities Symposium

February 15-16, 2013

The University of Kentucky

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Program

Keynote Speakers:
Kathleen Stewart, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas

Malcolm McCullough, Professor of Architecture, University of Michigan

Of all the topics of interest to the digital humanities, the network has received little attention among digital humanities proponents.  Yet, we live in a networked society: texts, sound, ideas, people, movements, consumerism, protest movements, politics, entertainment, academia, and other items circulate in networks that come together and break apart at various moments. While there exist networked spaces of interaction for digital humanities work – such as HASTAC or specific university centers -  we still must consider how networks affect traditional and future goals of humanities work. Have the humanities sufficiently addressed the ways their work, as networks, affect other networks, within and outside of the humanities? What might be a networked digital humanities or what is it currently if it does, indeed, exist? Can an understanding of the humanities as a series of networks affect – positively or negatively - the ways the public perceive its research, pedagogy, and mission?

The University of Kentucky’s Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Program invites proposals for a two day symposium devoted to discussion of the implications of a networked digital humanities. The symposium will bring together academic and professional audiences in order to rethink the taxonomy of humanities so that we emerge with a network of people and ideas beyond the traditional taxonomy of “humanities” work. Thus, talks will not be limited to traditional humanities areas of study. 

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

·      Public humanities work

·      Networks among disciplines

·      Ecologies

·      Animal and human networks

·      Online spaces

·      Mapping/Geography

·      Economics and the humanities

·      Labor and the humanities

·      Digital production of texts

·      Community work

·      Workplace organization

·      The university as network

·      Archives and Obsolescence

February 15-16, 2013

Panels, roundtables, performative pieces, and alternative forms of delivery are welcome and encouraged.

No registration fee to attend or present. Please send 250 word proposals to  Jeff Rice j.rice@uky.edu  by September 1, 2012.

GWS Research Matters Series presents:

Melissa Stein

"Bodies of Knowledge:  Historical Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Biological Determinism"

A talk by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Professor of Media Studies, Ponoma College and Director of Scholarly Communication, Modern Language Association. What if the academic monograph is a dying form? If scholarly communication is to have a future, it's clear that it lies online, and yet the most significant obstacles to such a transformation are not technological, but instead social and institutional. How must the academy and the scholars that comprise it change their ways of thinking in order for digital scholarly publishing to become a viable alternative to the university press book? This talk will explore some of those changes and their implications for our lives as scholars and our work within universities.

Baker is the well known biographer of Mary Todd Lincoln, and her eight other books include her collective biography of five feminists and suffragists American Sisters.

Deborah Weiner, director of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, will give a public lecture on “Insiders and Outsiders:  Jewish Communities in the Appalachian Coalfields”.  Sponsored by the UK Jewish Studies program, UK Appalachian Studies program and Appalachian Center.  Free and open to the public.  Reception following the lecture at W T Young Library Gallery