• Uncategorized

    CFP: Contesting Boundaries in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland

    Session proposal for the Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies Saint Louis University (St. Louis, MO) June 20-22, 2022 Frontiers, borderlands, contact zones – medieval Ireland is often conceived in terms of the countless borders by which it was demarcated. Some of those borders were physical, from the geographic boundaries that mirrored both the natural and political landscapes to the military frontiers along which the limits of royal authority were contested. Others reflected ideological boundaries, like the ethnic categories that functioned as mechanisms of legal difference. When represented on the map (and sometimes in scholarship), these boundaries appear rigid and impervious. Yet textual evidence, material culture, and the landscape itself…

  • Digital Humanities

    Digital Humanities Sessions @ Kzoo 2021

    If you’re a digital humanist attending Kalamazoo 2021 (affectionately – or not – referred to as Kalamazoom), here’s a list of sessions that address DH or DH-adjacent topics. Shameless plug: You should definitely join us on Thursday for a roundtable on “The Digital Middle Ages in Ireland and Beyond”! This is not necessarily an exhaustive list. I compiled it by searching the program for the terms “digital,” “virtual,” and “data.” Feel free to comment or tweet any others that I may have missed! All times in EDT (as given in the program) Monday 9:00 AM Environments of Change: Late Medieval Landscapes, Communities, and Health Monday 11:00 AM Fragments and the…

  • Teaching

    Text Analysis for History Classes with Voyant

    The interdisciplinarity of digital humanities is one of the field’s greatest strengths – that’s a truism, but of course it’s also a truth. DH tools help us capitalize on that interdisciplinarity even in our own field-specific, core courses. It’s nothing new to incorporate cultural products like poetry into a history class. Poems, songs, paintings – all of these make for engaging and perceptive primary source discussions and help students think not just about events but about ideologies, values, uses of the past and visions of the future. Digital tools can help us change our gaze slightly and read those primary sources through a slightly different lens. One of my favorite…

  • Teaching

    Family History Photo Analysis in Recogito

    As the spring semester comes to a close, it feels a little early to start looking to the next syllabus. First and foremost, this is a moment to breathe. But I’m a perennial class prep procrastinator, so I find it useful to start thinking now (and more importantly, write down my thoughts). I also find this late spring-early summer to be full of possibilities rather than constraints. With fall still far off in the distance, this is the time I feel free to dabble in things and explore new possibilities. So periodically over the course of the summer, I’ll write up some simple DH and DH-adjacent activities and assignments I’ve…

  • Family History

    Search and rescue

    My parents and I recently went on a salvage mission. My family lived abroad for much of my childhood, and as a result, many of the family heirlooms had been scattered among various relatives. We’ve slowly been reacquiring the things we’d stored with relatives when we left (for what my parents imagined would be a brief 3-year sting abroad) and accruing new bits and pieces as relatives retire and divest themselves of ancestral clutter. I use the word heirloom extremely loosely. The unfortunate truth is that much of this stuff is clutter at best. (I learned that lesson a few years ago when I helped clear out a storage unit…