New Work in Digital Humanities

This episode is a recording of a short paper presented by Kim and Saronik in the panel “Literary Criticism: New Platforms” organized by Anna Kornbluh at the 2023 Convention of the Modern Language Association. In the paper, they reflect on the nature of the voice in the humanities and the role of the humanities podcast inside and outside institutions. Image: © 2023 Saronik Bosu Learn more about you...

"The Partially Examined Life" is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it." In this interview, I chat with PEL host, Wes Alwan, about creating one of the longest-running philosophy podcasts. Wes discusses the personal value he's gotten from participating in publically-available debates and discussions. We also talk a...

What is the feeling of archival kismet? And how can we reimagine the format of academic conferences to better support scholars? This episode explores: The complex feelings of finding unexpected things in an archive. Why using conference presentations as openings for scholarly conversations is important. How Dr. Thompson founded an online conference during the pandemic, and her future plans for Arc...

Why is the internet making us so unhappy? Why is it in capital’s interests to cultivate populations that are depressed and desperate rather than driven by the same irrational exuberance that moves money? Sadness is now a design problem. The highs and lows of melancholy are coded into social media platforms. After all the clicking, browsing, swiping and liking, all we are left with is the flat and...

A close reading of Wikipedia's article on the Egyptian Revolution reveals the complexity inherent in establishing the facts of events as they occur and are relayed to audiences near and far. Wikipedia bills itself as an encyclopedia built on neutrality, authority, and crowd-sourced consensus. Platforms like Google and digital assistants like Siri distribute Wikipedia's facts widely, further burnis...

In this interview, Mel Rosenberg discusses his love for children's literature, what makes for a memorable picture book, and the company he created, Ourboox. Ourboox is a free site that allows people to create online flipbooks and picture books. Mel's collection is available here.  Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's...

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Grant Faulkner. We discuss National Novel Writing Month, of which Grant is the executive director, 100 Word Story, of which Grant is a practitioner and editor, and Grant's book of short stories All the Comfort Sin Can Provide (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Here's a bit about the book, a book I highly recommend you buy and read. "With raw, lyrical ferocity, All...

In 2020, during the nadir of the pandemic, Annie Rauwerda began posting strange, humorous, and obscure Wikipedia entries on social media. She dubbed her project Depths of Wikipedia, and after several hundred posts on Instagram and Twitter, she began to amass a following of fellow Wikipedians. More than two years later, Depths of Wikipedia has more than one million followers and a touring live come...

Laureline Latour founded Women In Art Magazine in July 2022 from a desire to bring together artists from different countries. She studied German and Russian ab initio at Oxford University. Women In Art Magazine's teams are based between Oxford, London, Paris and beyond. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Working with a group of over fifty students at the Little Wound School in Kyle, South Dakota, Mark Hetzel collected countless hours of oral history interviews with Oglala Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Mark and his students then turned those interviews into a 7-part audio series that attempts to piece together the long and complicated story of the Lakota oyate, or nation, thro...

Saronik Bosu talks about humanities work engaging diverse communities and publics, misconceptions about what the ‘public’ in public humanities might mean as well as the recent attention paid to it by academic departments. In a longer version of the conversation, some individual instances of various digital humanities and archival projects are discussed. Here he speaks mainly from the perspective o...

Aufhebunga Bunga is the global politics podcast at the End of the End of History. In this episode, Alex Hochuli, George Hoare, and Philip Cunliffe talk about their work as academics and political commentators. Their podcast, also known as Bunga Cast, is a funny and fascinating examination of populist and illiberal developments around the world. Alex Hochuli  George Hoare Philip Cunliffe Caleb Zaka...

A conversation with Michael Fiden about University of Texas at Austin’s new open access online resource for second-year Sanskrit students, either for self-study or as a supplement to instruction. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more abo...

With Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories (Amsterdam UP, 2022), Orli Fridman traces the emergence of memory activism in the aftermath of conflict and war, with a focus on Serbia after the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. The study offers in-depth accounts of memory activism both on-site and online, analysing the evolution of this practice in the context of generationa...

Rebel Book Club is an online and in-person book club. Each month, over 1,000 people get together to discuss a non-fiction book, occasionally with the author as a participant.  For new members, use code: REBELREADER Ben Keene is an entrepreneur, author, and food journalist. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...

Raj Balkaran speaks with Jacqui Hargreaves & Ruth Westoby about SOAS’ exciting new online learning platform: Yoga Studies Online. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show...

Let’s face it. It’s tough to talk about some things. Even things that are really important… like the individuals and institutions running the world in the shadows. Nothing will ruin a Thanksgiving faster than bringing up Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to the inner circles of power or running through some of the bizarre circumstances around the assassination of JFK. Talk like that and you’ll get wri...

Is there a strategy to communicating your research online? This episode explores: What an academic communications strategist does. Why having a strategy to your online presence is important. Common misperceptions about communicating online. Lessons learned from an academic communications strategist. The benefits and challenges to being an academic entrepreneur. Our guest is: Jennifer van Alstyne (...

The digital age has touched and changed pretty much everything, even altering how historical research is practiced. In his new book Technology and the Historian: Transformations in the Digital Age (University of Illinois Press, 2021), Adam Crymble makes a meta-historical account of how digital and technological advances have impacted historical research, collection management, education, and commu...

From social media posts and text messages to digital government documents and archives, researchers are bombarded with a deluge of text reflecting the social world. This textual data gives unprecedented insights into fundamental questions in the social sciences, humanities, and industry. Meanwhile new machine learning tools are rapidly transforming the way science and business are conducted. Text...

In Molecular Capture: The Animation of Biology (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), Adam Nocek, Assistant Professor in the Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies at Arizona State University, investigates the collusion between entertainment and scientific visualization in the case of molecular animation. “The very same tools that were invented to animate a character like Shre...

What is the potential of podcasts to disseminate research based insights? How can a podcast function as a networking and pedagogical tool? And what is so intriguing about a Nordic podcast on Asia? Born during the pandemic to keep alive the vibrant research community on Asia in the Nordics, the Nordic Asia Podcast began as a collaborative effort between Nordic research institutions. More than two y...

For this episode of How To Be Wrong, I speak with George Styles, a biochemist and author of the book Contemplation. George is also what we describe these days as an “influencer”—although as we discuss he objects to that label—on social media, with over 37 thousand followers on Twitter. His approach to Twitter is novel in that he focuses on asking probing questions designed to generate discussion,...

“Vaccine: The Human Story” is a podcast and video series that tells the story of the global fight against smallpox, from its earliest history as a folk demon, to the birth of the anti-vax movement, through to its eradication in the 1960s. It is written and hosted by Dr. Annie Kelly. Dr. Kelly, a specialist in antifeminism, conspiracy theories and the far right, earned her doctorate in American Stu...

Today’s guest is Whitney Trettien whose book Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork was published through the University of Minnesota Press in 2022. Trettien is a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, and researches the history of the book spanning print and digital technologies. Cut/Copy/Paste explores makerspaces and collaboratories where paper media were cut up...