research reflections | Public Access and the Liberal Arts: A Narrative History

Project Web Sites are Live!

Our amazing COPLAC program associate, Leah Tams, has set up your web sites:

geneseo.napla.coplacdigital.org
keene.napla.coplacdigital.org,
unca.napla.coplacdigital.org

You should have received an email yesterday from WordPress about their your status (same usernames as on your blog and we recommend the same password). You can login to your subdomain by adding /wp-admin to the end of the URL.

Design and Customize: Plugins, Themes, Widgets

The Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at the University of Mary Washington is a useful site to explore. In particular, have a look at Jess Reingold’s recent Jess’s Quick Guide to Plugins, Widgets, and Themes. Her post includes a list of best practices for choosing themes and plugins. Mark and Cole are available at any point to troubleshoot, or answer questions about themes and blogs.

Class Schedule: Part Two of the Course

We have designed the course to give you ample time to do independent work on your projects. We will therefore meet once per week, on Thursdays, during the next four weeks. Our weekly project charrettes will give everyone a chance to ask questions, resolve challenges or problems, and learn from one another.

We will meet twice during week 10, before we break for Thanksgiving. Your project timelines should align with the expectation that our meetings on Tuesday November 15^th and Thursday November 17^th will be dedicated to previewing your institutional sites. It is imperative that the sites be developed and refined at this point. For when we return from the holiday break we will only have one class before the Project Presentations begin on Thursday December 1.

Research Reflections

There are nine “Research Reflections” required in the course. The first three Research Reflections were the product of writing prompts: 1) on September 11th “What’s the Story?; on September 25^th “Reading and Writing,” about higher education in the US and your local institution; and on October 2^nd, “For Me and For Someone Else,” about the digital humanities and your projects.

From your fourth Research Reflection last week to your final reflection due on Sunday November 20^th your Research Reflections will be a product of the intellectual work you are doing—reflecting on the process of research, interviewing, and building a digital home for your work.

Each of your blog posts should make visible what you are doing, how you are learning, or what you are discovering in your research. Our expectation is that you will produce engaging and professionally presented writing. We want to give you the opportunity to “curate” your Research Reflections. And so at any time you may revise and/or update what you have written.

Nota bene: Because this “Monday Update” is posted on Thursday, and we are moving into Part Two of our course, I am going to change the Category on our NAPLA blog to “Weekly Updates.”

Research Reflection Prompt #3

Due: Sunday, 2 October

Introduction and Context Last week we talked about the direction of post-secondary education and “training” under the GI Bill and how that may, or may not, have been reflected on your campus – in its curriculum, in its mission, in its physical spaces, in its financing education, in the demographics of its student body, etc.

This week, we’ll be meeting with you as teams to discuss your intellectual work so far and your ideas and design for a Digital Humanities project.

In addition, this week’s reading looks at where two authors see an important intersection between the liberal arts and Digital Humanities – in making the research process visible and in trying to think about ourselves and others, to anticipate what we and others need as we structure a narrative, to be “sympathetic” as we research.

As you read the essay 1) gather insights and take notes for your third piece of writing, which will be posted on your blog by Sunday, 2 October; 2) feel free to discuss the insights or questions you have about the “sympathetic research imagination” with your team mate, with your friends and mentors, with your research support network, and with us; and 3) consider how the reading might shape the kinds of questions you use in the interviews you’ll be conducting later this semester – what does liberal arts mean to the people you talk with? What do they think about being part of a process of collecting stories and curating a narrative about your college?

For your third blog post, please discuss:

1) the relationship between what you understand the liberal arts and digital humanities to be (viz., overlaps? irreconcilables? same objectives, different methods? different objectives, same methods, etc.), and

2) how those relationships between the liberals arts and Digital Humanities connect, challenge, or support the research process you’re doing for this COPLAC digital project – a developing, evolving project done in public.

Reading List

Everyone should read “The Sympathetic Research Imagination” (2016).

The Digital Humanities project discussed in the article is Black Liberation 1969.

Another short essay related to this topic of being intentionally “slow” and intentionally “public” is Sheila A. Brennan’s “Public, First” (2016).