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AIUCD 2021 – DH for society: e-quality, participation, rights and values in the digital age

In a few days the Annual AIUCD Congress (19-22 January) will start. I did not took part in the last one or two, but this time I am in. Thanks to Covid, it will be entirely online, and therefore experimental. I think this will add a special flavour to the event. I believe it was not an easy one to organize but also one that might change long lasting habits that, in my view, needed an update. I am very excited for that.

The theme of the Congress is particularly well suited for the moment we live in, focused as it is on the social and political issue at stake involving the digital. This is something we need to address if we want to create meaningful research and teaching, otherwise Digital Humanities will be only some kind of technical navel gazing and/or a new form of shining ivory tower, so to speak, or even worst, a new kind of latinorum for a new kind of elite. And a latinorum that is much more invisible and (apparently at least) friendly than the older one.

Browsing on the program, I found many stimulating paper that I am eager to listen to, mostly the ones in which political and/or rhetorical and epistemological issues are involved. I will keep reading abstracts in the few days before the actual congress begins, and if I find interesting ideas I will probably write something on it. Stay tuned.

Continue reading AIUCD 2021 – DH for society: e-quality, participation, rights and values in the digital age

Covid and digital

This blog has been on hold for way too long. For personal reasons I have had to let go a few things, even important one, but It seems that it is time to get back in the game. I still think that the topics of this carnet de recherche – the future of reading, first of all – are relevant and I am willing to keep it alive.

In the past few months thinking about Viruses has been an occupational hazard for everyone in the planet. In fact, this is something that the real world has in common with the digital, provided that at present there is still a difference between the two.

During covid-induced lockdowns, we were all hooked up to our internet connections to breathe and survive. At least those of us that were lucky enough not to be attached to a ventilator and have the economical and technical means to be online 24/7 (digital divide is not a myth, is extremely real) Continue reading Covid and digital

DH Talk of the Town

 

Every weekend (if I have time, which is not always the case) I read news and essays on Digital Culture that I collected during the week, from various sources, trying to give them some perspective, The collection is idiosyncratic and highly personal, but not, I hope, without interests for the few readers of this blog.

[A slightly different Italian Version is published on Leggere, scrivere e far di conto]

Streaming videogames session, live or recorded (youtube), has become more and more popular in recent years. The phenomenon was described in the Guardian and The Conversation in 2014, and has been the topic of  a Master’s Thesis  at the University of Utrecht).

On the website in media res  there was an interdisciplinry discussion on Video Game Spectatorship (8-12 january 2018), with a number of short essays:.

Continue reading DH Talk of the Town

Digital utopias: cosmopolitan vs ethnocentric vs glocal vs global…

There has been a lot of discussion about the “dream” (the modern word for what once was called utopia? ) of multiculturalism in several venues, on and offline, and the recent billet by Martin Grandjean rekindle it recently. This is indeed a thorny issues and, unfortunately, not something that you can simply solve addressing practical issues (although in the end those are the ones that count).

The first thing that I want to say is that there are different kinds of multilingualism. Continue reading Digital utopias: cosmopolitan vs ethnocentric vs glocal vs global…

The dark side of the shadow of Digital Humanities

[While waiting to read the issue of difference discussing the “shadowy” digital humanities and their shadows,  I recovered from my previous blog this posts discussing the MLA panel on the dark side of DH that inspired the journal issue.]

During the launching event of Art/Works: Platform for the creative arts and industries, here in Cork, at Triskel, there was a performance of the Conflicted Theatre Company dramatizing the life of an aspiring… artist? journalist? writer? not sure… the protagonist wasn’t sure either, and ended up working as some sort of answering/calling “machine” all his life, with bleak and depressing consequences, as you might expect. It was a moving look at the dark side of a “creative” career, precisely the kind of thing that the rest of the day (and the various events that happened during it) was aiming at avoiding. Continue reading The dark side of the shadow of Digital Humanities

Flipping and blending

[Originally published in Creative Amnesia May 12, 2013 @ 20:08]

This is the prezi of the presentation I gave (in collaboration with James O’Sullivan)  at the ninth ICT in Education Conference hosted on the Thurles Campus of Limerick Institute of Technology on Saturday 11th of May 2013. I decided to use prezi instead of powerpoint because I thought it gave a better visual representation of the idea of ‘flipping’. I also added a draft of the basic points of my talk.

Continue reading Flipping and blending

What is Digital Humanities? An Italian perspective

[From my previous blog, but still worth reading, I believe]

There is been a lot of discussion around Digital Humanities lately, caused by (but also causing – or the other way around) what Ted Underwood called a PR crisis. This affected the current job market in humanities and literary studies, where “a lot of job postings are suddenly requesting interest or experience in DH”. Underwood has an interesting approach on this, saying that is perfectly legitimate for a literary scholar NOT to have a deep understanding of digital humanities and do his job perfectly well. Only these days there is a need to demonstrate some sort of awareness of what is happening in the DH field, even if you are not in fact doing it, Continue reading What is Digital Humanities? An Italian perspective

Hacking the moocs?

[From my former blog, Amnesia Creativa, a post on digital pedagogy and the MOOC hype.]

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a MOOC coming down through the wires and this MOOC that was coming down through the wires met a vicious digital native named baby linux…

I am sure one of the future generations will start the story in this way. But which generation will be and what story they will tell, it is still not clear. Being in the middle of a transformation of the way knowledge is managed, shaped, remember, archived (as we undoubtedly are), the question of pedagogy and education is in my view a key issue. And it will be part of what I will be writing about in this blog. Continue reading Hacking the moocs?

Man and Machine, or The algorithms of porosity

Yesterday I have been to my first DH Seminaire at EHESS, a series of meeting that started in 2011 aimed at discussing and mapping the emergence of Digital Humanities in America and in Europe while at the same time pushing towards a multilingual European network, with a number of initiatives, inspired by the Paris Manifesto (sorry, Manifeste, obviously, French style). The approach they adopted was wide and comprehensive, addressing different aspects and issues, as the definition they gave of the term DH shows. Continue reading Man and Machine, or The algorithms of porosity

Looking forward to quantum computing?

I recently read about the death of Emilio Del Giudice, one of the people that started and inspired New Humanities, a very exciting initiative taking place in one of the oldest cities in the world. Unfortunately I never met Del Giudice but I went to one of the New Humanities meeting which was very lively and interesting. I did not have time, energy, or ability, to establish a stronger connection with them. I am, however, definitely going to find the time to read Del Giudice book, and also to watch some of the videos and read the material in the website (sooner or later). And I encourage you to do the same (the site is bilingual, although the Italian version has obviously more material). To say the least, you will your brain will fill refreshed and you can start whatever you are doing with more (quantum?) energy. Continue reading Looking forward to quantum computing?

Communication Theories in a Multicultural World, edited by Clifford Christians and Kaarle Nordenstreng

Christians, Clifford / Nordenstreng, Kaarle (eds.)
Communication Theories in a Multicultural World
Bern, Peter Lang, 2014

Book synopsis

This volume is an up-to-date account of communication theories from around the world. Authored by a group of eminent scholars, each chapter is a history and state-of-the-art description of the major issues in international communication theory. Continue reading Communication Theories in a Multicultural World, edited by Clifford Christians and Kaarle Nordenstreng

MLA Call for Papers in Digital Humanities

MLA 2014 will host a number of panels that can be interesting for Digital Humanists. Here is a list of the ones I found while browsing their website. I have ordered them chronologically, using the deadlines. Apart from a few cases in which the deadline has passed already, they are still open.

If you find a call for paper that is not on the list, feel free to mention it in a comment. Continue reading MLA Call for Papers in Digital Humanities

Égarements, by Marcello Vitali-Rosati

Égarements, by Marcello Vitali-Rosati

Êtes-vous prêt à partir en voyage ? Une quête qui a pour but de répondre à une question qui d’universelle finit par sembler banale. Un voyage à la recherche de nos identités. Qui suis-je ? Ou plutôt: c’est quoi, moi ?
Ici ni carte, ni plan. A l’écart des sentiers battus, il nous faudra naviguer jusqu’à l’égarement, à l’affût des traces que chacun laisse. L’égarement est la condition de possibilité de ce parcours. Sur ce chemin qui n’en est pas un, quelques étapes indispensables : l’amour, la mort. Continue reading Égarements, by Marcello Vitali-Rosati

Old Media in New Media

“OLD MEDIA” IN “NEW MEDIA” ERA – ABOUT ADJUSTMENT STRATEGIES OF TRADITIONAL MEDIA TO NEW MEDIA REALITY

Institute of Journalism and Social Communication, University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn, Poland, 2-3.06.2014

Despite the creation and appearance of new forms of media, the so-called “old media” – such as printed and broadcast media – still play a crucial role and it is hard to imagine that they could disappear one day. Future Exploration, a company specializing in drawing up marketing strategies, published in 2011 a report stating when traditional newspapers will go “extinct” in the countries around the world. Continue reading Old Media in New Media

Interstitial Italy: Reassessing Global Questions through the ‘Peculiar’ Italian Case (an Interim SIS conference)

 

The conference will take place at the British School in Rome on 27-28 March 2014. For inquiries, please contact F.Camilletti@warwick.ac.uk and J.E.Burns@warwick.ac.uk

Organised by the UK Society of Italian Studies Continue reading Interstitial Italy: Reassessing Global Questions through the ‘Peculiar’ Italian Case (an Interim SIS conference)