Wanted: Professor for the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture

Texas A&M University seeks to hire a dynamic researcher with an established record in digital humanities research and/or humanities, artistic, or information visualization to participate in establishing an interdisciplinary Institute for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture (IDHMC). Currently an “initiative,” the IDHMC (http://idhmc.tamu.edu) will become an Institute upon approval by the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents. The IDHMC has been designated one of eight Texas A&M Initial University Multidisciplinary Research Initiatives and thus is the recipient of substantial start-up funding. The IDHMC recently received an award from the Mellon foundation for $734,000 to fund two years of collaborative research into creating better OCR methods and procedures for early modern texts. The rank for this position is open but candidate’s current research record must warrant appointment with tenure on arrival.

Possible research areas for this position include but are not limited to Visualization (including artistic, information, and scientific visualization), Computer Science, Architecture, data-mining, software development, graphic design, pattern recognition, etc. (please see more at our Center for the Study of Digital Libraries). The IDHMC supports interdisciplinary scholarly and creative work that broadly explores the relationship between computing technologies and culture. We are interested in researchers who combine critical thinking with design, creativity, or production in their research and who are willing to shape the emerging direction of this center by galvanizing faculty, graduate students, programmers, and/or digital librarians across a span of colleges in Texas A&M University. A Ph.D., MFA, MLS, or equivalent in achievement is required.

The appointee would have access to IDHMC’s infrastructure and labs, located in a wing of a new building which just opened (January 2013), and would receive substantial startup funding to create a research lab. The successful applicant will have an outstanding research, scholarly, or artistic record in digital humanities, visualization, digital media, digital cultures, and/or social innovation with respect to new media, including substantial experience in interdisciplinary, collaborative research and in obtaining grant funding. The record of achievement must be sufficient for a tenured appointment in the College of Architecture, Engineering, Liberal Arts, or University Libraries. The individual appointed to this position is expected to pursue supplemental funding from external agencies (e.g., NEH, Mellon, ACLS, NEA, NSF, etc.). Classroom teaching is also expected in the successful candidate’s home department.

Texas A&M University already supports a variety of high-profile and emerging projects involving digital humanities (http://idhmc.tamu.edu) and offers a Digital Humanities Certificate (http://dhcertificate.tamu.edu). A copy of the whitepaper that established the IDHMC is available (http://idhmc.tamu.edu/commentpress/dh-whitepaper/).

Minorities and women are strongly encouraged to apply. Texas A&M is an AA/EEO employer, is deeply committed to diversity, and responds to the needs of dual-career couples. Please send a letter of interest. Applications will be reviewed beginning February 1, 2013, and will be considered until the position is filled. Applicants should send a letter of interest, current CV, and a list of references to:

Professor Laura Mandell
Director, Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture
Department of English
4227 TAMU
College, Station, TX 77843-4227
mandell@tamu.edu

Call for Project Proposals

Sponsored by the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies


The Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies (http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu/)  is looking to help facilitate the work of students and scholars by aiding in the development of research-oriented databases related to scholarship in religion and new media.  Proposals are invited for database projects to be housed on the “Researcher’s Toolbox” section of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies website (http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu/toolbox).   Database projects should be related to focused research studies on an aspect of religion and new media (i.e. the categorization and identification of Hindu cybertemples, a database for analyzing the mission and aims of Jewish websites, etc.) and the database creation component framed as integral part of the data collection and analysis of the given area of research.  Project awardees will receive support for the design and implementation of their chosen database project from the network technical director (of up to 24 hours). Awardees will also receive a small stipend towards travel for a project presentation and consultation at Texas A&M University to be scheduled during the 2013/2014 academic year.

Databases will be embargoed and accessible only to the awarded scholar, network director and technical director for a period of 24 months, after which they will be made open to network members or other subscribers who can apply to gain access to these resources.  Awardees will be able to port their data to an alternate site at the end of the project; however the database and associated data will remain on the network in perpetuity for the life of the site. The hope is also to make these databases collaborative so scholars can add new entries and tags after they are published online.

Applications are invited from any member of the Network, though priority will be given to postdoctoral applicants, full-time faculty, and 2nd year or above PhD candidates.   Proposals should be 2-3 pages in length and include a narrative of the proposed project, detailed specification of desired database, justification of its centrality to the project and a project time line. In addition, a brief CV should also be included.  Preference will be given to projects that investigate under-explored religious contexts online.

The deadline for proposals is 30 October 2012. Complete applications should be sent directly the network director, Heidi Campbell (digitalreligion@tamu.edu). Membership to the network is required for proposal submission and the full application process must be completed before proposals will be considered. More information on membership is found at: http://digitalreligion.tamu.edu/join-network

IDHMC’s Day of DH 2012

This March 2012, the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture participated in its first Day of DH. We took some lovely pictures of projects, planning, and people, and we’re finally ready to share them.


 

 The IDHMC lounge is open for meetings, small workshops, events, and is also a place for faculty, graduate students, and staff to have coffee, talk, and read! We always have coffee, tea, and snacks as well as light (or heavy) reading to share.

 

 

PhD candidate and IDHMC fellow Matt Davis and IDHMC faculty fellow Dr. Amy Earhart discuss their projects in our IDHMC lounge. In this photo, they are discussing ARC (Advanced Research Consortium).

 

 

Every week in the IDHMC, our fellows, professors, and project managers get together to discuss their projects over coffee and tea.

 

 

 

 

Above Matt and Amy is a TEI Hierarchy Chart created by the fabulous Dr. Laura Mandell, the director of the IDHMC at Texas A&M University, for her bimonthly XSLT workshop – a precursor to her upcoming book on XSLT for the Humanities.

 

 

 

PhD candidate and IDHMC fellow Shawn W. Moore points to the wall of Digital Humanities in his office. Shawn created this physical visualization of his preliminary exam reading list in the Spring, and he is currently expanding it to visualize his dissertation project.

 

 

Here is the wonderful Dr. Krista May, Associate Editor of the World Shakespeare Bibliography and an IDHMC fellow, working hard on bibliography entries!

 

 

 

Project Manager Mary Farrington works with our IDHMC undergraduate interns! In this picture, Mary and Carly are working on data input and website maintenance.

 

 

 

 

Matt Christy, our programmer in the IDHMC, and Mary Farrington discuss the current contract work our Initiative is completing for our outside collaborative projects.

 

 

 

I’ll leave you with an excellent image of one of our project boards from March. The IDHMC is preparing for an exciting 2012-2013, and our contributors, students, staff, and faculty look forward to sharing more in the coming months.

 

Call for Proposals—IDHMC Faculty Fellowships, Collaboration Grants, and Working Groups

The IDHMC (Institute for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture) wishes to support scholars in a wide range of academic disciplines including literature, history, art and architecture, archaeology, communications, and computer science researchers who are creating new scholarly, poetic, artistic, and musical forms.  We are offering two kinds of fellowships this semester as well as support for working groups and collaborative teams:

  1. Three larger fellowships of $5,000 each for faculty conducting projects: this amount may be spent on special equipment and software to be hosted here at the center.  Our staff will set up a workflow for you and train you to use the equipment and software that you need.  You may propose to do projects without knowing what kinds of equipment/software you will need: you may but are not required to submit an equipment budget with your 5-page, double-spaced project description.  Faculty should feel completely free to write up what they imagine, describing wildly ideal research platforms: we can figure out what can be done to accomplish this work.  We will provide programming and data-entry help as well.
  2. Collaboration grants: Faculty who contact another faculty member in another academic discipline, someone with whom they have not collaborated in the past, in order to work on a project together, each partner will be allotted $500 for equipment and software expenses.  Up to 20 people can receive partner-grants, and collaborative teams may be larger than two people: the only requirement is that the members have not collaborated before and all are from different disciplines.
  3. Those who would like to discuss topics in Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture are welcome to start IDHMC-supported working groups.  While we do not offer money at this time, we can:
    1. Host meetings in the Digital Humanities Lounge, 246 Blocker: please see the calendar for available times at http://idhmc.tamu.edu
    2. Provide refreshments for meetings;
    3. Host for your group a drupal commons site that allows sharing documents, blogging, co-authoring, and communication (http://dhcommons.tamu.edu).
    4. If any group would like to start a wordpress blog or drupal site, please contact us.