Hastac 2017 Abstracts
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Abstracts HASTAC 2017 ABSTRACTS A Camila Afanador-Llach, “Digital Arts / Social Justice: A Space for Interdisciplinary Dialogue” DP11, Saturday 11:15am-12:15pm, VAB 104 In late 2015, digital media artist and scholar Sharon Daniel visited our University and launched an interdisciplinary working group. The group was comprised of faculty and graduate students from the College of Arts and Letters interested in the intersection of digital art, scholarship and social issues. Responding to arguments and methods central to the work of Daniel, members from the Departments of English and Visual Art developed a set of research and creative projects. Daniel's engagement with social issues through new media platforms inspired the group members to explore and incorporate digital tools in order to address issues of social justice, politics, memory and identity, among other subjects. The resulting product of this collaboration was a group exhibition in early 2017 showcasing screen-based work including video, data visualization, audio essays, and interactive narratives. As every discipline confronts the transformations brought by the digital age, the exhibition embodied the expansion of traditional forms of scholarship to visual and interactive approaches. At the same time, it opened a much-needed space for critical dialogue on interdisciplinary collaboration among humanists, artists and designers. In this poster I present a case study based on my experience as part of the working group. I show the group's projects and identify challenges and opportunities for collaboration among scholars in different areas. As a graphic designer interested in interdisciplinary collaboration I also look into the way some of these projects were produced, were a question remains on the line that separates design as a service from design as a collaborative endeavor. Nazli Akhtari, “Internet Garbage/Violent Games/ Performative Emotions” DP09, Saturday 11:15am-12:15pm, VAB 104 This one specific statement is hard to completely refute or to entirely agree with: the Internet is full of garbage. Materiality of garbage here is of course of a different nature, however production and reproduction of such garbage as well as its means of engagement within the popular culture has the potential to reveal significant cultural obsessions, collective emotions, and race and gender politics involved. Examining garbage proves to be a scientific way to assess the consumption habits in the consumer culture. But what can assessing Internet garbage reveal in regards to the consumption habits of different types of digital content such as entertainment, advertisement, news, and literature? 2 Internet garbage is a large discourse that includes but is not limited to data waste, spam, malware, and harassment. Internet garbage also refers to the content one deletes in the hope to get rid of for good, despite the fact that it will continue to exist in the indefinite world of the deep web. Garbage in this context also suggests the discrepancy of content and representation; it highlights the failure to hold to some kind of genuineness, legitimacy, or scientific truth. Using a digital poster, I will address the conference’s theme of “digital humanities and gender, race and other identities” in order to examine a case study, an Iranian Instagram Blogger, who creates challenging social games using Internet garbage. The discussion can go far by thinking about harassment, cyber-misogyny, and investigating performativity of emotions such as disgust and shame in the violent games played on the social media. Many of these games create performances that are challenging to witness. However instead of entirely detesting these online performances, this poster presentation considers their potential to function as sites of constant social and cultural negotiations worthy of observation. This digital poster will further engage the participants in a discussion about the broad spectrum of Internet garbage and what it does really mean to us as artists, scholars, and daily consumers of digital content. The focus of discussion can vary based on the participants’ interests and other themes of the conference. Kitana Ananda, Lauren Melendez and Mike Rifino, “Reimagining the Digital Humanities with ‘New Majority’ Students for Public Higher Education” SSA10, Saturday 1:45pm-3:00pm, CB1-212 When we talk about the digital humanities as scholars and practitioners in higher education, who do we imagine to be the students of this emerging field? How is this connected to efforts to make the digital humanities more inclusive and interdisciplinary? This interactive session invites audience participants to meditate on this question as we aim to reimagine the digital humanities for today’s “new majority” students who are increasingly students of color, as well as low- income, first-generation, and community college students. Our session seeks to expand current understandings of what the “digital humanities” entails. We focus on two programs that combine learner-centered approaches with digital technologies, for a critical pedagogy that strives toward more inclusive, accessible and equitable futures for the digital humanities and public higher education. We present case studies from our work with undergraduate and graduate students in two interdisciplinary programs based at The Graduate Center, City University of New York: The Futures Initiative’s Peer Mentoring Program and the Humanities Alliance. Both programs use free and open-source software--namely, WordPress, and the open-source Commons In a Box installation of BuddyPress, a WordPress plug-in for building online communities--along with other digital tools to foster active student learning. Our hour-long session will provide a brief overview of the digital humanities tools and methods used in the Peer Mentoring Program and the Humanities Alliance, and will include at least one graduate or undergraduate student from each program. Students will discuss how their use of 3 WordPress and other digital tools contributed to their experiences of teaching, learning, and mentoring, as well as their academic, professional, and personal growth. Throughout the session, we also invite audience members to participate in interactive exercises to engage in a critical analysis of the digital humanities, and better understand the educational needs and interests of today’s “new majority” students. About the programs: The Futures Initiative Peer Mentoring Program embodies the mission of advancing greater equity and innovation in higher education that reconnects liberal arts teaching and learning. Undergraduates learn to mentor one another while also learning and practicing transferable skills that contribute to their academic success and their lives outside the classroom: collaboration, leadership, project management, technology, time management, community-building, and organizational skills. The program is funded with the generous support of the Teagle Foundation. The Humanities Alliance is dedicated to training doctoral students in the most successful methods for teaching humanities courses in the country’s most diverse undergraduate classrooms. The program provides Ph.D. students with mentorship and professional development, while broadening and strengthening access to and engagement in the humanities for community college students. The Humanities Alliance is a partnership between The Graduate Center, CUNY, and LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, and is funded with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Georg Anemogiannis, Eric Butt, Tyler Chauhan and Megan Chipman, “ELLE, The EndLess LEarner Videogame: Language Acquisition Through Interactive Technology” PD22, VAB108, Friday-Saturday at 3:30pm With our lives being more interconnected than ever due to technology, persisting language barriers still hinder valuable opportunities of cross-culture collaboration. The idea of using technology to teach a second language is not a novel one, but with the continued rise of virtual reality (VR) technologies, our team felt that there was a great opportunity to utilize the unique components that VR has to offer for Second Language Acquisition (SLA) purposes. In order to accomplish that goal, our team believes that the most effective and engaging way to do this would be through an interactive game. Our hope is that the knowledge gained through immersive and entertaining gameplay will have a significant impact in bringing down the language barriers that separate us while also encouraging people to try and learn a new language when they might not have considered doing otherwise. The final goal of ELLE is to study how virtual reality affects SLA. ELLE is planned to be implemented in several language learning environments where participants will be able to use the system to aid in their language development. Various gameplay mechanics will be experimented with and tested for effectiveness, but the overall format of the game itself is that of an endless-runner, with players navigating through a track and answering language comprehension questions. Through data analysis of the participants involved, valuable insight 4 into how various demographics process and learn a second language will be obtained, including what parts of language acquisition prove to be most challenging, how quickly a language can be picked up, what gameplay mechanics are most effective for each group, and so on. Through its combination of VR technology and embedded language learning techniques, the ELLE project hopes