Digital Humanities Series

Daniel Veidlinger:  "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of the Humanities"

Wednesday, March 12th, 5:00 PM, ZOOM

Zoom Link:  https://csuchico.zoom.us/j/88561594318?pwd=MW5CZHpVRHUyOERSRW1WOVpOc09rZz09(opens in new window)

This talk will explore how Artificial Intelligence works and what the implications of this revolutionary technology may be for the Humanities. We will examine the potential disruptions that Artificial Intelligence could cause in this field and explore solutions to these problems. We will talk about what AI actually is and perhaps more importantly, what it is not. We will explore questions such as: how will it affect academic integrity, how will it affect research and the production of creative and scholarly works, from where does it get its information? We will end with a discussion of what, if anything, we can do about it.

Daniel Veidlinger is chair of the department of Comparative Religion and Humanities at California State University, Chico. He focuses on questions of Buddhism and Technology and is the editor of Digital Humanities and Buddhism: An Introduction ( De Gruyter, 2019 ) as well as The Pixel in the Lotus: Buddhism, The Internet and Digital Media ( Routledge, 2015). He is also the author of From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication, Technology and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas ( Hawaii, 2018). Veidlinger teaches a course on Digital Humanities as part of the Humanities program at Chico and has written and lectured widely about the effects of technology on religious developments and culture more generally. He has also consulted about machine learning, artificial intelligence and database management and developed an early algorithm that helped computers to learn the meaning of words using a detailed ontology.

The Digital Humanities Series is open to the public.  

Geneviève Zubrzycki, "The Reckoning Project: Digitally Safeguarding Testimony from Ukraine"

Wednesday, April 9th, 5:00 PM, ZOOM

Zoom Link:  https://csuchico.zoom.us/j/88561594318?pwd=MW5CZHpVRHUyOERSRW1WOVpOc09rZz09(opens in new window)

The Weiser Center for Europe & Eurasia (WCEE) at the University of Michigan has launched Ukraine Testifies, an online archive that preserves witness testimonies of war crimes committed in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Developed in collaboration with The Reckoning Project—an international NGO that trains journalists and researchers to collect and safeguard testimony for future legal use—the archive features two interactive maps. These maps allow users to explore and visualize patterns of violence in distinctive ways. In this talk, Professor Geneviève Zubrzycki will discuss the partnership with The Reckoning Project, student involvement, and present the digital archive and its maps.

Geneviève Zubrzycki is the William H. Sewell Jr. Collegiate Professor of Sociology and the Weiser Family Professor of European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Michigan, where she directs the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia and the Copernicus Center for Polish Studies.  A historical and cultural sociologist, her research focuses on nationalism and religion; collective memory and national mythology; anti and philo-Semitism; and cultural politics in Eastern Europe and North America. Her publications include the award-winning books The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland (Chicago 2006); Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion and Secularism in Quebec (Chicago 2016); and Resurrecting the Jew: Nationalism, Philosemitism, and Poland’s Jewish Revival (Princeton 2022). Zubrzycki serves on the Board of Directors of The Reckoning Project, an international NGO investigating war crimes committed against civilian populations in Ukraine. She is also the Principal Investigator of Ukraine Testifies at the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia.

The Digital Humanities Series is open to the public.  

Earlier this year...

Erin McCarthy:  "Systems of Transmitting Early Modern Manuscript Verse"

Wednesday, October 23rd, 5 PM, ZOOM

This talk will provide an introduction to  “STEMMA: Systems of Transmitting Early Modern Manuscript Verse(opens in new window), 1475–1700,” a digital project funded by the European Research Council and headed by Dr. McCarthy. Whereas scholars have tended to treat manuscripts primarily as case studies, STEMMA seeks to identify patterns and trends at scale. By mapping the evidence that has survived and making statistically informed inferences about what has been lost, our model will prompt a thorough reconsideration of early modern literary culture and the diverse people who participated in it.

Erin A. McCarthy is Established Professor of English Literature and Computational Humanities at the University of Galway. She is the author of Doubtful Readers: Print, Poetry, and the Reading Public (Oxford University Press, 2020), which won the 2020 John Donne Society Award for Distinguished Publication. She is currently completing two monographs: a jointly authored monograph about the reception and circulation of early modern women’s writing and a sole-authored monograph called Interpreting Early Modern Manuscripts: Towards a New Methodology.

The Digital Humanities Series is open to the public.  

Zoe Sherinian:  "Digital Humanities and Ethnomusicology: Digital ways to see and hear music in South Asia and beyond."

Wednesday, December 11th, 5 PM, ZOOM

What are the capacities and creative possibilities that are unleashed when we think beyond the limits of print or “writing as a privileged mode of expression of academic ethnographic practices” (Hsu 2013)? What is distinct or particular about a musical approach to digital humanities, to hearing sound in digital contexts? How can digital tools help bring us closer to a sensorial, phenomenological experience of people, sounds, and places as well as to create partnerships with underrepresented communities in shared (horizontal) knowledge production?  This talk will engage with these questions and others to illuminate and sound-out best practices, realization of projects, and methods through sharing her own work in documentary film and music mapping in South Asia as well as her colleague’s engaged with film, archiving, mapping, VR/AR, and DH pedagogy.

Zoe Sherinian, Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Oklahoma, is an accomplished scholar of Tamil folk music, Dalit liberation theology, and intersections of gender and caste. She has authored Tamil Folk Music As Dalit Liberation Theology (Indiana, 2014), co-edited Making Congregational Music Local (Routledge, 2017) and Music and Dance as Everyday Life in South Asia (Oxford, 2024). Sherinian has produced two award-winning documentary films on the parai drum of the Dalits of Tamil Nadu, India: This is a Music: Reclaiming an Untouchable Drum (2011), and Sakthi Vibrations (2019). Her latest project is a digital map on the musical diversity of the parai drum.  

The Digital Humanities Series is open to the public.