Slides on Teaching the Humanities in the College Classroom

1. Reviving the Humanities in the College Classroom
Archival Spirits

2. – Bernard Stiegler
“…all societies, are characterized by types of
attention: types of attentional forms and
knowledges that are also types of concern,
systems of care, of techniques for care of the self
and of others…”

3. The Dot Experiment
William James, Talks to Teachers (1907)

5. Gerald L. Bruns, Hermeneutics: Ancient & Modern (1995)
Hermeneutics:
“a tradition of thinking … that tries to clarify the
concept of … understanding. What is it to make
sense of anything, whether a poem, a legal text, a
human action, a language, an alien culture, or
oneself?”

7. educere, “lead out”
seducere, “lead away, apart.”

9. H E R M E N E U T I C R E A D I N G
T H E L I M I T S O F

10. “There’s no getting all of the way ‘outside’ [technology]
to perform the work of historical description or analysis.
Our sense of history—of facticity in relation to the past
—is inextricable from our experience of inscription, of
writing, print, photography, sound recording, cinema,
and now (one must wonder) digital media that save text,
image, and sound.”
Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New:
Media, History, and the Data of Culture (2008)

11. The Talos Principle

12. “meaning effects” “material effects”
“the interface of meaning and materiality”
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht,
Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (2003)

13. figure ground

14. How Not to Read a Novel:
An Exercise in Distant Reading
Word Cloud
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

15. Collaborative Annotation

16. Processing Posts

17. Student Projects

18. 1
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how it
works
One way we as Americans can effect positive social change and foster po-
litical equity is by making it easier for citizens to actively engage in the po-
litical process. To work toward this end, I propose an easy-to-use mobile
application, referred to in this project as “Veeto.” The idea behind Veeto
is that a well-informed electorate makes for smarter government. Veeto’s
purpose is keeping citizens up-to-date on the development of legislation,
from conception to end, while also monitoring the activities of their leg-
islators.
One of Veeto’s target cohorts are Millenials — the generation born after
1980 and reaching adulthood in the 21st century.This group is also one of
the largest in the United States, totaling some 77 million individuals. Ac-
cording to a 2014 study by the Nielsen Company, 85 percent of Millenials
ages 18 to 24 owned smart devices, and 86 percent ages 25 to 34 owned
them. Just one year prior, in 2013, only 77 percent and 80 percent of these
respective Millenial cohorts owned devices1
.
As this group matriculates and reaches its political coming of age, it is like-
ly that their collective potential to wield significant influence over matters
of state will only increase. Veeto paves the way for individuals to become
responsible, well-informed citizens who are proactive in shaping their
present and future.
Several of Veeto’s features are simple re-presenta-
tions of data that is already publicly available. Us-
ing an open-source application programming in-
terface created by an independent organization,
Open States, Veeto maintains constant contact with
a remote host that downloads legislative data and
metadata from each state’s capital.
Veeto repackages the existing online Bill Status sys-
tem used by the Mississippi Legislature to publish
legislative activity and blends it with features similar
to those found in popular social media applications
to create a unique and engaging user experience.
Rationale
** See next page for details
[1]“Mobile Millenials.”The Nielsen Company, 5 Sept. 2014, http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/
news/2014/mobile-millennials-over-85-percent-of-generation-y-owns-smartphones.html.
Recent activity
The most recent legislative activity includes new pieces of legislation and re-
cent actions taken on measures.
features
1
After loading, the application transports users to a dashboard that displays
the user’s name and avatar along with information such as how many bills the
user is tracking, how many friends the user has, and how many badges the
user has earned. (Badges will be introduced in a later version.)
User profile/Dashboard
The dashboard also displays a feed of recent activity related to bills the user
is tracking as well as “Hot Button Issues,” or “trending” bills. The “See More”
prompts segue to screens displaying bills tracked by the user or trending bills.
Feed
Following
The follow feature allows users to follow actions taken by specific legislators.
For example, a feed would display in real time how a legislator votes on a par-
ticular bill as well as any amendments that legislator might make to pieces of
legislation.
2
The browser lists all measures active in
both houses of the legislature in numeri-
cal order. Bills are displayed with their bill
code — HB for House Bills, and SB for Sen-
ate Bills. Authors’ avatars and names are
shown below each bill. The status of that
bill is indicated by the colored phrase be-
side each bill’s code. Red means a bill has
died; yellow means a bill is in committee;
blue indicates a bill has passed a vote in
either the house or senate; and green in-
dicates a bill that has been signed by the
governor.
Browser 6
The application
keeps track of
the actions tak-
en on a measure
throughout its entire
life cycle, from inception to
its eventual expiration or ratifi-
cation. This would include the passage or
killing of a bill as well as any amendments
made.
Track
7
Each legislator is listed in the roster. Also displayed are the legislators’
district number, the county or counties he or she represents, and his or
her party affiliation. Selecting a legislator triggers an option menu. Users
can opt to call or email that legislator, or view his or her legislative profile.
Roster
9
The performance section of the legislator’s profile provides metadata
about a given legislator’s activity. Legislators are assigned a grade based
on their attendance; a percentage score based on the ratio of bills au-
thored by him or her that are passed into law, compared to the total
number of bills authored by him or her; and a bipartisanship percentage
derived from the number of bills co-sponsored with members of the leg-
islature who are not in the same political party.
Legislator performance
4-5
The reader opens a bill from the brows-
er. It provides the names of the authors
responsible for a bill’s creation, as well as
the status of that bill and which legistla-
tive committee(s) has/have reviewed it.
The“In Brief”section provides a brief sum-
mary of the bill, while the “Background”
section provides the context in which
the new bill would take effect and how it
would affect the current state of related
affairs. Users also have the option to read
the entire text of a measure, and can also
add bills to their tracking list.
Reader
8
This includes background information such as the legislator’s profession
and educational history, as well as his committee memberships and ex-
tracurricular involvements. This section also displays how many bills the
law maker has written, how many of those bills are still active, and how
many have died.
Legislator profile
3
The menu offers sorting functions that
parse and display legislation by house,
committee, or by author.
Sort
Student Sample #2: Veeto

19. Digital
Archives

20. Craig Carey, Assistant Professor of English and Interim Director of
Undergraduate Studies
Joyce Inman, Assistant Professor of English and Director of Composition
Andrew P. Haley, Associate Professor of American Cultural History
Jeanne L. Gillespie, Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Jennifer Brannock, Associate Professor and Curator of Rare Books and
Mississippiana
Elizabeth Le Beaud, Digital Lab Manager, McCain Library and Archives
Digital Archives
Research Group

21. “The archive does not tell stories;
only secondary narratives give
meaningful coherence to its
discontinuous elements.”
Wolfgang Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive

22. SOS: Save Our Stories
Engaging with Digital Collections

23. Sample Project #1
Sample Project #2
Sample Project #3

24. Curious George and the History of the Book

26. The desire of knowledge is first stimulated in us
when remarkable phenomena attract our
attention. In order that this attention be
continued, it is necessary that we should feel
some interest in exercising it, and thus by
degrees we become better acquainted with the
object of our curiosity. During this process of
observation we remark at first only a vast variety
which presses indiscriminately on our view; we
are forced to separate, to distinguish, and again
to combine; by which means at last a certain
order arises which admits of being surveyed
with more or less satisfaction.
Goethe, Theory of Colors (1818)
“