Digital English Lab Opening

Earlier this week, I attended an event to commemorate the opening of the Digital English Lab: a computer lab located in Austin 246. This event also served as a panel to discuss what students, faculty, and staff in the humanities could use the lab for. Generally, technology is seen as being for STEM students, and not usually associated with those of us in the liberal arts as our chosen field of study. To showcase the uses of the digital lab and what it means to study the humanities in the digital age, eight professors and graduate students gave presentations about how to connect the humanities and technology within either their own projects or studies, or by sharing research made pertaining to the subject.

The first presenter was Professor Brenda Brueggeman, who shared a website she created to raise awareness of “Aktion T-4”: the Nazi plan to eradicate disabled men and women in Germany. This information was entirely new to myself and many other of the attendees, but now there is a place to consolidate all of the information Professor Brueggeman has found in her trips to Germany to research this occurrence. By putting this information online, Professor Brueggeman has been able to receive feedback from many people across the world, and has been able to post about various artifacts pertaining to the event, such as the gloves of a crematorium worker.

Professor Brueggeman’s presentation was followed by that of Professor Fiona Somerset, who spoke about digital pedagogy, the practice of teaching, and how the English Lab can be used in an educational setting. This site in particular is fascinating, since any member of the public can peer review the articles that are up for review. Readers can also download articles that are not up for review and submit any edits or changes to the articles.

On the topic of edits and changes, Eleanor Reeds and Professor Bob Hasenfrantz both presented websites in which changes to poetry are tracked. Ms. Reeds’s site pertained specifically to the poet John Temple, tracking edits and changes he made to his poetry and compiling them to compare and contrast different drafts. Professor Hasnefrantz developed a site with the purpose of providing a space for scholars and poets to translate medieval poetry from Old English to modern English.

Ruby Perlmutter and Henry Yordon shared presentations about how coding works, and how it can be used within the humanities. Ms. Perlmutter focused on a program that could scan pieces of text for certain linguistic parameters set by the user. For example, she used the program to analyze the inaugural addresses of the presidents of the United States. One interesting finding she discovered was that war was actually mentioned most often in periods of peace following wars, not during them. Mr. Yordon mostly spoke to how coding works, explaining what a Huffman Encoding Tree was.

Many of the presentations highlighted the extremely collaborative nature of the digital humanities, and how the lab could be used to create websites. According to Professor Yohei Igarashi, part of The Web and Digital English Committee, the lab will be open during certain times of the day, but keys will be made available to students with longer projects that would require more time in the lab. Each computer will be equipped with Adobe Creative Suite and will be available to students of all majors. Professors will be able to schedule class time in the lab, so that sharing media or showing videos will be easier for the class.