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Julia Schrank is an undergraduate student at The Pennsylvania State University and plans to pursue her French Language and Culture studies by incorporating principles of Digital Humanities. In this blog article she describes her attempt in explaining what her fellowship in HASTAC exactly is to her mother. Schrank knows it is never an easy task describing digital humanities to her friends and family outside of the "tech world" and asks readers for possible ways to explain Digital Humanities to the average person. Her followers reply sympathetically and discuss the possible ways for the DH community as a whole.

This link leads to a letter from Don Rodrigues, a doctoral student in English at Vanderbilt University. Rodrigues serves as the HASTAC Scholar for Vanderbilt's Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. This letter addresses the HASTAC community and outlines the purposes and goals for the Curb Center and what Rodrigues will be working on and reporting. These three main ideas are that the Curb Center seeks to identify and strengthen the public interest related to creative enterprise and expressive life, the Curb Center takes a broad definition of the system of creative enterprise and expressive life, and the Curb Center recognizes the importance of bringing different voices and perspectives together.

This forum on digital gaming raises some controversial questions in regards to the gaming world in our culture today. It points out the "serious addictions" and "aggressive tendencies" that most digital games possess today and raises the question, "Could it change?" Would a gaming system that introduces "virtual Peace" catch on in the mainstream gaming culture, or only pool in the more "university study" sites that seek to introduce it? Could a spark catch in peaceful gaming that instead of violence incorporates UNICEF or Red Cross into the virtual gaming world?

At the Digital Studio for Public Humanities, Kyle Moody attempted to define digital humanities in one sentence: "open and accessible research and content creation, distribution, and evaluation by persons able to use or utilize technology." In his definition, all people are included whether they are coders or not, a notable difference from many other digital humanists' definitions. Moody discusses how the digital humanities and technology are helping to blur the line between those accessing and consuming content and those creating content. This active reaction to what is being consumed helps developers to see what is wanted and needed and adjust their content based on public reaction. He left his audience with the open question of whether or not the academy has the responsibility to give the public more control over what scholars produce as well as if the academy should be the benevolent curator of cultural content.

HASTAC Scholar Rebecca Nesvest announces her work in testing out new software meant to be a digital accompaniment to texts. In her example, she is using "The String of Pearls, or the Barber of Fleet Street" to map out the locations from the story onto a map of the actual Fleet Street in London where the Demon Barber Sweeney Todd was said to live and work. Her work will also include historical evidence for and against the reality of the events depicted in the story that have always been said to be entirely true.

A professor used her Women's Studies class as a way to test out the use of digital humanities in the undergraduate classroom. The assignment was to create an online archive of every issue of the feminist magazine "Conditions" as well as a presentation over the issue they chose. In doing so, they were required to scan in every page of the magazine and edit them on computer to fit together uniformly. At the end of the assignment period, she submitted the archive into the "Lesbian Poetry Archive" for public viewing and use. Through working on this archive, she became convinced that the PDF format will continue to be the main format for converting physical documents into the digital medium. This is due to the format being almost universal in digital humanities and the likelihood of it continuing to be a relevant file format for many years to come.

In this short blog post, Beth Corzo-Duchardt introduces a project she is working on in the Gender Studies Program. She has decided to "ditch" Blackboard, because it does not a smooth functioning user-friendly program for students and her. Instead, she is using Wordpress and is hoping it will work better for her classrooms.

Kirstyn Leuner reveals further information about a new Digital Humanities collaboration titled "The 18th-Century Common," the purpose of which is to "provide a medium for eighteenth-century scholars to communicate with an eager public non-academic readership." This projects website's main focus as of the opening is to provide scholarly essays on the arts and science in the 18th century, as well as a blog section for professors to share essays on these topics. The project's creators hope to gain contributions from scholars on the 18th century who would normally publish in journals, books, and other print media to add to their online database. This contributions are also open to students as well, and the author provides a link to gain more information on submitting work to the project.

This article by Elexis Lothian is partly a response to another article, "Does DH Really Need to be Transformed?" by Roger Whitson. The article argues that although people in the field may have had good experiences with regards to acceptance, that there is still room for growth in areas such as queer studies, critical race studies, feminist studies, etc. The article also illuminates a little on the process behind choosing the tag #transformDH as well as some of the groups, such as HASTAC, which have collaborated to support the project.

This article represents the popularization of the #transformDH movement following ASA 2011. The article highlights the launching of the #transformDH Tumblr, as well as containing a section at the end with a collection of articles written by digital humanists related to the concerns of the #transformDH movement. The remainder of the article discusses the sessions the article writer personally participated in, as well as the people met related to the #transformDH movement.

This short article for the 2012 American Studies Association Annual Meeting represents a call for digital humanists to collaborate and propose ways in which American Studies and Digital Humanities can be transformed to be better address concerns such a marginalization. Provided proof that this is possible, the article highlights such "digital collectives and social movements" such as Crunk Feminist Collective, "shit [people] say" and artists offering a "productive [exploration] of digital productions and methods." The article also highlights in particular the #transformDH movement, and provides links to some of the articles and websites utilized by the group.

This brief presentation on the Fifth Annual Graduate Student Conference on World History gives an example of some of the things the field of History is looking to track and how the field is expecting to change. The conference is requesting papers on the topics of cultural mobility, political movements, and networks utilized for the transmission of ideas. More of interest to digital humanists though is the category of Mapping Movements, with an explicit focus on the new technologies and digital humanist methods being developed that can be utilized to assist this process.

This article highlights three large uncertainties of the Micha Cardenas about the digital humanities: is queer new media rare or is analysis of it rare, if there is something "conservative, even sellable" that is present in the digital humanities, and can queer theory, new media, or the digital humanities "disturb hegemonic systems." Although the article does not answer any of these questions, it discusses the history of Queer Theory as "hip, trendy," and its potential reflection in the digital humanities. These questions also arise out of a concern that discussions in digital humanities, particularly CCS, "can run down a road that is very conservative."

This blog is about how to teach digital editions more like a seminar. Digital editions are about pedagody, culture preservation, and interpreting. She uses this term as a broader Digital Humanities method to create a network that uses interpretive knowledge and connected skills to reach a certain audience. By making this teaching more like a graduate seminar students are able to contribute more to the class because they will be more easily self-motivated. Students will understand that there is one instructor and that they contribute to their project while also remembering who the audience is.

300 students in the UK had the opportunity to learn more about digital skills, such as coding and reporting, away from a classroom setting. They were broken up into small groups and ask to create a report about a certain event. This helped the students collaborate and share their skills in an enviornment they were more comfortable then with students who had similar skills and interests as them.

This blog is over a first year teachers proposal to teach a writing course that is digitally based. By teaching this way allows for students to focus more on analyzing, archiving, and transforming into a more modern method. Instead of composing through a word documents, students will use the XML program which does not tell any computer what to do with the information. This program requires students to describe what they are doing as they do it. It also allows students to see all of their editing work and has other advantages that Word does not.

This post highlights a project by Sanna Dullaway to recolor old black-and-white photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries in order to recreate the vibrant, colorful worlds that we usually imagine in sepia-tone. In addition to the praise of the project, Yvonne Seale questions if it takes away our historical imaginations and violates the artifacts' historical integrity. Either way, she concedes that this project makes the past more tangible to newer and younger audiences used to seeing everything in color and gets them thinking about history.

This blog post created in anticipation of a panel on undergraduate work and research in the digital humanities creates many questions and ideas for discussion at the panel. The author invites others to share input in hopes of turning it into a discussion to bring forward to the panel at the 2013 Digital Humanities conference. Among these questions and ideas are questions of the best way to incorporate project-based digital humanities research approaches in the undergraduate classroom as well as designing curricula to incorporate Digital Humanities into the coursework while still including traditional humanities disciplines.

Audrey Altman is set to give a presentation at the University of Iowa entitled, "Attck of the Digital Map! The Wonderful Monsters We Create When Humanities and Technology Collide." In her upcoming presentation Audrey will discuss both historical analysis and digital mapping and the requirements that both bring to the table individually in any given project. Both are individually composed of different aspects and Audrey will try to discuss the pros and cons of both tools when used together simultaneously for one project. Altman will also highlight on the project that she and her undergraduate students have embarked upon this semester that attempts to utilize the two aspects into one project. She will attepmt to delve into the findings, triumphs, ailures, and education gained by she and her students throughout the whole experience.

This short blog post announces and advertises Audrey Altman's upcoming talk about digital mapping. This talk is designed to discuss how historical analysis of maps and digital mapping require different sets of skills and methodologies. She is speaking from the context of a project she is heading which is which is involving undergraduate students in to creation of map-based documents for an archive on Iowa Latino/a history. Her talk is going to talk about both problems and surprises involved with the project and digital mapping.

This future course at a University wants to show how the human and the new machine are used for research and teaching. Their online learning method is used to incorporate different learning styles that are used in research with computational tools and networks that are connected throughout the world. This class is designed to prepare students in the humanities and social sciences that use new ways of thinking, teaching and learning. Their hoping with showing how online learning better educates students that it transforms higher education making it more meaningful to the present and future. After students have finished this course they will leave with many e-portfolio projects, public online writing, multimedia and collaborative productions.