Session Descriptions
- Bodies, Genders, and Beyond: Electronic Resources for Gender Studies
- Electronic Resources for African Studies
- Electronic Resources for the Study of the Medieval and Early Modern World
- English and American Studies: The 16th to the 18th Centuries
- Finding Primary Sources Online: The Marriage of Technology and Archives
- Gist of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
- Historic Newspapers
- New Directions in Web- Based Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SS/H)
- Organizing Scholarly Resources in a Digital World: Using EndNote® Bibliographic Software
- Past, Present, and Future of Annotation
- Reading, Writing, and Viewing: Digital Resources for the Art Researcher
- Religion in Cyberspace
- Resources for the Study of Drama and Theatre
- Resources for Work in Classics, Renaissance Studies, and the History of Medicine
- Social Sciences Computing Cluster
- Spatial Demography 101: Analytical Techniques for Social Scientists
- Student Projects: Graduate Stipends in the Humanities and Social Sciences
- Technologizing the Word: The Digital Turn
- Technology, Interdisciplinarity and Black Studies
- Using Digital Media in Research and Teaching: Standards, Techniques and Strategies
- Using Simulations to Explore Social Networks
- The Web as a Medium for Humanities Scholarship
- What You Need to Know about Social Science Research and Data Services
- Where Disciplines Intersect: The Research Question and Digital Resources in Psychology and Related Fields
Bodies, Genders, and Beyond: Electronic Resources for Gender Studies
This workshop session will focus on the broad spectrum of resources including full texts, abstracts, directories, and other electronic material available to students whose investigations lead them to study women and men, gender and sexuality, and issues of cultural identity and sexual politics. In addition to suggesting effective search strategies and optimal electronic resources for initiating an investigation or research project, the workshop will also treat specialized resources in the humanities and the social sciences depending upon participants' interests. Electronic Resources for African Studies
The Herskovits Library of African Studies is the largest separate library for the study of Africa in existence. Digitizing portions of its rare and unique resources make them more available for use both on campus and world-wide. Digital projects have included about 375 political posters focused on Southern African liberation now on the web and about 200 HIV/AIDS posters now in production. In 1993 the Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African photographs was purchased. Comprised of about 6,500 photographs taken between 1860 and 1960, this collection is an unequalled resource. A preliminary web site with about 135 images exists at present, with plans underway for a redesigned web site and most of the 6,500 images accessible. In this session, instructors will introduce the Winterton collection as well as the Africana posters and commercial electronic resources. Electronic Resources for the Study of the Medieval and Early Modern World
The instructors will introduce students to electronic resources central to the study of medieval and early modern European religion, history, culture, and literature. Among the resources to be discussed will be the International Medieval Bibliography, Iter, Early English Books Online (EEBO), and the Middle English Compendium. English and American Studies: The 16th to the 18th Centuries
Finding Primary Sources Online: The Marriage of Technology and Archives
Personal papers, correspondence, diaries, and other primary-source materials are crucial to research in the humanities. Because these materials are one-of-a-kind, and are organized and indexed differently from books and periodicals, they can be difficult to track down, and also difficult to use. Researchers can now benefit from technologies that make archival and manuscript collections much easier to locate. This session will discuss what to expect when searching online for primary sources; what finding aids are (and why you should care); and where to find them. The session will look at union databases of finding aids, using examples from the resources at NU as well as other online sites, and will describe how these databases are constructed. The Gist of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology is being used in research, teaching, and for practical applications across a very wide range of social science and humanities disciplines. This session introduces students to the data, software and other GIS resources available in the library to the Northwestern University community. Instructors will demonstrate GIS by showing the steps involved with GIS and how it is used in the research of one Northwestern University researcher.
Because newspapers are difficult to preserve and store in their original print format, libraries have long relied on facsimiles in lieu of paper originals. As a welcome alternative to film and fiche, an increasing number of historical news sources are now available in digital format. In this session, we will survey some of the materials available to members of the Northwestern community. Sources will include examples of U.S. papers, ranging from late 18th century newspapers to major urban dailies (The New York Times, Los Angeles Times) as well as foreign news sources, such as Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), and the Times of London. We will also discuss some sources for surveying more recent events in the foreign press, including World News Connection, Factiva, and China Core Newspapers. New Directions in Web Based Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SS/H)
Over the last decade new tools for research in the social sciences/humanities (SS/H) have transformed our acquisition, transmission and publication of knowledge. New research methodologies will continue to change our fields in the foreseeable future. But how well prepared are we to best take advantage of these new IT tools? Are the SS/H well-structured to grow in ways that strategically capitalize on the global circulation of knowledge? This talk will suggest ways to structure your graduate career to take advantage of web based tools that promote interdisciplinarity and collaboration--key factors for publishing and securing academic employment in the 21st century. Organizing Scholarly Resources in a Digital World: Using EndNote® Bibliographic Software
EndNote® is a powerful bibliographic tool that can help you organize your research materials and save you countless hours in the course of your reading and writing. In these sessions we will introduce you to the software and show you how EndNote® can help you gather information from remote databases, organize and sort records and notes, and automatically format citations and bibliographies in a finished paper. The Past, Present, and Future of Annotation
Among the many challenges we face in this increasingly information- rich world is the challenge of annotation. As more and more information comes to us as data, we need to transform that data into information and then cast that information into knowledge. This task is as old as human expression, but the challenge for us is to manage the enterprise in ways that fit the digital world. As the digital world replaces the analog world for media of all kinds, we need to find new ways to create information and use it creatively. My talk will encompass a very quick review of the processes we have used to comment on images and text. Then I will demonstrate one technique for commenting on (i.e., annotating) audio, images, and video. I conclude with some comments on the future of annotation and the role that today's graduate students will play in that future. Reading, Writing, and Viewing: Digital Resources for the Art Researcher
This introduction to the essential mastery of electronic research through the Northwestern Library system will focus on databases linked to the Religion website. We will explore additional electronic resources from the Library’s webpage. Navigating cross-database searching will be demonstrated, and time will be devoted to research on various religions, faiths, and denominations as well as related subjects, such as the philosophy and sociology of religion. Special attention will be paid to the importance of technological literacy in academic research, and the integration of electronic and conventional methodologies. It will be demonstrated how the skillful use of technology can make performing research dramatically more efficient and rewarding. Resources for the Study of Drama and Theatre
This session combines text and performance aspects of drama and theatre. Participants will be introduced to electronic texts for American, Asian-American, Black, and English drama, as well as the entire Shakespeare corpus. Archives of important historical newspapers, websites of electronic databases, and links to exemplary library collections will be outlined. The Library's own electronic journals and newspapers, tools for special subjects, such as medieval English theater, and electronic dictionaries will complete this presentation. Resources for Work in Classics, Renaissance Studies, and the History of Medicine
As much of the best work in the humanities and social sciences crosses traditional boundaries, you should be prepared to follow your research in directions you did not anticipate. For example, you may need to be able to read (or get help reading) Greek and Latin as well as the later European vernaculars, and you will probably need to do more complicated bibliographical research. You should also be prepared to cross into other media and research, acquire, scan, photograph, and edit images that illustrate your subject. Social Sciences Computing Cluster
The cluster of 18 Linux systems provides two interactive systems, a batch cluster of 16 systems that will run 32 simultaneous jobs, a network file service, a wide variety of statistical software applications, online access to NU Library's datalib files, and consulting and education services. In this session, instructors will introduce participants to these resources and discuss their role in your doctoral research. A brief demonstration of the SSCC will complete this presentation. Students interested in the Social Sciences Computing Cluster can learn more by visiting <http://sscc.northwestern.edu/>.
Please attend other 10:10 AM sessions.
Within today's high-powered computer environment, scholars interested in spatial relationship and patterns have argued for the digital map to be a basic descriptive tool of all demographers and social scientists. GIS enables social scientist to create digital maps that uncover spatial relationship that often remain hidden when geographic data are presented solely in tabular forms. Spatial analysis, with special reference to spatial statistics, is the companion of these maps. The goal of this presentation is to further promote the growing popularity of GIS and spatial analysis in demography by treating spatial analytical approaches involving demographic data that are geographically referenced. Relevant issues to be addressed include: (1) geographic information systems versus geographic information science; (2) geographic scale, (3) creating a GIS database; (4) spatial methodology and (5) specification and estimation of spatial models. Student Projects: Graduate Stipends in the Humanities and Social Sciences
The United States experienced an unprecedented rise in imprisonment over the last thirty years; approximately 2.2 million people now reside in U.S. prisons and jails. My dissertation project explores the role of political decision-making at the state level as a means to understand the emergence of mass imprisonment in the United States. Using a single case study of imprisonment growth in Florida, the project relies on combining and analyzing multiple archival, interview and secondary data sources. In this presentation, I discuss how new digital scanning technology is helping me to both collect and analyze the archival data in ways not previously possible. I demonstrate the potential of this technology through a content analysis of annual reports from the Florida Division of Corrections from the early 1960’s and the early 21st century. This comparison highlights how the idea of “rehabilitation” has shifted over time.
My dissertation topic requires me to do fieldwork in different places as well as to collect a large amount of data. The traditional way to do this job is to copy all the relevant publications in each place, and then carry more and more papers as I travel around in China. I also need to retype a lot of information into my computer. This is a waste of limited time and resources. The IT grant of WCAS gave me a chance to learn about OmniPage Pro 15.0, the most powerful OCR so far. It can significantly solve the above problem, though not perfectly. It converts the scanned documents into many different formats, such as PDF, word, excel, and PowerPoint, etc. with the same layout as the original file.
In recent years many neighborhoods in Chicago have become terrains of contestation over the control of community space. Promoters of gentrification often deploy liberal and ostensibly colorblind discourses of diversity and inclusion to describe a process that in the end excludes and stratifies. In turn, black and Latino groups contest displacement through racially self-determined cultural means. I approach gentrification both as a moment that reveals race, and as a process that constructs and transforms race through the medium of urban space. I reexamine this process from an interactional perspective that looks at these groups together to assess relative perceptions, attitudes, and actions, as well as degrees of social, economic, and civic integration. One component of this project is a survey on racial attitudes, levels of interracial contact, and general demographic information taken from whites and people of color in neighborhoods at the current frontier of upscale redevelopment. A tablet computer with recording and coding software can reduce artificial barriers between interviewer and respondent, and enable interviews that are more transparent, participatory, confidential and secure. These technologies allow flexible options for recording data which make them adaptable to neighborhood fieldwork, and open ended in content. I will then plot survey responses using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping to link interactional dynamics with changes in spatial demographics and the built environment. My presentation will provide demonstrations of technological integrations which bridge the scales of personal narrative and structural political economic change. The objective is a more complete anthropological portrait of race and social space in the context of gentrification in three Chicago neighborhoods.
Advances in technology benefit most, including qualitative researchers. Gone are the days of hours upon hours of transcribing via foot-pedals and countless playbacks. Digital microphones are now available, as well as software that can transcribe interviews with a 60% accuracy rate which increases as the length of the interview does (it's self-calibrating after initial calibration of the interviewee by the interviewer). This hardware and software enables for less time being spent on transcription and thus more time for analysis. It's easy to use and endlessly helpful for qualitative researchers.
In summer of 2006 I traveled in Italy and Spain thanks to a fellowship award from the Center for the Advanced Study of Visual Arts. The purpose of this trip was to research the spaces of baroque architecture. My presentation for the symposium will be primarily visual, using a slide show to demonstrate the ways in which having a camera benefited my architectural research. Though the quality and quantity of images in books varies widely, it is never possible to get a complete sense of how a space is experienced through photographic reproductions. Comparing photographs from books with my own, I will focus on Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane and Bernini’s Sant’Andrea al Quirinale as examples of the level of detail possible when taking one’s own documentation. In both cases, having a camera was essential to understanding the formal aspects of the architectural theories that made these two architects so distinct. Not only did the camera allow me to document the spaces for my personal archive, but the process of cropping and framing each photograph influenced the way that I saw these spaces. Often this involved documenting the space of the building as it is experienced by an average visitor as opposed to only seeing it from the ideal viewpoint that is available in most books. Other occasions allowed me to photograph aspects of the buildings that would have been invisible to a church visitor, such as the exterior of the lanterns that let natural light into side chapels. In other instances my photographs compare the juxtapositions of baroque additions to older, often medieval buildings, and in some cases I was able to capture the ways in which these spaces are used today, whether ritually or curatorially. Beyond individual structures, having a camera allowed me to make comparisons between buildings. Whether it was the work of a single architect responding to different sites, one architect being influenced by another such as in the case of the Gesù in Palermo which was modeled after that in Rome, or theatrical strategies carried in small details from one place to another, the camera allowed me to explore the similarities between spaces while referring back to previous sites. In addition to showing the academic benefits of the technology grant, my presentation will also highlight a number of the technical features of the camera I used including the enormous storage capacity of the memory card, the wide range of zoom, and the ability to manipulate focus, depth of field, and shutter speed.
This project is the third in a series in which I have utilized objects as surrogates for myself and imposed upon them physical gestures that emulate psychological states and emotions. Each project has consisted of three essential parts: collecting objects, acting out the gesture, and photographing the result. The original impetus for this current project was a feeling of being torn by forces larger than my self. However, this concept has evolved to encompass ongoing feelings of stress and anxiety as well. I’ve also shifted away from my past use of household objects in favor of ordinary materials that reacted to a variety of simple applications of physical stress, including bending, tearing, and stretching. Using a digital camera with a macro lens I’ve been able to take photographs of the stress marks at close proximity with the intent to use the printing process to further magnify the resulting images. Technologizing the Word: The Digital Turn
We now live in the early phases of digital textuality. Among scholars in the humanities, the attitudes towards this next phase of the 'technologizing' of the word frequently show the combination of fear and contempt that characterized earlier changes in the technology of the word. Or to put it differently, the perception of loss (real enough) stands in the way of seeing potential gain and taking intelligent advantage of it. In this talk I will focus on some of the gains that come from an even a little knowledge of digital text technologies and what kinds of things such knowledge enables you to do. I call this 'taking advantage of the query potential of the digital surrogate'. The telescope and microscope exponentially increased the scope of knowledge by letting scientists look at things too small or too far away to be seen by the human eye. In a somewhat similar way, reading-- a central activity of the humanist--can be extended by micro and macro analyses that become possible when texts are consistently encoded and become parts of interoperable digital archives. Illustrative examples will come from the Philologic search engine, the WordHoard project, the Text Creation Partnership archive (EEBO- TCP), and various Chadwyck-Healey archives. Technology, Interdisciplinarity and Black Studies
The interdisciplinary nature of Black Studies is an exciting challenge to electronic research efforts. Approaches to electronic resources for the study of the Black experience will be discussed. A survey of proprietary databases and freely available web resources will introduce the possibilities and limitations of electronic resources. An assortment of general resources for exploration of Diasporic topics will also be presented. Using Digital Media in Research and Teaching: Standards, Techniques and Strategies
Understanding how to properly gather and store audio, video and images in digital form is critical to successfully integrating them into publications and presentations. This session offers an introduction to digital media file formats and capture techniques. Learn how to manipulate and organize media once captured, and discuss some options for presentation and publication. The session will also include an overview of digitization hardware and accessories. Using Simulations to Explore Social Networks
Everyone knows about the "six degrees of separation" that link you to anyone else on the planet (including, for example, Kevin Bacon--see http://oracleofbacon.org). In fact, the networks of interactions that define our social groupings--and their consequences for human behavior--have been studied scientifically for many years in a number of fields (sociology, political science, linguistics, psychology, communications, etc.). The Web as a Medium for Humanities Scholarship
The Web is now well-established as a remarkable bibliographical and archival resource for humanities scholars, but its possibilities as a medium for presenting work is still in the developmental stage. This session will explore a number of projects, including several urban history sites in which the presenter was a principal participant, that attempt to use the multi-media and other dynamic features of the Web to do humanities scholarship in new ways. Its larger goal is to encourage graduate students doing qualitative scholarship to consider how they might integrate electronic tools and techniques into their own work, taking advantage of support for such efforts at Northwestern. Links to some of Professor Carl Smith's digital projects: The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory What You Need to Know about Social Science Research and Data Services
Social Science Data Services (SSDS) acquires and maintains an extensive collection of numeric computer data files used for secondary analysis in the social sciences. Thousands of data files acquired from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research and other depositories are available in Northwestern's data collection. These data can be used for research and teaching in the social sciences and related fields such as education, health, transportation studies and management. Participants in this session will be introduced to the research process and the reference and technical consulting services which are available regarding the data files. Participants will have the opportunity to review a number of sources of specific data files by topic and to learn how to access the resources for their own research. Where Disciplines Intersect: The Research Question and Digital Resources in Psychology and Related Fields
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