For the second year Lawrence Technological University (LTU) will host two conferences on the use of digital technology in the humanities, Network Detroit: Digital Humanities Theory and Practice, on Friday, Sept. 26, and THATCamp on Saturday, Sept. 27.
Digital technology has revolutionized scholarship and research in the humanities, and now mobile devices are changing the way future college students interact with literature at a very young age.
Network Detroit: Digital Humanities Theory and Practice highlights digital humanities projects in the region and involves undergraduates, graduate students and university faculty. Museum archivists, publishing executives, scholars and teachers will report on the state of digital humanities projects and practices in their fields.
In addition to LTU, the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University and the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan are also among the sponsors for this year’s conference.
Admission to Network Detroit, which includes a continental breakfast and dinner, is $40. Undergraduate and graduate students can attend for free. For registration information and a full schedule of the Network Detroit conference, visit detroitdh.org. Participants sign in between 8:30-9 a.m. in the lobby of LTU’s Arts and Sciences Building.
Registration for THATCamp, which is free of charge, is also at detroitdh.org. Participants should sign in beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday in the atrium of LTU’s Buell Management Building. The program is scheduled to conclude at 4:30 p.m.
The keynote speaker will be Steven Jones, a professor of English and co-director of the Center for Textual Studies and the Digital Humanities at Loyola University Chicago. His research interests include Romantic-period literature, textual studies, and the digital humanities.
In his most recent book, “The Emergence of the Digital Humanities” (2013), Jones wrote, “The past decade has seen a profound shift in our collective understanding of the digital network. What was once understood to be a transcendent virtual reality is now experienced as a ubiquitous grid of data that we move through and interact with every day, raising new questions about the social, locative, embodied, and object-oriented nature of our experience in the networked world.”
THATCamp stands for “The Humanities and Technology Camp,” and has been described as “an open, inexpensive meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot.”
Participants decide their agendas and form project/discussion groups at this “unconference.”
THATCamps started at George Mason University and now take place worldwide.
The Network Detroit schedule includes:
- Museum Plenary, 9 -10:45 a.m., with representatives of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Henry Ford Museum, the Detroit Historical Society, and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History.
- Detroit Cartographies, 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., with Peter Leonard of Yale University, Alex Hill of Wayne State University, and Kim Lacey of Saginaw Valley State University.
- Digital Archiving, 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., with Harmony Bench of Ohio State University, Randal Baier of Eastern Michigan University, and Ethan Watrall of Michigan State University.
- Scholarly Publishing, 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., with Arjun Sabharwal of the University of Toledo, Evan Weaks of Fernandez & Associates, LLP, and Dean Rehberger of Michigan State University.
- WSU Digital Collections Platform, 1:30-3 p.m., with Amelia Mowry, Joshua Neds-Fox, Graham Hukill, and Cole Hudson of the Wayne State University Libraries.
- Digital Pedagogy, 1:30-3 p.m., with Melinda Weinstein, Sarah Rescoe, and Marija Franetovic of Lawrence Technologial University, Ethan Watrall of Michigan State University, and William Pannapacker of Hope College.
- Ethnic Layers of Detroit Project, 3:15-4:45 p.m., with Sangeetha Gopalakrishnan, Alina Klin, Laura Kline, Julie Koehler, Felecia Lucht, and Krysta Ryzewski of Wayne State University.
- Journalism and Screen Studies, 3:15-4:45 p.m., with Jennifer Proctor, Carolyn Kraus, and Tim Kiska of the University of Michigan Dearborn.
- Keynote presentation, 6-7 p.m., “The Eversion of the Network and the Emergence of the Digital Humanities,” by Steven Jones of Loyola University Chicago.
Lawrence Technological University, www.ltu.edu, is a private university founded in 1932 that offers more than 100 programs through the doctoral level in its Colleges of Architecture and Design, Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and Management. PayScale lists Lawrence Tech among the nation’s top 100 universities for return on undergraduate tuition investment, and highest in the Detroit metropolitan area. Lawrence Tech is also listed in the top tier of Midwestern universities by U.S. News and World Report and the Princeton Review. Students benefit from small class sizes and experienced faculty who provide a real-world, hands-on, “theory and practice” education with an emphasis on leadership. Activities on Lawrence Tech’s 102-acre campus include over 60 student clubs and organizations and a growing roster of NAIA varsity sports.