This past week I’ve been visiting CIRCSE research center at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, digging into the fairly recently accessioned archive of Father Roberto Busa, SJ, often said to be the founder of humanities computing. I’m working on a book on the first decade of his research in historical context, 1949-1959, tentatively titled The Priest and the Punched-Card Machines. My hosts here, especially Dr. Marco Passarotti, have been very kind and helpful, and I’ve handled and examined a fascinating collection of letters and other documents, as well as punched cards, magnetic-tape reels, floppy disks, slides, and fragile glass transparencies, among other artifacts and texts. Today I visited the location of Fr. Busa’s first humanities computing labs in Gallarate, or locations for, as he called it, “Literary Data Analysis.”
Category: Digital Humanities
Columbia Studio @ Butler, Feb. 25, 2015
Wednesday, February 25, at 2:00 PM, I’ll be presenting the book in progress at Columbia University’s Studio @ Butler. That’s room 208b in Butler Library. The event is free and open to the public, but RSVP.
USF Humanities Institute, Jan. 20, 2015
It’s true, in the new year I’ll be giving a talk at the University of South Florida’s Humanities Institute on The Emergence of the Digital Humanities, and including a section on my new project on the emergence of humanities computing in the mid twentieth century. Free and open to the public: January 20, 2015, 6:00 PM.
CUNY ARC Seminar, Nov. 13, 2014
I’m looking forward to presenting my research in progress on early humanities computing at the CUNY Advanced Research Collaborative seminar next week, Thursday, November 13, 2014, 4:00 PM.
Network Detroit: DH Theory and Practice
I’m looking forward to addressing the conference, “Network Detroit: Digital Humanities Theory and Practice” Friday, September 26, 6:00 PM, at Lawrence Technological University.
DH Forum U. Kansas
I’m looking forward to giving a keynote talk tomorrow, September 12, at the DH Forum sponsored by the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas. The topic for the Forum is “Nodes and Networks in the Humanities.”
OSLEP Seminar, University of Oklahoma
I’m looking forward to directing a seminar next month at my undergraduate alma mater, Oklahoma University’s Oklahoma Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program, which I took part in as an undergraduate–the best part of my college career, really, so it’s an honor to contribute to it. The seminar, on “Media, Culture, and the Digital Humanities,” meets May 12-16, 2014.
Walter J. Ong Memorial Lecture
I’m looking forward to visiting St. Louis University next week to give the sixth Walter J. Ong Memorial Lecture on “The Eversion of the Network and the Emergence of the Digital Humanities” (Wednesday, March 26, 4:00 PM). The lecture is sponsored by the interdisciplinary Ong Center for Language, Media and Culture.
Citations sighted
Over on the Tumblr for The Emergence of the Digital Humanities, I’ve noted a few interesting recent citations to the book, one on a British Library Digital Scholarship blog, one on a blog dedicated to the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and one on Digital Shakespeares.
The Emergence of the Digital Humanities was named book of the week this week by the libraries and publishing journal, Against The Grain.