Sandbox: The 5CollDH Blog

This year’s Five College Postdoctoral scholar of Digital Humanities and Blended Learning, Jeffrey Vadala challenged his Hampshire College class to produce virtual reality representations of ancient beliefs systems for the class Anthropologically Critiquing Reality. Influenced by the “Ontological Turn,” this class explores how ontological and metaphysical systems shape societies around the world. For a semester-long project, Hampshire college students learned to use VR tools while independently researching ancient Maya or Pompeiian metaphysical beliefs. More specifically, students were asked to represent and characterize … Read More

By T.X. Watson When I was interviewed for the Valley Advocate podcast, Gina Beavers asked me what my most comfortable medium was as an artist. Since I was on camera, I couldn’t just shrug and say “iunno,” so I put a little effort into coming up with an answer. I wound up citing George Orwell’s essay “Why I Write,” which I cite pretty often because it works really well for me as an articulation of my motives as a writer. … Read More

Amherst College’s Lehua Matsumoto built an interactive virtual reality environment that introduces students and interested users to the natural world surrounding Amherst College and the Western Massachusetts area. Noting a general lack of understanding local native American history, knowledge, and epistemology, Lehua’s project is designed to help people explore and create awareness of local indigenous ecological knowledge. This virtual reality experience will provide users an interactive showcase of plants and environmental characteristics (see video below). Cycles of Reconciliation By Lehua Matsumoto … Read More

2017-2018 Digital Humanities Undergraduate Fellow Key Estime is producing a hybrid project that articulates a digital video ethnography with a hypermedia web experience. Called “RYSE-UP,” this work explores the needs of youth in the RYSE Program; which stands for Railroad Street Youth Student Empowerment Program. Why Bare Hands? Why RYSE-UP? By Key Estime In the 21st century, the youth of the United States struggle to prepare for their futures amidst global warming, rising technology, and the lack of community engagement … Read More

By Bailey Fernandez My project was a hypertext digital thesis built in Twine and scored within MAX/MSP. Over the course of the project, I developed a critical/theoretical text addressing how mythic structures can be interpreted in a “generative” way across various platforms. Synthesizing the works of Levi-Strauss, Frazer, Barthes, and Derrida—I created an interlocking web of small essays on the works of William Blake, Snorri Sturluson, and Nick Land. Twine, as a form, presents significant opportunities to the writer and … Read More

The Five College Digital Humanities program is pleased to welcome Prof. Tom Scheinfeldt Ph.D. (University of Connecticut) for his talk called:  “Collaborative Creativity: What can art and design teach humanists about working together?”How can art and design-based approaches to the production of new knowledge inform humanities research? What can these disciplines teach us about deep and meaningful collaboration in the “digital age?” This talk will draw on the facilitator’s fifteen years of work in digital humanities, prior experiments in radical … Read More

UMass Faculty/Staff, We are offering Innovate@ Symposium from May 21-24 as a collaboration between TEFD, the UMass Libraries, and IT, and I am hoping you can share this information with your colleagues. The deadline to apply is Friday, April 20. Participation in the Symposium is supported by a $500 stipend, and faculty agree to deploy one new tool used in the Symposium in one of their courses, attend a post-Symposium session during the academic year to share their experiences, and … Read More

Registration is now open for the Blended Learning in the Liberal Arts Conference, held May 23-24, 2018 at Bryn Mawr College. Join us to talk about digital pedagogy, blended learning, and more! Register here.Find out more information about the conference on our website. Full schedule coming soon!Contact Jennifer Spohrer at blendedlearning@brynmawr.edu with questions. This conference is supported by Bryn Mawr College, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Teagle Foundation. Limited funding for Five College participants is available! Have questions? Send us … Read More