All posts by Alan Liu

Shout Out for the Humanities

Dear Students . . .

Posted by Alan Liu

Shout Out for Humanities Student Contest

The submission deadline (March 1, 2016) for the 4Humanities.org “Shout Out for the Humanities” student prize contest is fast approaching. If you are an undergraduate or graduate student anywhere in the world who values the humanities and think that society should too, please make a submission that tells us why.

How better to advocate for the humanities than to have students tell it in their own words, pictures, videos, songs, online materials, etc.?

We’ll use your submissions to get the news out that society needs a robust, rich mix of fields, disciplines, and values, among which the humanities have a strong role.

Share this post about our contest with friends. Check out our Facebook page and “like” our post on the contest. Follow us on Twitter (@4Hum).

There are separate prizes for undergraduates and graduates. There is a great panel of distinguished judges. We’ll be posting the submissions.

Shout Out for the Humanities

Dear Friends . . .

Posted by Alan Liu

Shout Out for Humanities Student Contest

The submission deadline (March 1, 2016) for the 4Humanities.org “Shout Out for the Humanities” student prize contest is fast approaching. Please help us make one last push to publicize the contest to undergraduate and graduate students in your networks and institutions. Share with students (and instructors) by email and Twitter. Check out our Facebook page and “like” our post on the contest. Send our press release to people who might be interested.

There are separate prizes for undergraduates and graduates. There is a great panel of distinguished judges. We’ll be posting the students’ submissions.

How better to advocate for the humanities than to have students tell it in their own words, pictures, videos, songs, online materials, etc.?

U. S. Patents Related to the Humanities

Posted by Alan Liu

4Humanities Advocacy Projects

In the course of its current effort to collect a “big data” set of newspaper and magazine articles, government documents, and other public discourse on the humanities for study through computational text analysis, the 4Humanities WhatEvery1Says research project acted on an intriguing idea…. The project team collected a plain-text corpus of all U.S. patents issued since 1976 (the first year of full digital text available in the U. S. Patent Office’s searchable archive) and scraped the patent descriptions as plain text to facilitate study through computational text-analysis
        Much of the leading-edge scholarly response to public discussion about the apparent decline of the humanities has revolved around translating the older notion of “general” and (more recently) “flexible” humanities knowledge into such terms relevant to current socioeconomic change as “open access” and “collaboration.” Normally, these concepts are seen through the lens of copyright issues. Little attention has been paid to patents as part of the modernization of the humanities.
        Gutenberg did not have a patent on print. However, thinking about the humanities in society today, researchers may need to evaluate critically how the humanities should adapt to the fact that he didn’t. (Read full post, including details on topic modeling the patents.)

“Downstream from the Digital Humanities” Working Meeting at University of Zadar, Croatia

Posted by Alan Liu

Digital Humanities to Advance the Humanities

Eva Kekou and Christina Kamposiori report on the May 2014 “Downstream from the Digital Humanities” working meeting hosted at the University of Zadar in Croatia. The workshop was an event of the Network for Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities (NeDiMAH) and it was led by Trinity College Dublin. Its purpose was to gather researchers and other professionals interested in the different aspects of scholarly communication in Digital Humanities. Thus, the group of participants represented the various perspectives of the topic under investigation; these ranged from institutional (e.g. libraries, funding institutions) to scholarly (Humanities & Computer Science) and industry related (publishing). […]

Scott Newstok, “The Crafts of Freedom”

Posted by Alan Liu

Advocacy Statements & Campaigns, Humanities, Plain & Simple

« A Humanities, Plain & Simple Post » by Scott Newstok and Chapter16.org

Martin Luther King Jr.’s Mountaintop speech was more than brilliant rhetorical art; it was also the culmination of a lifetime spent in intense and extensive reading.

On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was summoned to the Bishop Mason Temple in Memphis to address the striking sanitation workers and their supporters. King wasn’t scheduled to speak at the rally, but Reverend Ralph Abernathy, sensing the crowd’s disappointment, had persuaded King to come from the Lorraine Hotel to make a few remarks […]

4Humanities “Shout Out For the Humanities” Student Prize Contest

Posted by Alan Liu

Shout Out for Humanities Student Contest

4Humanities.org announces its “Shout Out For the Humanities” student prize contest. Prizes are offered for best undergraduate (1st prize: US $1,000 – 2nd: $700 – 3rd: $300) and best graduate student (1st prize: US $1,000 – 2nd: $700 – 3rd: $300) submissions from any nation that speak up for the value of the humanities in today’s society. 4Humanities wants to showcase student ideas and voices on such questions as: Why is studying the humanities–e.g., history, literature, languages, philosophy, art history, media history, and culture–important to you? To society? How would you convince your parents, an employer, a politician, or others that there is value in learning the humanities? Submissions will be judged by an international panel of distinguished judges for message, quality, and impact no matter the medium or format. Possible submissions include: essay (less than 2,000 words), video, digital work, poster, cartoon, song, art, short story, interview. Submissions are due March 1, 2016. Submission Guidelines • Contest Kit • Judges (Faculty: host a student “creativity workshop” for the contest at your institution!)

Take a Survey on Perceptions of “Public Humanities” at Your Institution

Posted by Alan Liu

Advocacy Statements & Campaigns

The Public Humanities Group affiliated with the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) seeks respondents from higher-education institutions for an online survey gauging contemporary perspectives about the “public humanities.” The questionnaire (designed to take between 10 and 15 minutes to complete) inquires into how important the public humanities are at various institutions; what kinds of activities faculty members think contribute to the public humanities; the percentage of time that educators spend on such activities; and the impact educators believe various public humanities activities and media outlets to have. (More) (Take the survey)