Post Spring Break personal blog

The break was really nice, in the sense that I had a chance to catch up on finishing mid-fi wireframes for our project. While I definitely used the majority of the break to relax, I took a couple nights to hunker down and focus on completing the wireframes on Figma. This process entailed not only designing key screens for the wireframes and creating a simple prototype with Figma, but also meant deciding on key components, interactions, and page structures that we can convert into assets, and utilize moving forward as we create individual pages for each freedom of speech-related case.

I’m planning to spend the remainder of this week to convert my teammates’ feedback to fleshing out final details and finishing up high-fidelity wireframes. I’m excited to get these wireframes out of the way, so that Joanne and Eva can start development, and all of us can get more into the weeds of web copywriting. Overall, I think we’re on-time in regards to schedule, so I’m happy with where we’re at!

Personal Blog #6: Recovering from the “Break”

Although it didn’t quite feel like one, I was grateful to have this break. We had our regular Thursday evening meeting and Micki was kind enough to join us. We talked through verbal rebuses (rebus poems), PWP and various ways we could include digital methods to analyze the work, such as textual analysis = data = an argument. Other digital methods we’re considering adding to the project are maps but there are some questions as to what to map and how it contributes to the project. One big revelation that came out of that meeting was the reminder that the project should not necessarily be answering questions, but rather asking them!

I’ve made a lot of progress to the website v.3.0 (not public yet). To be honest, a website of this size does not need a versioning mechanism but it helps me feel like it’s moving forward. So, v.3.0 has the website architecture complete and rebus interactive functions in place. I’ve placed a few rebuses on the website to test the functionality and I’m excited at the results. It’s a bit labor-intensive but considering we won’t have translations for everything, it’s nothing to complain about. All the pages are developed but with placeholder text. It’s good to see this all in place so we can get an idea of the things we need to write. For v.4.0, I’m thinking about rebus poems and how to display them with the same creativity that we display the pictorial rebuses. And, also maps – where do they belong on the website, what kind of maps, are they interactive, etc.

While I was making progress on the website development, I put the researching/writing part on hold. Thankfully, the team members are finding wonderful things. I always look forward to the days when I have time to open up our Google folders and see what’s new!

post-break promise(s)

Since my last posting (March 30) I have,

Researched more context to PWP’s verbal rebuses, particularly in the British West Indies.

The intersection of rebus poems and enslavement announcements in colonial newspapers suggests the complex nexus of publication in which PWP’s printed rebuses might have been read, including the use of initials to create an open secret disclosing puzzle makers and at the same time to serve as an identifying mark for “absented” or “lost” self-emancipated men and women.

Had a fruitful and spirited discussion with Micki about possible digital tools that might expand the D side of this aspect of our DH rebus project;

Returned and been guided to readings on Black Digital Humanities (Jessica Marie Johnson’s “Marked Bodies,” Kim Gallon’s “Making the Case for Black Digital Humanities,” Katherine McKittrick, “Mathematics Black Life” Saidya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts”) while participating in a seminar on Pre Modern Race and DH at the annual SAA conference;

Begun to compare what can be known about PWP from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Data Base to that in other knowledge corpuses or archives.

Subsequently, sworn off more research on PWP and verbal rebuses for now, turning to finding what information I can for an essay on the material and publication history of visual rebuses in the period and languages on which we are focusing.

Lastly, started looking through the holdings of regional rare book collections that are reopening, to see if it might be worth going in person to examine undigitized rebuses from the 18th & 19th centuries (specifically Yale, Columbia, Morgan Library, NYPL), Princeton) and at the same time collecting digitized rebuses to add to our archive.

Post Spring Break Update

Like others mention, I’m so thankful for last week’s break. We’re all juggling a lot in our personal and professional lives, and it felt great to have a little less on my plate. That said, I’m mentally preparing myself for the one month countdown to the GC Digital Showcase. I don’t feel too unprepared, but I am worried about how we’ll process the (hopefully!) high number of student submissions that will come back to us after our outreach efforts over the past couple of weeks. I want to make sure that my teammates feel supported and not overwhelmed.

Our focus over the next week will be finalizing our site’s design choices, as well as working out some process flow improvements and continuing to intake student submissions. Each of us has an independent area where we know what we’re responsible for and work asynchronously, but a lot of our best ideas pop up in our group meetings. I’m excited to connect with the team on Thursday.

This digital student gallery is really coming to life and I cannot wait to share it out with a larger audience. There are some really bright stories that these students have to share with the world, and one year into this pandemic it will be powerful to learn from them.

Grateful for a break

Our team took a real break this break, which happened to coincide with the timing of break at the school where I work, as well as many of our contacts and potential contributors. This was a helpful reset and exhale in what has been a dizzying year, well beyond the scope of this semester. We still received a small number of submissions over the last two weeks and it makes me incredibly excited about what the coming weeks might hold, though I am slightly nervous about a lull followed by a flood of submissions. I shared our site with several colleagues who were struck by how quickly our project has come together – it was moving to see them respond to where we are as a group, even at such an early (is it early?) stage. Next, we will make some big decisions about color and design, with thanks to Phil for recommending the following site, which generates an apparently infinite collection of palettes that are somehow addictively relaxing and compelling to continue generating: http://colormind.io/bootstrap/

We now have contributors from Vermont, Texas, New York City, and upstate New York, which will provide us with an opportunity to progress with the next iteration of our site before receiving what we hope will be a larger but manageable volume over the final weeks of the semester. I am on the brink of formal approval to send our site off to connections internationally – that should happen within the week.

Lisa’s Public Journal – Week Ten – Crunch Time Approaches

Crunch Time Approaches

Last week was Spring Break in CUNY-land and for the most part, our team agreed to honor it as an actual break. I think of this last week as the proverbial calm before the storm that is often the reality of birthing any kind of creative product. For myself, the timing was fortuitous as I received my first shot of the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 and it hit me pretty hard: for three days following the shot I was not in any shape to do research or concentrate on anything technical. But I’m doing fine now and have picked up my research and am moving forward.

I’ve decided to break my research on our war memorial into six sections:

  • An introduction to the project, as it relates to the Worth Memorial location.
  • Biographical information about General Worth’s life.
  • Information about the Worth Memorial itself, including its unveiling and how the city has changed around it since it was created.
  • Some thoughts on the memorial within the context of the project.
  • Conclusions from the research.
  • The Clio walking tour [tentative]
William Jenkins Worth Cigarettes Card

Allen and Ginter. “William Jenkins Worth Cigarettes Card.” Circa 1888. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public domain collection.

Sadly, the NYPL was unable to send me the two books I requested. No reason was given for the denial, though I suspect it is because they only have one copy of either on file. They are able to send photocopies of up to 50 pages from each. Without being able to see the books, it’s hard to direct them as to what pages to copy. Luckily, I was able to find Edward Wallace’s original 1948 dissertation (which later became the published biography) on the Boston University website. A digital PDF has been created from the document, including some notes from the professors who reviewed it … fascinating for this digital humanist to see. I have now read enough about Worth that I feel I can move from his life and on to why the memorial was created in New York City, and what it meant in the context of that time.

The research continues ….

Personal Blog: Back from Break

Last week was spring break, and as much as possible, I gave myself permission to step away from the Mapping Cemeteries project. I’m not sure how much I was able to enjoy my break from the project as I spent a lot of that time overthinking all of the work yet to be done, but I’m feeling good with my decision overall. And I feel more excited to come back to the project this week and deliver some deliverables.

Based on a class last semester–in which we had several very fruitful discussions when everyone tried to define “what is digital humanities?” and “what is text?”–I had an idea that everyone in our group should try and answer “what is Mapping Cemeteries?” As I suspected, we all came up with very different answers, and they’re all fantastic. We’re featuring this content on our Commons site homepage so readers can get an idea of the conversations we’re having as we create the project. We also hope our readers will join us in this conversation (we’ve turned on Hypothesis on every page of the site).

I also found some very interesting articles about COVID and the deathscape in New York City published by THE CITY. I’ve added all of them to our What We’re Reading page with Hypothesis links in the hopes that our readers will also engage with us here. Two of the articles focus on Hart Island, which isn’t a location we’re covering specifically in our initial phase of the project, but it is such a prominent part of the deathscape in the city (being the largest mass grave of its kind in the United States). In many ways these articles about Hart Island and the uncounted COVID deaths in city prisons reflect one of our aims, which is to make visible deaths that are treated as invisible and unimportant and create space for reflection, care, and memorialization.

A digital shift into minimal-text and high-impact visuals

In keeping with Internet speed and the social media style for minimal-text and high-impact visuals, here are a couple of moments and experiences of the world from other perspectives to share during the break.

https://twitter.com/supremehadid/status/1370855805327704064?s=20

 

Week 9 Journal – It’s a long way to the top (if you wanna create a community archive based on the feminist principles of care and intersectionality)

I’m not a patient person. I find it really hard to sit and wait for things to happen: not having control over things drives me insane.

This project has been feeling a lot like making two steps forward and one step backward: I see the progress, but it’s much slower than I imagined. The temptation is always to push things forward, post more posts, reach out to more people, send out the contributions campaign asap. I’m burning with impatience, with the desire to just share the project with everyone and start to see our archive grow onto itself through crowdsourcing.

However, I realized that “doing the right thing” takes a much longer time than just improvising. If we want to keep everyone safe and cared for– including our own team and collaborators – we need to think deeply about every step of the process, every paragraph in the release form, every option in the submission plugin. It means spending twice as much time on each component, and this is something I wasn’t prepared for: I didn’t expect it would take this long just to set up the structure of the archive, of the data management, the tone of our outreach efforts, basically everything about our project.

One thing I am really grateful for is that I feel supported by my community: the two teams who are working with me on this project. I feel lucky that the amazing humans in the teams share my feminist ideals of care, equity, intersectionality, and all that good stuff. When we have disagreements, it is about HOW to reach these goals, but not about the goals themselves – which I think is great. We are able to see each other’s blind spots and work together towards the same feminist goal.

I guess I just have to learn from my own statement at the beginning of this project: embrace the mess. One thing we’ve been doing as a team is holding space for the community: we have heard from several fridge organizers and volunteers, who are not only the beneficiaries but represent the advisory board for our project. It just takes so long when you really care about the community’s needs, feedback, and opinions. This is a great learning opportunity for all of us: when you do things with authentic care, it takes a much longer time (and a bigger effort) than you envisioned.