Faculty and Students Join the DHSI Learning Community
In June 2014, members of the English Department attended the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) at the University of Victoria. "The whole DHSI experience was generous and actively intelligent,鈥� declared Ryerson instructor Aaron Tucker, 鈥淚'm looking forward to working with a number of the people I met on the trip." Aaron was joined by faculty Jason Boyd, Dennis Denisoff, and Andrew O鈥橫alley, as well as graduate students Alison Hedley (Communication and Culture) and Chelsea Miya (Literatures of Modernity). A recent graduate, Chelsea will be continuing her studies in the PhD program in English at the University of Alberta this September.
The DHSI adopts a community-based approach in providing opportunities for the exploration of a range of computing technologies and the discussion of the digital humanities in research, teaching, and creative production. Over the five days of the summer institute, Ryerson attendees took a range of intensive courses from 鈥淕ames for Digital Humanists鈥� to the more specialized 鈥淎 Collaborative Approach to XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations)鈥� and 鈥淎dvanced TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) Concepts.鈥� In addition to the classes, readings, and homework that are part of the courses, attendees could attend unconference sessions, plenary talks, and 鈥淏irds of a Feather鈥� debates.
Ryerson attendee Andrew O鈥橫alley observes that, in addition to the benefits of his course in 鈥淒igitisation Fundamentals,鈥� 鈥渁t least as productive was just being in an environment where everybody is thinking and talking about creative ways to use digital technologies in their research and in their classrooms.鈥� PhD student Alison Hedley agrees, adding "importantly, I'm now conversant enough in [XSLT] that I know how to ask questions of the experts when I'm stuck!"
In addition to taking courses, Ryerson attendees found various other ways to participate. Jason Boyd led an 鈥淚ntroduction to Digital Humanities鈥� and co-led an "Introduction to Project Management" workshop for DHSI@Congress at Brock University in May. At the DHSI Colloquium, Alison presented 鈥淭he Yellow Nineties Personography,鈥� a project developed over the past year by Alison and Dennis Hogan (a graduate student in the Literatures of Modernity program who will take up his PhD at Brown University this fall). At a reading prompted by the inaugural "Introduction to Electronic Literature in DH: Research and Practice" course, Aaron Tucker gave a demonstration of and reading from his 鈥淐hessbard鈥� project, developed here at Ryerson.
These examples reflect the DHSI鈥檚 and Ryerson鈥檚 interest in attendees not simply taking in the offerings, but contributing to the intellectual dynamism and collegiality of the event and the international DH community. The English Department attendees thank the office of the Provost Mohamed Lachemi for making this experience and training possible, through the Centre for Digital Humanities.