This semester I learned a lot about the analysis and applications of Digital Humanities. Every class session debate and readings helped me to understand the concepts and different approaches to Digital Humanities.
For my last project, the final proposal assignment, I decided to expand the topic that I chose for the mapping praxis assignment that is “ Haunted Places in New York.” First, I wanted to cover all the haunted places in New York State. However, I had to narrow my list a little bit, and I decided to only include the top five most popular haunted places in New York City based on TripAdvisor ratings and reviews.
I really like the topic of my proposal paper because I believe that haunted places in New York City represent an important field to analyze in order to promote paranormal tourism. Therefore, my final proposal project was to create a website that uses digital humanities tools to promote paranormal tourism in New York City. First, my project aims to create an interactive StoryMap showing the locations of the top five paranormal locations in New York City. Also, my project involves developing a section that describes the historical information of these places and its link to the paranormal phenomena observed in each one of them. In addition, my project includes a gallery of images of the featured places along with a link to their official websites with the purpose of satisfying the curiosity of readers. Finally, I decided to incorporate a section with audio narrative in the form of podcasts that explain the historical context of these locations.
The idea of doing this project was born after completing my mapping praxis assignment when I noticed the absence of a comprehensive paranormal tourism guide of places offering historic and enchanting experiences in New York State. In fact, the New York State’s official tourism site known as I Love NY does not have a special section that provides information about paranormal tourism or haunted places in New York. I really hope to expand my project and be able to add more haunted places to the list I created.
I feel really motivated to continue creating digital maps, analyzing texts, and incorporating visual tools in my academic research life. Thanks to the GC Digital Initiatives, I had the opportunity to attend to different workshops this semester. I learned about Python and Microsoft Excel analysis, and I was introduced to GIS. I feel grateful that I will be able to apply this valuable information that I learned in these workshops to any project or academic field. Thank you so much Professor Gold, and everybody that was part of this class. It was a pleasure to be part of this wonderful group. Happy Holidays!
I think that most of us at some point in our lives had the opportunity to watch an animated Disney movie. In fact, these animated films have become timeless classics and favorites of many generations not only because of the peculiarity of their characters but also because of the messages that they convey. But, are these messages truly positive? Are there words that the Disney script writers use more frequently than others? If so, what is the connection between these words? Therefore, for this text mining assignment, I decided to analyze the words of some of the most popular animated Disney movies. So, I selected about 100 emotional and inspiring quotes from various Disney animated films. In my list, I included quotes from both the golden oldies and more modern Disney films such as Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Bambi, Pinocchio, Lion King, Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, Dumbo, Winnie the Pooh, Toy Story, Lady and theTramp, Alice in Wonderland, Up, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Frozen. I found these quotes published on two different portals, Kidadl and Good Housekeeping, dedicated to educating users and publishing trusted and curated content. In order to perform this text analysis, I used Voyant Tools and Google Ngram, which are open-source and web-based applications. I was eager to complete this project since I believe that, because of their popularity, Disney characters have a tremendous influence on the behavior of children. At the same time, being a Disney-movies fan, I think that in general Disney films have the power to inspire people to develop empathy and be more caring, kind, and appreciative of the value of family and friendship.
Analysis:
After I uploaded my corpus on Voyant tools, I obtained the following results:
The image shown above was made using the Cirrus tool, which allows us to visualize the frequency words of the corpus or document. It shows a cloud of words with the centrally positioned and largest-sized words representing the most frequent words of the Disney movie quotes I analyzed. Among these words we have “love”, “dream,” “day,” “it’s,” “come,” “true,” “heart,” and “believe.” This result shows us that the majority of the quotes from the Disney animated films used for this analysis convey a positive message related to love and believing in dreams that can come true.
The next image shown below corresponds to the network-links graph. This network graph shows the links between the keywords I selected (shown in blue) and other frequent words that appear in the Disney quotes used for this analysis (shown in orange). This graph confirms that there is a connection between the words “dream” and “wish.” It also shows a connection between the words “believe,” “stronger,” and “braver.” In addition, we can observe a connection between the words “love,” “beautiful,” and “wish.”
The third graph was made using the trend tool. It shows a curved line graph of the most frequent words used in my document. Each series in the graph is colored according to the word it represents. As we can see, the blue line is the highest line, and it represents the word “love,” which is the most frequent word. It is followed by a green line that represents the word “dream.” Next, we have a pink line which represents the word “believe.” Other frequent words observed are “life” represented by the light-blue line, and the word “heart” represented by the purple line.
In this graph, we can see how the word “love,” which is represented by the blue bar, appears with more frequency in quotes that are collected from movies such as Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio, Bambi, The Lion King and Up, etc. At the same time, I think it is important to mention that the graph shows that in the quotes from the movie Cinderella the words “love,” “dream,” “believe,” “heart,” and “life” seem to appear with more frequency than in the rest of the movies. I’m not surprised about this result because after all, the message of the movie Cinderella is about kindness, and learning to forgive others as well as to believe with all your heart that through the power of love all dreams come true.
These results motivated me to make a quick analysis of the words “dream,” “believe,” “love,” and “Cinderella” using Google’s Ngram tool in order to see how popular these words have been in books independently of their frequency in the Disney films.
As we can see, the Ngram for the words “love,” “believe,” and “dream” shows that “love” and “believe” have always been a trend, especially during the period of 1800 and 1900. The graph shows an increase in the frequency of the use of these words during the 2000’s. In addition, it seems that the word “love” overtook the word “believe” in recent years (around 2018). On the other hand, the word “dream” has been used consistently over the years, but with less frequency than “love” and “believe.” This gives us an idea of how appealing these words are for the public, and why Disney writers decided to include them as part of the scripts of their animated movies.
Moreover, the Ngram below shows that the word “Cinderella” has always been used in books through the years. As we can see, the word Cinderella increased its popularity around the time in which Disney released its animated film in 1950, which was based on the original and popular Cinderella fairy tale. The graph also shows that frequency of this word reached a peak around 2015, which was the year in which Disney released a new adaptation of the Cinderella story.
My thoughts about the text analysis applications:
Overall, I really enjoyed doing this analysis. I think that Voyant Tools and Google’s Ngram are very useful applications to analyze all types of texts. However, when using Voyant Tools, it took me some time to find out how to remove from the corpus stopwords or words that do not add much meaning to the analysis such as “an,” “and,” “or,” “but,” etc. Thus, I would like to explore in depth more about the use of Voyant Tools in order to apply this to other text analysis.
Conclusion:
This text analysis shows that Disney classic animated movies contain messages that inspire viewers to believe in the magic of love and dreams come true. The words that appear with more frequency regarding the name of the film are: “dream,” “love,” “come,” “true,” “believe,” “heart,” and “day.” At the same time, the results show that these words are interconnected, and that they were used by Disney writers to create messages appealing to people about love, believing, and dreams. In addition, another result that this text analysis reveals is that, for many years, the story of Cinderella, in all its versions and different adaptations, has been one of the people’s favorites of all time.
Introduction One of my favorite activities to do during my spare time is to watch movies, especially horror movies. So, I was curious about why some horror movies are more popular than others. Thus, some questions came to my mind. For instance, I wanted to find out if there is a relationship between the budget of a film and its popularity among viewers, or if such a relationship exists between box office earnings and the number of user votes of these films on sites like IMDb.
I tried to find online datasets that could help me to find the answers to my questions. However, I was not able to find anything with updated information related specifically to horror movies. Therefore, for this visualization assignment, I decided to collect information from a website called IMDb (Internet Movie Database) in order to create my own dataset of the 30 best horror movies of all time. According to Wikipedia, IMDb is an online database that provides information related to films and television programs. The dataset I created contains the title of the 30 most voted horror films among the IMDb users, the number of votes for each one of the movies on the list, the budget of each movie and their corresponding global box office earnings, release date, and running time. This data was collected by IMDb between 2011 and 2020.
Analyzing my dataset using Excel, TableauPublic, and RStudio I created my graphs using Excel. At first, I tried to use TableauPublic and RStudio, which gave me similar results as the ones I got using Excel. However, I could not figure out how to show my data numbers as thousands (K) and millions (M). So, I decided to use Excel as I am more familiar with the Excel tools available to change settings and labels on the graphs. Thus, I created 4 different graphs to show and analyze the relationship between IMDb users’ vote numbers, movie budgets, and box office earnings. Also, I calculated Pearson’s correlation coefficient to measure how strong the relationship between these variables is. According to Pearson’s coefficient (r), a value of 1 indicates a strong positive relationship while a value of -1 indicates a strong negative relationship. In addition, a result of zero indicates no relationship at all. My results show no significant relationship between the variables I analyzed.
Data Analysis Results:
Graph 1: IMDb Thirty Best Movies of All Time Graph 1 shows the relationship between the titles of 30 horror movies released between 1973 and 2018. We can see that the most voted movie among IMDb users was The Silence of the Lambs with over 1 million votes while the least voted movie was Hereditary with only 273,051 votes.
Graph 2: Relationship between IMDb users’ vote numbers and movie budgets: Graph 2 shows the relationship between IMDb users’ vote numbers and the budget in dollars of each one of the 30 most voted IMDb horror movies between the years 2011 and 2020. In order to visualize this relationship, I chose a bar graph with a trend line. My results show a value of -0.155 for the Person’s coefficient (r), which indicates no significant relationship between the number of votes and the budget of each of the 30 most popular horror movies on the IMDb list. As a result, a large budget doesn’t necessarily translate into a high number of votes. For instance, according to IMDb, the movie The Silence of the Lambs with a budget of $19 million obtained over 1 million votes among the IMDb users, and it became the most voted horror movie on IMDb. On the other hand, the movie Sleepy Hollow with a budget of $70 million obtained only 345,504 votes. Furthermore, the movie Psycho turned out to be the fourth most voted movie on the IMDb list with a budget of about only $1 million.
Graph 3: Relationship between IMDb users’ vote numbers and box office earnings
Graph 3 shows the relationship between IMDb users’ vote numbers and the box office earnings in dollars of each one the 30 most voted IMDb horror movies between the years 2011 and 2020. In order to visualize this relationship, I chose a bar graph with a trendline. Again, according to the calculated Pearson’s coefficient (r = 0.097), I found that there is no significant relationship between the IMDb viewers’ vote numbers and box office earnings of each one of the most popular horror movies on the IMDb list. For instance, the movie The Silence of the Lambs, which is the most voted movie on the IMDb list had box office earnings equal to $273 million. However, movies such as Jaws, It, and The Exorcist obtained less votes on IMDb, but they reported higher box office earnings.
Graph4: Relationship Between Movie Budget and Box Office Earnings Graph 4 shows the relationship between movie budgets and box office earnings corresponding to the 30 most voted horror movies on IMDb between the years 2011 and 2020. A Pearson’s coefficient (r) equal to 0.233 shows that there is no significant relationship between the budget of the movies and their box office earnings. As we can observe in the graph, the majority of the horror movies on the IMDb list had a budget of about $30 million and box office earnings of up to $500 million. Two particular cases caught my attention: It and Sleepy Hollow. It had a budget of $35 million and accumulated box office earnings equal to $701 million. On the other hand, Sleepy Hollow had a budget twice as big as the one of It ($70 million). However, this movie had a poor performance in the box office as it only accumulated about $207 million, which represents only about one third of the box office earnings of the movie It.
Conclusion:
I believe that data analysis and visualization is very important to understand information about any topic. Also, I think that learning basic statistical concepts and how to use software such as Excel, Tableau, RStudio, and Python has become increasingly important for all academic fields.
In respect to the topic I chose for this particular assignment, I found no significant relationship between the variables that I analyzed. Therefore, there is no relationship between the budget of each one of the 30 most voted horror movies on IMDb and their box office earnings and how popular they are among the IMDb users. Both the graphs and Pearson’s coefficient (r) results confirm this.
In addition, from my experience after completing this assignment, I find Excel to be the most accessible tool for users of all backgrounds. However, the value of Tableau, RStudio, and Python as open-access tools is huge, especially for researchers. This is because they offer the possibility of analyzing large datasets and creating graphs to visualize and understand information. However, RStudio and Python require coding skills and more practice than Excel and Tableau, which can be more challenging and time consuming for people with less experience in this area.
When I think about “open access,’’ the word reach-ability comes to my mind. In fact, open access for a scholar means the possibility to have more readers, citations, and collaborations to name just a few benefits. As a student, I have to admit that having the possibility to have open access to academic contents helped me a lot when doing research. In my opinion, sometimes some students or people in general can’t access subscription contents due to the high cost of the subscriptions. Thus, open access content is indeed a valuable tool for people to explore and do research. Moreover, having the opportunity to read a paper that contains a topic of public interest results in a strong public engagement, which motivates readers, researchers, and writers.
In addition, living in a digital world, the power of social media and other platforms plays a key role in establishing connections among interdisciplinary fields. For instance, Twitter helps researchers to establish connections and promote their publications and work.
In my opinion, open access journals are essential and very important for a variety of groups such as researchers, lecturers, students, administrators, and publishers.In fact, I think that the role of open access is to create connections among the writers and the readers, building up bridges for collaborations.
When we think about infrastructure in the digital world, we have to focus on the invisible world of maintenance and repair. Thus, as Jackson Steven mentions in his article Rethinking Repair “Repair inherits an old and layered world, making history but not in the circumstances of its choosing. It accounts for the durability of the old, but also the appearance of the new (a different way of approaching the problem of innovation”( 223). As we can see, when we repair an object, we extend the life of it as we renew its appearance. So, I think that it is important to analyze some questions such as whether the action of repair may result in better products, and in a long lifecycle of them. Moreover, when we talk about the words “repair” and “innovation,” it is important to mention the relationship between craftsman and the object. In my opinion, as technology becomes part of our lives, the work of a craftsman becomes so valuable and unique.
For instance, when talking about fashion, we have to talk about how machines were created for large-scale production. In the world of fashion, in particular, fast fashion, machines are indispensable for quick production. However, as Richard Sennett mentions in his book The Craftsman, the introduction of machines gradually decreases the necessity of most skilled workers and increases the number of semi or unskilled workers. In this way, I believe that the handmade production has become something valuable that makes a product something unique. Handmade things not only innovate the creativity of the craftsman, but also remind us that technology is not everything. Behind a handmade item was someone that dedicated his/her time and put all his/her effort into making a product beautiful and unique.
At the same time, the article “See No Evil” by Miriam Posner, lets us analyze the problem of supply chain and labour conditions. I think that consumption without consciousness becomes part of the phenomenon of commodity fetishism. This is because if a consumer carefully chooses a product based on what it is made of, and how it was made, that person is able to understand the labour process and mechanisms behind the production of this particular object. In this case, the consumer is able to understand a product beyond the idea of trading value. This connection is important, if not fundamental, to establish a close link between production and consumption and to break free from the vicious cycle of work, consume, and repeat. It also allows consumers to value the interpersonal relationships of the humans that are behind the creation and production of a product or garment.
For instance, a report published by Bloomberg in 2011 makes us think about the human stories behind the production of Victoria’s Secret garments. The Bloomberg report documents the life of a 13-year-old-girl, who was abused while working on a cotton field in Burkina Faso. It was reported that Victoria’s Secret through its parent company Limited Brands purchased the cotton picked by this and other female workers at Burkina Faso to produce their clothing line. Indeed, in these cases, one cannot help but to wonder how many consumers take some time to value the human stories and labour involved in the production of the garments they purchase?
There are many examples in the history of humanity and fashion of the use of clothing as a trading commodity. However, with the emergence of fast fashion and mass production, customers are more than ever encouraged by marketing strategies to buy more frequently. The constant innovation of products in the market motivates customers to buy more often by making recent styles old or outed. In addition, people need to purchase more often in order to continually satisfy their desire to display their social and economic status. Thus, by doing so, a disassociation between consumers and all the workers involved in production occurs, delineating the case of commodity fetishism.
However, one thing is true which is, despite everything, if a company creates robots, their hardware and software will require upkeep. That makes us think that labour force and maintenance is still essential even with technological innovations.
Jackson, Steven J. 2014. “Rethinking Repair.” In Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, edited by Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and Kirsten A. Foot, 221–40. The MIT Press.
Every single street, building, house, or hidden place in New York has a story to tell. From urban legends to old mouth-to-mouth tales and beyond, New York offers people many historical and mysterious places to discover, visit, and explore. It is precisely in these places where rich architectural styles and stories of love, passion, and tragedy intertwine and trespass the limits of what science can explain. Inspired by this spicy combination of supernatural stories and paranormal phenomena, I decided to create a map of the most popular haunted places in New York State.
Method:
In order to create this map, I collected information from diverse websites dedicated to promoting historical information about haunted places in the state of New York. It was difficult to choose the locations to be included in the map. This is because there are more than 30 places that are considered haunted in New York State. I decided to focus my project on old and enigmatic buildings and a few cemeteries, which have been repeatedly featured in magazines, films, and websites dedicated to the discussion of paranormal activity. Thus, the map I created contains 27 of the most famous haunted places in New York. Moreover, I decided to create a map tour, which allowed me to plot points on the map and add media content to these points. Therefore, the map below contains an image of the haunted places included in my map as well as a brief description of the paranormal phenomena observed in these places. I also included a link to websites containing more extensive information about these locations with the purpose of satisfying the curiosity of readers.
The Process:
I created a story map using the ArcGIS online platform. I used a story map because I like the idea of expressing my ideas and thoughts in order to create a narrative along with the visual tools of maps. My experience using this platform was in general good. I like the map tour tool because it is pretty flexible in terms of changing layouts and designs. For instance, you can change layouts, or even the whole map tour design, at any point by clicking the slide panel without losing your previous added content.
By working on this project, I learned that there are no limits to map an idea. The only requirement needed is to have imagination and be able to collect the adequate information to plot on the map. In my particular case, I really like the whole process of navigating and exploring different websites about haunted places in New York State. I have to mention that there are more than 30 haunted places in New York State, but I decided to include only 27 of them. As I was completing my research, I learned how rich the history of New York is. From abandoned asylums to old houses of important government officials from the independence time, the study of history shows us, one more time, that it is important to understand people and places of the past in order to understand the mysterious legends created around them.
The Inspiration Behind the Story Map:
I have always been fascinated about the story of haunted places. Some years ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Merchant’s House Museum located in New York city. The story tells us that after the death of Gertrude Tredwell, the youngest member of the large Tredwell family in 1933, the house was sold and turned into a museum. Visitors reported seeing the spirits of Gertrude, her family, and servants of the house walking around the building. Thus, I was very impressed with the house, the construction, the decoration, the old rooms, and the vintage garments. Everything made me feel like I was traveling back in time. So, I could not resist choosing the theme of haunted places in New York State for my assignment praxis.
This is the list of the places:
The Sagamore Resort (Bolton Landing, NY): This place is best known as one of the best haunted hotels in the US. Visitors have reported seeing a ghostly couple in the restaurant, a ghost in the elevator, or a ghost of a playful young child on the golf course among other spooky stories.
Rolling Hills Asylum (East Bethany, NY): This historical and real asylum isconsidered one of the most haunted places in the world. This place was the refuge for widows and orphans who suffered some kind of mentally illness. Many unclaimed dead were buried on the property.
Dr. Best House & Medical Museum (Middleburgh, NY): Located in Schoharie County, paranormal investigators and witnesses were able to capture the sound of piano playing and ghostly voices.
Bannerman Castle (Fishkill, NY): Some native American tribes believed that this place was haunted by evil spirits, and these rumors were also promoted by Dutch sailors.
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Sleepy Hollow, NY): This is the final resting place of famous figures, such as Washington Irving, author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which was set in the adjacent burying ground at the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow.
Mount Hope Cemetery (Rochester, NY): A legend tells that Native Americans warned people not to build anything on this land. Strange lights, orbs, and ghostly figures have been seen by visitors of this place.
Forest Lawn Cemetery (Buffalo, NY): Visitors reported seeing ghosts of children, soldiers, and even a phantom car.
Merchant’s House Museum (New York, NY): After the death of Gertrude Tredwell,, the youngest member of the large Tredwell family in 1933, the house was sold and turned into a museum. Visitors reported seeing the spirits of Gertrude and her family, and servants of the house walking around the building.
Morris-Jumel Mansion (New York, NY): This house was built in 1765 by Roger Morris, a British military officer, and it was used as a headquarters for both sides in the American Revolution. Ghostly figures and strange voices are among the paranormal phenomena witnessed by visitors.
The Amityville Horror House (Amityville, NY): Located in Long Island, this house was the location in which the DeFeo family murders took place. The story of the crimes became a book and a series of movies.
Palmyra Historical Museum (Palmyra, NY): Visitors have reported a larger number of paranormal experiences such as strange noises and ghostly apparitions of people and even cats.
Iron Island Museum (Buffalo, NY): This building was a former church that was built in 1883. Visitors and paranormal investigators have recorded spectral voices and taken pictures and videos of the ghosts that haunt this place.
Buffalo Central Terminal (Buffalo, NY): Built in the late 1920s, this abandoned train station is believed to be haunted by many ghostly figures, who have been seen and captured in pictures by visitors and investigators.
Belhurst Castle and Winery (Geneva, NY): Visitors to this place report hearing people screaming and the voices of children playing. Isabella is the name of the most famous ghost of Belhurst Castle. She was a beautiful opera singer, and she is often seen dressed in white.
Utica State Hospital (Uitica, NY): Formerly known as the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, visitors of this place reported seeing faces looking out the window and hearing voices screaming.
Hyde Hall (Cooperstown, NY): More than 150 years of paranormal experiences have been documented by visitors of this building. These experiences include ghostly apparitions, footsteps and sheets being pulled off beds.
New York State Capitol (Albany, NY): Visitors to this place claim seeing flickering lights and ghostly figures as well as clocks mysteriously rewinding by eight minutes.
Letchworth Village (Thiells, NY): This was a medical facility for mentally and physically disabled children. Visitors report seeing moving objects and listening to ghostly sounds.
Fort William Henry Museum (Lake George, NY): Fort William Henry was lost when thousands of French soldiers attacked and destroyed the military stronghold during the French and Indian War. Visitors to this place report seeing shadowy and ghostly figures as well as hearing voices and whispers.
Landmark Theater (Syracuse, NY): People report seeing three ghostly figures. Two of them were actors that died in the building under tragic circumstances, whose names were Clarissa and Oscar. The third ghost is known as Charlie the janitor, who died in the building because of natural causes during the 1970’s.
Burn Brae Mansion (Glen Spey, NY): Visitors to this place report seeing a woman pacing the halls and hearing unexplained noises, footsteps, and music from an unseen piano.
Seward House Museum (Auburn, NY): People report ghostly encounters with members of the Seward family and other ghosts lurking the place.
The Winery at Marjim Manor (Appleton, NY): The owner of this place and visitors report seeing friendly ghostly figures of people and animals.
The White Horse Tavern (New York, NY): This place is believed to be haunted by the spirits offamous writers and musicians such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison.
The Dakota (New York, NY): This building is tragically famous because its south entrance was the location of the murder of John Lennon. The building was also used for exterior shots of the film “Rosemary’s Baby.” It is believed to be haunted by many spirits including the ghost of John Lennon.
The Campbell Apartment (New York, NY): This is a historic bar located inside the Grand Central Station in New York City. It started out as an office space for John W. Campbell in 1923. Customers and staff reported being tapped from behind without anyone in sight, hearing sounds of an organ playing, and seeing doors mysteriously shutting on their own.
Grand Central Station (New York, NY): Visitors report seeing the spirit of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his dog Fala. Also, people say that a smoking steam locomotive could be observed even though the tracks were electrified.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, I really like the whole process of creating a map. The possibilities are unlimited, and the only thing that we need is to collect the information and plug this into the software. I believe that ArcGIS online is a functional and dynamic platform that helps us to design interactive maps and story maps for any kind of project. Thus, after doing this assignment, I can say that digital maps have become an important tool for scholars to unveil the untold stories about historical events, showing a new visual, social and cultural idea about it. In my case, my goal of mapping the most haunted places of New York State is to provide people with adequate geographical information about important ghostly landmarks in New York. So, they can have a visual idea of the locations of these places in order to consider exploring and visiting them in the future as their next vacation destination. I would definitely like to work on expanding my map to include more locations where paranormal activity has been reported in the past and also more recently in New York State.
Last Thursday September 23th, I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop called “Introduction to Python ” organized by GC Digital Initiatives.This workshop was very useful for me since I did not have any previous experience with Python. In my opinion, learning Python is very important to visualize and analyze data, which could be applied in research, website creation, etc. During the workshop I could learn important concepts about data types, variables and functions. Moreover, before the day of the workshop, I installed two functional softwares on my computer: a text editor (VS code) and Python itself (Anaconda Suite).
This workshop was an extremely helpful opportunity to get familiar with coding and the navigation of Python. In my opinion, sometimes, people are afraid to learn about softwares such as Python because they find it a bit complicated. However, I found out that if we play around, we would be able to see that this program is designed to be used by people from all computer-data based levels.
In my opinion, it is important to learn how to use Python in order to create Digital Humanities projects in fields such as history, art, or literature among others. Python helps us to visualize and analyze data in greater scales. In addition, since my field of interest is fashion studies, I think that having knowledge of Python could allow me to analyze the history of fashion and fashion trends throughout time. On the other hand, as we know data visualization constitutes a fundamental part of any study field nowadays. Thus, the fact that Python is an open-source software gives people from all backgrounds the opportunity to access a variety of graphic libraries with many interesting features.
Consequently, the workshop that I was part of helped me a lot to learn and get familiar with the basis of Python. Now, I can say that I feel more confident to explore this software and its tools. Furthermore, it helped me to think about projects and ideas that I could develop in the future with the valuable help of Python tools.
Through the course of history, the application of maps helped us to visualize information about the world.For instance, maps are important tools to understand geographical areas, and the expansion of people in a determinate space.Today, we live in a digital age in which the use of technology tools could be used to better understand different aspects of the history of the world, such as colonialism. When I think of colonialism, I wonder to what extent maps can show us the historical process of colonial expansion, and help educate people about native lands and rights.
As Bonilla, Yarimar, and Max Hantel mention in the article Visualizing Sovereignty, “Geographic histories reveal that the visualizing power of the map preceded the formation of sovereign states and created the conditions of possibility for colonial expansion.” As we can see, maps constitute a powerful tool to visualize information, and either expose historical colonial expansion or hide the forgotten lands that were victims of it. Moreover, in many cases, colonial maps promoted the agenda of the country in which they were created, becoming a tool of political propaganda.
In my opinion, the creation and application of digital maps could be used by scholars to educate people about important historical points of colonialism, analyze events of our past, and create new ways to build a better future. For instance, James Devitt in the article Maps Depict and Shape History, Power, Identity, interviews Kyle Wamberg, a clinical associate professor of global liberal studies and author of the new book Maps of Empire: A Topography of World Literature. In the interview, Wamberg explains that “the map of the US entails the erasure of the independent Indigenous nations that have been displaced in the course of remaking the world in a particular way through imperialism and cartography. My research suggests that Indigenous groups in the United States have a radically different view of space and geography.” As we can see, maps have the power to shape narratives, and social and cultural ideas about history. Living in a digital age, cartography has been remade in digital maps that constitute new spatial-temporal platforms. Now, the question is if, like the traditional paper maps that served imperialist goals, the new digital tools could be used to promote a whole new vision about colonialism and history. Certainly, one thing is true, which is that digital maps have become an important tool for scholars to unveil the untold stories about colonialism, showing a new visual, social and cultural idea about it.
References
Bonilla, Yarimar, and Max Hantel. 2016. “Visualizing Sovereignty” Sx Archipelagos, no. 1 (May).
Devitt, James. 2020. “Maps Depict and Shape History, Power, Identity.” Futurity, December 8th, 2020.
I found very interesting the ideas and concepts that Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein mention in the article “Introduction: Why Data Science Needs Feminism.” This article has helped me to analyze and rethink the concept of data feminism. In my opinion, data feminism is a way of thinking about data connected with a feminism thought. That concept makes me think about the idea of data science nowadays. For instance, after reading this piece, some questions came to my mind such as… is data science, in our days, for everybody? Or if data science is a form of power, has this been used equally? What are the reasons for that?
Moreover, this piece analyzes the distribution of power explaining the idea that “in data science power is not distributed equally in the world.” However, the authors mention that “the work of data feminism is first to tune into how standard practices in data science serve to reinforce these existing inequalities and second to use data science to challenge and change the distribution of power.” Thus, I think that it is important to find strategies to increase the collaboration of women in the field of data science.
At the same time, after reading this piece, I can see that this is connected with another article that was assigned this week which is “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities” by Kim Gallon. In this article, Gallon also tackles the relationship between the racialization of humanity and the digital as power. What I like the most is the fact that if we question ourselves about this relationship in order to find solutions, we will ultimately be able to have a better understanding about the human condition.
In my opinion, it is hard and yet complex to analyze how data is used to control power structures. Thus, living in a society in which algorithms, and data collection are used to analyze problems and find possible solutions, one thing comes to my mind is the impact of data collection results on issues like the role of women and equality. My hope is that the work of scholars and activists can contribute to creating a more equitable form of data science and society.
References
D’Ignazio, Catherine, and Lauren Klein. 2020. “Why Data Science Needs Feminism” In Data Feminism. The MIT Press.
Gallon, Kim. 2016. “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. University of Minnesota Press.
Digital Humanities constitutes a broad academic field, which uses digital technologies, such as mapping, digitizing archives, and computational programs, in teaching and scholarship. In addition, Digital Humanities contributes to other disciplines by facilitating the visualization and analysis of data, and creating interdisciplinary tools of connection.
Personally, when I think about Digital Humanities, one definition that comes to my mind is the application of computing tools to study disciplines such as literature, sociology, and history among others. The incorporation of technology into these so-called “traditional” fields helps scholars to have a visual, more comprehensive understanding, analytical interpretation of information and data sets. Moreover, in my opinion, Digital Humanities opens a new concept about the integration of dynamic models, such as interactive digital maps and archives, to the research and learning process. Thus, I really like the idea of saying that Digital Humanities is “about building things…If you are not making anything, you are not …a digital humanist” (Ramsay cited by Gold). In fact, in my opinion, digital humanities means the use of dynamic technologies and practices in order to approach common humanities issues.
On the other hand, it is undoubtedly that Digital Humanities constitutes a field that is rapidly expanding and evolving in the academic world. For instance, Digital Humanities incorporates not only the application of digital tools, but also helps important data to become more accessible to larger audiences. Also, Digital Humanities helps us to create a digital academic world in which the visualization of information and data plays a key role in the learning process of students. As Lauren F. Klein and Matthew K. Gold explain in the reading Digital Humanities: The Expanded Field, “along with the digital archives, quantitative analyses, and tool-building projects that once characterized the field, DH now encompasses a wide range of methods and practices: visualizations of large image sets, 3D modeling of historical artifacts, ‘born digital’ dissertations, hashtag activism and the analysis thereof, alternate reality games, mobile makerspaces, and more.” In regarding to this, I can mention that thanks to the digitization of archives from 1930’ s and 1940’s of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma–Biblioteca Digitale, I was able to access important material that helped me write my research about the image of italian women in magazines during the period of fascism. I find this completely fascinating because the digitalization of historical materials represents a platform that is accessible to all people around the world. At the same time, we can see how the application of Digital Humanities becomes an important connection between the past and the present, which allows us to analyze new ways to improve our future.
Consequently, I think that Digital Humanities is the use of digital resources and technology to approach different practices in humanities. Its contribution to the academic world helps to understand a visual concept of information and data. Moreover, living in a world, in which technology is everywhere and digital media connects people in a way never seen before, the role of Digital Humanities creates new interpretations and ways of thinking, understanding and analyzing data. Thanks to the technology that Digital Humanities applies to the research work, data can be used to analyze real society problems and create solutions to improve the world.
References
Gold, Matthew K. 2012. The Digital Humanities Moment In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold. University of Minnesota Press
Klein, Lauren F., and Matthew K. Gold. 2016. “Digital Humanities: The Expanded Field” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. University of Minnesota Press.
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