Boot Camps

Dates: Monday, August 7 – Friday, August 11, 2023
Format: In-Person at USC
Registration

Instructor:
Curtis Fletcher, USC Libraries, Director Ahmanson Lab

Monday, June 26 – Friday, June 30, 2023
Format: In-Person at USC

Instructors:
Sean Fraga, Assistant Professor (Teaching), Environmental Studies and History, USC Dornsife; USC Mellon Humanities in a Digital World Postdoctoral Fellow, 2020-2022

Andy Rutkowski, USC Libraries, Visualization Specialist, Library for International and Public Affairs

Course Overview:
Why make maps? Why read maps? How can spatial thinking and digital mapping enrich our research, teaching, and learning as humanities scholars? Join us to discuss these questions and more in a responsive “un-boot camp.” We’ll build readings and activities around participants’ interests, goals, and projects. You’ll get the most out of this workshop if you already have a question, goal, or project that involves mapping, no matter how big or small. 

We welcome both new and returning participants.

Monday, May 22 – Friday, May 26, 2023
Format: In-Person at USC

Instructor:
Virginia Kuhn, Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts, Media Arts + Practice Division; Associate Director, Institute for Multimedia Literacy

Course Overview:
The week will be of particular use to those who have participated in previous boot camps allowing them to fine-tune a project with nuance and sophistication. It will be no less valuable for first-timers regardless of their familiarity (or lack thereof) of born-digital epistemologies. These include an overview of the tools, and tactics associated with digital humanities, as well as a broad survey of the move from text-based epistemologies to those that include the extra-textual registers of sound, image, and interactivity. What are the implications of these shifts for issues of scholarly integrity, archiving, metadata schemas, citation, fair use, project documentation, peer review, and publication? We will also focus on pedagogical research and spend some time with AI tools for word and image, paying attention to their prompting and their blind spots.

December 7, 2022
Format: In-Person at Doheny Memorial Library, 241, USC
Keynote Lecture

December 8 & 9, 2022
Format: In-person at Ahmanson Lab, Leavey Library, USC
Two-day Workshop
Instructor:

Mark Letteney, MIT ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-2024) and USC HiDW Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022)

Keynote Lecture: “Old questions, new tools: 3D modeling, aerial survey, and humanistic research”

Advances in automation have rendered digital replication of nearly anything — from objects to landscapes — within the grasp of humanists, even those working with simple tools on limited budgets. As with any methodological advance, the question is: what now? This lecture surveys a range of new digital methods in the context of my collaborative project which is aimed at understanding the archaeology of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean world, and uncovering the experience of incarceration for its ancient victims.

Workshop: The workshop will include sessions on theory, photogrammetry, aerial survey, 3D modeling software, and publishing projects.