Here’s something kind of silly: a set of postcards I made for Yale’s Instructional Technology Group to advertise the Teaching with Technology Tuesdays series of workshops on technology and pedagogy. Each one is an image of older reading technology, which I have improved and modernized!

This was a really fun project for me because it was my first time using Photoshop for anything other than cropping and autobalancing photos. Basically, I watched about 20 hours of Lynda.com videos. (Pretend you didn’t read that, dissertation advisers.) OK, yes, there may be some issues with perspective, but, whatever, I made them and therefore think they are brilliant.

Beinecke Library, by P. Donovan

(This is Part II in a series of posts about living in New Haven. Look for more, unless I get tired of doing them.)

I first moved to New Haven from the Bay Area, and well do I remember driving up and down Dixwell and Whalley, wondering where the hell the kids were in this town. There are plenty of young adults, don’t get me wrong, but the whole blue-blazered, drinking-at-Mory’s thing was not my scene (and still, thankfully, is not). I must tell you, New Haven Transplant, that there is a lot of that in your new home. And maybe you’re into that! In which case, go nuts!

For the rest of us, though, there are a few hidden gems, and you should find them so you don’t become bitter and angry.

Yes, of course, you can go to New York — like everyone says, it’s only an hour and a half away! But you probably won’t end up going as often as you think you will, because grad school is exhausting and soul-sucking, and New York is big and expensive.

The first thing you should do is bookmark Yale’s events calendar, because they really do offer some amazing, once-in-a-lifetime stuff. And it’s usually free. Just don’t assume everything’s on there. Some departments just don’t have their act together about submitting stuff to the main event calendar, so be sure to check the websites of departments you’re interested in.

Also keep the New Haven Public Library in mind. They have some great speakers from time to time, plus a great collection of fiction, DVDs, and audiobooks.

Music

If you’re into suburban hardore, a la Nickelback, good news! New Haven is a hotbed! Young Connecticutians come from all around to inflict their shitty music on us.

The other stuff, though, is out there, albeit a little hard to find. There’s Toad’s, which occasionally has good shows, despite the  inexplicable frequency with which it hosts Badfish: A Tribute to Sublime. (And Aaron Carter, for the love of God). I saw Le Tigre there once, and Joanna Newsom and the Dresden Dolls.

I’m not really a jazz or classical or avant-garde fan, but I respect Firehouse 12 for the ambitious and experimental shows it offers.

If you do like classical or jazz, Yale’s music school is terrific, and offers a lot of free concerts.

My favorite venue is The Space, out in Hamden. It’s a scrappy little place that hosts a lot of local bands and the occasional better-known act. I saw Jonathan Richman and Vic Chesnutt there, and missed Deertick, sadly.

Movies

There used to be a cool little movie theater on York Street, but now American Apparel lives there, gross. But the Criterion is pretty good! And you can get discount tickets if you’re a grad student — just ask at the McDougal Center. It’s a great, great deal.

You are actually in luck if you are a broke cinephile, because Yale’s Film Studies program has two 35mm facilities that are in pretty much constant use. Seriously, you could do nothing but go to all the Yale movies — which are free — for a couple years and get a terrific film education. And not only the screenings themselves, but talks by filmmakers and film people — D.A. Pennebaker, Jodie Foster, David Lynch. However! There is no website for these screenings, for reasons that I don’t quite understand but have to do with copyright. So in order to find out about them, email the Film Studies administrator and ask to be added to the email list for film screenings. You’ll be really glad you did.

One of Yale’s hidden gems is the fantastic collection of DVDs and videos at the Film Study Center. If you’re a Film Studies grad student or major, you can check movies out for free. Otherwise, you can purchase a pretty affordable season pass. And, really, the collection is amazing.

If you prefer to browse, Best Video, in Hamden, is one of the world’s best video stores, with really knowledgeable clerks.

Bookstores

I may be in the minority here, but I wish that New Haven’s profusion of small, independent, mediocre bookstores (Labyrinth, Atticus, Book Trader) would just join forces and be a decent larger bookstore, a la Powell’s in Portland, Oregon. But whatever. There are a number of fine smaller bookstores around town for your browsing pleasure. There’s also the Yale Bookstore, which is really a Barnes & Noble, but not called a Barnes & Noble, where you can go to read magazines for free.

You have to get out to Niantic if you possibly can, to go to the Book Barn. It’s a huge complex of ramshackle barns crammed with used books and roving dogs and cats. Seriously, it’s awesome. Go there.

Art-Type Stuff

The Yale Art Gallery is terrific, and so is the British Art Center (if you like their particular brand of British art). The School of Architecture often puts on some really cool exhibitions.

It’s also worth noting that the Yale School of Art is one of the best in the world, and it has frequent shows. I like New Haven’s City-Wide Open Studios week, where you get to see the inside of a lot of cool art studios.

Bars

You can usually find grad students whining into their beers at the Anchor, Rudy’s, or GYPSCY. GYPSCY deserves special mention because it’s run by the Yale grad student council and has cheap booze. I like Rudy’s best because it has beer on tap, occasionally hosts bands, and has awesome pommes frites.

If you like grinding against sweaty guys in striped button-downs, check out Bar on Thursday night! But otherwise, don’t! Other places not to go: Hula Hank’s (do I even need to tell you this?), the Playwright, and Hot Tomato’s.

Festivals and Etcetera

A lot of people like New Haven’s Arts and Ideas Festival, but I’ve just never felt it. It runs a little too world-music-and-middle-aged for me. Like, is there a special booking agency for anodyne blues music and Ladysmith Black Mambazo? You’re better off getting out into New England to less pretentious festivals.

There’s some great hiking around Yale. My favorites are East Rock Park, West Rock Park, and Sleeping Giant State Park.

One of my favorite things to do is to pick peaches and apples and berries at Bishop’s Orchards in Guilford. Don’t miss this. It’s really fun. Plus they make a mean apple cider donut.

In general, I recommend you learn to embrace the whole New England thing. Drive amongst the changing leaves! Eat apples! Buy yourself a cable-knit sweater! Seek a fireplace! Obtain tweed clothing and an L. L. Bean Boat & Tote! Take up sailing! Connecticut can be infuriating, mainly because of the chasm between rich and poor, but the New England thing has its charms.

Except in the winter. Good luck with that, sucker.

If you tried to leave a comment and got spammed, it’s because you’re a cylon. Just kidding, it’s nothing personal. I’m trying to fix the settings, but I’m having trouble. Send me an email to let me know, or just hang on, and I’ll keep monitoring my spam folder.

"Don't Be a Jerk," by Gregalicious

OK, let me just start by saying that I have been That Guy (in a gender-neutral sense) many, many times. You know what I mean? The one who asks a question that makes you surreptitiously elbow the person next to you or doodle “WTF?” on your notepad. It’s hard! There are so many ways to be obnoxious at an academic presentation! Especially for those of us with egos (not me, of course — I’m just being helpful), the temptation to grandstand can be overwhelming.

Thus! I am compiling this list of dos and don’ts so that I, more than anyone else, will remember to do them and don’t them. Are there some I’m missing?

Ask a genuine question.
I cringe when I think about my behavior at a recent conference, when I responded to a presentation by triumphantly proclaiming, “Yes, but what about X?” I was so pleased with myself for knowing about X, and so pleased that I knew something the presenter didn’t know, that I forgot to ask a real question. Obviously, the presenter did not know about X, and this wasn’t a genuine question for her. I asked it so the audience would know that I was a great genius and knew about X. Don’t do this.

Keep it short, and resist the temptation to qualify.
This thing happens while I’m waiting to ask a question where my brain performs the following gymnastics:

1. I have a question!
2. What a great question!
3. But wait! Is it actually a dumb question?
4. Does everyone else already know what the answer is and I’m just ignorant?
5. I know! I shall demonstrate that I am actually quite well-read and thoughtful by prefacing my question with an extended monologue, in which I explain that this question is not actually about this, but about that, which I thought of because I know about this other thing and what that one guy said about it!

Yeah, don’t do that. Just ask the question, and if it makes you look dumb, take the hit. It probably doesn’t, anyway.

Ask a question that has broad interest.
“Broad interest” is always a relative term in academia, but think about the audience. If they’re there to hear about, like, Emily Dickinson, they probably don’t care what Emily Dickinson thought about leper colonies in Louisiana, even if that’s your great and important research project. It’s not like academic presenters are rock stars. You’ll get a chance to ask your question one-on-one, promise.

Start off with a compliment.
It’s hard to get up in front of an audience and do your thing. Unless the presenter is very experienced, her first thought on getting a question is more likely to be “Is this hostile?” than “What does this person want to know?” In my experience, starting off with a quick compliment (“That was really interesting. Thanks for that.”) goes a surprisingly long way toward putting the presenter at ease and allowing her to focus on the substance, rather than the tone, of your question.

Allow the presenter a graceful way to defend herself or decline to answer.
It’s OK to argue with a presenter, but it’s not OK to hector. Yes, these are Very Important Issues and the world should hear your point, but the stakes are higher for the presenter than for the questioner. If the presenter is clearly not equipped to defend herself, or can’t provide a satisfactory answer, you need to let it go. The audience is smart enough to understand what’s going on, and you won’t accomplish anything by needling the presenter, other than making yourself look like a jerk.

"Embroidered Digital Commons," by Bethany Nowviskie

A big part of my new job at Emory is researching models of digital scholarship. The idea is that by getting a sense of what’s out there, Emory can benefit from others’ experience when it launches its own center for digital scholarship. So my colleague, Stewart Varner, and I have been going on field trips to centers whose work we admire.

So far we’ve hit the University of Virginia’s Scholars’ Lab and George Mason’s Center for History and New Media (CHNM). Next up is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. (Before I got to Emory, staff members visited Duke’s Visual Studies Initiative and the Maryland Institute for Technology and the Humanities.)

Staff at both CHNM and the Scholars’ Lab were unbelievably generous with their time and expertise. Really. One of the things that’s drawn me to the digital humanities is its practitioners’ intellectual generosity, and the people we met confirmed that impression tenfold.

Stewart and I expected to be impressed by the Scholars’ Lab and CHNM, and we were — specifically, we were impressed by the smart, thoughtful, creative people we met. We were surprised, though, by how deeply the visits affected our own thinking about the kind of center we want to build at Emory. Here’s my attempt to capture what I took away from our trips.

Community is essential.

In order for a tool or project to gain traction, it has to fulfill a real need, and it has to develop a passionate community of users. To do this, a center has to form meaningful, honest, and generous relationships with people in both the DH and the larger academic worlds. CHNM, for example, has staff members dedicated to outreach, who monitor forums, advocate for tools, and listen to suggestions.

An innovative center resists the service model.

Yes, absolutely, faculty members’ research and exhibit websites are an important part of what a digital scholarship center can do. But they shouldn’t be all the center does. A DH center should position itself ahead of the curve — that is, its leadership should not only respond to what academics tell it they want, but also push scholarship and technology forward. For example, did a faculty member instruct the Scholars’ Lab to build Omeka plugins that can hook into a Fedora repository? Probably not. But it’s tools like these that will allow the creation of sustainable, graceful exhibit websites.

A center’s leaders must be recognized as scholars.

This principle closely follows the preceding one. If a director is going to claim the autonomy to push a center away from a simple service model, he or she needs to possess — and remind others that he or she possesses — academic credentials. Though I’m always wary of easy humanities/sciences parallels, I do think of this model as akin to that of a scientific lab. Would the dean of faculty instruct a chemistry professor where to focus her research? No way. Nor should an administrator define the entirety of a center’s activities.

Don’t duplicate effort — unless you can do it better.

Rather than focusing on one-off boutique websites, both CHNM and the Scholars’ Lab have chosen to spend resources developing tools that can serve many people’s needs. So instead of building tons of individual exhibit websites, CHNM has built Omeka, a platform with which scholars can build their own sites, and ScholarPress, a set of course-management plugins for WordPress. I think this approach is really smart, and I think it solves a lot of problems. Omeka and WordPress aren’t going anywhere: they’re widely used platforms with active communities of users, and they’re built with widely used programming languages. Updating, then, is relatively simple, and websites have a much better chance of persisting in a usable state.

Hire creative, curious developers — who may not be CS majors.

Both the Scholars’ Lab and CHNM have staffs of developers whose backgrounds were humanities-heavy. And they are awesome and funny and smart. Everyone I spoke to stressed that a serious CS background pales in importance next to a genuine commitment to the larger project, a willingness to learn, and a grasp of why the humanities matter. Once these components are in place, you can give developers the autonomy they need to build something really cool.

Stability is important in a funding model.

Tom Scheinfeldt, CHNM’s managing director, has written about the viability of running a DH center on soft money. And he makes a good point that getting paid from a grant isn’t really all that different from the at-will employment that most people enjoy (or suffer). And yet neither he nor anyone else makes any secret of the fact that hard money is nice if you can get it. CHNM has been absolutely ingenious is obtaining grants and finding ways to keep talented people. But its staff must devote a huge amount of time to grantwriting. In contrast, the Scholars’ Lab enjoys funding from the university itself, and it benefits from an endowment. This has been a great benefit for the Scholars’ Lab: its staff is stable, it can choose projects at will, and it needn’t devote hours and hours to writing grants.

The Scholars’ Lab’s endowment itself originated with a grant, and the Lab still seeks grants for certain specific projects. If Emory is very lucky, our own digital scholarship center will receive a start-up grant, with which we’re determined to prove our worth. But in the long term, I do hope that we’ll enjoy the security and stability that the Scholars’ Lab can claim.

Marketing matters.

If I needed convincing, Tom’s recent blog post really laid out the importance of marketing a tool or project in order to cultivate an active and passionate community of users. Except in rare cases, we academics are probably not natural marketers, but it’s clear that we need to develop these skills.

… And so does design.

No one wants to use an ugly tool. Moreover, thoughtful design is not only pretty; it has scholarly and pedagogical integrity. Someone like Jeremy Boggs, CHNM’s creative lead, combines aesthetic sense with academic cred to build an architecture and feel that convey an idea with real rigor. Internet users often like their information in bite-sized pieces. Scholars, on the other hand, often want to convey complex ideas that build on series of principles. Someone smart needs to be thinking about how to combine these two tendencies in order to create meaningful, pleasurable experiences.

I’ve been pretty remiss in my website-maintenance duties for Yale’s Past’s Digital Presence conference website.

However! Thanks to our intrepid cinematographer/video editor (A.K.A. my boyfriend Andy), you can watch video of a lot of the talks by clicking on the title of the talk you’re interested in. And Jana Remy, our distinguished and talented online media chair, has turned a number of talks into downloadable audio podcasts.

Andy and I are pretty pleased with ourselves for our decision to host the conference’s video at the Internet Archive. As I see it, this has a number of benefits: the I.A., unlike YouTube, has an explicit commitment to sustainability, open access, and archival integrity. Plus, people can freely download these videos, and they’re even available as HTML5. Here are all the videos over at the Internet Archive.

Our undeserved prominence has inspired me to get on Andy’s case to get the rest of the video up. And I’ll work on making the site a better archive, rather than a conference-registration site.

Here's my new workplace, Emory's Robert W. Woodruff Library. Photo by shihwy1.

Boy, May just about killed me! There was the small matter of writing the last chapter of my dissertation, not to mention revising an article, grading stacks of finals and papers, finding a new place to live — and, of course, moving 1,000 miles from New Haven to Atlanta. I was fascinated by the exotic variety of weird stress-related symptoms I developed: so very many rashes!

Anyway! We did it, and here we are in Decatur, Georgia, mostly unpacked and doing great. I started my job in Emory’s library on June 15, and I’m loving it. I was delighted to find my initial impressions of Emory confirmed — particularly the part about having awesome coworkers.

One thing I’d missed while in school was exercising a variety of different skills, and I’m finding this one of the most enjoyable parts of my job. I do a lot of research, just like always, but also a lot of planning, talking, and strategizing. And, crucially, I know when my workday is over.

I have to confess to some initial concern that in moving from an academic role to a (sort of) staff role, I’d experience some drop in others’ respect or willingness to take me seriously. So far, though, I’ve been way too busy to worry about that at all. And the faculty members I’ve met at Emory have been absolutely terrific, more than willing to listen to my ideas.

So, basically, I’m congratulating myself on ending up here, and feeling optimistic about what my coworkers and I can accomplish at Emory. If only that dissertation didn’t need revising …

Andy and I are in the middle of orchestrating our big move to Atlanta, and all the excitement is reminding me of when Andy and I first moved out to New Haven. It was kind of hard to get a handle on where to live and what to do, even though Yale has some good resources. But here is part one in a multipart (i.e., until I get tired of doing it) series  of some information I wish I’d had. (Update: here’s a second post, on what you should do once you get to The Have.)

This is assuming you’re not living in the grad student dorms, which, to be honest, I think is a little weird. Unless you’re coming from far away and can’t apartment-hunt. I guess it can be cheaper, too, depending on which dorm you choose.

Neighborhood boundaries (PDF warning!)

Grad students at Yale tend to cluster in two neighborhoods: downtown and East Rock.

Downtown

Since Yale’s campus is mostly scattered around downtown (except the Med School, which is in the Hill, and the science-y stuff, which is in Science Park), living downtown is your best bet if you want to be really close to everything. It can be pretty pricey, but it’s not undo-able on a Yale stipend. A lot of grad students live in 88 Howe or 100 Howe, reasonably priced buildings with fairly nice apartments. You’ll be near all the coffee shops and restaurants your little heart could desire, though there will be no escaping the rampaging undergrads.

The problem with downtown is that ever since the Whalley Avenue Shaw’s closed (boo!), there’s nowhere to shop for groceries, besides the outlandishly expensive (but 24-hour) upscale convenience store Gourmet Heaven.

Well, that’s not entirely true. There’s Edge of the Woods, a natural foods grocery store, and there’s a place called Minore’s Poultry & Foods, which no one I know has every been to, though I’m not sure why not. There’s also a downtown farmer’s market in the summer and fall. There’s been talk of a co-op opening up at 360 State St. (a new mixed-use development downtown), which would be great. A lot of grad students who live downtown use Peapod by Stop ‘n’ Shop, or just eat out all the time. Or they take the bus to the Dixwell Avenue Stop ‘n’ Shop.

Update, 08/16/10: just got word that the Graduate and Professional Student Senate has organized Tuesday-evening shuttle runs to the Dixwell Avenue (Hamden) Stop ‘n’ Shop. Email GPSS.Shuttle@gmail.com for details.

East Rock

East Rock is much leafier. That’s where I lived for three years. Residential buildings tend toward the decaying Victorian triplex, though there are a few modern apartment buildings (and some very fancy houses). East Rock gets its name from the big park at the northeastern end — terrific if you have a dog or like to run.

East Rock also has a number of establishments that have sprung up to serve the bourgie academics (yes, yes, like me) who live there: the specialty grocery stores Nica’s and Romeo’s, the more general-purpose P & M Orange St. Market (which I find charming), several bars, and a number of restaurants. There’s a new farmer’s market on State Street. Lulu’s coffee shop is an institution (though the new, more modern Cafe Romeo is great, too), and your booze needs are easy to fill.

If you live toward the southern end of East Rock (near Grove Street), school is just a few blocks away. If you’re down near the park, it’s a pretty long walk — maybe 45 minutes? But the Yale shuttle serves East Rock, and you can totally live there without a car.

I’d avoid living on State St., personally, since it can get kind of noisy, and I’d also avoid the eastern ends of Willow St. and Trumbull St., just because people get off the highway there and drive really fast.

East Rock is a great place to wake up on a Sunday morning — very peaceful, with lots of kids and dogs. If, however, you are irritated by living chockablock with other grad students and postdocs, you may want to set your sights elsewhere.

Wooster Square

To a lesser extent, grad students also live in Wooster Square. This is the part of town that’s across the freeway from downtown. Wooster Square, named after, uh, Wooster Square, is actually pretty close to everything, but the freeway, along with the neighborhood-y feel, make it seem farther away.

Wooster Square has a reputation for being home to lots of old New Haven Italian families, and it’s certainly home to the two legendary Warring Pizza Places of New Haven: Sally’s and Pepe’s. (I’m a Modern girl myself, but that’s over in East Rock.) Fuel is the local coffee place. You can get groceries at Ferraro’s, or, in the summer and fall, at the Wooster Square Farmer’s Market.

Car-dependent neighborhoods

If you have a car and are willing to drive to school (this is not easy, because parking, as I’ll explain in a later post, is not for the faint of heart), your options expand a bit.

Westville

I live in Westville, which I like very much. It takes me about 15 minutes to drive into school, New Haven traffic considered. It’s a lot like East Rock in many ways: leafy, with lots of young families. Yale’s athletic fields are out here, which makes everything very green. But because fewer grad students live here, houses don’t turn over so quickly, and so there are a lot of people who’ve been here for decades.

There’s a nice park, Edgewood, and a farmer’s market every weekend in the summer and fall. Manjares is a terrific coffee shop with the friendliest proprietors you’ll ever meet, and there’s also Deja Brew (which I like to call Deja Bourgeois), which is okay, except that the owners’ taste in decor tends toward the doily. If you’re going to live in Westville, you pretty much have to have a car. The closest supermarket is in West Haven (a 10-minute drive), and there really aren’t even any convenience stores around.

The main reason Andy and I chose Westville is that it’s quite cheap compared to East Rock, downtown, and Wooster Square, and you can get more space and a yard for your money. But there’s a reason for that: the Yale shuttle doesn’t run out here, and even the stupid bus stops running at about 8:00 p.m. Andy likes to walk to downtown, but it’s definitely a serious walk: about 45 minutes. You could bike, but how would you get groceries? Also, a word of warning: if you live in Westville, your friends won’t come over, because most of them don’t have cars.

But if you do choose Westville, the Craigslist keywords to search for are “SCSU,” “Yale Bowl,” and “Westville Village.”

Hamden

People also live in Hamden, which, like Westville, is a fairly pastoral residential suburb where you really have to have a car. It’s about a 10-minute to a half-hour drive away, depending on where you live.

The bus service is better, and there’s a strip of grocery and big-box stores at the northern end of Dixwell. There’s also a nice family-owned grocery store. Hamden has its own parks, West Rock and Sleeping Giant, and its own farmer’s market. I don’t know a ton about Hamden, but it does have the best video store in the world, a good music venue, several excellent thrift stores, an okay used bookstore, a good Irish bakery, and a natural food store that people seem to like.

Yes, yes, the crime

This is probably a good place to mention New Haven’s crime corridor. Sooo … that exists, and you should be aware of it. No neighborhood in New Haven is immune from crime, and crime waves regularly hit even sleepy East Rock, where burglars can be sure to find grad students’ laptops and poorly secured apartments. Crime in New Haven is not as outrageous as people sometimes think, but it certainly exists, and it’s something to think about when you choose a place to live.

So good luck, and happy househunting.

Other Resources:

Craigslist (is that obvious?) is the place to look for rentals. Yale also has rental housing listings, but CL seems to have mostly edged them into disuse.

I’ve gotten really into PadMapper lately, which is one of those sites that combines Google maps with apartment listings. It’s my favorite because it’s the best designed and seems to be the most comprehensive.

I’ve also gotten into WalkScore, which tells you how close you are to the essentials — coffee, beer, books, groceries — and gives you a walkability score. Alas, my Westville address only has a walkscore of 49 (car-dependent).

The New Haven Independent is the best news site about New Haven. I’m a big fan. Read and search its archives for the real dirt on New Haven neighborhoods.

Some general commentary on New Haven

Upper State Street Neighborhood Association (serving part of East Rock)

Historic Wooster Square Association

Westville Village Renaissance Alliance

Hamden neighborhood associations

The City of New Haven has a bunch of cool maps of various things

Bike New Haven

The Past’s Digital Presence, the conference Heather, Jana, Molly, Taylor, and I have been working so hard on, took place this last weekend, and the consensus seems to be that it was a success. The papers were fantastic and our invited speakers were inspiring. Edward Ayers, the historian and president of the University of Richmond, called the conference a “watershed,” and Willard McCarty, one of the founders of the field of digital humanities, called it “exhilarating.” So that is all fantastic and exciting. The best part, for me, was meeting people who are active in the digital humanities, both speakers and attendees. It was great to trade stories and references.

We’re hoping to keep the momentum going by publishing the conference proceedings in some form, as well as by posting video and audio recordings to the conference website. Jana has already posted the podcast of the conference’s closing roundtable with Willard McCarty, Edward Ayers, Rolena Adorno, and George Miles.

I took over tweeting duties for the conference (we’re PDP2010), and you can follow all the conference tweets by searching for #pdp2010. It was an interesting experience. I really enjoyed watching momentum gather as the conference progressed, but I do have concerns about the way that tweeting encouraged me to hunt for soundbites in speakers’ talks.

Willard McCarty posted a very complimentary review of the conference on Humanist, a digital humanities listserv. That was terrific, but I was especially interested in a very thoughtful response to McCarty’s post by Amanda Gailey. Gailey points out that, amidst all our post-conference self-congratulation, we shouldn’t forget that state schools have been doing digital humanities for quite awhile, and with a great deal of success. She writes,

I simply want to suggest that to my mind, the conference may be a watershed, but not because DH has finally earned the benediction of the Ivies. Instead, it is quite possible that a hitherto unproven field, within which smart people not housed at the most selective and expensive universities could actually earn influence and rewards, is becoming less egalitarian.

I think this is a real danger, and I’m glad Gailey made the point. I’ll be thinking about it as we move forward with the momentum the conference has generated.

Photo by andrew d. miller.

I am so happy to report that I’ve just accepted a new job. Beginning June 15, I’ll be the Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow for the Digital Scholarship Commons at Emory University. I’ll be working to coordinate, promote, and integrate Emory’s existing digital resources, as well as helping to design a physical space for a digital scholarship program. I couldn’t be happier about this: on my visit to Emory, I was blown away by the resources, ideas, and (especially) the people Emory has devoted to the digital humanities. I loved what I saw of Atlanta and felt convinced that Andy and I (and Beatrice) could have a good life there.

After years of fretting about the job market, I found myself in the totally unexpected, totally surreal position of having to decide between two great offers. The other, for a teaching postdoc at a wonderful small liberal-arts college, was a very attractive, more conventional academic position. It was a difficult decision, and hard for me to subvert expectations by foregoing the traditional academic route, but I really believe that Emory’s program will help to build a place for a hybrid digital humanist and scholar.

On a personal level, I think it was important for me to be finally faced with a real choice between a professorial job and one in the digital humanities; it was the manifestation of a more abstract decision I’ve been trying to make for years. As soon as I made my choice, I knew it was the right one. We are celebrating in the Posner household!