Hello! My name is Tonushree and I’m a senior from Mumbai, India. I am majoring in Cognitive Science with a Digital Arts and Humanities minor. When I’m not studying/working, I love creating art, exploring various nooks and crannies of campus and Northfield with my friends, and getting coffee with someone different every week to keep me on my toes. I also enjoy acting in Carleton productions. Apart from being a Digital Humanities Associate, I am also a Costume Shop Assistant at the Theater and Dance department and an Office Assistant for the Psych and Cog-Sci department!
Here is a picture of me soaking up the sun during my study abroad, Studio Art in the South Pacific 🙂
I thrive in settings of interdisciplinarity, where a project, theory, or concept needs to be understood from several different lenses, be it philosophical, sociological, economical, linguistic, or digital to name a few. I’m excited by the fact that being a DHA gives me the opportunity to simultaneously dabble in multiple humanities classes and work on or observe the digitization of their projects. I would love to further my interests in art, storytelling and creative visualization by learning how to turn them into digital projects during my time as a DHA!
Hello! I’m Henry, a sophomore from Minneapolis, MN. Here at Carleton, I’m interested in computer science, cognitive science and economics/public policy. This is my first year as part of the DHA team, and I’m excited to start getting involved in some Digital Humanities projects. While I love the theoretical/technical side of computer science, using these techniques as tools to build interesting projects has always been more rewarding for me than just theory alone. I’m hoping in my role as a DHA, I will have the opportunity to apply my formal knowledge and experience in web design and app building to projects across Carleton’s humanities disciplines.
I’m interested in the process of distilling large amounts of information into digestible analysis. This year, I’m hoping to learn more about how to do this well with digital tools. I’m also interested in learning more about visual storytelling with maps and other interactive web-based experiences.
Outside of school, I love playing music and spending time outside. On campus, I’m a board member for KRLX (our student-run radio station), a software developer on DataSquad, I live in Carleton’s Outdoors House (Wade house), and I can often be found in the climbing gym, exploring the Arb (by ski or foot), or plotting overly complex pranks on my friends.
My name is Cynthia Leng and I am a junior Statistics major from Beijing, China. This is my first year working as a Digital Humanities Associate (DHA), and I am really excited about the interesting projects I will be working on.
I got interested in digital humanities when I started working with the Carleton Archives. My role in the Carleton in China project introduced me to digital tools and content management systems, and I am eager to learn more about them as a DHA.
In my free time, I sing with the Carleton Choir and a Chinese a cappella group. I also enjoy traveling, watching movies, and playing badminton with my friends.
My favorite part of Carleton is that there’s plenty of space to follow curiosity – no matter what discipline the topic falls into. I’m excited to work as a Digital Humanities Associate this year because I love helping other people bring their curiosity to life. Selfishly, I also get to see more cool projects.
As an example, last Spring I began working as a DHA, and I worked on the 3D model viewer for CARCAS, which is an archaeology department project to display high quality scans of bones. The best moment of that project was showing Sarah, the faculty member leading the project, that the mobile version of the site lets you virtually put the bones on real world surfaces around you using your phone camera. She was delighted! I’m so proud that I was part of what made that moment happen, and I’m looking forward to more moments like that this year.
Here I am, holding a goat skull! In reality, nothing was in my hands; this is a feature of the mobile version of the CARCAS model viewer that I worked on last spring. Photograph by Cynthia Leng.
A little bit more about me – I’m a senior, and I’m a math major and digital arts and humanities minor. I love all angles of math, from the beauty and symmetry of abstract math to the nitty gritty computational considerations of working with real data. I also keep coming back to maps across a variety of academic fields, from medieval maps to storytelling maps made in the present day.
I’m looking forward to a great year working as a DHA!
My name is Gaby Lazo, and I am a senior Linguistics major. This term, I was lucky enough to serve as a Digital Humanities Assistant between roles as a Student Teaching Assistant, and what a gift it was! While Digital Humanities projects have been my preferred way to engage with humanities education throughout my time at Carleton, stepping into this role meant stepping all the way back into my freshman self’s shoes, as I worked to revitalize my skills in the DH tools first introduced to me in Hacking the Humanities. And as I reimmersed myself in this work, between writing my Senior comps and captaining the Ballroom Dance Team, I rediscovered my love and passion for DH!
This term, I got to work on three primary projects: classroom Omeka support, digital advertising and revision, and video captioning. Working primarily with MELA 230: Jewish Collective Memory, I supported the onboarding of several new “researchers” onto their course Omeka site. I created new instructions both for adding new users to the site as an admin, and for accessing and activating new accounts. In doing this, we learned that many of the other Omeka resources no longer reflected the newest version of the interface; thus, I also got to update these instructional materials. These tasks together really let me dive back into the different ways Omeka can serve well as a digital archive, and the powerful capability it possesses to support humanities visualization through timelines.
Between compsing and DHA work, Gould Library became my second home this term!
My other two projects related to our annual Day of DH event held each June by our department. Firstly, I supported prep for the upcoming 2023 event by creating new teaser posters for this year’s festivities. This allowed me to become familiar with our keynote speaker, Quinn Dombrowski, and their wonderful work both in making DH welcoming to women, via the Data Sitters Club, and incredible textiles! Further, since the event is returning to in-person this year after several virtual occurrences, I updated some of the materials that will be needed to navigate the Weitz on the big day! In addition to these things, I have gotten to apply my captioning skills to a new project (in a new software) as I added captions to each Lightning Round session video from last year’s event. This has helped hone my attention to detail, and has reminded me of the critical role of accessibility in our department and at our school.
As I return to my TA position, I cannot help but reflect on how grateful I am that Digital Humanities not only thrives at Carleton, but that I got to be a part of it. Our work is a constant learning experience, where we are supported to practice trial and error as we come together to support incredible projects. While my academic career at Carleton is slowly coming to an end, my immersion into the world of DH is just beginning!
My name is Thien M. Bui and I am a Junior CS / Mathematics major at the school. Due to some pronunciation complications, I often go by Kevin which is what most of you *probably* would’ve known me by. I worked as a DHA last year, doing basic Python scripts and WP template maintenance for various departments, and I hope to continually be of use as one of the few resident CS major in the program!
Outside of DHA, I hope to spend more time with the seniors in the townhouse area this year (ALL THE HOUSES HAVE THEIR OWN CULTURE). Because of Covid, I took a gap after freshman year so this will be the last chance I’ll get to kick it with the folks I came into Carleton with. Here’s a cool pic of the area!
Lawn area next to Owens (where I live ;D)
Lastly, since I couldn’t make it to the accessibility training, I’ll instead be talking about Sofia Noble and Algorithm of Oppression instead. Last year, we got lucky and somehow managed to invite her over for our Day of DH where she kind of went ham on how search engine algorithms are marginalizing certain groups (e.g. searching for “black girl” on Google used to return a lot of pornographic materials). She goes into a lot of details in her book on how the problems in a wide range of use cases, and also possible solutions to remedy them. That was a fascinating talk, and I would wholeheartedly recommend everybody interested in AI to give the book a read!
Hello, I am Abdullah. I am from Lahore, Pakistan. I am a rising sophomore this year. I spent my last year working as a DHA. The main work that I did was with Map Archival where I archived maps of different places and cataloged them, added their descriptions, and posted them on their respective websites. My last year’s experience was really productive, relaxing, and at the same time, positively challenging. The work made me try new things which I may not have tried otherwise.
This year, I am aiming to keep up that trend and also try more technical aspects of DHA which will help me develop my skills. I am hopeful that the experience will be up to my expectations and just as great if not more wonderful than the last year.
Coming to the photographs that I have taken on campus, I have such a big collection of them. I like walking around campus and taking photographs. I am sharing two of them here since I want to learn more about both of these things albeit in different respects.
A picture of Sunset near Lyman LakesA picture of the Carleton Seal
These are the two pictures that I have thought about lately.
I am Abdullah Ansar from Lahore, Pakistan. I am a Freshman who is interested in nearly everything that has to do with Humanities and Social Sciences, ranging from Economics to Philosophy and everything in between. I love nature, reading, listening to Sufi Music, watching random philosophy videos on Youtube, and late-night walks (Say Hi if you ever find me walking around at 12).
My favorite DH project is Religions in Minnesota. This is the first DHA Project I read about. Being Interested in Religion, I see how this can be a great resource for communities to share their beliefs, ideas, and heritage. It can be hard for some communities to create presentable pages for external observers, due to various challenges they face with technology or language. This is why it becomes even more important to help them.
For Data Feminism, I really liked the observation of the writer about the relation of Data and Power. While it is thought that Data is objective, it can still be affected by the subject who is collecting, analyzing, and talking about it. Knowledge or Data is not completely objective under all conditions. This is a very interesting idea, one I agree with as well.
Apart from this, I also like to take pictures of Carleton Campus sometimes (because it is so beautiful). I am adding a picture I took yesterday in its raw form without any filter. I hope to become a better photographer. Thank you for reading this.
My name is Miyuki Mihira and I am a senior History major and Philosophy minor from Tokyo, Japan. This will be my 3rd year(!) to work as a Digital Humanities Associate. As a History major with a strong interest in Public History, I have learned and been involved in several historical digital projects. As the DH is still a growing and developing sector, I’m passionate about thinking about how digital tools can enrich humanities and achieve more inclusivity.
<Project>
One project I especially liked among the Carleton DH projects is Mapping Masquerades from 2012. This is a historical project, and the way in which it presents history was so eye-opening for me when I first came across it that it completely changed my definition of historical writing. Although it has a number of paragraphs, using a story map and a GIS mapping, the project makes historical writing (or historical presentation I would say) more interactive and easier for users with little background knowledge to better understand.
On the Glass Animals website, I recognized that some of the file types such as “jpg” used in the dozens of file titles. This made me think that learning the history of digital scholarship helps us understand the continuities/discontinuities in the rapidly changing digital world. With this in mind, for example, I got an impression that the file types that appear on the website remain until today because they are important to sort files and for other reasons.
<Data Fuminism>
I found the reading, “Introduction to Why Data Science Needs Feminism,” very empowering. The reading highlights the importance of intersectionality when it comes to thinking about people’s diverse experiences in the world. Revealing the hidden inequalities by using data, we are able to reframe the reality and destabilize the world which have been made to work and look in a certain way by those with power–as if turning over an iceburg.
Thank you for reading up to here, and I’m excited to be working as a DHA for one last year!
Hi! My name is Isabel Rameker and I’m a sophomore. This is my first year working as a DHA, and I’m excited to get started. I found this position really interesting because it integrates technology and the humanities in a variety of creative ways, and I’m looking forward to learning new skills and approaches to the humanities.
One DHA project that I found interesting was the interactive Boston Massacre game. The project approached a historical event in a way that I wouldn’t have considered, and I really liked the way it made the point of the project so accessible and interactive.
Like any history, I think that the history of digital scholarship is important because it teaches us about the present. By exploring the history of anything, you widen your perspective on how it became what it currently is and you expand your knowledge and ability to work with the current systems. I don’t currently know much about the history of digital scholarship, especially when it comes to technical details, but I did find the Glass Animals website helpful in understanding some of the basics.
I really appreciate the take put forward by Data Feminism on how data can be subjective and not only reflect but also contribute to inequalities. Looking through the exhibit on the history of technology, I noticed that the articles focused almost exclusively on White men and their contributions to technological advances. Although the website does focus on European history, they mentioned several (White, male) American inventors and innovators while leaving out women and people of color almost entirely.
