This Colloquium is designed specifically for graduate students interested in the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity and other dimensions of difference. Our intention is to extend current thinking about theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical approaches to intersectional analysis, as well as apply these insights to graduate students’ own work.

Please join us for the first colloquium of the semester, “Technology and Intersectionality,” featuring Dr. Carl Stahmer from the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities; Asim Ali, doctoral student in the Department of American Studies; Michele Mason (doctoral candidate in Communication); and more speakers to be announced. We will be exploring ways in which technology can aid intersectional research and teaching.

All are welcome to attend. A light lunch will be served.

February 16, 1200-200, Marie Mount; Maryland Room.

For more information contact:Patrick Grzanka
301.405.5223 , pgrzanka@umd.edu
http://www.crge.umd.edu

MITH is pleased to release its Spring Speakers Schedule. Between our weekly seminar series Digital Dialogues and a variety of special guests we are bringing to campus in partnership with other campus units, we are able to offer speakers and events in the digital humanities every week of the spring semester.

Alongside of showcasing a diverse array of current research by MITH’s Fellows and College Park faculty, MITH will host or co-host talks by such distinguished visitors as Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker (University of Virginia), Alan Liu (UCSB), Joseph Tabbi (UIC), Scott Rettberg (Richard Stockton College, and co-Founder of the Electronic Literature Organization), Shelley Jackson (author of Patchwork Girl and Skin), and Scott McCloud (author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics).

Unless otherwise noted, all talks are Tuesdays at 12:30 in the MITH Conference Room and are free and open to the public.

MITH’s weekly Digital Dialogues series continues on Tuesday, Feb. 14th at our usual 12:30 time in the MITH seminar room.

Produced, scripted, and filmed by MITH Fellow Regina Harrison who will lead a discussion after the screening, this 40 minute documentary (with Spanish subtitles)–which also exists in a Spanish version titled “Mina adentro” (with English subtitles)–depicts miners in Potosi, Bolivia, who extract silver, zinc, and lead from the mountain in the same precarious conditions as their ancestors did five centuries ago. Tourist agencies and transnational mining companies promise to bring in additional revenue for the miners, because the “rich” mountain is dying.

For this work Harrison received the Latin American Studies Association 2006 “Award of Merit in Film,” which is given for “excellence in the visual presentation of educational and artistic materials on Latin America.” Harrison is also the recipient of book awards from the Modern Language Association and the Latin American Studies Association. This is her first award for film.

The project was filmed with the MITH Canon GL1 digital camera in 2003 and 2004, but the 2004 digital cassettes were stolen in Bolivia after three weeks of filming. Despite this setback, she then bought her own Canon GL2 to return to the labyrinth of mine tunnels to film again in 2005. Harrison, as a MITH fellow, received training in film technique from MITH fellow April Householder and from MITH Advisory Board member Irvin Kershner. Campus funding from CAPA, MITH, and ARHU DRI funds, as well as maintenance funds from Fulbright-Hays, helped defray the costs of several years of travel, filming, and editing.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries offer a one-year Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities. The Fellow will be based in the University Libraries’ Digital Initiatives & Special Collections Department (DISC) and will be involved in a major Center for Digital Research in the Humanities project dealing with Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, and Washington, D.C. during the Civil War. Through this and other projects of the CDRH, the individual will assist in broadening access to unique cultural resources and learn about the development of a scholarly digital project from its inception including standards, methodologies, changing research and information needs based on digital media, digital preservation and sustainability, copyright, and funding. For more information, see http://www.clir.org/fellowships/postdoc/postdoc.html.

Applications must be postmarked no later than February 24, 2006.

Please join us in congratulating Regina Harrison for being awarded the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 2006 "Award of Merit in Film," which is given for "excellence in the visual presentation of educational and artistic materials on Latin America." The award will be presented at the LASA meeting in Puerto Rico (March 16-18, 2006).

Prof. Harrison produced, scripted, and filmed a 40 minute documentary in English: “Mined to Death” (with subtitles), which also exists in a Spanish version titled “Mina adentro” (with subtitles). The documentary depicts miners in Potosi, Bolivia, who extract silver, zinc, and lead from the mountain in the same precarious conditions as their ancestors did five centuries ago. Tourist agencies and transnational mining companies promise to bring in additional revenue for the miners, but it is apparent that the ‘rich’ mountain is dying.

Campus funding from CAPA, MITH, and ARHU DRI funds, as well as maintenance funds from Fulbright-Hays, helped defray the costs of several years of travel, filming, and
editing.

The film will screen at MITH next week, on February 14th as part of our Digital Dialogues series.