MARYLAND INSTITUTE FOR TECHNOLOGY IN THE HUMANITIES

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland, College Park announces an immediate search for the position of Assistant Director.

EXEMPT/12 MONTH FULLTIME (POSITION # 112159)

Made possible by a major Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) is a collaboration among the University of Maryland’s College of Arts and Humanities, Libraries, and Office of Information Technology. Since its founding in 1999, MITH has become internationally recognized as one of the leading centers of its kind, distinguished by the cultural diversity so central to its identity.

Located in McKeldin Library at the heart of the campus, MITH is the University’s primary intellectual hub for scholars and practitioners of digital humanities, new media, and cyberculture, as well as new home of the Electronic Literature Organization, the most prominent international group devoted to the writing, publishing and reading of electronic literature.

Projects have typically taken the form of electronic editions, scholarly databases, or high-end teaching materials (examples here: ). MITH is also increasingly supporting research in creative new media. MITH’s house research includes projects in text mining, visualization, digital libraries, electronic publishing, and digital preservation. We collaborate actively with allied campus units, including the University Libraries, the College of Information Science, and the Human Computer Interaction Lab. Situated just outside of Washington DC, MITH also offers all of the opportunities that come from the libraries, museums, and cultural institutions of the area.

In addition to participating in MITH’s house research, the Assistant Director will bear primary responsibility for the conceptualization and development of MITH’s Fellows’ projects and the supervision of a staff that includes a full-time Web designer, graduate assistants, and interns. We are therefore seeking a data architecture specialist experienced with both relational database and XML data representation. Ability to work at the command-line level with Unix/Linux based applications such as mySql is required, and preference will be given to candidates with scripting and programming expertise. Strong organizational and project management skills are also mandatory, as are excellent communication skills. A humanities background is welcome and desirable. MA, MLS, or Ph.D. preferred.

The Assistant Director is a full-time staff position at the University, with benefits. Salary commensurate with experience, ranging from $50,000-$63,000.

To apply, please send a letter of application, CV, and contact information for three references. Best consideration by August 1, 2006. Application materials may be sent electronically to mith@umd.edu or to Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH, McKeldin Library, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. Consideration of applications to begin immediately. Applications from women and minorities, as well as faculty at HBCU’s is encouraged.

Neil Fraistat, Director
Matthew Kirschenbaum, Associate Director

To: All current and former members of MITH

From: Neil Fraistat, Director

MITH Acting Associate Director Carl Stahmer has returned for family reasons to the San Diego area, where he will once again be able to surf the ocean daily, rather than just the Net. Although we will greatly miss Carl’s presence day to day, he will remain a key part of MITH’s staff. I’m happy to say that Carl has accepted a position with MITH as a Research Associate, through which MITH’s fellows and grant projects will still be able to take advantage of his extraordinary talents as a conceptualizer of projects and a programmer. We hope to see him periodically throughout the year.

To: All current and former members of MITH

From: Neil Fraistat, Director

I am delighted to share the good news that Matt Kirschenbaum, Assistant Professor of English and Acting Associate Director of MITH, has accepted the position of Associate Director of MITH. By now everyone in the MITH Community knows Matt as one of the leading theorists in the field of digital studies, as one of the most interesting practitioners of applied work in the digital humanities, as a blogger extraordinaire, and as one of our most compelling and thought-provoking colleagues. Matt brings to the think tank of MITH a deep and wide-ranging expertise on new media, visual culture, and the digital humanities.

To: all chairs and directors, all current and former members of MITH

From: Dean James F. Harris

Re: Appointment of Professor Neil Fraistat as Director of MITH

June 7, 2006

I am happy to announce the appointment of Professor Neil Fraistat as Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) beginning July 1, 2006. Neil is a Professor in the Department of English specializing in the Romantic era, textual scholarship, and digital studies. A recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Keats-Shelley Association and the Fredson Bowers Memorial Prize from the Society for Textual Scholarship, Neil is well known internationally for his scholarly editions of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry and for his work as co-founder and co-general editor ofRomantic Circles , an award-winning scholarly Website, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, that is published by the University of Maryland and devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture.

Beyond his work on Romantic Circles, Neil has been an active and highly visible presence in the field of Digital Humanities, creating electronic resources, publishing on such topics as electronic editing, MOOs, and computer gaming; giving talks and running numerous sessions at major conferences; and sitting on the advisory board of several major electronic projects and journals, including Literary and Linguistic Computing, the premier journal in the field. He has just begun a second five-year term on the Executive Council of the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the field’s key professional organization. Neil has also served on an impressively large number of committees at every level within the university. He has been associated with the Dean’s Task Force on New Technologies and the Humanities (1993), with ARHU’s Committee on New Technologies, 1994-1996, and 2002-2004 (as Chair), and with MITH as both Chair of its Internal Advisory Board (1999-2005) and as Acting Director this past year.

Since its founding in 1999 through a major Challenge Grant from the NEH and under the directorship of Martha Nell Smith, MITH has become one of the most dynamic and exciting units on campus, as well as one of the most renowned institutes of its kind in the world. I fully share the Search Committee’s confidence in Neil’s ability to build successfully upon MITH’s great strengths in leading it to a yet higher level of excellence. The coming year provides an auspicious start: MITH will become the new headquarters of the Electronic Literature Organization, the premier professional organization for scholars and authors of born digital literature; it will add as Resident Fellows Merle Collins and Angel David Nieves, both working on fascinating multimedia archives involving African culture and history; and it will have as its new Networked Fellow the acclaimed hypertext fiction writer and conceptual artist, Shelley Jackson, who will be working on Skin: A Mortal Work of Art.

My thanks to the Search Committee ably chaired by Juan Uriagereka and composed of Ralph Bauer, Catherine Zabriskie, Ellen Borkowski, Allen Stairs, Roberta Lavine and Patricia Cossard.

Stan Ruecker, Assistant Professor of Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta and a member of the Mellon-funded Nora Text Mining and Visualization project MITH and HCIL participate in, will be visiting the campus on Thursday, June 8.

Ruecker is a specialist in experimental interface and visualization design in humanities contexts; he will present an informal overview of his work at MITH at 10:30 on Thursday. All are welcome to attend.