We are delighted to announce that MITH’s Winnemore Digital Dissertation Fellowships for spring 2007 have been awarded to Nadja Masura (Theatre) and Michael Evans (GVPT).

Nadja’s dissertation, “Digital Theatre,” examines the ways that digital technology–such as animation, video, motion capture/sensing, and internet broadcasting–when used along with “live” co-present actors, expands our ideas of body, place, and community. Michael’s dissertation, “Constitutional Regime Leadership in a World of States,” involves the use of digital technologies to analyze the public and private writings of Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton to better establish how their core beliefs about the nature and the causes of war and peace influenced their views on constitutional design.

We at MITH very much look forward to working with Nadja and Michael on these two interesting projects and wish to thank Roberta Lavine (Spanish and Portuguese), Angel Nieves (ARCH/CRGE), and last year’s Winnemore Dissertation Fellow, Michele Mason (Communication), for Joining us on this year’s Winnemore Fellowship Committee.

MITH is pleased to announce its spring 2007 Digital Dialogues schedule. In addition to presentations from fellows and various colleagues around campus, highlights include visits from Georgetown’s Randy Bass, the Center for History and New Media’s Dan Cohen (talking about Zotero), media scholar Lisa Gitelman (Catholic U.), digital artist and writer Jason Nelson, information designer Brad Paley (TextArc), and Kate Hayles (UCLA) and Kenneth Thibodeau (Director of Electronic Records, National Archives) as part of the MITH/ELO symposium on the Future of Electronic Literature.

Digital Dialogues resumes Tuesday of next week, February 6, at 12:30 with “Odd and Wondrous Creatures: Jason Nelson’s Traveling Digital Magicke Show.”

Uncontrollable Semantics, Hypnotizing Mascots, Between Treacherous Objects, This is How You Will Die, curious titles for odd digital magic works/poetics. Jason Nelson, Net Artist and Digital Arts Lecturer at Griffith University in Australia, will be showcasing his strange net artworks/new media poetics, as well as talking about the future of new media art on the web on the Maryland stop of his US art talk tour. Explore some of his artworks at: http://www.secrettechnology.com and then come along to the show.

MITH is pleased to announce we have accepted an invitation to join Georgetown and George Mason as third regional host of the Washington DC Area Technology and Humanities Forum. Co-sponsored by the Center for History & New Media (CHNM) at GMU and the Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown—and now MITH at Maryland—the DC Area Technology and Humanities Forum explores important issues in humanities computing and provides an opportunity for DC area scholars interested the uses of new technology in the humanities to meet and get acquainted.

Look for a program at Georgetown this spring, followed by MITH hosting its first event next fall.

The complete text of A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) is now freely available online, at:

http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/

This volume covers the full range of the digital humanities, collecting essays from many of the major authorities in the field.

MITH and the Electronic Literature Organization are pleased to announce a public symposium on the Future of Electronic Literature, May 2 and 3 at the University of Maryland, College Park, with co-sponsorship from the University Libraries and Department of English. The keynote speakers will be Kate Hayles (John Charles Hillis Professor of Literature at UCLA) and Kenneth Thibodeau (Director of Electronic Records Archives Program, National Archives and Records Administration). In addition to the keynotes and associated panels, we are planning an electronic literature slam on the evening of May 2. A number of ELO Board members and other writers and artists will be in attendance; watch the Web site linked above for more details soon, but in the meantime save the date!