On January 28th, IRIS hosted its annual open house. Faculty and students from across the university came to the Center to learn about current projects and resources for faculty and students. The event highlighted research being done by professors in the digital humanities.
The presenters/presented projects included:
- Dr. Jason Stacy, whose continuing contribution to the Walt Whitman Archive (http://whitmanarchive.org/) makes Whitman’s work freely available and easy to navigate.
- Digital East Saint Louis, a collaboration between the STEM center, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Education, is a project which attempts to diminish the digital divide present in local communities where students do not have access to the technology or education needed to acquire computer literacy. The participating eighth graders create digital historical archives of their city which simultaneously teaches basic coding skills gives the students pride in their community.
- Greg Fields, who demonstrated his monograph and audio-visual companion material on Northwest Coast tribes.
- Johanna Schmitz, who presented her ongoing work on the Rose Theatre Trust image archive
- Kristine Hildebrandt, and her collaborative work to document mother-tongue survivor narratives from the 2015 Nepal earthquakes.
- Wide, Wide World Digital Edition, is a project which publishes digital copies of the various editions of Wide, Wide World (1851) by Susan Warner. This novel is exemplary of the trend of adaptation and recreation of texts according to the needs and interests of the publishers.
IRIS offers the technology, facilities, and support to conceptualize cross-disciplinary and collaborative projects with digital applications. It also helps to foster mentorship and collaboration between faculty and students at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
If you are interested in learning more about the facility as well as faculty and student resources, please contact Dr. Kristine Hildebrandt (khildeb@siue.edu) or Dr. Jessica DeSpain (jdespai@siue.edu).
(Photo credits: IRIS Center students Morgan Rogers and Alex Jackson)