Broadening the Digital Humanities: The Vectors-IML/UC-HRI Summer Institute on Multimodal Scholarship Summer 2010

Broadening the Digital Humanities: The Vectors-IML/UC-HRI Summer Institute on Multimodal Scholarship Summer 2010

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship July 19-August 12, 2010

Call for Proposals

University of Southern California, Los Angeles

The University of California’s Humanities Research Institute, USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy and the electronic journal Vectors are pleased to announce a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship Program for summer 2010 designed to foster innovative multimedia research. Titled “Broadening the Digital Humanities,” the Institute will offer scholars the opportunity to explore the benefits of interactive media for scholarly analysis and authorship, illustrating the possibilities of multimodal media for humanities investigation. Fellows participating in the program will learn both by engaging with a variety of existing projects as well as through the production of their own draft projects in collaboration with the Vectors-IML/UC-HRI team. The projects that fellows create will at once enrich their understandings of the digital humanities and model the field for other scholars. Select projects will be published in Vectors, while the Vectors team will also assist some fellows with applications for further funding for the projects begun during the institute.

First launched in 2005 at USC’s IML, Vectors  is an international electronic journal dedicated to expanding the potentials of academic publication via emergent and transitional media. Moving well beyond the text-with-pictures format of much electronic scholarly publishing, Vectors brings together visionary scholars with cutting-edge designers and technologists to propose a thorough rethinking of the dynamic relationship of form and content in academic research. Founded in 1998, the Institute for Multimedia Literacy conducts research on the changing nature of literacy and scholarship in a networked world. The UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) is a multi-campus research program of the University of California, serving all ten campuses in the UC system. Headquartered at the UC Irvine campus, the Institute promotes collaborative work representing different fields and institutions both within and beyond UC and is a major grantee of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative.

About the fellowships: Up to 15 fellowships will be awarded to individuals or teams of collaborators in the early- to mid-stages of development of a scholarly multimedia project. While scholars in all humanities disciplines are eligible to apply, we are especially interested in collaborating with those who are working with video or with photography, sound, or other graphic elements. We also have special partnerships with the video collections of the Shoah Foundation, NYU’s Hemispheric Institute, the Internet Archive and Critical Commons. Scholars interested in working with these archives are particularly encouraged to apply.

During the institute, fellows will explore central issues in the digital humanities and in multimedia authorship, including such topics as database structures and information architectures, visualization and interactive design, and process-based collaborative research. Guest lecturers during the summer will include Liz Losh, Todd Presner, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Sharon Daniel, Mike Goodchild, Richard Marciano, Diane Favro, and Anne Balsamo, among others. All fellowship recipients will participate in a four-week residency July 19-August 12, 2010 at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy, where they will have access to state of the art production facilities. Fellows will work in collaboration with world-class designers and technical support from Vectors, UC-HRI and IML during the residency and should complete a draft of their multimedia project during the course of the summer.

The residency will include colloquia and working sessions in which participants will develop project foundations and collectively address relevant issues in scholarly multimedia. Applicants need not be proficient with new media authoring, but must demonstrate engagement with the potentials of digital media forms and clearly articulate their motivations for creating a digital project. Evidence of the capacity for successful collaboration and for scholarly innovation is required. Fellowship awards will include a stipend of $3,000 for each participant, as well as a travel and accommodation allowance of $1,500 for non-local participants. We welcome scholars from all career levels, from advanced graduate student to full professor.

About the proposals: While we are interested in innovative modes of multimedia scholarship, we are not necessarily looking for projects that are about new media. Rather, we are interested in a broad array of projects across the humanities and from a variety of disciplines, periods and methodologies.

Projects may translate existing scholarly work or be entirely conceived for new media. For instance, a scholar might aim to re-conceive a print project in a non-linear, database format, perhaps as a companion to a forthcoming book. Alternately, a scholar might seek to animate and annotate a collection of media assets in a rich, interactive manner. We are particularly interested in projects that re-imagine the role of the user and seek to reach broader publics. Work that creatively explores innovations in interactivity and cross-disciplinary collaboration is also encouraged.

Proposals should include the following:
 · Title of project and a one-sentence description.
 · A 5-6 page description of the project concept, goals, and outcomes. This description should address questions of audience and innovative uses of interactivity, address, and form. Please also clearly state the project’s argument and its contribution to multimedia scholarship and, more generally, to contemporary scholarship in your field. This description must include an explanation of how a digital format is integral to the goals of the project.
 · A description of the types of media you anticipate including in your project and a brief explanation of why they are significant to the project, including previously published work in any format related to the project. (This might include a list of video, sound or photographic assets, among other things.)
 · Brief biography of each applicant, including relevant qualifications and experience for this fellowship.
 · 2-3 page CV for each applicant.
 · Anticipated resources (design, technical, hardware, software, etc.)
 · Projected timeline for project development.
 · Sample media if available (URLs are preferred but media may be sent as e-mail attachments or via post if necessary).

Important: Projects that articulate a clear understanding of the value of multimedia to their execution will be regarded favorably. We ask that you take seriously the questions: Why does this project need to be realized in multimedia? What is to be gained by the use of a rich media format for the argument or experience I aim to present? What media assets will best help me realize my goal? What type of experience do I hope to create for the user? How do I envision the function of my project: archival, experiential, argumentative, explorational, etc?

Electronic applications are preferred. Please submit to usc.vectors@gmail.com

Mailing address :

IML-Vectors Summer NEH Fellowships Institute for Multimedia Literacy

746 W. Adams Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90089-7727

Priority will be given to applications received by March 24, 2010. Fellowship recipients will be notified in mid April. Useful websites: UCHRI, Vectors, IML, NEH Office of the Digital Humanities,

Archive partners: NYU’s Hemispheric Institute,  The Shoah Foundation, Critical Commons,  The Internet Archive,  

Questions may be directed to Tara McPherson tmcphers@usc.edu , Steve Anderson sfanders@usc.edu or David Theo Goldberg dgoldberg@hri.uci.edu