Programming

Academic Year 2023-2024

We are no longer actively updating this page with information about upcoming events.

To learn more about our upcoming events, visit the DH Center’s event page. You can also explore recordings of past events below and on the DH@SDSU YouTube channel.

Spring 2023

Events centering digital ethnic studies continue this semester. In addition, the Digital Humanities Initiative is teaming up with SDSU’s Center for Teaching and Learning for Explorations in AI: A Faculty Learning Community. The semester culminates in our annual DH Showcase, a celebration of all things digital at SDSU.

February 2023

Mon, Feb 20 at 12pm: Explorations in AI (hybrid). The Digital Humanities Initiative and the Center for Teaching and Learning invite you to the first meeting in a semester-long faculty learning community, “Explorations in AI.” Join us Monday, February 20 from 12-1pm for a conversation with Dr. Gabriel Doyle, Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Digital Humanities. We’ll explore how AI writing systems such as ChatGPT are developed and used. We’ll consider the “untruthiness” of AI-generated writing alongside our tendency to anthropomorphize such systems. Our conversation will be hosted in the Digital Humanities Center, LA 61 (bottom of the Library Dome) and on Zoom. Lunch will be provided to those attending in person who register in advance. Watch the recording.

March 2023

Fri, March 17: 8:30-4:30: Networked Narratives (hybrid). Join SDSU’s English and Comparative Literature Department for a full day of sixteen student presentations focused on the integration of narratives and digital networks in the Digital Humanities Center (LA 61 – Bottom of the Dome).Keynote speaker: Dr. Francesco Levato. Featuring student presentations from SDSU and SDSU-Georgia. No recording available.

Mon, March 20 at 12pm: Explorations in AI (virtual). Please join us on March 20 for our second “Explorations in AI” Learning Community Meeting presented by the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Digital Humanities Initiative. We will continue our critical conversations of AI Writing Systems and what they might mean for us as university faculty. To explore some of the inner workings as well as context surrounding AI beyond the hype and headlines, we invite you to read the blog post “We come to bury ChatGPT, not to praise it” by Dan McQuillan. The meeting will begin with a brief overview of the ideas raised and the post be used as a springboard for our discussion, with the option to go down various other paths. Reading the post, while encouraged, is not a prerequisite for joining our conversation. No recording available.

April 2023

Thurs, April 13 at 2pm: “The Urgency of Digital Ethnic Studies” (virtual). The Digital Humanities Initiative and Digital Humanities Center invite you to attend our third public talk in our new Digital Ethnic Studies Series. “The Urgency of Digital Ethnic Studies” with LaShawnDa L. Pittman, Ph.D., Joff Hanauer Honors Professor in Western Civilization & Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington .The Digital Ethnic Studies Speaker Series is funded by the new SDSU College of Arts and Letters (CAL) Interdisciplinary Research Cluster program. Watch the recording.

May 2023

Fri, May 5 from 10-12pm: Digital Humanities Showcase (in-person). Join the Digital Humanities Center and and Digital Humanities Initiative for our annual digital humanities showcase, a celebration of all the digital work created/in process this year. Submit your project(s) by April 27 to be included. To be held in the Digital Humanities Center, LA 61 (Bottom of the Dome). Watch the compilation video.

Fall 2022

The Digital Humanities Initiative is excited to offer a wide range of virtual and face-to-face programs this semester. New this year, we’re featuring a series of events focused on digital ethnic studies, funded by the new SDSU College of Arts and Letters (CAL) Interdisciplinary Research Cluster program.

September 2022

Thurs, 9/15 at 11am: Digital Ethnic Studies Talk #1 (virtual), Anne Cong-Huyen, “Community & Coalition in Asian American Digital Humanities.” Director, Digital Scholarship, University of Michigan Library. Watch the recording.

October 2022

Tues-Wed, 10/11-10/12: Networked Connections: Explorations Across Digital Humanities (virtual), the inaugural CSU Digital Humanities Research Institute “at” SJSU. A virtual DH event hosted by San José State University Library Digital Humanities Center and San Diego State University Digital Humanities Center. More info and recordings available.

Wed, 10/19 at 2pm: Digital Ethnic Studies Talk #2 (virtual): Maira E. Álvarez, “Digital Approaches to Ethnic Studies.” Early Career Provost Fellow, Department of History, The University of Texas at Austin. Watch the recording.

November 2022

NEW DATE: Thurs, 11/3 at 4pm: Digital Humanities Faculty Lightning Talk (hybrid), DH Center (LA 61, Bottom of the Library Dome). Featuring: Nathian Shae Rodriguez, Associate Professor, Journalism and Media Studies; Lashon Daley, Assistant Professor, English & Comparative Literature; Erika Robb Larkins, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Behner Stiefel Chair of Brazilian Studies; and Kristal Bivona, Associate Director, Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies. No registration required to attend in person. Watch the recording.

Thurs 11/10 at noon: Chuyun Oh, K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media (in-person multimodal book talk), Digital Humanities Center (LA 61, Bottom of the Library Dome). Chuyun Oh (PhD. UT Austin) is a Fulbright scholar and Associate Professor of Dance Theory at San Diego State University. She will discuss K-pop dance and fandom based on K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media (Routledge), #1 Amazon New Release in Communications and Pop Dance in July 2022. Her award-winning scholarship has appeared in global media, top-tier journals, and anthologies. As a graduate of Kirov Ballet Academy, she received international dance competition awards and performed worldwide as a professional ballet/modern dancer before entering academia. Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Media and Performance, the Digital Humanities Initiative, the DH Center, the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, and the APIDA Center. Watch the recording.

POSTPONED due to illness: Mon 11/14 at noon: Julia H. Lee, The Racial Railroad (in-person book talk), Art North 300B (no Zoom option). The Department of English and Comparative Literature and Digital Humanities Initiative will host Julia H. Lee, Professor and Chair of Asian American Studies at UC Irvine, to discuss her new book, The Racial Railroad (NYU Press, 2022). The Racial Railroad highlights the surprisingly central role that the railroad has played—and continues to play—in the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the United States. Julia H. Lee argues that the train is frequently used as the setting for stories of race because it operates across multiple registers and scales of experience and meaning, both as an invocation of and a depository for all manner of social, historical, and political narratives. Lee demonstrates how, through legacies of racialized labor and disenfranchisement—from the Chinese American construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and the depictions of Native Americans in landscape and advertising, to the underground railroad and Jim Crow segregation—the train becomes one of the exemplary spaces through which American cultural works explore questions of racial subjectivity, community, and conflict. By considering the train through various lenses, The Racial Railroad tracks how racial formations and conflicts are constituted in significant and contradictory ways by the spaces in which they occur. A new date for 2023 will be announced soon.

Spring 2022

Spring 2022 brings as much uncertainty as previous semesters. This semester, DH@SDSU will begin experimenting with hybrid programming—virtual in the first half of the semester (out of an abundance of caution), and in-person after Spring Break (public health measures permitting). Our programs continue to center care for our community, as we feature events that help us stay connected and support us in exploring approaches to mixed modalities in the future.

We hope you join us. And don’t forget to check out anything you missed by catching up on videos of all of our programs since Fall 2020!

February 2022

Wed 2/16 New Faculty/Staff Lightning Talks, 4-5 pm
Learn about the work of some of our new DH colleagues. Featuring: Lashon Daley, English; Romain Delaville, Digital Humanities Center; Dustin Edwards, Rhetoric and Writing Studies; and Kylie Sago, French Studies. Watch the recording.

Wed 2/16 Award-winning Author and Utah’s Poet Laureate, Paisley Rekdal 7pm
Rekdal will share excerpts from her latest publications, including the multimedia project, West: A Translation (https://westtrain.org), and the award-winning collection of poetry, Nightingale.
_This event is the Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers Series supported by the Department of English and Comparative Literature, the Laurie Okuma Memorial Fund, and the MFA Program in Creative Writing. DH@SDSU is a co-sponsor.

Wed 2/23 Indigenous Digital Storytelling, 4-5 pm
Lorena Sekwan Fontaine, “Mite Achimowin (Heart Talk): Indigenous Women’s Expressions of Heart Health & Decolonizing Research Methods through Community-Based Digital Storytelling.” Dr. Fontaine is Associate Professor Human Rights at the University of Winnipeg and SDSU Fulbright Scholar in American Indian Studies. Co-sponsored by the Department of American Indian Studies. Watch the recording.

March 2022

Fri 3/4 Introduction to E-Lit, 11am-noon
Join DH E-Lit Programs Assistant Brent Ameneyro for an introduction of his new position and a brief exhibition and discussion of Electronic Literature. Watch the recording.

April 2022

Thurs-Fri 4/21-4/22 Omni Echo Experience, 10am-3pm
Imagine a place where IMPOSSIBLY RICH REVERBERATION lets sounds gracefully linger in the air to form lush harmonies that swirl around us. The Omni Echo is an immersive synthesizer, an augmented reality experience that stretches sounds in time. Chris Warren, Assistant Professor of Digital Composition and Sound Design, Music Recording Technology and Audio Design Area Coordinator in the School of Music and Dance, will lead this immersive exploration in the DH Center (LA 61-M). Stop by at any time. Co-sponsored by the SDSU Center for the Study of Media and Performance. Watch the 360-degree interactive videos: April 21 video and April 22 video.

Th-Fr 4/28-4/29 Adaptive Performance of Brown Girl Dreaming, 1:00-1:30pm
Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson’s lyric memoir about finding her voice as a young African American writer, will be collaboratively adapted for performance by the students in Professor Dani Bedau’s THEA 510 advanced Creative Drama course. This 30-minute adaptation will focus on themes of civil rights, education and learning, and growing up African American in the 1960’s and 70’s. This hybrid piece will feature live performance and a range of visual and mediatized images. SDSU campus performances will take place in the Digital Humanities Center April 28 and April 29 at 1:00 pm. Watch the April 29 performance and post-performance conversation.

May 2022

Fri 5/6 Digital Humanities Showcase and Electronic Literature Competition, 10am-12pm
Our annual DH Showcase and E-Lit student competition is back! Join us as we reunite in the DH Center and celebrate all of the creative digital work we created during the Pandemic. Watch a 360 interactive time lapse video of our showcase.

Fall 2021

We are back in person…sort of. The Fall 2021 semester finds SDSU offering mostly in-person classes but also mostly virtual events. For the safety and well-being of our community, DH@SDSU programming will remain online.

Our Fall 2021 calendar is intended to support and enhance teaching and learning with events geared towards intellectual recovery and the refreshing of our sense of community. Towards that end, we offer book talks by authors of recent, cutting-edge digital+humanities scholarship, tools refresher workshops, and collaborative brainstorming sessions about what DH– and especially DH@SDSU– means after a year+ of learning online.

We hope you will join us!

If you have a workshop that you would like included in your class, please let us know by emailing Pam Lach plach@sdsu.edu.

Fall 2021 Virtual Programs

September 2021

Fri 9/17    Tool Refresher: TimelineJS (1-2pm)
Brush up on your digital humanities tool skills with our DH Tool Refresher Series. These sessions will provide an informal overview of popular DH tools, led by DH Librarian, Dr. Pam Lach. In this session, we’ll review TimelineJS, a browser-based timeline builder that runs off of Google Spreadsheets. Watch the recording and explore our resources.

October 2021

M 10/4 DH book talk, 12-1 pm
Roopika Risam (Salem State University).
Professor Risam’s work pushes DH to address the politics of race, colonialism, globalism, and ethics. She will share ideas and research from her work across recent publications: New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (Northwestern University Press, 2018), co-editor of Intersectionality in Digital Humanities (Arc Humanities/Amsterdam University Press, 2019), South Asian Digital Humanities: Postcolonial Mediations Across Technology’s Cultural Canon (Routledge, 2020), and The Digital Black Atlantic (University of Minnesota Press, 2021). Watch the recording.

Fri 10/8    Tool Refresher: StoryMapJS (1-2pm)
Brush up on your digital humanities tool skills with our DH Tool Refresher Series. These sessions will provide an informal overview of popular DH tools, led by DH Librarian, Dr. Pam Lach. In this session, we’ll review StoryMapJS, a browser-based tool for creating maps. Watch the recording and explore our resources.

Fri 10/22    Tool Refresher: Onodo (1-2pm)
Brush up on your digital humanities tool skills with our DH Tool Refresher Series. These sessions will provide an informal overview of popular DH tools, led by DH Librarian, Dr. Pam Lach. In this session, we’ll review Onodo, a browser-based tool for creating network graphs. Watch the recording and explore our resources.

NOVEMBER 2021

M 11/1       DH book talk, 12-1 pm
Melody Jue (UCSB): Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Sea Water (Duke University Press, 2020). 12-1 pm.
Jue’s research is at the cutting edge of eco-criticism and “blue humanities.” Come hear her talk about her new book, which (from the publisher): “destabilizes terrestrial-based ways of knowing and reorients our perception of the world by considering the ocean itself as a media environment—a place where the weight and opacity of seawater transforms how information is created, stored, transmitted, and perceived. By recentering media theory on and under the sea, Jue calls attention to the differences between perceptual environments and how we think within and through them as embodied observers. In doing so, she provides media studies with alternatives to familiar theoretical frameworks.” No recording available.

Fri 11/12    Tool Refresher: Voyant (1-2pm)
Brush up on your digital humanities tool skills with our DH Tool Refresher Series. These sessions will provide an informal overview of popular DH tools, led by DH Librarian, Dr. Pam Lach. In this session we’ll review Voyant Tools, a browser-based tool for text analysis. Watch the recording and explore our resources.

Th 11/18    Digital Shakespeares Lecture #3: “Immersive Shakespeares: Live Performance, Virtual Reality, and Audience Experience,” D.J. Hopkins (Professor, School of Theatre, Television, and Film at SDSU). 12:30-1:45pm.
The Digital Shakespeares lecture series has been asking questions about what we do with bodies, spaces, texts, and technology in the 21st century. Shakespeare is the ideal medium for such questions. This third and last lecture shares ways in which Shakespeare’s plays have been authorizing new modes of live and mediated performance for more than 125 years. Hopkins considers the interrelationship of live performance and new media in immersive Shakespeare experiences, with examples drawn from live theatre (Sleep No More) and Virtual Reality (The Under Presents: Tempest). Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Media and Performance (12:30-1:45pm). Recording not available.

Mon 11/29    Re-imagining DH@SDSU: A Conversation about Radical Design for the DH Initiative & DH Center (12-1pm). DH Librarian and DH Center Director, Dr. Pam Lach, will facilitate a conversation that helps us imagine future possibilities for our community. No recording available; explore our collaborative idea Padlet.


December 2021

Mon 12/6 DH Book talk, 12-1 pm
Andrea Righi (Miami University of Ohio)
Professor Righi will present his book The Other Side of the Digital: The Sacrificial Economy of New Media (University of Minnesota, 2021) exploring the contradictions of the digital world under neoliberalism. This event is co-sponsored with the Italian Program and the Department of European Studies. Watch the recording.

Spring 2021 Virtual Programs

February 2021

  • Friday, 2/19: 1pm-2pm. DH Workshop: Ethical Data Science: Getting Data. In the first part of this two-part workshop, we’ll cover popular data repositories, how to scrape data from websites like Twitter, and critical issues around data acquisition like representation, quality, and transparency. Instructor: Brienne Hayes. Watch the workshop recording. Get the workshop slides.
  • Friday, 2/26: 12pm-1pm. Roundtable conversation on scholarly writing groups. Join DH@SDSU Co-Director Jessica Pressman (Associate Professor, English & Comparative Literature) for a conversation with her former dissertation writing group members– Noah Wardrip-Fruin (UCSC), Mark Marino (USC), and Jeremy Douglass (UCSB)– to reflect on the importance of a writing group and the development of the academic field of new media studies. SDSU MA student Bree Hawkins will be one of the selected student moderators. No recording available.
  • Friday, 2/26: 1pm-2pm. DH Workshop: Ethical Data Science: Using Data. In the second part of this two-part workshop, we’ll discuss what to do with data, including low-to-no code machine learning tools, data visualization, and how to use these tools in a way that represents data in a critical context. Instructor: Brienne Hayes. Watch the workshop recording. Get the workshop slides.

March 2021

  • Friday, 3/19: 12pm-1pm. LatinNow DH Project Talk. LatinNow is a European Research Council-funded interdisciplinary project combining sociolinguistics, epigraphy and archaeology to write social history (2017–2023). Between the Iron Age and the end of the Roman period the linguistic landscapes of the north-western Roman provinces were dramatically reconfigured. LatinNow explores the nature of the spread of Latin, varieties of Latin, the uptake of literacy, bi- and multilingualism and the fates of local languages. We relate the linguistic patterning to other social practices to try to understand lived experience in the Roman west. Alex Mullen and Pieter Houten (University of Nottingham) will introduce the project and some of the highlights of our work made possible through DH, from reading 2000-year-old texts with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to mapping patterns of Latinization across our provinces using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Hosted by David Wallace-Hare, Friends of Classics & Schuch Endowed Postdoctoral Fellow in Classics and Digital Humanities. Watch the recording.

April 2021

  • Friday, 4/9: 1pm-2pm. DH Workshop: Introduction to Digital Pedagogy. Learn about different approaches to incorporating a digital tool or assignment into your classes. The workshop will cover aligning digital assignments with learning outcomes, scaffolding and scaling assignments, and assessing student work. Whether you’re new to DH instruction or a pro, this workshop can help you prepare for digitally-inflected pedagogy in the coming semesters. Instructor: Dr. Pam Lach. Slides and worksheet available. Watch the workshop recording.
  • Thursday, 4/22: 10:30am-12:00pm. Digital Shakespeares Series: “Digital Theater: Decolonizing Shakespeare in South African Schools,” a talk by Gina Bloom (UC Davis) with Lauren Bates (Vista Nova High School and Educasions, Cape Town). Co-sponsored by the SDSU Center for the Study of Media and Performance. This talk explores how the mixed reality game Play the Knave (which was developed at UC Davis) is being used to decolonize Shakespeare in South African high schools. South Africa has been called the “most unequal country on the planet” and these inequalities are strikingly evident in the secondary school system. Bloom and Bates’s project engages South African high school students in digitally-mediated Shakespeare performance to tackle one of the major symptoms of inequality in South Africa: violence. This paper discusses a curriculum the authors developed for using Play the Knave’s gaming technology to teach the Shakespeare plays most often assigned in high schools—the violent tragedies Othello, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, andMacbeth—connecting these to South African experiences and history. The curriculum aims to address the psychological and emotional impact of violence on the country’s youth, contributing to sustained peace. Watch the recording.
  • Friday, 4/23: 1pm-2pm. DH Workshop: Digital Pedagogy Assignment Design. In this hands-on workshop, participants will work to develop a digital assignment, whether converting an existing assignment or designing a new one. Whether you’re new to DH instruction or a pro, this workshop can help you prepare for digitally-inflected pedagogy in the coming semesters. Instructor: Dr. Pam Lach. Explore the workshop materials from this two-part series. Watch the workshop recording.
  • Monday, 4/26: 12pm-1pm. DH Virtual Book Talk: Roopika Risam (Salem State University), New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (Northwestern University Press, 2019). UPDATE: The end of this semester has become incredibly busy and stressful. In staying true to our pandemic motto, work less, care more, we are rescheduling this talk for early Fall 2021. We look forward to hosting Dr. Risam in September, 2021… when we all have a little more time and energy. Read our similar rationale for postponing our annual DH showcase.

May 2021

The annual DH Showcase and Electronic Literature Showcase will not be held this year. Read why DH@SDSU made this decision.

Fall 2020 Virtual Programs

Missed our Fall 2020 virtual programs? Check out our event recordings below:

September 2020

October 2020

  • Monday 10/19: 12pm-1:30pm Talking #BrownTV: a book talk & conversation with the authors– Frederick Luis Aldama (Ohio State) and Bill Nericcio (English and Comparative Literature & MALAS) about race and media. Watch the recording.

November 2020

  • Tuesday 11/17: 1pm-2pm  Thinking Critically with ClioVis. ClioVis: Interactive Digital Timeline Software combines the best features of digital timeline, mind-mapping, and presentation software to help your students make analytical connections. Designed by UT-Austin history professor Dr. Erika Bsumek, ClioVis enables students to synthesize information into interconnected timelines (or, for science classes, pathways). This tutorial will go over how ClioVis works and how you can use it in your classes. Hosted by David Wallace-Hare, Friends of Classics & Schuch Endowed Postdoctoral Fellow in Classics and Digital Humanities. No recording available.