[The following is the introduction from a paper, “In the biting stage”: The 1955 Nebraska State Penitentiary Riots and Violent Prison Activism, submitted for a research seminar last year. This fall I am working on preparing the paper for submission to a journal.] Following the evening meal of August 16, 1955, prisoners at the Nebraska [...]
Archive | September, 2011
Spatial History
by Brian Sarnacki on September 29, 2011 in Digital Humanities
[This post is a reading reflection written for UNL's Digital Humanities Seminar. This week's readings were Richard White, "What is Spatial History?, David Staley's "Historical Visualizations," and Phil Ethington's Los Angeles and the Problem of Urban Historical Knowledge] Of all the the subfields of history, spatial history benefits most from the emergence of digital tools. [...]
Historypin
by Brian Sarnacki on September 23, 2011 in Digital Humanities
Historypin allows users to place (or “pin”) old photographs onto a map. Users can then explore the map, viewing others’ photos in nearby cities, states, or countries. In most cases, the photos are placed on top of the current Google Maps streetview image, merging the past and present in one view. Historypin also provides “tours” [...]
The Social Life of Information
by Brian Sarnacki on September 22, 2011 in Digital Humanities
[This post is a reading reflection written for UNL's Digital Humanities Seminar. This week's readings were John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's The Social Life of Information, Jean-Baptiste Michel et al.'s "Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books," and Roy Rosenzweig's "Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era."] John Seely [...]
Is it a Dissertation or a Book?
by Brian Sarnacki on September 16, 2011 in Academia, Research
When it comes to writing a dissertation, I have heard both “remember it’s a book” and “it’s not a book it’s a dissertation.” So clearly, there is a consensus. Though it is a little frustrating to have such conflicting advice when beginning to formulate a dissertation topic, it is pretty clear both sides are correct. [...]
Radiant Textuality
by Brian Sarnacki on September 15, 2011 in Digital Humanities
[This post is a reading reflection written for UNL's Digital Humanities Seminar. This week's readings were Jerome McGann's Radiant Textuality, Geoffery Rockwell's "What is Text Analysis, Really?", Steve Ramsay's "Algorithmic Criticism", and Matthew Kirschenbaum's piece in the Companion to the Digital Humanities.] Perhaps tension is the wrong word, but there is an peculiar rhetorical tension [...]
GradHacker
by Brian Sarnacki on September 9, 2011 in Academia
I have been thinking more about entering graduate school this year, perhaps because I am technically a new student (new to the Ph.D. program). Whatever the reason, though, one of the best resources for any new or existing graduate student is the blog GradHacker. Modeled after ProfHacker, GradHacker covers virtually every aspect of life as [...]
The Medium is the Massage
by Brian Sarnacki on September 8, 2011 in Digital Humanities
[This post is a reading reflection written for UNL's Digital Humanities Seminar. This week the reading was The Medium is the Massage] The pictures, unusual layouts, and other visual irregularities of The Medium is the Massage seek to shock the reader. In a book focused on examining the importance of new media, adhering to the [...]
My New Year’s Resolutions
by Brian Sarnacki on September 2, 2011 in Academia
I have always been a big fan of making lists, though I rarely ever complete a list that looks more than a few days into the future. However, after I finished my MA I decided to push myself to actually work towards longer term goals. I sat down and listed a few goals in a [...]
The Humanities, the Laboratory and “Culturomics”
by Brian Sarnacki on September 1, 2011 in Digital Humanities
[This post is the first of many reading reflections written for UNL's Digital Humanities Seminar. I will be posting my reflections each week. Jason Heppler and William Thomas will also be blogging about the class. This week the readings were Reinventing Knowledge and "As We May Think."] Predicting the future is, unsurprisingly, difficult. Writing in [...]
