My research project for this semester revolves around the Grimm Brothers and their famous collection of fairy tales. I’ve chosen the Grimm Brothers’ collection as my subject for several reasons. First and foremost, these stories are everywhere in our culture. Disney movies, bedtime stories, musicals, etc. constitute the childhoods of American kids everywhere. Everyone knows the story of Cinderella, but they don’t know the story exactly how it was written, and I believe that it is important to highlight the differences between what media has made the Grimm Brothers tales and what they actually were written to be. I would love to do this in both English and German. The goal is to create an accessible, chart-like interface that has hyperlinks that lead to paragraphs of information (in German and English and whatever other languages we choose to use) related to the word or phrase that is hyperlinked.
I have seen similar projects on the University of Pittsburgh website and on a pathfinder website dedicated solely to educating teachers that wish to incorporate the Grimm Brothers in their curriculums. However, the University of Pittsburgh’s website only shows links to electronic texts for each tale. Similarly, the pathfinder website provides summaries of different books and films relating to the Grimm Brothers, but there is no exploration into the meanings or themes of each. Furthermore, neither project has an interface that is as versatile or easy to use as I plan for mine to be. University of Pittsburgh just has a list of links and little snippets of information. The weebly website has four links across the top that lead to materials for different grade levels for each teacher visiting the site.
My project is different than the aforementioned projects. It is a transmedia storytelling project on the topic of the Grimm Brothers and their assortment of fairy tales. Transmedia storytelling is a method that explores literature and all of its adaptations. In my case, I’d like to explore the film, board game, and live performance adaptations of the Grimm Brothers fairy tales and show how they differ and build on one another. This project is important for several reasons. It can be used as a tool for teaching about the Grimm Brothers, since it will list all of the different adaptations and why they are important. Secondly, it can be used for collaboration in the future. Right now, I plan to incorporate English and German adaptations. However, there could be adaptations in other languages that I’m not capable of reading or understanding. Finally, should the project go as planned, it would be the most comprehensive resource and the resource with the easiest interface to use on the subject. It is also important for me to incorporate German because that is the language that the stories were written in.

Note: Hayley has been accepted to give a presentation about her project at the Undergraduate Network for Research in the Humanities conference in November.

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This semester the Keck Center Student monitors will be using their time at the front desk to contribute to an ongoing digital humanities project. They will all be reading John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and using digital mapping technology to represent all the places mentioned and visited in the novel, which is set in New Orleans.

Using maps in the humanities has risen in popularity lately. At Stanford University their Spatial History Project has used maps to explore Brazilian literature, Chinese migrant railroad workers, Chilean ecological issues, and many other fascinating topics. Here at Colgate, Carolyn Guile of the Department of Art and Art History has used maps to help her students explore historic architecture.

While these projects have been fruitful, their application within a class structure has can be difficult. The steep learning curve required to produce a map can be challenging for students, and take away from the time normally allotted for studying the primary course topic. Given that most mapping platforms are produced for use in other fields, no concise guide of how to use a map for a humanities class has been developed.

The goal of this project is not only to produce a mapped representation of a novel, but to also work out the possible stumbling blocks that could prevent a similar project to be integrated within the class. The aim is to produce the necessary guides and information for faculty and students to engage in a similar endeavor without having to spend hours of class time learning a new technology. The Keck Center will also have the ability to support similar project and trained staff to give technical support as needed.

We will be exploring different platforms, including Google Maps and ArcGIS Online. The student workers will also write about their experience for the Keck Center Blog and newsletter, to explain their own personal feelings about the positives and negatives of the project. By the end of the semester, we hope to provide a comprehensive guide to a humanities-based digital mapping project on the Keck Center web site.

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This week I attended one of two sessions of the fifth Digital Witness Symposium sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor in conjunction with Hamilton College and Syracuse University. This year, the symposium brought two fascinating speakers, both experts in new media, who spoke about the way that digital media (especially film) is being used to highlight social issues around the world. Each of the speakers brought up some though-provoking points about how the internet has created the opportunity for interaction beyond the typical film structure. And I think the projects they showcased offer some great opportunities for integrating film into a course in a way that engages students in higher-order thinking.

The first speaker, professor of film and new media at Ithaca College Patricia Zimmerman, focused her message on the way that documentary makers are changing the way they interact with their audience. Rather than produce a linear film that has a singular message mediated by a single director, these new documentaries use methods of crowdsourcing to get more directly to the people affected by  a certain social condition. This type of filmmaking is less about telling a story, and more about engaging people in deeper discussion. There is less a sense of direct confrontation and more of a feeling of open dialogue. The four aspects that characterize this new style, Zimmermann said, are that 1) they deal with very specific people and places, on a small scale (as opposed to documentaries that would take on larger, global issues). 2) they are about designing encounters and promoting discussion about an issue (as opposed to promoting a specific plan or political agenda), 3) they rely heavily on collaboration, and 4) they are inviting of people of all viewpoints.

The second speaker, Sarah Wolozin, runs the Open Doc Lab at MIT and is herself an accomplished film and new media artist. In her talk, she showcased some of the more ambitious documentary projects similar to those described by Zimmermann. She showed how filmmakers are exploring new ways of interacting with films, mixing new techniques with web-based platforms that allow users to explore a film outside of the traditional linear path that would normally be set by a director. These new forms allow for individualized viewing experiences, but also encourage users to continue thinking about and discussing the issues beyond the film by connecting online. I found all of these new approaches to filmmaking fascinating, but also a rich resource for classroom use. Many of the projects came from different countries, and could easily be used to help students learn more about a different culture and engage them in higher-order thinking as they become active users exploring information in a new way and finding ways to contribute. Below are a few projects that caught my eye and that could be useful in various language classrooms.

18 Days in Egypt

18 Days in Egypt is a web site that accompanies a film of the same name in an attempt to gather and tell the stories of experiences during the 2011 uprisings. The site has a variety of user-created streams with photos, videos, audio, and text. Students could explore the site endlessly, learning both about culture and using their Arabic language skills. The site has many resources, both in Arabic and English.

Quipu Project

The Quipu Project is an effort to make the stories of victims of forced sterilization in Peru heard. The project involves mobile storytelling, but bringing mobile technology to remote villages.

From their web site:

Inspired by the Quipu, an Inca communication system made of knotted threads, the project is creating a collective string of oral histories. Contributors can record and listen to themselves and others, through an interactive phone line and local radio stations, while connecting to a wider audience through the web.

Engage Media

Engage Media is one of the most ambitious and perhaps richest of these types of projects. Engage Media is an alternative to YouTube dedicated, allowing uploads related to social justice in the Asian Pacific. Users can browse by country, which is extensive and includes several languages, including Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and many, many more. Videos can be easily shared using links, and even downloaded for later use or for showing in areas without internet connections. This video, for example, showd the umbrella protests in Hong Kong.

Patricia Zimmermann has curated a list of these types of projects in several languages, and they can be viewed on her blog. Any of these project offers a great resource for students, and they could be asked to explore and present to the class something they learned from the project. Each also has the potential for collaboration for more advanced students.

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