Programs
Researching and Creating in a Digital Age
As a grassroots and faculty-lead initiative, our programming emerges and adapts to suit the needs and interests of our growing community. We are dedicated to connecting faculty and students through the exploration of the digital and to showcasing the results of their research and creativity. We are strategically building our Area of Excellence in “Digital Humanities and Global Diversity” through the following programs.
Developing Collaboration and Community
We create community through sharing of research, scheduled events, and social gatherings in the hub of our Digital Humanities Center and beyond.
In fall 2018, SDSU’s Digital Humanities Initiative partnered with arc, a California-based company dedicated to working with students to help emphasize learning through experience, to create an after-school program that aimed to bridge the digital humanities between the university and local high schools. High school students will showcase their work alongside SDSU students and faculty on November 7, 2018 in the Digital Humanities Center.
Learn more about the program on our blog.
Regional Leadership SD|DH
SDSU is the leader of a regional Digital Humanities network, SD|DH, that includes faculty, staff, and graduate students from across San Diego: SDSU, USD, UCSD, CSU San Marcos, Palomar College, Mesa College, and more. We led an NEH supported grant project (2015-16) to implement digital humanities pedagogy across a regional network. Our regional group hosted a major conference, THATCamp:Diving into Digital Humanities (2014), and meets regularly for strategic planning, sharing of resources, and building of a distributed network to foster digital humanities research, teaching, and community-outreach.
The Faculty Research Group
The Faculty Research Group studies research in digital humanities but also works on creating our own. We meet once a month in the Digital Humanities Center (LA 61) to learn collaboratively and collectively about digital humanities research, tools, methods, and teaching.
Learn more about the research group.
Workshops and Tool Clinics
We hold regular digital workshops to help students and faculty expand their knowledge of digital tools and practices reviewing and getting hands-on with programs such as Twine as well as electronic literature, timeline, and data visualization tools.
Showcases
In an effort to make visible the wonderful digital humanities research and work of SDSU faculty and students, we host a showcase of digital projects at the end of each semester. Part-online, part in-person event, this showcase celebration is all fun!
Electronic Literature
Electronic literature (E-Lit) is born-digital, made on the computer and read on the computer so that its computational processes are part of its poetics. From Flash poetry to augmented reality, interactive fiction to hypertext, games to Netprov, electronic literature encompasses a wide variety of efforts to employ new media to create literary art. E-Lit is one of our central programming missions within DH@SDSU. We have a successful track record of impactful E-Lit programming at SDSU.
Each year we run a student competition in electronic literature: student winners earn a cash prize and showcase their work at the annual DH Showcase in May.
To support student experimentation in digital poetics, DH@SDSU regularly offers tools workshops in free, accessible digital storytelling programs (including Twine and Scalar); these workshops are often taught by students and former students who have mastered the tools and produced E-lit within them, and often won the SDSU E-lit competition themselves. We further support the development of digital storytelling by regularly offering workshops specifically geared towards making E-Lit, often taught by Professor Mark Marino (USC), an award-winning writer and scholar of E-Lit. In the audio realm of digital storytelling, Dr. Pam Lach regularly provides lessons and support for podcasting. We are always experimenting with programming to support creative expression in new media because we understand E-Lit to be central to DH.
We also work with community partners to teach E-Lit and critical digital literacy. In 2018 we partnered with arc, a California-based organization that runs after school and experiential education programs, to create an after-school electronic literature program for local high school students, led by our own SDSU graduate students. Read about the program on our blog.
In Spring 2022, we are piloting a new program to strengthen experimentation in Electronic Literature on campus and within the larger local community led by Brent Ameneyro, current MFA student in Poetry, in the role of our first-ever DH E-lit Programs Assistant. Read more about the program on our blog.
Podcasting
SDSU is a national leader in teaching podcasting as research method and medium. With our podcasting studios in the DH Center and our podcasting institute in partnership with National Humanities Center, podcasting is now a strong pillar of DH@SDSU.
Learn more about the history of podcasting at SDSU.
Funding
To support our mission, we are experimenting with providing seed funding for student research/creative work. The fund will provide high-achieving undergraduate or graduate students with support to engage in Digital Humanities professional development, present their work at conferences, and bring knowledge back to the DH@SDSU community.