Broadening the Digital Humanities: The Vectors-IML Summer Institute on Multimodal Scholarship

FAIN: HT-50010-08

University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA 90089-0012)
Holly Willis (Project Director: April 2008 to September 2010)
Tara L. McPherson (Co Project Director: April 2008 to September 2010)

A four-week summer institute to investigate scholarly research methods in the digital age, to include thematic discussion seminars and hands-on workshops in collaboration with technologists.

This proposal requests funding to support a four-week summer institute for 12 participating scholars. The Institute, set to take place at the University of Southern California's Institute for Multimedia Literacy from mid-July to mid-August, 2009, will serve as an introduction to key issues in the multimodal digital humanities and as a hands-on practicum in the creation of digital scholarship. Scholars will learn both by engaging with a variety of existing projects but also through the production of their own project; these projects will at once enrich the participants' own understanding of the digital humanities and model the field for other scholars through their publication in the electronic journal Vectors, and elsewhere online. The Institute will provide the opportunity to explore the benefits of interactive media for scholarly analysis and authorship, illustrating the possibilities of multimodal media for humanities investigation.