Digital Humanities
@ Pratt

Inquiries into culture, meaning, and human value meet emerging technologies and cutting-edge skills at Pratt Institute's School of Information

Gender Reveal Party : playing in the intersections of digital humanities and autoethnography

To play Gender Reveal Party in your browser, go to my itch.io page! Gender Reveal Party is a visual novel that explores the idea of embodied personhood, my own personhood, within digital humanities Using the methods of autoethnography, and a performance studies perspective, this game brings together Augusto Boal’s theory of the “spect-actor” with the realm of the digital. Gender…

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Revisited: A Geospatial Exploration of Tragedy

We banded ourselves together, moved by a sense of stricken guilt, to prevent this kind of disaster from ever happening again. Frances Perkins, witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, U.S. Secretary of Labor (1933-1945), and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. INTRODUCTION Can we use geospatial tools to explore the human condition and tragedy? The Triangle Shirtwaist…

Livingstone Online Project Review : A case for interdisciplinary DH

Abstract: This project review examines Livingstone Online, in particular the project arguments and goals, disciplinary context, and methodologies used. By examining this testament to scholarly and institutional collaboration and interdisciplinary thought, I break down the project’s contributions to digital humanities, postcolonial studies and Livingstone studies. 

Weighted Words

Using a combination of HTRC Analytics and Voyant Tools, this study compares the language used in a collection of turn of the century weight loss texts to that of the current weight loss verticals on the websites of Women’s Health and Men’s Health in order to investigate what has changed or remained the same in terms of how weight, bodies…

Digital Humanities: National Museum of Rio de Janeiro Tragedy

Abstract: Digital humanities in museum settings is a crucial area to be explored and applied because it can be the determining factor between saving history and losing it forever. The tragedy that happened in the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where a devastating fire destroyed the museum completely and with that over 20 million unique artifacts were…

Mukurtu Info Site and Resource

Serving as a Digital Humanities resource, the purpose of this WordPress site is to educate and inform a community of practitioners about the content management system Mukurtu. Designed collaboratively by indigenous groups and academic researchers, Mukurtu is a user-centered CMS intended to empower marginalized communities to designate terms of accessibility and reuse for their cultural heritage ephemera.  Because Western intellectual…

Text Analysis with Historical Newspapers

As many cultural heritage institutions rush to digitize materials, hoping to fulfill their missions of providing widely, openly accessible collections, one of the odd quandaries researchers face is an overwhelming amount of certain kinds of information. Historical newspapers are top among those materials that have been digitized like mad. It makes sense, of course — these might be fragile items…

Designing for Reflection: Walden, a game and the Case for Slow Digital Humanities

While more and more attention is being paid to slow things down—slow food, slow TV, etc.—should we be also creating a “slow digital humanities?” Walden, a game, a video game adaptation of Thoreau’s experiences at Walden Pond, prioritizes slowness, reflection and deliberate action. Exploring how that is manifested in the rules and world of the game will demonstrate ways that slowing down can benefit digital humanities projects.

Analyzing produce crate label images via Python and ImageJ

Over the course of the Spring Semester, our Digital Humanities class analyzed a variety of digital humanities projects from spatial analysis and mapping, to data visualizations, to text analysis methods. I have an art history background and really enjoy visualizations both for their aesthetic value and also for their ability to enhance large data. There are many ways to gather…