Journal Entry February 17th

By Camilla Skoglie | Published: February 17, 2019

Overall

It’s been a good week, with progress made and I feel exited about this course. It’s a privilege to have your idea be chosen as a project and it feels really great that the idea will now have a chance to be developed and be brought to life. I feel strongly for this topic and I am eager to explore and learn how to build a digital humanities project from the ground up. In Carolyn, I have found a great partner who is enthusiastic, knowledgeable and on the ball. She has also taken on the role of project manager, for which I am grateful. We have already developed a good working relationship and I feel confident that we will be able to bring this project to fruition in the best way possible. We met for a few hours this week, solidifying how to move forward.

Tools

This past week, Carolyn and I met with Stephen Zweibel, who is a Digital Librarian at the Graduate Center, who walked us through the possibilities that are available through Omeka, described as “a content management system for online digital collections”. This software is ideal for our purposes and we have decided to use the platform for our catalog of artwork for the Lost Art Collective database. Stephen also informed us that Omeka offers a GIS based mapping service called Neatline, which again perfectly suits our needs for the Lost Art Collective project. Our next tasks consist of being granted the permission to set up Omeka on a server, which is needed for the work to function optimally. The first step in getting the ball rolling has been to reach out to Joe at the New Media Lab on the 7th floor of the GC, where it so happens that both me and Carolyn have workstations.

Database

As mentioned in the “Revised Project Proposal”, the project will be based on the artwork presented in the French report “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage Toward a New Relational Ethics”, which explores the issue of restitution of African art currently in French possession. One of the tables included in the rapport will be unlock using a new converter tool I found online, which converts pdf’s to excel. Worth using for relatively tidy pdf’s.

https://www.pdftoexcel.com/

For the catalog included in the rapport, which includes name and image etc of the different artwork, exists in image form, which will pose a much larger challenge to unlock and might have to be dealt with manually.

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Journal Entry 1: Hannah House

By Hannah House | Published: February 17, 2019

 

Journal entry

Gregorian calendar date: 17 February 2019

 

Readers — feel free not to be. 

I was on the fence whether to post this publicly or privately. This will be boring and irrelevant to most of you, however I do like cheerleading great people in public (see mentions of my teammates in this post), so here in public we are.

The TRIKE group project is moving along at a brisk but sustainable clip. The team is working together well. Everyone is putting in good thinking and lots of effort. This is the most highly motivated and collaborative group with whom I’ve ever group-projecked.* 

My activities on this project so far include (but are not limited to) these below.

I am serving as project manager. In that capacity I set up a Slack workspace for our project, with a handful of channels dedicated to specific aspects. I integrated it with Google Drive. I also added in Giphy (opportunities for levity are good for morale). Rob added a task management function that he and Sabina are using as they work on the technical development side of the project. I’ll be checking that out too. It sounds great. This is my first time using Slack, though I’ve used other comparable platforms.

I created a robust work plan detailing activities and deliverables week by week through the semester. These are targets, not mandates. I got rave reviews on the previous iteration of my work plan from Matt Gold and Steve Brier. I’m good at breaking down tasks and estimating what is doable within various timing and resource constraints.

While we were discussing our technology options, I made a simple wireframe of desired site architecture. Sabina turned it into a basic working WordPress shell site with absolutely blinding speed. It was seriously in what felt like a few minutes. That helped change my mind on the following…

I confess I’d been hoping this project would be a chance to try out a minimal computing solution, so I was initially opposed to building this on WordPress. But I caved. WordPress makes sense for execution in this short timeframe as multiple team members already have experience with it. And it is pretty handy that it can be hosted for free on the Commons. Rob has extensive and valuable experience with WordPress deployments on the Commons. I’ve used WordPress before but I’m waffling on whether it’s where I want to invest my time. I do still want to learn a tech skill this semester, though, so I’m going to carve out time to help on a project up at Columbia where a DH friend is teaching me about static site generators (there are an infinite number of them, which feels vaguely ironic in the context of minimal computing). But I digress.

Natasha introduced the idea of having a theme to connect the datasets when she joined the team, which is a great way to make our project more cohesive. We are leaning toward a theme of datasets connected with Shakespeare’s the Tempest. Natasha mentioned that, “it has critical traditions within feminist studies, post colonial studies, queer theory, etc.” I am entirely ignorant of Shakespeare studies, but I’m happy to hear that about this play. I am going to have to read it (again – I made a point of reading most Shakespeare plays when I was 15 just to flex nerd**, but then a lot of bad things happened and my brain entirely overwrote that knowledge). I plan to read the Tempest next weekend.

The idea is we have at least 3 different types of datasets related to the theme. If mapping is appropriate for the Tempest I may do something critical of cartesian ways of knowing, and the mismatched levels of detail between geo coordinates and literary descriptions to supplement this project. I get pretty excited about that, and also about the implications of how metadata structures like TEI reduce friction to / privilege certain types of knowledge and analysis.

Nancy transformed our initial brainstorm on potential datasets and analysis types into a really well organized outline in a shared Google doc. We are having an active ongoing discussion about potential datasets, which tracks perfectly with our workplan.

Everything is going well.

 

* “group-projecked” should be a thing

** “flex nerd” is definitely now a thing

 

 

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Week 2 Reflection

By Andrea Lausevic | Published: February 17, 2019

Week 3 started with a high enthusiasm (at least on my end) after our Tuesday Google hangout meeting. The group discussed the aim of the project in more depth and defined future milestones. Being a communication designer, I know how important it is to define the target audience early, so I initiated the conversation. The crucial point was to decide whether we are keeping the project within the boundaries of racial injustice (as initially proposed) or expanding it to the broader audience– anyone who believes that their sense of freedom is being compromised. The group agreed that the project should target a wider audience.

We delegated the tasks among us, and I took upon myself to kick start the web development process by:
1. Starting to think about the branding: Created a moodboard Google Slide where we can share visual research and inspirations, along with market research. Market research will help us understand what is already out there in terms of visual representations of activist, social and political campaigns.

2. Creating the website wireframes. I will work on creating early wireframes using the software called Axure, so next time the group meets we will have something tangible in front of us to discuss.

3. I had a conversation with a friend who is a full-stack developer about the best and leanest way to approach this project from the development perspective. He suggested using React for front-end, a JavaScript library for building the interface. For the back-end he proposed Google’s Firebase, apparently, the platform offers some free data storage– we will need to look into that. Additionally Google offers CMS that supports Firebase and it’s called Firelink (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cw5ktNADBQ)

The next steps would be:

1. Talk about the website’s visual identity and what is the message and ‘tone of the voice’ that we would like to visually communicate.

2. Discuss the wireframes.

3. Conduct research about React and Firebase.

 

Digital Humanities Week

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend any of the workshops during the DH week. I am a single parent who is working full time and it is extremely difficult for me to plan any activity that is outside of my work/parent schedule. It would be wonderful if next DH week holds activities during the weekend or allow remote access.

 

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Carolyn A. McDonough — Personal Journal Entry 2/17/19

By Carolyn A. McDonough | Published: February 17, 2019

On Friday, Feb. 15, after attending the Alan Liu talk (which was intense and special) I went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the exhibition Jewelry The Body Transformed. Among the items on view is this Warrior’s Neck Ornament (above) which is displayed vertically. In the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris ( Lost Art Collective’s dataset) there’s an almost identical object of adornment catalogued as War Charm, which is displayed horizontally (below).

Both Warrior’s Neck Ornament and War Charm are from the same place of origin — Admiralty Islands, Papua New Guinea — and made of the same mixed media materials.

I wondered why War Charm was oriented horizontally when I first looked through the Chirac’s African art that we’re using as our dataset. Such horizontal-ity makes the War Charm hover and appear oddly “disembodied”, because it’s worn around the neck, presumably like a neck tie, and therefore, vertically. This horizontal mounting might be due to a curatorial choice or lack of expertise about the specific use of War Charm on the part of the Chirac. I will investigate.

I’m enjoying working with Camilla and serving as the Project Manager for Lost Art Collective. On Thursday, Feb. 14, Camilla and I met with Digital Librarian Stephen Zweibel regarding our project and an assessment of Omeka and Carto as our software. I set up the meeting and fortunately Stephen was able to meet with us at the time we requested. My train was a tad late, so I arrived 5 minutes after the appointed time, but I’d contacted both Camilla and Stephen that my train was running behind, and they kindly waited for me to screech in. Camilla was on time — thank you, Camilla, teamwork!

Stephen then escorted us to his office and we had a very cordial and productive meeting. He is incredibly knowledgeable and the best news of all was that he said we had an “excellent dataset”. This is to Camilla’s credit for her interest in the The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage Toward a New Relational Ethics report that Lost Art Collective is drawing data from. He also said Omeka and its plug-in Neatline, as well as Carto, and all “good fits” for our project and the work ahead of us of cataloguing artwork/artifacts, mapping and data vis. Omeka and Carto can also be integrated.

Stephen advised us on a matter that we will have to address which is that we will need the computational resource of an outside server in order to install the recommended plug-in to Omeka. I asked if this is something we could take up with the New Media Lab and he said we might be able to, which would be great as Camilla and I are both Graduate Student Researchers at the New Media Lab. Camilla offered to inquire with Joe Kirchoff of the NML about this.

After our meeting with Stephen, we went to the dining commons and had a nice lunch meeting together discussing the project’s next steps and an issue of concern to us, which is the absenteeism of the additional two group members. The distribution of labor in our group is and has been quite unequal, with Camilla and I having done 99% of the work thus far. We will address this during our group meeting in class on Feb. 19, because it’s an unavoidable discussion and an issue that must be addressed, and hopefully ameliorated, going forward.

After our lunch and 2+ hour meeting, I devoted a few hours to editing our Revised Project Plan, with Camilla’s ok as it was initially posted by her at the stroke of midnight on Feb. 10/Feb. 11 (we made the dealine!) I added images, links, such as to the report, and edited the language.

I’m both enthused about Lost Art Collective and aware of the massive amount of work ahead of us with data entry, back end management, communication, consultations, etc.

I’m enjoying the readings for class so far, esp. Todd Presner who I’m also citing in my Independent Study project, and between these two projects, I’m quite sure I’ll be spending many more hours like this…

~Carolyn

 

 

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Lost Art Collective — Revised Project Plan (edited)

By Carolyn A. McDonough | Published: February 14, 2019

Per a project meeting today with Camilla, please find the Lost Art Collective Revised Project Plan (edited below).

War Charm, Papua-New Guinea, Admiralty Islands, 20th century (wood, frigate bird feathers, leaves, beads, pigments and resin) Photo © musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, photo by Thierry Ollivier, Michel Urtado

Team Members and Roles:

Carolyn A. McDonough: Project Manager/Researcher/Omeka set-up + data entry + updates

Camilla Skoglie: Web Developer, Visualizations, Researcher/ Omeka

Patty Accarino: Research/ Carto

Pamela Jean Stemberg: Research/ Carto

Abstract:

Lost Art Collective is an educational, digital component prototype to be used within an inter-sectional undergraduate course. With the course’s working title, Of Dubious Origin: The Complexities of Stolen Art Recovery, both the course and digital component will explore the complexities surrounding art theft, specifically, that of the removal of African art during French colonialism.  This digital component would be a required part of the coursework, inter-disciplinary in nature, and open to students of art history, digital humanities, interactive technology, history, African studies, and international law. Collaboration between students and the integration of digital tools in to research will be emphasized.

Dataset:

The LAC digital component will employ the artwork, cultural artifacts, information and data in the The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage Toward a New Relational Ethics report by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte  Savoy (prepared with the assistance of the Inspector General of Cultural Affairs, the Institut des sciences sociales du politique, Ministere de la Cutlture, Universite’ Paris Nanterre and translated by Drew S. Burk) which was commissioned by and submitted to the French presidency in November 2018. The artwork and artifacts which appear in the report are currently housed in The Africa Collection of the Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Museum, Paris, France. The French president has named Savoy and Sarr in charge of a mission to study the restitution to various African countries of art and heritage pieces currently in France. (1) This pivotal and controversial report is receiving current media coverage and co-author Felwine Sarr delivered a talk titled Reopening the Future in December 2018 at The Cooper Union, New York.

French art historian and professor at the College de France in Paris and the Technishe Universitat of Berlin Bénédicte Savoy (R) and Senegalese economist and professor at the Gaston Berger University of Saint-Louis in Senegal Felwine Sarr (L) pose on March 21, 2018, in Paris. photo credit: ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/Getty Images

Environmental scan:

No comprehensive database/s exist/s for stolen African art or have been identified for this project plan thus far.

The LAC digital component could therefore potentially fill a void in current scholarship.

In general, the online information regarding stolen African art is sparse and scattered without a consolidated information locus online. An environmental scan sample indicates that the theft of African art is also not an often taught subject at universities. A few academic dissertations on the topic were found through search yields, as well as the research consortium Trafficking Culture which touts itself as an academic resource. However, online information and databases on the topic of stolen art tend to be broad in scope, such as Culture Crime, which has a compilation of articles and reports concerning all art theft.

Therefore, Lost Art Collective ascertains there are currently no similar projects on the topic of stolen African Art.

Software:

The project will make use of the following software:

Omeka for cataloging the artwork – creating a database unique to the project

Carto for mapping, telling the story of the artwork

Tableau, Flourish Studio for data visualization/s

The group members have different expertise with the different tools within cataloging, mapping, and visualization but would need some additional guidance with the aforementioned. Two group members are meeting with a digital librarian the week of Feb. 11 to inquire if Omeka is a good fit for the cataloguing, and, if so, to receive general guidance and information regarding Omeka. Online tutorials and the Digital Fellows are other support resources which may be sought.

Phases/Milestones:

Phase 1) Research and preparation to build Omeka catalogue: February 2 – 20

Phase 2) Database, content writing, data visualizations: February 20 – March 4

Phase 3) Omeka catalogue + Carto mapping: March 4 – April 4

Phase 4) Omeka catalogue + Carto mapping + Presentation Prep: April 4-May 2

Next Steps + Objectives + Future:

Next steps are to examine the data in the report, explore the chosen tools to begin building the database and visualizations (n.b. this may require an outside server and some training).

The Lost Art Collective project would serve two purposes:

1) to give students an opportunity to study a subject that deserves more academic attention. It would also enable students to make a contribution to a valid project while having the opportunity to learn how to use digital tools to assist in their scholarly work. Eventually the project would fill a gap in online access to information on the subject.

2) although not primarily aimed at the general public, Lost Art Collective could serve as a resource for individuals interested in accessing information on stolen African art.

Additionally, as noted above, The LAC digital component could potentially fill a void in current scholarship.

The prototype could be built upon by future cohorts who would add research through investigating additional museum collections and/or similar repositories, toward repatriation. A collective effort could eventually serve as an ongoing, evolving database project and resource for students and the general public seeking information on African art. Hence the name Lost Art Collective.

The repatriation/return of African artwork has a been a contentious issue for decades and with the 2018 French-prepared report, which recommended the repatriation of African art held in French museums, the issue will hopefully gain traction and receive more attention in the future.

written + posted by Camilla Skoglie, Feb. 10, 2019 — revised + edited + posted by Carolyn A. McDonough, Feb. 14, 2019 for Lost Art Collective Group, DH Praxis, Spring 2019

(1)“The Idea is Not to Empty the Museums” by Kate Brown, Jan. 24, 2019, artnews.net

 

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NYCDH Week: Analyzing Congressional E-Newsletters

By Jennifer Cheng | Published: February 13, 2019

I attended the “What Matters to Your Congressperson?” workshop at NYU for DH Week where, as Nancy pointed out, there were some difficulties getting onto the WiFi network. The instructor, Lindsey Cormack, introduced us to DCinbox, a project she started in 2009 as a student pursuing a Ph.D. in politics, and continues to maintain. It is a database of e-newsletters sent out by members of the House and Senate, or at least those who do send them out, and can be used for research purposes. According to the website, some 90,000 e-newsletters have been collected. By examining, for example, the word frequency used in the newsletters of a certain representative or senator, one can see the issues they focus on the most.

The site links to the full dataset of newsletters which is updated in real time. This dataset is presented through Kibana – described as “an open source data visualization plugin for Elasticsearch” – a tool which I’m still trying to fully understand. Through it you can filter the results and make visualizations.

The description on the DH Week website said the workshop would show how to “perform text analyses in R” using the newsletters but it turned out not to focus as much on R as I had hoped. Given the different levels of experience among the people in the class, I imagine it would be difficult to do anything beyond giving an overview of the code used to study the results and to make the graphs. Still, it pushed me to revisit text analysis in R, and to also consider how different texts from elected officials can be analyzed – from tweets to official statements, including press releases, and biographies. And what conclusions could be drawn from a look at word frequency, sentiment analysis, etc.

Kimberly went through Rep. Jerry Nadler’s newsletters – the representative for the district in which NYU is located – over the years and pointed out words, like “health,” that come up among the most frequently used terms. This brought up the issue of what words to filter out (“stop words”) when doing text analysis. She removed words like “Facebook” (most likely used in newsletters to tell readers to visit their Facebook page) and his name in addition to the usual stop words of “and,” “I,” etc. But do you remove geographic terms like “New York,” “Brooklyn” and “Manhattan”?

She also shared some overall patterns:

  • More newsletters would be sent out following a major issue, event or tragedy
  • During President Obama’s term, his name would appear in the e-newsletters of Republicans far more than in Democrats’
  • Republicans send more newsletters than Democrats

Neither of the New York senators send out newsletters even though, as Kimberly pointed out, Sen. Gillibrand has published her daily schedule online – what she calls a “sunshine report” – in an effort to make her office more transparent. This brings up the issue of whether newsletters do indeed give insight into the workings of a politician’s office and their daily agenda being that it is essentially a prepared text.

Some links I’ve found to be helpful on text analysis in R:

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NYCDH Reflection

By Antonios Liamis | Published: February 13, 2019

Although I’m in a full time job and I ‘ve got a lot of matters to run during the weekend, I had the chance to attend at the Kickoff event of the Digital Humanities week. I fancied the open discussion panel between the four speakers who expressed their opinion on different topics concerning Democracy and archives. Especially the five minute presentation of a certain project of the speakers was quite interesting for me, since they were discussing about real live events and demonstrated how Digital Humanities enables us to contemplate what we know and how we know it and democratize the production of knowledge.

I did not have the change to join the keynote speaker Meredith Broussard, as I was late at the conference, but from what I got informed, she was very interested regarding research issues and methods for preserving digital journalism projects in archives for current audience.

In February 8 I was attending the workshop regarding Humanitarian Open Street Mapping for All. The speaker of the workshop Adrianna Martinez seemed to be a very well educated person. She had a deep knowledge of the tool and was quite friendly with the students. The workshop took place in New York Institute of Technology, there were some minor problems I would like to mention.
There was no WIFI-Access at all, although all of the students had their own laptops. After quite a lot of time they decided to provide us with their own laptops so that we can have WIFI-Access. The time of the workshop lasted just one hour, although it was scheduled for two hours. Nevertheless, we had a deep digging into the GIS-Tool and we managed to learn how to join data sources and visualize them in order to create a map.
But to be honest, I was expecting to be taught in deep regarding GIS-Tools on the grounds that I had a Geospatial Humanities course for that semester. The level was not equal but at least we got some extra knowledge on that matter.

I wish I would have been able to attend more workshops during that week but as already mentioned, due to my job I was not able to. Several times I was thinking and asking myself why the workshops were scheduled in such a way, so that people with regular jobs have no chance to attend them. That is a urgent matter and should be considered for next year’s workshops. I also need to mention that it could be a good idea to be set up live webinars during the presentation, as that could limited the distances across the city. Last but not least the hours of workshops and lectures have to be available to students and other digital humanists during evening time, as in the morning students, adjuncts and digital humanists are quiet busy.

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A Call to Imagine (freedom dreaming)

By Kiana Carrington | Published: February 11, 2019

ABSTRACT

“In order to enact radical change we must first imagine the world we hope to build…We need to firmly anchor our journey towards this world with deeply rooted community values. We need to stretch the limits of our imagination beyond what we have been told to accept as true. And to do this, we need spaces of empowerment created by us for us.”

– Downtown Brooklyn Arts Management Fellows cohort of  2018

 

How do we transcend cynicism to embrace hope and love in our politics during these tough times? How do we help a new generation of organizers consider not only what they are fighting against, but what they are fighting for?

The Freedom Dreaming project aims to serve as an online space for reflection and conception; a place where people can imagine the future without structural oppression and find the tools to take actionable steps toward that future. The project will have two main components; a website that serves as a resource library and platform offering a public, supportive and creative environment that envisions the concept of “Freedom Dreaming” and a social media campaign (primarily using Twitter and Instagram) that will serve as a tool to engage wider audiences and generate content surrounding the concept of “Freedom Dreaming” in the most efficient and accessible way.  The website will host a resource library offering a selection of texts written by radical thinkers, links to New York City based organizations, and other online resources pertinent to the concept of Freedom Dreaming. A data input interface will play a central role on the website inviting people to submit their responses surrounding the concept of “Freedom Dreaming”, in form of text, image, sound or video (more media formats will be discussed as the project progresses). We envision that the interface will collect, sort, and archive data in meaningful and helpful ways. The online resource portion of the website will provide the tools necessary for the journey towards dreams of the future without oppression, including websites for further self-exploration, tools, and additional information. Through creating a social media campaign, the Freedom Dreaming project will invite users to share personal dreams of freedom and consider what their future would look like without structural oppression. We plan to collect, display and sort the data in a comprehensive manner, help elevate voices, and help create awareness by making the data easily accessible to all.

 

Project Collaborator Roles:

Kiana: website design, social media, outreach

Raven: research, student outreach, blog writing, narrative/branding, moderating

Anthony: research, student outreach, writing, (very) basic development

Andrea: web, digital, print design and research

Brittany: project manager, research, and social media data collection

 

Environmental Scan

Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities. In her essay Kim Gallon defines the black digital humanities as, “the intersection between Black studies and digital humanities”. Many Black DH projects archive writings for scholarship or map texts that we thought were lost. These projects tend to serve the purpose of exposition, telling stories that have been silenced or forgotten over time. Another key concept of Gallon’s argument for the Black Digital Humanities is the “technology of recovery”. The technology of recovery according to Gallon, underpins black digital scholarship and fills the gap between Black Studies and Digital Humanities. The technology of recovery serves as a space for black academic and non academic work, a space where Black studies scholars and black public approach technology. Instagram pages like @thefreeblackwomenslibrary and @mediablack are examples of technology of recovery sites that retell black narratives that are often silenced or forgotten with the passage of time. With the “Freedom Dreaming” project we aim to follow Gallon’s lead of integrating Black Studies with Digital Humanities through elevating the voices of marginalized individuals using digital technologies as a means of awareness and education.

What technologies will be used?

Adobe Creative Suite, WordPress, Instagram

Within our group there is a good amount of experience with the platforms above. Online tutorials and Digital Fellows will be sought out for added support.

 

How will the project be managed?

We have created a group chat for this project and will be working collaboratively through Google docs.

Milestones

  • Weeks 3-6 (February 12-March 5):
      • Create boilerplate language for website and instagram
      • Research NYC organizations, online toolkits etc. for resource guide
      • Gather sample freedom dreams to serve as examples for visitors to our instagram and/or webpage
  • Week 6 (March 5 ):  Launch Instagram page and website
  • Week 7-12 : Maintain pages and collect data
  • Week 12-14: Analyze data from submissions, reflect on best practices throughout the life of the project this semester
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NYCDH: Building a Support Structure for Digital Humanities Research Projects in the Classroom

By SC Lucier (Luci) | Published: February 11, 2019

Hi!

I went to the NYCDH workshop on Tuesday, February 5th at 10:00am. It was held at the DH Studies department of NYU in a conference room. The workshop was a “hands-on experience in which participants learn about the different aspects of support necessary for planning and implementing digital humanities research projects in the classroom.”

There were about five participants in the workshop that were not part of the support staff (of which there were about ten). Because the workshop was supposed to simulate a kind of collaborative process through which a pedagogical project that utilizes the digital humanities might go through to achieve the best experience for the classroom, we were divided into different roles within that process.

I willingly took the role of the student. This was probably because I wanted to talk through any fears that I had about entering into a digital humanities group project as a student! There were also the roles of Faculty, Librarian, Technical Staff, and Designer. We talked together as group before splitting into our individual roles. Once separated, we each met with one or two members of coaching to discuss our thoughts about the project that we were creating.

While there wasn’t a ton of information that I was able glean that would help me with our DH class specifically, it was still very interesting to think about the group project in the larger picture of the class. The timeline for the project was one of the areas that was helpful to think about, as was the division of group labor and the way in which it can be graded, and the benefits of learning one particular DH skill through the process of completing said project.

There wasn’t much insight I was able to contribute to the workshop in the form of previous experience, but it was still beneficial to hear the perspectives of the other participants and their suggestions for making the project most effective. Especially in light of my group project, late-19th century immigrant newspapers, the discussion surrounding copyrights and online “archiving” was very relevant to me (we were working on a theoretical project that involved classical music and the aural identifiers that can indicate period, as expressed through a digital databased that would be created by the students in question).

Overall, the takeaway from this workshop is that there are many untapped resources in the realm of pedagogy, especially in the elementary or high-school age, that exist in the technology and library science fields. These roles are often available to the faculty when planning such a project, and as we learned in this workshop, are largely under-utilized during the gestation period of lesson planning. This is particularly true when the plan is based so heavily on an element of the digital humanities being explored within the classroom.

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Revised Project Proposal: Of Dubious Origin: The Complexities of Stolen Art Recovery

By Camilla Skoglie | Published: February 11, 2019

Working Course Title

Of Dubious Origin: The Complexities of Stolen Art Recovery

Team Members and roles

Carolyn A. McDonough: Project Manager/Researcher/Omeka set-up+data entry+updates

Camilla Skoglie: Web Developer, Visualizations, Researcher/ Omeka

Patty Accarino: Research/ Carto

Pamela Jean Stemberg: Research/ Carto

Abstract

For our project we propose to create a prototype for an educational component to be used in an academic course concentrated on exploring the complexities surrounding historical art theft, specific to that of the removal of African art during colonialism. This component would be implemented as a required part of the course work and be of an inter-sectional nature relevant to students in history, art history, the digital humanities and well as law. This would enable collaboration between students of different disciplines and provide students with an opportunity to learn about the topic in question as well as explore how to integrate digital tools in their research.

The prototype will explore the artwork maintained in the African Collection at the Quai Branly Museum – Jacques Chirac in Paris and use material disclosed in the “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics “report of November 2018. The current prototype would serve as a blueprint to be built upon by future students who would enrich the project with their own research findings by investigating other museum collections or exploring questions of repatriation. This collective effort consolidated on a single website would eventually serving as a resource for fellow students and the general public seeking information on looted African art.

Environmental scan

Which problem do we solve?

In general, the online information regarding looted African art is sparse and scattered without a consolidated site of information. A few academic dissertations were found and the research consortium “Trafficking Culture” is another academic resource focused on art crime.  No comprehensive databases have been located thus far but a few websites such as https://news.culturecrime.org/ has a compilation of articles and reports concerning all art theft. https://traffickingculture.org/

However, a brief environmental scan indicates that the looting of African art does not show up as a much-taught subject at universities.

The project would serve two purposes. First, it would give students an opportunity to study a subject that deserves more academic attention. It would also enable students to make a contribution to a valid project while having the opportunity to learn how to use digital tools to assist their work. Eventually the project would fill a gap in online access to information on the subject. Second, although the project is not primarily aimed at the general public, it could serve as a source for individuals interested in obtaining further knowledge.

The return of African artwork has a been a contentious issue for decades and with the above-mentioned report of 2018, which recommend the repatriation of African art held in French museums, this issue will hopefully receive more attention in the future.

What similar projects are there?

To the best of our knowledge there are no similar projects out there. There are probably projects with similar structures created for educational purposes but none dealing with this specific subject matter.

Next week will be dedicated to exploring the “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics “report, getting an overview of the collection and its history. Decide on how to go forward in regard to building the database. Explore chosen tools and receive training.

Software 

What technologies will be used?

The project will make use of the following software:

Carto – for mapping, telling the story of the artwork

Omeka – cataloging the artwork – creating a database unique to the project

Tableau, Flourish Studio – visualizations

The group members have different experiences with different tools, within cataloging, mapping and visualization but would need to get training in the above-mentioned tools. Two members are meeting with the digital librarians next week to receive training on how to use Omeka. Online tutorials and the Digital Fellows are other resources which will sought out.

Milestones:

Phase    Task                                                                       Time Period                      Weeks

 

1            Research and collection of data                       February                                 2

2            Working with data, database, analysis,         February – March                 4

content writing, data visualizations

3            Website and finalization                                   March – April                       4

4            Preparing for presentation                               May                                         2

 

The group is communicating on the Lost Art Collective group site on the CUNY Academic Commons.

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