This essay outlines five types of publicly engaged humanities work. It was originally published in 2018 on the Humanities for All website, an initiative of the National Humanities Alliance Foundation. With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Humanities for All documents and promotes publicly engaged humanities work in U.S. higher…[Read more]

The objects of science education are transformed, degraded and disappeared for many reasons, and sometimes take other things with them when they go. This close reading of an undergraduate physiology laboratory report demonstrates how the kymograph was never a stand-alone instrument, but intertwined with conceptual frameworks and technical skills,…[Read more]

Scholarly Identity (SI) encompasses scholars’ efforts to promote their reputation and impact (Brigham 2016) using digital tools and social networking sites (SNS) (e.g., ORCID). The need to cultivate an academic SNS presence is pressing, particularly for individuals who are in tenure-track positions, working towards promotion, etc. Managing SI is c…[Read more]

Evaluation template for digital humanities projects. Used in “Introduction to Digital Humanities” undergraduate course at Michigan State University. The template is a learning tool for thinking through the materials in a digital project as well as the labor and uncovering the human in the project.

A comic about the Notre-Dame cathedral 15 April 2019 fire, made by Ernesto Priego reusing images from various sources. References and Original Image Sources listed at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7999418

A comic by Ernesto Priego about Sylvia Plath’s last London address.

This module will deal with the study of a few texts written in Medieval and Early Modern Europe related to Witchcraft, Heresy and Inquisition. The main purpose of this course is to consider how some patterns and stereotypes in the European cultural history of the past use to appear also in our current times. The outline below gives the general…[Read more]

This is the submission (unedited) version of the article published in Times Higher Education on April 11, 2019, which argues that the market-based competition that fuels so much of academic life is doing us all far more harm than good.

The early Church regarded dreams as potential messages from God, private revelations that appear as visions while the soul is undistracted by bodily sensations. Sleep, with its accompanying dreams, was also believed to be the temporary state of the disembodied soul as it awaits the resurrection of its body at the Last Judgment. Not only did…[Read more]

[Abstract. This paper begins by examining some of the claims of Dual-Process Theory (also known as Dual-System Theory), in particular its opposition of rapid, intuitive, automatic thought processes to those that are relatively slow, analytic, and consciously controlled. The former traits we share with our primate cousins and with other mammals,…[Read more]

Ernst Haeckel and Emil du Bois-Reymond were the most prominent champions of Darwin in Germany. This essay compares their contributions to popularizing the theory of evolution, drawing special attention to the neglected figure of du Bois-Reymond as a spokesman for a world devoid of natural purpose. It suggests that the historiography of the German…[Read more]

Call for papers for the II Historical Soundscapes Meeting – Évora 2019, that will take place at the University of Évora, October 16th-18th, 2019. The meeting is organized by the FCT research project PASEV – Patrimonialization of Évora’s Soundscape (1540-1910) (ref ALT20-03-0145-FEDER-028584 • LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-028584). Further information and…[Read more]

Tracing an early rabbinic approach to the human, this article analyzes how the Tannaim (early Palestinian Jewish sages) of the Mishnah and Tosefta (redacted ca. early 3rd century CE) set the human side by side with other species, and embedded their account within broader considerations of reproduction, zoology and species crossings. The human here…[Read more]

Print-friendly remediation and backup copy of my course site for “Digital Storytelling,” part of the Spring 2019 offerings in the Public Humanities MA program at Brown University. Course web site can be found here: http://digitalstorytelling2019.jimmcgrath.us. This course focuses on three particular areas within the larger topic of Digital…[Read more]

Essay for the online manual on how to open a pirate kindergarden, commissioned by Soprasotto and WeMake, Milan (IT).

Die Digital Humanities sind dabei, die geistes- und kulturwissenschaftliche Forschung grundlegend zuverändern. Durch die Inhalte und Methoden der Digital Humanities werden aber nicht nur neue Zugangswege, Fragen und Auswertungsmöglichkeiten zu bzw. an Primärquellen ermöglicht, sondern es eröffnen sich auch für die Präsentation und Publik…[Read more]

On the phenomenon of online hashtag syllabi as a digital tool used by recent political movements, particularly in the US, to instigate processes of political pedagogy.

The German Literature Archive Marbach, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar and the Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel collect, preserve and provide access to sources that are crucial to the study of German literary and intellectual tradition. In all three institutions, digitization of their collections has been an important task to build digital…[Read more]

Die sammlungsübergreifende Recherche und Nachnutzung geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschungsdaten stehen im Blickpunkt aktueller Forschung in den Digital Humanities. Obwohl das Interesse an einer Zusammenführung digitaler Forschungsdaten bereits kurz nach der Einführung erster digitaler Bibliotheken um die Jahrtausendwende entstand, bleibt die In…[Read more]

Der Beitrag thematisiert das innovative Tagungsformat eines Barcamps am konkreten Beispiel der im Rahmen des Forschungsverbundes Marbach Weimar Wolfenbüttel durchgeführten Veranstaltung “Data and Demons: Von Bestanddaten zu Services”. Ziel war es, Vertreter/innen der verschiedenen Fachdisziplinen an Bibliotheken, Archiven und Museen z…[Read more]