johnlaudun

{
 "cells": [
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "# On the Syuzhet of Small Stories\n",
    "\n",
    "## Introduction\n",
    "\n",

johnlaudun

{
 "cells": [
  {
   "cell_type": "markdown",
   "metadata": {},
   "source": [
    "# On the Syuzhet of Small Stories\n",
    "\n",
    "## Introduction\n",
    "\n",

johnlaudun

SLIDES := $(patsubst %.md,%.md.slides.pdf,$(wildcard *.md))
HANDOUTS := $(patsubst %.md,%.md.handout.pdf,$(wildcard *.md))

all : $(SLIDES) $(HANDOUTS)

%.md.slides.pdf : %.md
	pandoc $^ -t beamer --slide-level 2 -o $@

%.md.handout.pdf : %.md
	pandoc $^ -t beamer --slide-level 2 -V handout -o $@ 

johnlaudun

In a recent post on ProfHacker I described a classroom technique I have used when teaching fiction. The roll-your-own dramatic interpretation mixed in with some reality television competition is one way I have found to plunge students into immersive encounters with texts and with each other. The exercise hacks conventional classroom dynamics, but perhaps ProfHacker readers yearn for something more, something more, well, hacky. And what if I told you that the hacks I have pursued were to reverse engineer text mining so that it became a lived process in the classroom?

As perhaps a lot of people who have tried to get undergraduates to read texts as

johnlaudun

I feel like, as the participant with, I think it is safe to say, the least code fu coming into the summit that my contribution, coming out of the summit, should be in possible theoretical/analytical ideas/schemes that might contribute to the white paper and/or the grant narrative that will let the project continue to grow and develop. If I understand what I can contribute correctly, it is that I am a trained ethnographer and that, as luck would have it, the project I am in the process of concluding focuses on the tacit knowledge and how a diffuse collection of individuals thinking within the schemes available to them, schemes that are not linguistic in nature, developed, through that diffuse network, a rather amazing artifact. 

With that in mind, I am going to offer a collection of observations:

One of the things that the meeting confirmed was that, whether it was internal or external, a dialogue between programming and theory was indeed part of the development of digital humanities projects. The dialogue 

johnlaudun

# MLA 2014 Session Notes


## 98. Vulnerable Texts in Digital Literary Studies 
  

###  Jeremy Douglass

  * Subject is _Meanwhile_, the fiction that began as a poster, became a website, then a tabbed book, then an iOS app. 
  * Branching narratives as networks.

johnlaudun

Your honor, I would like, at the very start of this, to note that I did not
know that overflowing the stack would kill the snake inside my computer. It
took my an awfully long time just to get that python inside my machine and to
get used to talking to it, so, really, if you think about it, it dying was the
last thing I would have wanted.

How'd it happen? Well, sir, it all started ... it all started so long ago that
... well, it gets fuzzy in my mind.

You see, your honor, I am a plain man, a simple man. I don't have mighty

johnlaudun

## Tuesday


### Project Pitches

* Jim Smith: ADHO Linked Open Data SIG. Has a website that has recipes and resources.
* Bill Turkel: What's the intermediate level look like for the Programming Historian (beyond using `wget`.)
* Bridget Almas: a best practices for digital humanities *data*. 
* Amanda Visconti: a Zotero folder that collects digital humanities. There's already a digital_humanities folder -- AV has added a "Speaking in Code" folder within that.
* Wayne Graham (+ Jeremy Boggs): there are a lot of open source projects in the digital humanities; what we need is a DH "bugmash", a day set aside for people to inspect and improve code -- it would require work on the front end by the code creator, to make it ready for *mashing*.

johnlaudun

# Speaking in Code

Here are some of the things for which I will be listening:

* What are the emergent standards (consensuses) for the various disciplines (and are there disciplinary differences that should be considered or worried)?
* What are the languages scholars are speaking? (e.g., Python, R but also TEI) And, given that, for example, Python and TEI are not the same thing, are scholars beginning to make those interoperable?

## Monday

### Welcome Session

johnlaudun

Jeana Jorgensen generously [inquired][] about my own thoughts in response to
my recent retweet of a link to Geoffrey Rockwell's post on [alternate careers
for academics][alt], which, to be fair to Rockwell, he framed as a response to
Berubé. Rockwell's suggestions for reform are pretty far reaching: if I were
to try to boil down the overall scheme to a few words of summary it would be
something like: the dissertation should be the last option among many and the
PhD should be considered a degree path to a wider variety of professions.

There's a lot more there, to be sure, but Rockwell's statement is so far
reaching that, working as I do at a university trying to roll itself into a