Hello! My name is Caity Swanson, and I’m a Ph.D. candidate also in the English Department at Stony Brook. My dissertation focuses on borders, security, and the War on Terror in contemporary US literature. I’m new to Humanities Commons, so I’m excited to learn more about the platform. I’m hoping that through this summer camp I’ll get a better sense of what’s possible on HC and how to get the most out of it. I’m also hoping that the activities and using HC will help me develop (or at least think about how to develop) a more cohesive digital presence for my academic self. My number one goal is to complete all the challenges, but as I’m totally new to the platform, I don’t know what that entails or which ones I’ll need courage to accomplish – maybe all of them.

In the spirit of summer camp, here’s a popsicle stick joke:

How does a computer catch fish?

With its internet.

If you’re looking to waste some time, there are tons more here: http://laffgaff.com/popsicle-stick-jokes/

Hello! I’m Sara Santos and I’m a 3rd year PhD student – also in the English Department at Stony Brook. My work focuses on biopolitics, posthumanism and ecocriticism in contemporary literature. My dissertation will look at trajectories of becoming non/posthuman in neoliberal spaces of security – basically, I just want an excuse to write about walls, zombies and Foucault! I’ve had an HCommons profile for a few months, but haven’t done much with it. So I’m looking forward to learning how to best use this platform to share knowledge/materials, as well as interact and collaborate with other academics. Above all, I want to work on developing a stronger digital (academic and professional) presence.

A couple of questions I’d like this summer camp to address are:
1) Is it unprofessional to tweet about wine?
2) What is the meaning of life?

No pressure at all…

Hi there! I’m Kirsten Bussière. I am currently completing my MA in English and Digital Humanities  at Carleton University and I will be attending the University of Ottawa in the fall for my PhD in English. My current research pertains to utopian nostalgia and collective memory in contemporary post-apocalyptic fiction. Focusing on the geographies of loss I digitally map fictional spaces.

I am also new to the Humanities Commons platform so I hope I will become more accustomed to it as the summer goes on. My goal is to increase and improve my academic presence online.

Hello! I’m Kathie Gossett, a faculty member in the writing department at UC Davis. My current research includes digital dissertations (both creating them and archiving them), medieval and digital rhetoric, and user experience. (And yes, those things all do go together, I promise–I’m even working on a book to prove it!)

I’ve let my digital footprint sort of wane over the past couple of years and I’ve been planning to spend a good amount of time this summer rebuilding it. I’m hoping this summer camp will help keep me on track with rebuilding my digital academic profile.

Thanks so much for creating this group!

I’m finishing up the second year of a post-doctoral teaching fellowship and transitioning to a visiting assistant professorship at the same university. My overarching research focus is the way that narrative works to form and maintain communities. Specific research projects have looked at a variety of media from fairy tale books and films to narrative textiles.

By the time my contract ends in June 2019, I need to have found a next thing, so I’ve been trying to work on my public presence online with a Commons profile, a Twitter account, and a portfolio website through WordPress, but it is a challenge!

My name is Mollie, and I’m Professor and Head of Public Services in the Olson Library at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, MI (on the south shore of Lake Superior). My academic background includes the M.S, in Library and Information Science, as well as a master’s and Ph. D. in English (all from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

I’m currently working on a book about libraries and librarians in mystery fiction (tentatively titled Book ‘Em: Libraries, Librarians, and Information in Mystery Fiction from 1970-present). I’m also exploring digital humanities, not only as a librarian, but in some work about Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series.

I’m so glad that this group was started. Thank you.

Hey, I’m Nashieli Marcano, Research Librarian at Clemson University. I received my masters in Library and Information Studies and my PhD in Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. My book, Chronotopias: Mediation of Identitary Spaces in Early Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico (in Spanish), is in press at the moment. My research areas are diverse, among them: Latin American Literatures & Cultures, Information Fluency, Scholarly Communications, the Process of Literature Reviewing, Graduate Students’ Self-Efficacy, and Postcolonial Studies. I’m a newbie here, and I look forward to learning from you all.

Cheers!

Hello! I’m Mariana Ou. Recently received my MSc Library Science from City, University of London, after a few years working as an architect in Brazil. Now in the UK, I’ve been doing library & archive work, which I love. Considering going back to research in a PhD; still thinking about choice of institution, topic, timing (I might be the most junior in the Camp so far?). Very much interested in Archives and Digital Archives, Documents in the digital age, Digital Objects, Online Collections, History–of the Spanish Civil War, of Socialism and Communism, of Information…

I’m also quite a HC enthusiast, and it will surely be great to explore this platform further with you!

Hi everyone! I’m Nora, currently an independent scholar of early modern drama, performance, and digital culture. My day job is in enrollment management (admissions) for graduate programs at Emerson College in Boston. Current projects include a book on Shakespeare and Twitter (yes, really) and a practice-as-research project that uses Measure for Measure to help kids talk about rape culture. I’m excited to learn more about HC and all of you 🙂

Hello all! My name is Natalie and I just defended my dissertation on literature and mathematics at Princeton University a little over a week ago! I’m in a bit of a transitional period — I recently accepted what seems like the coolest job in Paris at the SAE Institute, but my dissertation committee also insists that I try to publish my dissertation as a monograph. So I’m hoping to use this summer to start my new job and maintain an academic web presence and try to figure all of this out. Looking forward to meeting all of you!

I’m Lisa, and I teach composition, literature, and business communications at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.  My third and fourth books (one on contemporary American playwright Marsha Norman, and the other an edited collection on Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway) are coming out in 2019, so I would like to develop more of a digital presence than I currently have.  I’ve created a profile here but not much else (not even a photo yet!) and would like guidance (and deadlines!) to get started.

Hello. My name is Nissa, and I’ll be filing my dissertation–on twentieth c. interwar material culture and expatriate literature–at UC Santa Barbara next week, and will be a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Mannheim this fall. I’m excited to take part in this “camp” and meet you all!

Hello My name is Andrew,

I’m out in the world of high school teaching but I find it important to stay engaged with the Academic world. I’m also in Colorado where there are not as many opportunities for Classical Archaeologists to meet so I hope to use this platform to stay connected. I am using the summer camp to kick me in the butt and update/upload things to my profile.

Hello! I’m Linda Levitt, and I teach in communication, focused primarily on media studies. My first book, a cultural analysis of Hollywood Forever Cemetery, has gone to press. The book builds on my interests in cultural memory, which recently is moving toward material culture as well. I’ve been to a couple of THATCamps over the years and tried to find a place for myself in digital humanities, but haven’t managed to do that. I’m hopeful that I can sort that out a bit this summer.

Hi there! I’m Dana Gavin, wrapping up coursework in my PhD studies at Old Dominion University while I teach at Marist College. I am excited to learn more about being a very deliberate and thoughtful online communicator. For example, academic Twitter has been a joy for me, but I want to make sure I am proceeding forward with best practices in mind. Cheers and I look forward to learning from everyone!

Hi, all! — I’m Jessica Horvath Williams, a doctoral student in Lit in English at UCLA. I’m a 19th century Americanist, working on literary form and disability, especially mental disability (filing in June 2020). I’m back and forth between California and Minnesota, where my partner lives, and I work the Critical Disability Studies Collective at UMN. I also do disability and race/gender/sexuality education and activism, especially recently with medical professionals, in the Twin Cities. My summer goals center around finishing up the first chapter of my dissertation and establishing an online presence. Pleasure to meet you all!

Hi,

I’m Scott Banville. I’m an associate professor at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, LA. I teach Victorian literature as well as literature in general in addition to a lot of composition and advanced writing–technical writing for the sciences in particular.

I serve as the Writing Program Administrator for the department as well as on other committees.

My current projects are thinking about how Tony Pastor’s traveling (and non-traveling) vaudeville company’s are a window into the development of American (popular) culture. My other project is Rhetorical Mapping: Oil, Land, and People in South Louisiana. It’s grown out of work with students in a couple of digital rhetoric courses. It attempts to use data from existing oral history projects to map internal migration in the Bayou Region of Louisiana, to archive and document the changes in recreational and subsistence activities, as well as other cultural and economic activities in the area.

I’ve know about HC for a while and thought the summer came would be a good way to boot the post-tenre blues.

Hello!

My name is Katie Trostel, and I am an Assistant Professor of English at Ursuline College in Cleveland, Ohio. I recently earned my PhD in Literature from UC Santa Cruz where I focused on contemporary Latin American women’s writing centering on post-trauma cityscapes. I am excited to see how I can use my presence on the Humanities Commons to make new connections!