Just in case anyone else had trouble finding the Humanities Commons homepage for item 1 of Challenge 2…….

Once you log in, click on the Humanities Commons logo in the upper left of screen.

It’s such a useful page, and I’m grateful that this challenge prompted me to find it. 🙂

So I’ve gone and added anyone who shares interest in the Etruscans, I’ve found there are very few people here who are in those groups. I wish there was a way to see the members that other people follow. I wonder if some of the people I follow are following Etruscan Scholars who just have not added Etruscan to their interest and so are not coming up when I click on that topic.

Hello, everyone!

I’ve just completed Challenge #2. I started following 5 people, mostly scholars in postcolonial ecocriticism, Global South lit and environmental humanities, and joined 2 new groups, Animal Studies and Lit and Economics. At first I had difficulty finding people with similar interests, perhaps because I was searching very specific terms, so I broadened the search and found that there’s a large number of people on HCommons with interest in ecocriticism and Global South lit. I think the slightly more challenging part was starting a discussion. I almost never participate in these group discussions, so this time I created a discussion thread using one of the strategies suggested by our awesome camp director. I asked the Animal Studies group which 3 key texts they would recommend to anyone in the field of animal and environmental studies. We’ll see what replies I get!

Overall, this challenge was helpful in encouraging me to engage more actively in digital communities!

I’ve started following three more people, and joined one more group. I am pondering whether to start a new discussion topic in one of the groups or reply to an existing one, but haven’t decided yet. None of the groups I’ve found as yet have an enormous amount of recent activity, so I’m not sure which would be the best option for the purposes of the challenge. But at least I have now posted a discussion reply to each of the two HC Summer Camp challenges so far 🙂

I’ve added a few more folks–and even found a few that I follow on Twitter as well.

I’ve also joined two more groups. Both the ones I’m most interested don’t have a very active discussion board so I’m thinking I may add a discussion topic here.

I found a few people to follow so far and I will continue to look for more. In one of the groups I posted a new topic but nobody has answered just yet on Humanities Commons. On Twitter though I had a fellow scholar respond to my tweet which summarized what I did for this challenge and the topic of my discussion. It turns out that we both are working on mapping and literature so I guess this networking activity helped me network elsewhere as well.

There are precious few folks on HC-some of whom I already correspond with- who work in and around AfAm Print Culture, Consequently, I followed a few folks who work in DH as this is an area of interest and I’m in need of some network connections as my program has lost it’s DH faculty. The groups I’m looking to join lack active discussion threads; if anything, the activity in these groups are CFPs and deposits (I’m guilty of posting these and not participating in the discussion as well). My reading of this thread makes me think that a lack of discussion is not uncommon here at HC (?)

/C

I’ve found a number of people to follow, but I’ve been disappointed that there are so few people in Hemingway studies and even modernism more generally who have a presence here. I think one of the problems is that those groups have existing networks (email lists, newsletters, journals, Facebook groups) already and don’t see the need to join. Still trying to find somewhere I could logically post a question about my research interests.

Lisa

This challenge was difficult for me at first — until @kirstenbussiere posted about completing the challenge on Twitter, was retweeted by HC, and I found out how networking can manifest!

Like everyone (I imagine), I felt awkward starting a new conversation in groups that seemed inert, but I understand that if no one overcomes the awkwardness, communities die off. Which is depressing, because I have had great success networking on Twitter, and I would like to have another complementary platform to use for longer discussions, document sharing, etc.

In order to complete this challenge, I got off Twitter for five seconds and posted a longer response to Kirsten’s inquiry — the sort of response Twitter really can’t handle. I really appreciate events like this Summer Camp, and folks like @caitlinduffy49, for inspiring the kind of action that can keep this place thriving.

I’d already joined some groups and followed two people, but I checked out the membership of the groups I’d already joined and added some people to follow. I also found a group on Digital Pedagogy that intrigued me, so I joined that.

The group on Detective Fiction doesn’t have a lot of traffic–people have posted some work, but there didn’t seem to be any discussion. I did post a question about any work people were doing on cozy mysteries, but I really don’t expect an answer right away.

That said, I intend to post a link to Humanities Commons and the Detective Fiction group to an e-mail list on mystery and detective fiction, and I’ll probably post on Twitter as well. There’s a good deal more going on in the field than is reflected in that group.

I’ve actually enjoyed completing the second challenge.  I did not realize how many scholars in my field already had profiles on H-Commons.  Hopefully this will encourage me to reach out more to other academics and network over projects and research that we have in common.

I joined several groups related to my research.  For the task to create a new discussion thread in a group, I decided to share a call for papers for a symposium on Black literature in Latin America taking place in Brazil in November:  https://simposioliteraturanegraiberoamericana.wordpress.com/ 

Hi everyone,

Happy Friday!  I joined several new groups: Comics Scholarship/Comics Studies, Narrative theory and Narratology, Autofiction, and Neoliberal Fiction (thanks @sarastarbucksantos). I started threads in two of the groups based on what I’m currently working on (both having to do with voice and co-mix). I also tried to join groups that seem to have more participants. I have, in the past, found the groups not to be very helpful, so I’m hoping to get some responses. I didn’t start a new group, but that might be my next step.

Thanks for all of the helpful suggestions and ideas on this discussion.

Joelle

I’ve been having a really good time discussing maps and speculative fiction with  @djgavin in the Science and Speculative Fictions group. This challenge has allowed me to network with people working on some similar but different tasks that I think will allow for fruitful discussion of maps and literature and the act of creating maps more generally.

I also went ahead and did the second part of the challenge and created a Utopian Studies group to discuss topics related to utopias, utopianism, utopian literature, utopian theory, and intentional communities.

Hello!

I came to this challenge a bit late, but it is a very good one!  I joined a few groups with varying levels of activity, and created two new ones (Science and Technology Studies and Agricultural History).

It was great to have another summer camper to chat with over on the Animal Studies list 🙂

One question I have is an HC identity one: many animal studies scholars already have vibrant discussion hubs going on other internet places (i.e., H-Net) — how might HC develop a different, but no less robust discussion space?