New book on personal communication/connection in digital environs…

Some of you may be following the Media Commons blog/site already, but if not, a new book was announced there today. Here is the post. The book is by Nancy Baym, and here’s a blurb about it:

The internet and the mobile phone have disrupted many of our conventional understandings of our selves and our relationships, raising anxieties and hopes about their effects on our lives. This timely and vibrant book provides frameworks for thinking critically about the roles of digital media in personal relationships. Rather than providing exuberant accounts or cautionary tales, it offers a data-grounded primer on how to make sense of these important changes in relational life.

The book identifies the core relational issues these media disturb and shows how the ways we talk about them echo historical discussions about earlier communication technologies. Chapters explore how we use mediated language and nonverbal behavior to develop and maintain communities, social networks, new relationships, and to maintain relationships in our everyday lives. It combines research findings with lively examples to address questions such as whether mediated interaction can be warm and personal, whether people are honest about themselves online, whether relationships that start online can work, and whether using these media damages the other relationships in our lives. Throughout, the book argues for approaching these questions with firm understandings of the qualities of media as well as the social and personal contexts in which they are developed and used.

Personal Connections in the Digital Age will be required reading for all students and scholars of media, communication studies, and sociology, as well as all those who want a firmer understanding of digital media and everyday life.

Pre-order info is in the original post. I’m wondering if some of the insights that Baym offers might also extend into the realm of academic/scholarly communication and publication in the digital realm. At any rate, it looks worth reading!

Info-Meeting on NEH Fellowships/Stipends 4/23 noon

Next Friday 4/23, between 12-1:30 pm in the McKenzie Collaboration Center (175 McKenzie Hall), Robert Long will hold an informational meeting about NEH Fellowships and Summer Stipends. The NEH Fellowships deadline comes up soon (5/4/10), while UO’s internal deadline for the Summer Stipends will be 8/2/10 (to select 2 nominees for the NEH deadline of 9/30/10).

UO faculty are invited to  come with their questions, their concerns, their own NEH grant-writing experiences.

The following resources will be made available to attendees:

• recent successful UO faculty proposals for Fellowships and Summer Stipends;
• some UO faculty (in person) who wrote a successful proposal;
• figures for UO Fellows/Stipendees from 1979-2010;
• info on UO’s participation in other NEH divisions/programs;
• a self-guided proposal-writing packet based on the NEH Fellowship application.

Tara McPherson: Animating the Archive, 4/22 2-4 pm

Tara McPherson of USC will talk to UO Digital Scholars about “Animating the Archive” on Thursday 4/22 between 2:00-4:00 in the  EMU Collaboration Center, 22A Erb Memorial Union (see map). UO faculty, students, and the public are invited. McPherson will also take more general questions about digital scholarship.

Tara McPherson’s books and edited collections include Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender and Nostalgia in the Imagined South, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, and Digital Youth, Innovation and the Unexpected (MIT, 2008.)  Interactive Frictions, co-edited with Marsha Kinder, is forthcoming from the University of California. She is working on a manuscript on the cultural and racial logics of code. Her new media research focuses on issues of convergence, gender, and race, as well as upon the development of new tools and paradigms for digital publishing, learning, and authorship. She is among the founding organizers of Race in Digital Space, a core member of HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), and the founding editor of Vectors.

Tara McPherson will be in town for the Console-ing Passions Conference. The plenary session of that event will be on Friday 4/23 from 3:00-5:00pm in the EMU Ballroom:

Publishing What We Preach: Feminist Media Scholarship in a Multimodal Age

“‘American Sabor: U.S. Latinos in Popular Music’ and the Possibilities of Feminist Public Scholarship in the Museum Context,” Michelle Habell-Pallan, University of Washington

“Remaking the Scholarly Imagination,” Tara McPherson, University of Southern California

“Preserving the Twilight: DIY Archiving of Queer Zines and Print Ephemera,” Milo Miller, Co-Founder, Queer Zine Archive Project

“New Media, New Feminism: Evolving Feminist Analysis and Activism in Print, on the Web, and Beyond,” Andi Zeisler, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture.

Twitter and the Library of Congress

On both Arcade and my (rather neglected) blog, I posted some initial reflections on the Twitter archive that the LOC announced yesterday. I thought the archive project might make for an interesting topic of conversation among the digital scholars group!

THATcamp PNW: 10/23-24 University of Washington

THATCamp PNW is coming to Seattle next October 23-24. Applications, especially from PNW scholars, are being sought by June 7 2010. The Humanities And Technology Camp is a two-day event where humanities and technology students, scholars, professionals, and dabblers convene to discuss the intersection of humanities research and technology, demo new projects, and learn more about digital humanities scholarship and programs in the Pacific Northwest region.

Learn more about THATCamp PNW 2010 at the University of Washington at
http://www.thatcamppnw.org
. You may also contact organizers Paige Morgan and Jentery Sayers (PhD Candidates, Department of English) at thatcamppnw@gmail.com.