First Lecture Delivered in IIT Humanities Department's Digital Humanities Series
On September 21, Sarah Roberts gave the inaugural lecture in a new series sponsored by IIT's humanities department. In her talk, "Digital Humanity: Foregrounding Human Traces in Technological Systems (and Why We Should Care)" she discussed her current research in the field of digital humanities.
Roberts spoke about several practical applications of technology that foreground humanity in the digital, such as Fab Lab, a low-cost lab that lets people build things they need using digital and analog tools, created by MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld. She raised ethical issues involved in ostensibly seamless automated processes, which are really accomplished by human beings, such as those used by Google in its project Google Books. Her research, and other current research cited in her lecture, "unveils hidden or obfuscated traces of humans within digital systems and the implications that such erasures engender."
The humanities department lecture series, "Defining Boundaries and Goals in the Digital Humanities," is a sequence designed to foment discussion on the current state of the art in digital humanities and encourage exploration of the disciplinary issues within the emerging field.
The next lecture will be held on November 8, from 1-2:30 p.m., in Siegel Hall 218. Stan Ruecker, from IIT Institute of Design, will deliver a talk on "Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching in the First North American MA in the Digital Humanities: The University of Alberta's MA in Humanities Computing." His talk will focus on his key role in creating the first MA program in digital humanities.
A complete lecture schedule for the academic year is available; anyone interested in the Digital Humanities is invited to attend.
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