Collaborative Digital and/or Public Humanities Exhibit Proposal
An Introduction to the Assignment
First due date: Group project idea due April 1st
Our last and largest assignment this semester asks you to use your knowledge of the possibilities (and limitations!) of the digital and public humanities to create a sophisticated project proposal of your own conception and design. As we have stressed in class such projects often require working in collaboration with others (whether students, other organizations or both).
Objectives of this assignment:
- To articulate the importance of digital and/or public humanities in the exploration of humanistic inquiry.
- To design a sophisticated digital and/or public humanities project proposal that tackles and important question and/or fills an important gap in knowledge for a specific audience.
- To gain awareness of the processes involved in creating and designing a major digital and/or public humanities project.
- To gain awareness of current trends in the public and digital humanities, including theories, design, software, and programming.
- To gain awareness of the funding structures and requirements of major digital and/or public humanities projects.
- To learn how to work collaboratively with people of various interests and levels of expertise in the humanities, computing, design, museum studies, and public presentations.
You probably already have several questions! Let’s try to break down how you might tackle them—and this assignment—efficiently.
1. What do I want to explore in this proposed project?
This is the most important question you can ask! It is also the most difficult to answer. For your project to have a purpose—for it to have an argument, to fill a need—you have to think very carefully about how you can develop an appealing project out of your own interests, with other people, and with a broad audience in mind. You also have to consider originality. No one will fund a project that is quite similar to others that are already in existence. There are several ways in which digital and public humanists can be unique, but given we’re at the introductory level, it will probably be hard (though not impossible!) for us to revolutionize through our design. This would require us to write a new program or create a revolutionary exhibit design. That leads us to:
- How should we design our project?
This question is so intertwined with our first question it’s hard to separate it. Given that the design of your project is part of what will make your study engaging to your audience (and to grant selection committees!) it needs to be connected to your topic at its earliest stages. In other words, this project should consider how we can use and build upon the tools and methods we are exploring this semester to create an exciting project using the sources of humanists in entirely new ways. The design of your project should be structured to complement the question you’re asking of your sources—whether literature, material culture, and/or historical texts, etc.—and to provide possible interpretations. Within this question are several other questions. Who is your audience? Will your project be interactive? Will it contain an argument, or will it provide its audience with the content and context needed for them to craft their own interpretation of your subject matter?
- So, who IS my audience? How much should this weigh into my project topic & design?
No topic, no matter how over-studied and over-analyzed by academics, is off limits, as long as you can find a way to engage an audience. But finding an audience is never as easy as “people like Shakespeare so I did something on Shakespeare.” So did a zillion other people. What did you do that is exciting and revolutionary about Shakespeare? That’s a tough one, but not impossible.
As we heard from our guesst from the Neville museum, consideration of your audience is of the outmost importance when designing public and/or digital exhibits. Not only do public humanists sometimes struggle for an audience, they also struggle to gain funding for their projects. Intended audience(s) and their engagement/education are particularly important to grant selection committees. However, it is not necessary to complete cater one’s project to the interests of an intended audience.
Many non-profit organizations and foundations are interested in projects that “preserve” ideas, texts, or objects that are at risk of being erased from our collective memory. They are also often invested in projects that interact and connect with local communities in areas that are seen as lacking access to the arts and humanities. Northeast Green Bay just happens to be one of these areas, and, thus, you may wish to take advantage of this as you consider your project. It doesn’t mean that you have to explore something directly connected to the region, but you may wish to think about how you could serve this community specifically. This is not required—but part of being a public or digital humanist is thinking about how you can reach and intended audience and cobble together funding for your projects.
There are ways, of course, to gain a wide audience not connected to your community. Anniversaries of famous authors, historical actors, and momentous events are often the center of major public and digital humanities projects. Just a few years ago it was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to the creation of multiple projects (just use Google and you’ll find several). This summer marks the 100th year since the outbreak of WWI, and, indeed, the Neville has a public exhibit on this currently running. 2015 also marks the 50th anniversary of UWGB, and both the Neville and the university archivist would be over the moon to help us with projects on this topic. There are many, many other possibilities and we would love to discuss them with you.
- How much actual research, analysis and design should go into a proposal?
Given that you’re creating a project proposal for a large, time intensive project, you cannot actually complete it in the short time that we have left in the semester. Thus, we’d like you to consider this project proposal as a first extremely important step in completing a major public/digital humanities project. Who do you need to convince of its value and feasibility? Much like professional digital and public humanists, we urge you to think about how you would present your proposal to a grant committee or foundation you hope will fund your project. Think of it this way – it is unlikely that such a group would provide your collaboration funding if you don’t have a well-conceived, demonstrative, and realistic proposal. Thus, how “much” you have to accomplish at the proposal stage depends on the project proposed. Examples of the exciting things your project is able to do/intends to do are vital to your proposal. Demonstrating close familiarity (if not mastery) with the subject matter and media you will use is also of great importance.
Unlike the coding assignment, we don’t want to tell you precisely what you have to do for your proposal as each project proposal is going to be unique. Thus, we will work with your groups/collaborators to help guide you as you design your project. On a basic level, examples that are visual as well as textual are going to be paramount for this assignment. How detailed and specific these examples need to be will depend, of course, on the number of examples you intend to use in your proposal.
As each group/collaboration moves forward, we will build specific criteria for you to consider, but we want you to conceive of this as your project. We are here simply to help—to discuss ideas, and to point you towards sources, software, and/or designs that you may want to explore.
3. Who is going to evaluate our projects?
- Who is going to grade our project?
The Professors. And, as noted above, we’ll present groups with a basic guideline of the criteria that will weigh into our assessment. These will be available at least three weeks before the projects are due.
- Who is going to evaluate our project’s viability as a public/digital humanities project? Does this weigh into my grade?
A “board” of individuals we will put together to judge your projects. These will include individuals from the public humanities, the digital humanities, and the academy. They will judge your projects based on criteria often used in these scenarios, of which they are well familiar. No, it will not weigh into your grade, as they do not know what you’ve learned in our class. The Professors will assess how well each group prepared for this part of the assignment.
4. How do we learn more about grants and foundations?
We will have another short assignment grappling with this issue upon our return from Spring Break. The class as a whole will research such grants to understand common criteria and general expectations. Remember, you’re not writing a grant, but its important to be aware of what sorts of projects tend to get funding as you go forward with this assignment.
5. What should I do next?
You should begin to think very basically about what type of project you wish to propose. What topic in the humanities would you like to explore, and what software/media might you use in your research and presentation? Who might you work with—are there students in the class with similar interests to yours? Do you want to include people in your collaboration who have different strengths?
You need to have your group formed and a topic isolated by April 1st.