Blog Post #8--Word Clouds as a Tool for Critical Analysis

For the Provost’s Learning Space seminar on Digital Humanities, I revised a project I assign in my HUC117—Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication course.  This is a digital project that fulfills the research requirement but that asks students to present their issue, claim, research, and implications in an online format rather than as a traditional written essay.  One of the obstacles I dealt with previously was students’ inability to conduct meaningful analysis of the sources consulted for their projects and to draw conclusions from them.  Upon further investigation, I discovered that students read the source material but were incapable of identifying themes that would help them focus their discussions.  As a result of the seminar on Digital Humanities, I discovered the utility of word clouds for identifying themes that can provide guidance with regard to focusing analysis and discussion and that can help to narrow the issue and its implications.

The guidelines for the Digital Project are as follows:

Construct a reader-friendly, content-focused web site that develops and defends an original argument about CMC theory and/or practice discussed in class or in your readings. In terms of writing, this assignment should be equivalent to a 5 page paper (not including references). The project shall be composed of:

(1)  an introduction page that presents your issue/topic and states your thesis,

(2)  a background page that explains key terms and provides a history of your issue,

(3)  a page with word clouds created using Wordle that present the major themes across all the sources you have consulted

(4)  an argument page that persuades the reader to accept your thesis (and that ideally draws attention to the themes identified in your word clouds, and

(5)  an implications page which answers questions like, "what does this mean for

contemporary public life?" or "what's the next policy step?"

I strongly suggest you organize your implications around themes such as technology, identity, and/or culture. You must also provide a references page that provides links, where possible, to your source material (sites are more reliable when they provide references to which readers can link for additional information).

An exemplar was provided for student reference, which I initially created prior to my work with word clouds, but that was revised to include one for a more representative model to which students could refer.  The site was created using Wix, which students are also encouraged to use because of the ease with which sites can be created by students who have little to no web authoring experience. 

The class brainstormed potential topics for exploration, analysis, and discussion.  The discussion was lively and students were particularly drawn to the word clouds both for their visual appeal and for their ability to reveal themes they otherwise might not have identified.  For the purpose of this discussion, two student projects have been chosen as representatives of this project’s success. 

The first project focused on online dating.  This student was interested in the notion of algorithms used for the purpose of matching potential romantic partners, but was also interested in how potential matches present themselves online through their profiles.  The student conducted research that included articles on how to maximize an online profile and the effectiveness of algorithms to match people.  The student identified what she believed to be the key ideas and themes addressed in her research and then created a word cloud.

The main themes identified by the word cloud were, not surprisingly, “people,” “online,” and “dating.”  However, the student was particularly struck by the word cloud’s emphasis on “women.”  She had already noted the importance of profiles, which were also emphasized, but she hadn’t recognized the articles’ focus on women.  As it turned out, when she revisited the articles, she noticed that they emphasize how women should present themselves online in order to attract her ideal mate, the focus seemingly implying that it is more important for women to find a mate than it is for men.  The student concluded that societal norms regarding women’s role in society was implicitly reinforced through the in-depth discussions she consulted for her research.  The student also noticed that the word cloud included references not only to data, but to the data points (the questions asked that provide the information for the algorithm) themselves.  While these weren’t as prominent in the word cloud, they were nevertheless there.  She concluded that the algorithms and the data used for them are frequently scrutinized for their effectiveness in matching potential romantic partners.  This was part of her initial research question, but the word cloud’s focus on this information reinforced her conclusions.

The second project focused on the issue of net neutrality.  The student was particularly interested in this topic given the FCC’s recent proposal that would allow content companies to pay broadband providers for faster Internet speeds delivering their traffic.  The student was interested in how this decision, if implemented, might influence access to content.  Similar to the issues of censorship presented in the exemplar, this student theorized that the elimination of net neutrality would result in internet providers and, potentially, governments to control what content users will and will not be able to access.  The student read a variety of articles and concluded the general consensus is that such a decision would effectively regulate user access to content much the same way governments in other countries control what information is and is not available to citizens.

The main themes or topics emphasized in the word cloud included “FCC,” “internet,” “providers,” and “neutrality.”  This was not surprising given the topic under investigation.  What was interesting for this student was the specific focus on the internet providers themselves.  The student concluded that broadband providers have a vested interest in regulating access in order to increase income and profit.  More interesting to the student was the inclusion of terms that suggested censorship, or at least the potential for it.  Words such as “speech,” “access,” “blocking,” “freedom,” “discrimination,” and “protect.”  While the student recognized the potential legal implication of abandoning net neutrality, he had not considered the aspects of censorship that might become real if the FCC moves forward with the plan.

These two students projects are by no means representative of the entire class.  In fact, at the time of this writing, less than half the class had completed research on their topics and generated word clouds.  Still, the class responded very positively to word clouds as a tool to help them read more critically.  Several indicated that the word clouds provided them with guidance as they returned to the research to better understand the themes identified.  As a tool, then, word clouds provide students with the ability to read more critically and, thus, to conduct more meaningful research and writing.  Unfortunately, because the digital projects aren’t due until the end of the semester (June 2), links are not currently available.  Once the projects have been submitted and evaluated, links will be added to the blog post to better highlight student work and to showcase additional word clouds.

Blog Post #7--Exploring a Data Visualization

I examined many of the data visualizations offered on the PLS site, but I found myself continually drawn back to the NYPD Stop & Frisk visualization.  This visualization was created by John Keefe from WNYC and appeared both on the WNYC site (http://www.wnyc.org/story/222809-wnyc-map-police-find-guns-where-they-stop-and-frisk-less/) and on The Guardian website (http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2012/jul/16/new-york-police-frisk-search-gun-map-wnyc).  Published in 2012, WNYC used data from the New York City Police Department to map all stops & frisks and all gun recoveries.  Interestingly, the data showed that most guns were found not in the targeted stop and frisk neighborhoods, but well outside them. 

The NYPD has been criticized for racial profiling in its Stop & Frisk program, something the department denied, but that data seem to support.  Then Mayor Bloomberg asserted that the program would get guns off the streets and that by focusing on certain neighborhoods believed to be "hot spots," the city would be safer.  Instead, police distrust increased and the program data show that the profiling inherent in focusing on targeted "hot spots" is not only unfounded but unethical. 

I have students who have routinely been victims of Stop & Frisk.  One LaGuardia student spoke about his experience during the 2013 LaGuardia Speech Contest and received first place honors for his efforts.  My own partner has been stopped and frisked while walking home from my apartment in Washington Heights for no reason other than that he has dark skin, even when he is dressed in slacks and button-down shirt with dress shoes. 

Why did I choose to focus on this visualization?  Because so many of my students have experienced being stopped and frisked, the program and its data are personally relevant for them.  More important, though, students can see the actual results of the program.  But perhaps the reason I chose this visualization as being particularly relevant for a class activity--especially in my Computer-Mediated Communication course--is its ability to present an enormous amount of data in an easy-to-understand, interactive visual tool.  We talk in my class about how technology enables us to better understand ourselves and our place in the world.  This tool gives students an opportunity to examine their own neighborhoods, to determine whether the NYPD sees their neighborhoods as "hot spots," and to critically evaluate the efficacy of the program in light of its mission to make the streets safer.  Moreover, because the map is color-coded, the information is easily identifiable, allowing students an opportunity to think critically without the need to sift through what could otherwise be overwhelming information.  Students can thus draw conclusions and expand them to develop arguments about the issue itself and/or about the utility of visualization tools such as this for presenting information.

This first image is a screen shot of a close-up view of my own area of Washington Heights, 171st & Broadway.  I live three blocks from Columbia University Medical Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital.  The area in bright pink is a "hot spot"--the area surrounding Columbia University Medical Center, the boundaries for which are Broadway on the east and Fort Washington Ave on the west, and 165th Street on the south and 168th Street on the north.  You will see, however, that there were no guns seized in this area.  Instead, a gun was seized further up Broadway on 172nd Street (one block from my apartment), indicated by the bright dot in the upper center of the image.  This stretch of Broadway is not considered a hot spot, though it is a pale shade of purple, which means it is more heavily patrolled than are the areas that are royal blue.
 

The second image is a wide-view screen shot of the area, which clearly illustrates that guns were not recovered in the most heavily targeted areas (those shaded in medium and bright pink), but rather in areas that are only minimally patrolled for the program.

Interestingly, the wide view demonstrates that the areas targeted as "hot spots" seem to have been unfairly labeled as such.  This entire area is quite diverse, though a large portion of the population is Dominican and Cuban.  The medium pink areas are more heavily Dominican, and yet those areas did not produce more guns. 

Does this support claims of racial profiling?  Maybe yes and maybe no, but it at the very least suggests that the program is flawed.  Perhaps it is most useful for opening a dialogue about the program, about racial profiling, and about the utility of visualization tools such as this for understanding ourselves, how we are perceived by others, and how we might go about changing those perceptions.

Blog Post #6--Annotating Google Earth

I tried and I tried, but I could not figure out how to do this.  We talked about it at our last meeting, but despite the tutorials sent to me by Richard and despite my repeated attempts, I just can't figure it out.  Perhaps it's because I'm a Mac person?  Doubt it.  Still, what I wanted to do was annotate Google Earth and show you all where I grew up.  Instead, I'm posting a pic that I grabbed as a screen shot from Google Earth.  It's the house I grew up in, located in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. 

The red square is the window to my bedroom.  The blue square is the Catholic Church.  When my mother finally sold the house and moved away from Steamboat because of her health (long story; she can not breathe at altitude), the Catholic Church bought the house and it is now the priest's residence or something like that.  Interestingly, when we lived there we had a fenced backyard.  The fence is gone and there is now an uninhibited view of the church.  

The left part of the house was originally built in 1904.  It had many lives, including serving as an infirmary at some point.  The original middle part was added on in the 1950s but the foundation hadn't been properly built and it was literally tilting when we bought the house (I was in 6th grade and the house was condemned; my mom bought it for $27,500 and because my stepfather was a general contractor, we did all the work on it ourselves).  The right part of the house was added when I was in high school and housed what became the new master suite and office upstairs, and garage and carpentry work space downstairs.  What you can't see in the picture is the ski mountain, which you would be able to see if the left part of the house weren't so tall.  Yes, I grew up skiing.  But only in the west.  Snow in the east is like cement. 

This has nothing whatsoever to do with our upcoming blog post, but it strikes me as an interesting use of visualization tools and seems related to Glenn Hershaw's interest in social media.  Today Tech posted a map that visualizes how Twitter chatter about #FortHood spread across the U.S. in the hours following the April 2, 2014 shooting.  I'm not sure if we would have access to whatever visualization tool was used for this, but it seems to me an interesting method of visualizing the importance of social media when important events occur.

http://www.today.com/tech/watch-forthood-chatter-news-shooting-spreads-across-us-2D79476682

Blog Post #5

Apologies to all for my absence.  I was unable to attend our last meeting due to an injury and the week following was crazy busy.  I presented research at the CUNY CLASP Colloquium and feel honored to have been named by the keynote speaker, distinguished scholar from UNC Chapel Hill Dr. Julia Wood as one of the premiere scholars in the discipline currently exploring images of women and minorities in American Media.  She mentioned me twice during her keynote, including praise for my presentation earlier that day (she attended my panel, she said, because she saw my name listed).  I was beaming.  All that said, however, I was so busy with preparing my presentation and preparing for the colloquium that I neglected my PLS responsibilities.  I'm back, though, and ready to move forward.

As a brief aside, before I launch into the current blog assignment, I presented the Digital Project about which I posted in my previous blog post to my HUC117--Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication course yesterday.  I discussed the incorporation of word clouds and, luckily, had found some scholarly articles that discussed how word clouds were used to study the tweets/status updates of 9000 people and in so doing, accurately predicted the gender of the poster 89% of the time, and predicted psychological characteristics 92% of the time.  Using that as a foundation, I explained the benefit of incorporating word clouds into students' analysis of the issue they will address in their research project, showed the exemplar I had created last semester and then showed the word cloud I created (which I included in my last blog post) and discussed how using it would have improved my overall argument.  I then opened the discussion to the class and, surprisingly (and happily), the students were very excited about the possibilities.  Seems like my little project might work out after all. :)

As I explored various GIS/mapping sites, I stumbled upon a couple that I found particularly interesting.  In particular, I decided to focus on the New York City Graffiti and Street Art Project created by Lewis & Clark College's Watzek Library and Off-Campus and Study Abroad Program.  The site's "About" page indicates, the idea for the site "was an experiment to develop and employ mobile technologies for teaching and learning with the expectation that it might serve as a model for creating collaborative digital image projects with mobile devices and Flickr for non-traditional classroom settings."  The site includes a google map with points on which the visitor can click, with links to the various neighborhoods that, when clicked, open a gallery of photos of graffiti and street art.  I was sad that the Hunter's Point link didn't have more photos of 5Pointz.  I meant to take photos of it myself before it was whitewashed but never made the time.  Clearly I lost my opportunity, though I'm happy to report that on my travels past the building each morning on the 7 train I notice new graffiti and new tags popping up over the whitewash.  Rebellion!  I did create a montage memorial of 5Pointz on my Facebook page the day it was whitewashed, images obtained from Google images.  I was equally sad to realize that there are no links for my neighborhood:  Washington Heights.  This neighborhood is filled with graffiti, some of it very poignant.  The RiteAid across the street has a beautiful graffiti mural painted on the side of the building that celebrates neighborhood and unity.  Down the street is a graffiti piece that encourages residents to "Know Your Rights!"  Unfortunately, the site only extends as far north as Harlem (125th between Lenox and Park Ave).  Hmmm... maybe I should take some photos and create my own site.  I snapped a screenshot from Google Maps "street view" of the RiteAid just for fun.

I chose this particular site because I teach the importance of the visual and the importance of actually paying attention to the images, signs, and symbols to which we are exposed on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis, and to then examine the messages sent by those images, signs, and symbols.  Many of us walk around in a fog, not really paying any conscious attention to what we see, yet we are nevertheless influenced by it all on a subconscious level.  The images, the messages, speak to us and influence how we see ourselves and our place/role in the world, not to mention how we see others.  Graffiti is, by its very nature, a form of rebellion, often perceived as deviant, but often very political in nature.  Many graffiti artists try to make a point with their art, to call attention to something they deem important or relevant to the neighborhood and its population.  Thus, by encouraging students to examine a site like this, and then to potentially visit some of the neighborhoods and look at the art in real life, students might begin to appreciate the importance of paying attention.

Blog Post #4

For the Seminar Project using the Digital Humanities, I will revise the existing research project, which is the major project, for my HUC117--Introduction to Computer Mediated Communication course.  As it currently exists, the assignment is as follows:

Digital Course Project

In this assignment, you will construct a reader-friendly, content-focused web site that develops and defends an original argument about CMC theory and/or practice discussed in class or in your readings.  In terms of writing, this assignment should be equivalent to a 5-page paper.  This project shall be composed of:

1. an introduction page that states your thesis,
2. a background page that explains key terms and provides a history of your issue
3. an argument page that persuades your reader to accept your thesis, and
4. an implications page that answers questions like, "what does this mean for contemporary public life?" or "what's the next policy step?" or "how will this affect interpersonal communication in the future?"

I strongly suggest you organize your implications around themes such as technology, identity, and/or culture.  You must also provide a references page that provides links, where possible, to your source material (sites are more reliable when they provide references to which readers can link for additional information).  You should also include hyperlinks throughout your web site to engage the reader.
________________________
I instruct students to publish their project either on ePortfolio (which is cumbersome and presents many problems for accomplishing this project) or on Wix (which is user-friendly and a student favorite).  I currently have exemplars from the fall semester linked on my own ePortfolio page under "courses."

I plan to incorporate the Digital Humanities by asking students to create word clouds using either Wordle or Voyant, for which the corpus will be the sites and/or articles that provide the foundational (historical, key terms, issues, etc.) information for their argument.  Students will then incorporate a page between the "Background" and "Argument" pages that provides a discussion of the key terms that this DH tool illuminated (these may be the same or different from the established key terms, or it may be ideas or issues that were previously unexamined).  This should help students focus their argument and the "Argument" page should, as a result, be stronger.

I plan to use this project as the basis for a pedagogical article I plan to submit to Communication Teacher, one of the journals of the National Communication Association and in which I have previously published.  This journal serves as a pedagogical resource for others in the field and as yet has provided no activities or discussions focused on DH.  Also, because it is pedagogically-focused, it will not only enhance my scholarly productivity, but it will embrace my own passion, which is teaching (I love my research, but my passion is teaching), thereby neatly combining the two into one grand project.

For fun, I visited the exemplar I created for the class (I always model what I expect students to do), visited the foundational sites, and created word clouds for them.  The topic I investigated for the exemplar was Internet Censorship.  I specifically used as the corpus the body of text in each of the links I provided on the "Issues" page (the background page was about censorship more generally, while the issues page focused on the internet specifically).  The resulting word cloud was, to me, quite interesting and I will need to go back and explore the items that were highlighted more closely.

I can honestly say that I am truly excited to incorporate this project and to examine the results.  I am even more excited to share the results and to potentially inspire a new method of inquiry for our students.

Blog Post #3

For the "visualization" activity, I chose to create word clouds for Kate Chopin's The Awakening, a book that literally changed my life and enabled me to focus my scholarly interests.  The book was published in 1899; Chopin died five years later in 1904.  She is one of the most important feminist writers in American history and she captured in this novel the struggle with which I, myself, struggled for most of my life, the struggle between conformity and individuality, between the perceived self and the actual self.  Two quotes from the novel sum this up nicely:

• "At a very early period she had apprehended the instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions."

• "She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world." 

I located the text through Project Gutenberg, copied the body of the novel, and pasted it into Wordle.  The word cloud created from this corpus was interesting to me, mostly because it captured the important characters, but not necessarily the important themes (or what I believe to be the important themes):

I then pasted the body of the novel into Voyant.  The initial word cloud was comprised of little more than "and" and "the," so I had to edit it and apply the English Taporware stop.  The resulting word cloud is nearly identical to the Wordle word cloud, with the major difference being that I couldn't figure out how--if it is even possible--to manipulate the font and colors:

The visualizations reveal little to nothing with regard to what I, and scholars like me, consider to be important about this text.  To be sure, the characters are important and Edna is the most important, but the individual thoughts, the internal conflict, the struggle to be an individual in a society that demands conformity for women, are absent.  There are some hints at this conflict as the words "thought" and "think" appear (heaven forbid a woman at the turn of the 20th century should think!).  What I find interesting about the word clouds are the words that, in my opinion, emphasize the constraint that Edna feels, words like "husband," "children," "house," "woman," "Mrs," "Madame," and so on.  Many of these words--and even more in the Voyant word cloud--focus on appearance, which implies conformity and, in Edna's case, constraint.  The one word that stands out to me in the Wordle word cloud and that does not appear at all in the Voyant word cloud is "one."  This, to me, is very telling and suggests (or, at least, implies) Edna's aloneness, her feelings of isolation in a society that demands feminine conformity.  

For my purposes, specifically for the purpose of identifying key terms in texts (I tend to undertake close rhetorical textual analysis with all texts I examine), I find Wordle to be much easier and, for me, more useful in visualizing the important aspects of the corpus.  I also prefer the ability to manipulate the image with regard to its color scheme, font, and layout which for me, as a visual rhetoric scholar, communicates in its own way as much as the text under analysis does.

I have thought a great deal about this with regard to its pedagogical application and have begun to develop what I think will be a spectacular activity for my students in HUC117--Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication.  When I proposed the course for Pathways, I included a research assignment about some aspect of computer-mediated communication that asks students to investigate a particular issue, research it, identify both scholarly articles and credible online texts/sources, and then to create a webpage that presents the research and their argument about it that includes hyperlinks as a means of citation.  Students often, especially in an introductory-level courses, have difficulty articulating arguments.  For the Spring 2014 semester, I will incorporate this visualization activity as part of the student research assignment.  For the different articles and sites student locate, I will have them copy and paste the corpus into Wordle and/or Voyant and create word clouds,  I will then ask them to include the image of the word cloud(s) on the webpages they create and to discuss the important themes or topics that emerge as the result of the word clouds with respect to the topic each student chooses.  For instance, if a student chooses to investigate the possibilities of artificial intelligence, s/he might find ten sources and create a word cloud using the corpus for all the sources.  The words that emerge might lend themselves to a more in-depth discussion about the important issues concerning artificial intelligence.  At the very least, this sort of visualization might spark interest in students who otherwise might not get excited about the research process.

I'm excited to move forward with this and to apply this strategy not only to my own scholarship, but also as a pedagogical activity to facilitate student research and critical thinking.  I look forward to sharing the results.

Blog Post #2

Warwick's discussion centers on the language of the visual and the means by which reliance on the written word has deprived many of us of the ability to read and interpret visual images.  She briefly recounts her visit to Thessaloniki, Greece where she had difficulty understanding the mosaics and marble carvings because she was unfamiliar with the meaning embedded in the images.  She then discusses how technology impacts the notion of the written (and published) word.

Warwick then turns her attention to the various factors involved in reading.  She argues, "reading even the simplest text is a highly complex cognitive task, involving what Crowder and Wagner (1992:4) describe as 'three stupendous achievements':  the development of spoken language, written language, and literacy."  She discusses text-based factors, reader-based factors, and situational factors as elements that influence one's ability to both read and interpret a text, factors that are different for each of us given our life experiences, our racial or socio-cultural background, etc.  This complexity and individuality, she argues, accounts for the intrinsic pleasure or satisfaction derived from reading, which she believes, is "difficult to replicate when computational analysis is used."  She then turns her attention to reading the visual.

Reading the Visual is what attracted me to this particular document.  I have focused much of my scholarly attention on reading the visual to discern the messages embedded in visual texts, messages that are often subtle but highly influential, if not always intentional because many are so normalized, messages that rely for their understanding on discrete textual clues that sometimes only particular members of an audience recognize.  It is precisely beause of this personal experience that I agree with Warwick's claim, "Reading a printed text is clearly a subtle and complex analysis technique.  It is therefore not surprising that scholars have made the assumption that digital resources and computational techniques that simply replicate the activity of reading are a pale imitation of an already successful technique.  To be of use to the humanities scholar, it seems that digital resources must therefore provide a different dimension that may change the way that we view our raw materials."

While technology cannot necessarily assist humanities scholars with the actual interpretation of visual texts, it nevertheless provides access to texts that were previously inaccessible to us.  The Internet has provided access to museums and archives and videos and advertisements and magazines in ways previously unimaginable.  My own scholarship has benefited from this access.  In one award-winning essay, I accepted the challenge presented by John Berger in the influential Ways of Seeing (1972) that asked scholars to continue to compare contemporary advertising images with classical images of the nude to determine whether men are still assumed to be the ideal spectator/consumer and women the object of the gaze.  In order for me to effectively compare contemporary ads with classical images, I needed access to the images,w hcih I found not only through museum websites, but through the Artchive, an art resource that includes most forms of visual art from the classical era to contemporary modern art.  It is a resource that is useful for scholars and provides scholarly analyses of many of the images and artists included in its database.  Without this technology, I would have had to attempt to visit many of the world's museums and requested permission to photograph the paintings (a daunting and pricey endeavor).  The curator of the Artchive, Mark Harden, has done all this for me.  In this way, my own scholarship is the very type Warwick insists benefits form technology.  We both agree, however, that technology cannot do the very personal work of interpretation.  While it can prompt "a fresh approach for consideration," the humanist must still exercise her/his own interpretive faculties to "[determine] the significance of the findings."

So what does this mean for my students and me?  Most of my students are both familiar with and excited about the possibilities of technology, however few possess the critical thinking skills necessary to ask the important questions or engage in the very personal task of interpretation.  I am excited about the possibilities inherent in using technology to assist students with asking the questions of interpreting the visual texts we will examine.  The tools might open up ways of seeing that hitherto seemed too advanced or complicated for many students who fear they may not interpret a text "correctly."  (I should mention that my students typically have difficulty understanding that there is no single "right" way to interpret any text, even if there is an agreed-upon general theme in it.)  As I mentioned in a previous post, I am excited about the possibilities inherent in creating word clouds or, if I can figure out a way to compile something like this, image clouds (repetitive images from, say, a music video, such as fragmented body parts, certain camera angles, etc.).  The possibilities are endless and I think this, in and of itself, will excite even the most apathetic students.

Blog Post #1

I have always considered myself an anomaly of human nature.  Perhaps it is because my father was a scientist, a Chemist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who worked in Hazardous Waste Management and Nuclear Counter-Terrorism, while my mother sewed my clothes, entered me in fashion shows, encouraged my love of music and theatre, and encouraged my imagination.

In high school, I achieved academic success equally well in the sciences (biology, anatomy & physiology, algebra, geometry, algebra II) as in the more creative or humanistic disciplines (band, French, speech & debate, drama).  I was a gymnast.  I studied dance my entire life and began performing in dance theatre at the age of 13.  I had always wanted to be a cardiovascular surgeon, but decided I didn't want to go to medical school because I didn't want to spend that many years in school.  So I pursued a theatre degree.  And yet, because I was bored with just the performance and creativity, I declared astronomy/astrophysics as a dual major (which I unfortunately never completed because I got married, divorced, and became a single mother as an undergraduate).

In addition to the biological sciences, I have always enjoyed astronomy & astrophysics.  I completed my M.A. in Communication and my Ph.D. in Speech Communication, both with a focus on media studies, though I conduct close textual analyses, which some would argue is a more analytical (and, hence, scientific) approach to rhetorical analysis.  I never lost my passion for the sciences, though.

During a particularly difficult period of my life, I taught middle school and actually taught Math (standard grade-specific classes, as well as algebra).  I also taught SAT Prep, and was highly sought-after because I could not only teach the Critical Writing and Critical Reading prep, but I could also teach the Critical Reasoning (math) prep. 

My mother's health had deteriorated significantly and we needed to obtain home-health care services, but we could not afford the out-of-pocket expense.  Because I was teaching at a community college, I pursued Nursing certification.  However, because I had not taken the requisite science classes within the past five years, I was required to take Biology for Health Science Majors, Anatomy & Physiology I & II, Chemistry, and Microbiology before I could actually apply to the Nursing Program.  I excelled in these classes.  I dissected a sheep's heart so skillfully that the tricuspid and bicuspid (Mitral) valves were perfectly intact.  I dissected a sheep's brain so skillfully that the arbor vitae was clearly visible and the pineal gland easily identifiable.  Dissecting the cow's eyeball was SO cool.  Who knew that the lens is as hard as a marble?  And don't even get me started on Microbiology.  My favorite class ever!  Not only was it amazing to learn the different mounts, but to see eColi swimming around and jumping and twirling in a wet mount (eColi is motile), to be able to clearly identify microbes like staphylococcus aureus, p.aeroginosa, and others, and to test microbes to identify unknowns was so enjoyable.  It allowed me to use my scientific knowledge in conjunction with my analytical skills to solve the puzzle.  My only problem... my instructor hated my lab reports because they were too wordy, detailed, and descriptive (a characteristic of humanistic writing).  Still, if I had it to do all over again, I might become a microbiologist.

For a period of time, I considered leaving academia and pursuing Nursing as a new career.  I had worked for ten years as an adjunct, unable to obtain a permanent position because the college where I taught had adopted a business model that favored adjuncts over permanent faculty and, in fact, was encouraging long-time permanent faculty to retire so they could hire more part-timers (and pay them less and not provide benefits, but offer more sections).

While in the Nursing Program, I excelled.  However, it became evident early on that I would never be a good nurse.  Nurses aren't supposed to diagnose anything, or even speculate.  Nurses are only supposed to take vital signs, take notes to provide to the physicians about a patient's complaint, and comfort patients.  We administered medications and injections.  But we were treated like dirt.  One day, while I was caring for an 82-year-old man who had been admitted through the Emergency Department with a battery of tests to determine if he was suffering from pneumonia or congestive heart failure, I discovered that I was too smart for my own good (and too good to play second fiddle to a physician who clearly thought he was "all that" but who was failing his patients).  As any good nurse does at the beginning of the shift, I read the patients' medical charts, updated myself on any developments in their condition, and read all consults that had been received.  This particular patient had received consults from Pulmonology, Cardiology, and Radiology, all of which clearly stated that there was no evidence of pneumonia, but that there was clear left ventricular dysfunction (the left ventricle of the heart is the chamber that pumps oxygenated blood out to the body, the most important chamber of the heart).  The family, a very blue-collar family, expressed concern to me that the patient wasn't improving at all, and I suggested they tell the physician that (he was a recent med school graduate who was a "hospitalist," an on-staff physician rather than a separately-billing physician with an independent practice).  I was taking the patient's vitals when the physician entered and the patient's daughter expressed his concern.  The physician immediately began talking in his most complicated and technical medical terminology, which infuriated me, so I started translating over the top of him so the family could understand what he was saying.  And then he said he would increase the patient's respiratory treatments to 4x daily and keep treating him with antibiotics.  Wait.  What?!?!  The patient had no evidence of pneumonia whatsoever, so what good would respiratory treatments and antibiotics do?  When the physician left, I gave the family the direct phone number for the cardiologist who had completed the consult, as well as the number for the hospital's patient advocate.  I told them to request a different physician and to file a complaint against the physician who was just in the room and who was the attending for the patient.  I then walked out of the patient's room and told the physician I was sorry for talking over him, but that the family clearly didn't understand his medical terminology so I was translating.  I then looked at him and said, "did you by any chance look at the consults before you entered the room?  Because you're going to kill this patient."  I then went to the Charge Nurse and said, "I'll never be a nurse and I'll never get a job as a nurse," and told her the story.  The following week my clinicals had me in the Operating Room and it became clear that if I were to ever truly be involved in medicine, I would have to go to medical school because I wanted to be conducting the surgeries (I observed a cholecystectomy--gallbladder removal, a lumpectomy--breast lump removal, a hiatal hernia repair, and the excision of a mole for testing to determine if it was benign or malignant).  I finished the semester with certification as a Certified Nursing Assistant and Certified Medication Technician and never went back (though I kind of wish I had completed the next semester because I would at least be a Licensed Professional Nurse).

And then I was offered the position at LaGuardia and relocated to NYC.  Woo!

All this is to say that my very being challenges the "Two Cultures."  I am passionate about math and science (algebra, especially... and I have tutored several LaGCC students who are also my advisees in algebra).  I have helped students devise study plans for biology and chemistry and helped them create methods for remembering, for instance, how to balance chemical equations.  And yet I teach for the Humanities Department.  I am living proof for my students that the humanities and sciences are not--nor do they have to be--mutually exclusive.  I continue to explore astronomy and astrophysics (and love Discovery's "The Universe" and other shows).  I watch medical shows on Discovery ("Untold Stories of the ER" and "Trauma:  Life in the ER"... I had considered being a trauma nurse).  I love shows like "NCIS," "CSI," "Elementary," and "Criminal Minds" that use scientific deduction to solve crimes.  I loved the show "Numbers."  But I also love Shakespeare, attending performances of the New York Philharmonic, reading, and dancing (I want to learn Belly Dancing).  I meditate daily and love exploring metaphysics and different (mostly Eastern) spiritual practices.  And in the midst of all of this... I'm an avid rock climber, so I'm a naturalist as well.

As I said, I'm an anomaly of human nature.  My very existence challenges the Two Cultures dichotomy.  I tell my students that I'm not normal.  And I'm not.  But I think that's a good thing.

Today's seminar of the Provost's Learning Space has sparked an intense interest in exploring the possibilities and potentialities of digital humanities, both from a pedagogical perspective as well as a scholarly perspective.  I not only have ideas for scholarship that tools like Voyant will make more efficient, but I have ideas for incorporating some tools into teaching and for engaging students in class assignments.

As a scholar, I would like to use Voyant to create word clouds that identify the most commonly used words in the speeches of prominent woman suffragists, in the speeches and writings of Eleanor Roosevelt, and in contemporary rap/hip-hop/R&B songs.  My scholarship is close textual analysis of particular artifacts (women's political public address and/or media--music videos, film, television) to examine the rhetorical implications of the messages embodied in them.  Word clouds would allow me to more efficiently identify common terms or ideas that occurred during the woman suffrage movement, which could elucidate, perhaps, why the struggle lasted nearly 100 years (1838-1920) or if there was a shift in language that ultimately resulted in the successful ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that gave women the right to vote.  With regard to Eleanor Roosevelt, she was a prolific speaker and writer.  She was the first First Lady to hold regular press conferences (open only to female journalists, thereby opening up career opportunities for women that were previously nonexistent).  She was incredibly popular and remains so.  Word clouds would be helpful to identify ideas and themes that permeated her messages to better understand how she enacted feminism to conspicuously in a time when feminism was not celebrated socially.  And with regard to media artifacts, my scholarship typically examines the contradiction between the words and the images in, for instance, music videos, to identify the competing messages and their potential impact on audiences.  What would be interesting to me is to examine the words that occur most frequently in the lyrics of rap, hip-hop, and R&B songs in the Billboard Top Ten over the course of a year or two years to identify not only the messages that are being fed to (largely) our youth, but to examine the rhetorical implications of such messages.

In my HUC117--Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication course, I have students complete a research project that, instead of resulting in a written essay, is published in the form of a website with hyperlinks to sources and examples.  I would like to expand this project to include the incorporation of digital humanities tools in the research, or research about digital humanities tools to better engage students in their research specifically and in the digital humanities more generally.  For example, one student might examine the history of visualizations of ancient locales and their use in understanding our history.  Another might explore a digital archive to make an argument about the corpus of a person's work and discuss the importance of that archive in accessing information that might otherwise be inaccessible.  The possibilities are endless.

My HUC101--Fundamentals of Speech Communication course asks students to conduct a critical analysis of a music video to identify what story the images tell.  It would be interesting to have students create word clouds using Wordle of the lyrics as well in order to discuss the interplay (or contradictions) between the images and lyrics and to speculate about which is more powerful and why. 

Finally, my HUC106--Public Speaking course could incorporate different Digital Humanities tools to help students not only research their topics, but to create more compelling visual presentations to accompany their oral presentations.

Clearly, I have lots of ideas and I'm excited.  I didn't know what to expect when I submitted my request to join this seminar, but I can honestly say I'm so happy I did.

Welcome to my Provost's Learning Space Blog!

Here, we will explore the Digital Humanities and all its potentialities.