Online Symposium

Data, Humanities, & Society

November 12, 2021 - Microsoft Teams

Resources For Symposium

Before joining the session, we encourage you to download the following items for our interactive session at 9:30 a.m.

Watch The Entire Archived Symposium

8:30 a.m. - 8:35 a.m. | Opening Remarks

Dr. Kevin Porter, English Department Chair and Symposium Chair

08:35 a.m. - 09:00 a.m. | What is Data-Driven Research?

Dr. Kenton Ramsby

In this opening session, Dr. Kenton Ramsby will explain why putting data in context is so important. He will guide the audience through an interactive discussion about how to use visualizations to interpret large bodies of data.

9:00 a.m. - 09:25 a.m. | Data-Driven Research Projects

Ashley Johnson and Bailey Cannon

This session highlights the diverse research environment at UTA by highlighting a range of data driven projects by two graduate students Ashley Johnson and Bailey Cannon. In this lightning round of presentations, they will explain their experiences working with data and how it led them to ask different questions about and produce different types of research projects.them to ask different questions about and produce different types of research projects.

9:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. | Interactive Demonstration—Data Storytelling with Tableau Public

Dr. Kenton Ramsby

Signifying & Sampling: Visualizing Jay-Z’s Music

In this interactive demonstration, Dr. Rambsy will explain how the rapper Jay-Z can serve as a gateway figure to scholarship at the intersections of literature and data storytelling. Audience members will use Tableau Public, a free online visualization software, to create a interactive visualization related to the various samples in Brooklyn born rapper’s music. In preparation for this session, audience members will need to download Tableau Public, create accounts for free, and also download a pre-assembled dataset from UTA’s Dataverse.

10:05 a.m. - 10:40 a.m. | Symposium Keynote

Dr. Amy Earhart

In this session, Dr. Amy Earhart will discuss practical tips and steps related to how to get started in Digital Humanities and offer advice to students and teachers about to implement methodologies into their work.

Speakers and Bios

This year we are priviledged to bring 4 speakers to model and guide you through creating your own data-driven story or analysis.

Dr. Kenton Ramsby Assistant Professor of English The University of Texas at Arlington

Ashley Johnson PhD Student in English The University of Texas at Arlington

Bailey Cannon MA Student in History The University of Texas at Arlington

Amy Earhart Associate Professor of English Texas A&M University

Dr. Kenton Ramsby

is an Assistant Professor of African American Literature at the University of Texas at Arlington. His ongoing Digital Humanities projects use datasets to illuminate the significance of recurring trends and thematic shifts as it relates Black writers and rappers.

Ashley Johnson

is pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Texas at Arlington, specializing in Medieval English Literature and culture with a focus in Children's Literature and Arthurian Literature.

Bailey Cannon

is pursuing her MA in History at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her research interests include 20th-century United States and World History, focusing specifically on United States and international politics. Originally from the Kansas City, Missouri area, Bailey graduated from Texas Christian University in the Spring of 2018 with a degree in History and Political Science and has been a teacher at The Oakridge School in Arlington for three years.

Dr. Amy Earhart

is Associate Professor of English and an affiliated faculty of Africana Studies at Texas A&M University. In 2020, Earhart received a NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication for her book length digital project “Digital Humanities and the Infrastructures of Race in African-American Literature.” She has also won numerous teaching awards, including the University Distinguished Achievement Award. Earhart has published scholarship on a variety of digital humanities topics, with work that includes a monograph Traces of Old, Uses of the New: The Emergence of Digital Literary Studies (U Michigan Press 2015), a co-edited collection The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age (U Michigan Press, 2010), and a number of articles and book chapters in volumes.

Sponsors for the Data, Humanities, & Society Symposium

This event was made possible by a grant from Humanities TX and additional financial support from The University of Texas College of Liberal Arts.