Author Archives: Adeline Koh

May 17, 2013, 3:00 pm

Weekend Reading: The DH Summer Edition

The semester is over! Grades have been turned in, the weather is beautiful, possibilities are endless. It’s the perfect time to think about beginning summer projects, and to read up on the digital humanities, one of our favorite fields at ProfHacker. My links in this week’s Weekend Reading focus on some interesting developments in race, ethnicity and literary studies within the digital humanities, social media, and some literary inspiration for beginning your new summer project.

In “Famous Authors’ Handwritten Outlines for Great Works of Literature,” Emily Temple gives her readers some inspiration in showing you how famous authors planned out their novels (which may inspire you to check out Amy Cavendar’s review of Scapple, a terrific new mindmapping app): “Writing a novel (or a story, for that matter) is confusing work. There are just so many characters running all over…

April 26, 2013, 8:00 am

Reminder: The Global Women Wikipedia Write-In #GWWI, TODAY, 1-3pm EST

By Adeline Koh

rewritewikipedia1-300x187 Join the Postcolonial Digital Humanities (#DHPoco) TODAY in our Global Women Wikipedia Write-In from 1-3pm EST! This write-in is aimed to improve and increase the amount of Wikipedia coverage on women outside of Europe and the United States.

If you’d like to join in, please sign up on the Wikipedia meetup page and check out the #GWWI main event page. Also, if you’re on Twitter, send out a Tweet using the hashtag #GWWI so that we’ll know you’re there. Real-time events are going on at HASTAC 2013, UCLA, Foothill College and the Sanger Papers at NYU.

Roopika Risam (@roopikarisam) and I will be live-blogging #GWWI developments here between 1-3pm EST, so do follow along and let us know what you’re doing so we can add it to the live-blog! (Every little edit counts.)

Now on to today’s event. New Wikipedia editors often find that it is hard for them to create entries that will…

April 25, 2013, 11:00 am

On Open Access, #AltAc and the Future of the Academic Press: A Conversation with Duke University Press, Part Three

By Adeline Koh

This is part 3 (the final part) of the ninth interview in a series, Digital Challenges to Academic Publishing, by Adeline Koh. Each article in this series features an interview with an academic publisher, press or journal editor on how their organization is changing in response to the digital world. The series has featured interviews with Anvil Academic, Stanford Highwire Press, NYU Press, MIT Press and the Penn State University Press.

In this third and final installation of the interview, I speak with Ken Wissoker (@kwissoker), editorial director of Duke University Press, about open access publishing, the future of the academic press, and alternative academic careers.

AK: Let’s talk about open access publishing. Does your press have a policy regarding open access? Are you trying to move towards that in terms of your journals or your books?

KW: We don’t have an overall policy….

April 22, 2013, 11:00 am

Join the Global Women Wikipedia Write-In (#GWWI) this Friday, 1-3pm EST!

By Adeline Koh

Screenshot 4:8:13 4:37 PM Ever been disappointed by the level of Wikipedia coverage on the world outside of Europe and the United States? Consider joining in this Friday in the Global Women Wikipedia Write-in (#GWWI), hosted by the Postcolonial Digital Humanities (#DHPoco) and the Global Outlook on the Digital Humanities (GO:DH) special interest group. If this event sounds familiar to you, that’s because #GWWI follows on from the success of #tooFEW, a multi-location edit-a-thon to write women and people of color into Wikipedia held in March 2013.

Building on #tooFEW, we want to increase the amount of Wikipedia coverage on women outside of Europe and the United States. If you’ve ever tried doing a Wikipedia search for important women theorists around the world, you might be surprised to note how short the entries are, particularly on their work and their ideas.

A few examples:

Chandra Talpade Mohanty,
…

April 17, 2013, 11:00 am

Buying Book Chapters like Music Tracks, and What’s Wrong with Traditional Peer Review Anyway? A Conversation with Duke University Press, Part Two.

By Adeline Koh

This is part 2 of the ninth interview in a series by Adeline Koh entitled Digital Challenges to Academic Publishing. Each article in this series features an interview with an academic publisher, press or journal editor on how their organization is changing in response to the digital world. The series has featured interviews with Anvil Academic, Stanford Highwire Press, NYU Press, MIT Press and the Penn State University Press.

In this second part of an interview with Ken Wissoker (@kwissoker) (editorial director of Duke University Press), I speak with Ken about some of the digital innovations Duke University Press is experimenting with for its new publications, and on Ken’s appreciation for traditional forms of peer review. Read part one of the interview here.

AK: What I’m hearing from you is that length is very malleable when you publish something digitally. You can have the really…

April 12, 2013, 3:00 pm

Weekend Reading: Race and the Global Digital Humanities Edition

By Adeline Koh

This has been a spirited two weeks in conversations about higher education. First off, Rebecca Schuman’s Slate article on how “getting a literature PhD will turn you into an emotional trainwreck” hit the Internet on April 5, resulting in a flurry of heated articles published in response. Next, on Monday April 8, the MSU MATRIX Research Center hosted the Day of Digital Humanities, which provided insight into how digital humanists work around the world. My links in this Weekend Reading focus mostly these two big events through the lenses of race, gender and global politics.

In response to Schuman’s Slate article, Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) has published an important blog post on graduate school, race and reality: “Plainly put, black folks need credentials because without them our “ghetto” names get our resumes trashed, our clean criminal records lose out to…

April 9, 2013, 11:00 am

On Monographs, Libraries and Blogging: A Conversation with Duke University Press, Part One

By Adeline Koh

duke chapel This is part 1 of the ninth interview in a series, Digital Challenges to Academic Publishing, by Adeline Koh. Each article in this series features an interview with an academic publisher, press or journal editor on how their organization is changing in response to the digital world. The series has featured interviews with Anvil Academic, Stanford Highwire Press, NYU Press, MIT Press and the Penn State University Press.

In this interview I speak with Ken Wissoker (@kwissoker), editorial director of Duke University Press, one of the most well-known university presses for innovative books on global cultural theory. This first installment covers Ken’s thoughts about the relationship between the academic library and press at Duke, publishing your research online before you find a traditional publisher, and the future of the monograph.

AK: Hi Ken, thanks so much for speaking with us…

March 15, 2013, 8:00 am

Tips for Participating in #TooFEW: Feminist People of Color Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon Today, 11am-3pm EST!

By Adeline Koh

toofewfeminists Have you ever been disappointed by the way Wikipedia represents certain subjects? You’re not alone. Wikipedia has been criticized for its gender gap by many sources, including the Wikimedia foundation, Rhiannon Ruff and Claire Potter.

To address this, groups across the United States are meeting today from 11am-3pm EST for a feminist Wikipedia edit-a-thon titled #tooFEW. If you can’t find a way to physically get to one of the edit-a-thon parties, please consider jumping in virtually, editing entries and following the Twitter conversations using the hashtag: #tooFEW. Read our Tuesday post to see other ways you can participate.

Here are some suggestions from Adrianne Wadewitz, David Golumbia, Fiona Barnett and Kaysi Holman to create entries that are less likely to be deleted/flagged for deletion:

Wikipedia editors like citations–the kinds of citations that would be…

March 12, 2013, 11:00 am

#TooFEW: Feminist People of Color Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon on Friday, March 15 (2013) from 11am-3pm EST

By Adeline Koh

feminist wiki edit a thon Have you ever wondered why there are few instances of detailed entries on women and gender studies, disability studies and on people of color on Wikipedia? Wikipedia itself has noted its own systemic bias–Wikipedians are by and large privileged, educated Anglophone males who might not consider these fields worthy subjects to annotate. According to the Wikimedia Foundation’s study in 2011, only 13 per cent of countributors to the site were female. Claire Potter has pondered about this in a recent article titled “Prikipedia? Or, Looking for the Women on Wikipedia.” If this concerns you, now’s your chance to rectify this!

In celebration of Women’s History Month and WikiWomen’s History Month, groups across the United States are organizing both virtual and in-person meet-ups to edit Wikipedia to include more perspectives on women and people of color on Friday: #tooFEW — a feminist

March 11, 2013, 8:00 am

Toshl: Reorganize Your Financial Life (with little Monster Gnomes)

By Adeline Koh

It’s that time of the year when taxes are in the air. You’re probably irritated, wondering: where are my receipts? Why didn’t I document my finances better? If this rings true, it might be time to look into some personal finance software. Heather has blogged some reviews of applications that she has used earlier, and today ProfHacker reviews a fun little application called Toshl.

Toshl is a multi-platform app that allows you to keep track of your spending. When you pay for something, you can enter the expense either on its web-based application, or on your mobile phone. Toshl is multi-platform (iOS, Android, Symbian and the Windows Phone) and syncs smoothly across different devices.

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