Michael
Heim (2001),
Art Center, Pasadena.
Author and pioneer
in thinking through
the social and aesthetic
possibilities for
virtual reality.
Lev
Manovich (2002),
Visual Arts, UCSD.
Manovich'sThe Language
of New Media (MIT Press,
2001) has proved to
be one of the most
influential accounts
of new digital media.
Geert
Lovink (2003),
Australia. Journalistic,
scholar, and intellectual,
Lovink has developed
a wide range of interventions
for exploring the
political possibilities
of the networked computer.
Johanna
Drucker (2004),
Media Studies, University
of Virginia. A scholar
of the artists book
and a practicing artists
and writer, Johanna
Drucker is now developing
an impressive array
of new media work.
Interdisciplinary, collaborative
paradigm
Cross-discipline
Cross-field/period
Online publishing
of proceedings, papers,
audio and video of
talks
Convergence on common
technological development
initiative
Online casebook publications
Annual conference
Annual week-long graduate
seminar
Anticipated Results:
[from MRG grant proposal:]
"The institutional goal of
Transliteracies is to make
the UC system a leader in collaborative
humanities/engineering/social
science research on information
technology. Subsidiary institutional
goals include strengthening
the UC system's profile in
the burgeoning humanistic
field of "history of the
book" or "early
media"; bringing together
UC faculty interested in
digital media with UC faculty
focused on earlier periods;
and training graduate students
who have interests that straddle
the humanities, media or
communication studies, and
information technology. The
project's wider, social goal
is to improve online reading
by bringing the full, interdisciplinary
resources of a university
to bear on the problem."
Relation to Broader UC and UCSB
Initiatives:
[from my introduction to Panel 3 on
"Collaboration Across the Humanities,
Arts, and Sciences" at the Humanities@UCSB
Conference, April 27, 2005:
One of the main recommendations of
the AAU Report (one that potentially
links up with many of its other recommendations)
is that "University presidents,
provosts, and humanities deans should
provide flexible structures for interaction
and collaboration across humanities
disciplines, and among the humanities
and the social and natural sciences
and the professional schools."
So, too, the 2001 Report of the UC
Presidential Humanities Commission
forcefully recommends on pp. 11 ff.
a suite of "multi-researcher and interdisciplinary" collaborative
initiatives in the humanities involving project-centered or clustered approaches
to topics.
And the current draft campus LRDP Academic Plan recommends, on p. 8, that: "One
mode to consider in the future development of the campus is the allocation
of sets of FTE to be used for cluster hires among the disciplines."
In sum, as David Theo Goldberg and Cathy Davidson argue in their Chronicle
of Higher Education 2004 essay titled "A Manifesto for the Humanities in a
Technological Age": "universities and their faculties have been
slow to conceive of new institutional structures and reward systems . .
. for those [in the humanities] who favor interdisciplinary or collaborative
work. We believe that a new configuration in the humanities must be championed
. . . [and] must be supported by new institutional structures and values."
