Distinguished Graduate Center scholars analyze digital trends, investigate how technology and culture collide, and develop critical theories.

 

On Broadway: An Interactive Installation – Lev Manovich

The interactive installation ON BROADWAY represents life in the 21st century city through a compilation of images and data collected from Instagram, Twitter, Foursquare, Google Street View, the US Census Bureau, and more, that spans the 13 miles of Broadway in Manhattan. The result is a new type of city view, created from the activities of hundreds of thousands of people.
A project by Daniel Goddemeyer, Moritz Stefaner, Dominikus Baur, and Lev Manovich.  Read more…

Mapping Occupation: The Union Army and the Meaning of Reconstruction – Gregory Downs

This project will simultaneously convey new data about the presence, size, and persistence of Army outposts in the years after Appomattox, and use that data to develop interpretations about the crucial role of force in shaping emancipation, the development of new national rights, the newfound power of the federal government, and the insurgency launched by ex-Confederates against federal power. The project will also utilize newly organized data about Army outposts to develop an interactive website that will allow scholars to map federal power and emancipation in the post-war moment. Read more…

 

 

Debates in Digital Humanities – Matthew K. Gold

Together, the essays in Debates in the Digital Humanities—which will be published both as a printed book and as an ongoing, open-access website—suggest that the digital humanities is uniquely positioned to contribute to the revival of the humanities and academic life. Read more…

 

 

 

Welfare Rights Initiative: Digital Oral History Project – Cynthia Tobar

The WRI Oral History Project documents the history of the Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI), a grassroots student activist and community leadership training organization located at Hunter College. The aim is to examine, via these oral history interviews, social movement activity at the level of a grassroots organization as exemplified by the WRI, which was developed to aid student welfare recipients to become agents of social change and actively involve them with policymaking. Read more…
 

What They Saved – Nancy K. Miller

Distinguished Professor Nancy K. Miller (Comp Lit, English, French) reconstructs her family’s missing past from artifacts passed down to her.  Locks of hair, postcards, receipts, letters written in Yiddish are among the objects which inspire the quest to understand her relatives’ lives. Read more…

 

 

Children Framing Childhoods – Wendy Luttrell

Wendy Luttrell, Professor of Urban Education and Social-Personality Psychology, investigates the ways young people participate in social structures.  She asks them to take pictures of their  family, school, and community life that “emphasize their participation in and insights about larger social structures, processes, and ideologies—including the global migration of people, poverty, gender, and the American Dream. Read more…

Spatiality Apps – Steve Romalewski

Steve Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research, takes mobile applications beyond the basic information retrieval done by a tourist visiting a city, in his suite of mobile apps called Spatiality Apps.  He and his team “focus on delivering interesting, detailed, unexpected information often buried in government databases.” Read more…