Follow this link to the THATCamp evaluation form – thanks for coming! THATCamp AHA 2016, Atlanta, anyone?

Morning sessions will take place at the Theresa Lang Center at The New School’s Arnhold Hall located at 55 West 13th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

Afternoon sessions will be scheduled in The New School’s Arnhold Hall on 13th Street and around the corner at Johnson/Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street. There will be a room for storing luggage until 4:30pm at Arnhold Hall.

[The New School campus map]

For lunch, we recommend a quick walk west to Sixth Avenue, or the stretch of eateries two blocks east on University Place.

If you’re staying at the conference hotels, The New School is a short subway ride from Midtown, on the downtown F train (which you can catch from West 57th Street and Sixth Avenue). Get off the train at 14th Street (Union Square) — The New School is just a quick walk south.

[Google Maps]

Last minute questions? Tweet us at #AHA2015!

Scheduled for 1:30-2:20pm in the Hirshon Suite (205), 55 W. 13th Street

Whether this is your first THATCamp or your 20th, you are participating in a remarkably wide-reaching process of talking, making, learning, and sharing the digital humanities.  Since the first THATCamp in May 2008 at George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media there have been well over 150 THATCamp unconferences all over the world, reaching thousands of people.

As one of the members of THATCamp Council (elected under a community-produced THATCamp Council Charter), I’m particularly interested in what both new and experienced THATCampers would like to see from future THATCamps.  So, I’m proposing a session where we talk broadly about the future of THATCamp.  What role can and should these unconferences serve in reaching and serving people interested in the digital humanities?

Historians texting.

As one of the co-organizers of this year’s THATCamp AHA, I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately.

• “What exactly is THATCamp?”
• “What should I expect at an unconference?”
• “Is it specific to historians?”

On this site, you can visit the About page for detailed answers to these questions, and the THATCamp 101 page for some basic instructions for the day (most important: bring a laptop!)

Earlier this week the AHA did a nice job of explaining what THATCamps are, so to their description I’ve added some more specifics:

THATCamp, which stands for The Humanities and Technology Camp, is an inexpensive (in our case, free), open gathering where participants set the agenda themselves. Topics are proposed in advance via the website or on the day itself–this is what makes it an “unconference.” During the sessions, you can expect wide ranging conversations with humanists and technologists of all skill levels interested in learning and building together, collaboratively exploring questions on any aspect of the application of technology to the humanities. The sessions you attend might be a general discussion, a project-based conversation, or a workshop focusing on a particular technological skill.

Join us on January 6 at The New School.

In the next week, we’ll open the site to your session proposals, which the group will vote on together at The New School the morning of January 6. We’ve also been working to arrange some pre-scheduled workshops. One, proposed by The New School’s Liz Sevcenko, will discuss a collaborative digital history of mass incarceration; the other, led by Rice University’s Caleb McDaniel, explores Twitter as a medium for history.

THATCamp AHA is open to all, not just to those attending the annual meeting. Sure, you’ll meet fellow historians — #twitterstorians or experienced digital folk — but others will be new to digital research and pedagogies. We expect a wide range of participants and welcome first-time attendees as well as veteran THATCampers: graduate students, college faculty and K-12 teachers, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, independent scholars, developers and programmers, administrators, managers, and funders as well as people from the non-profit sector, the for-profit sector, and anyone interested in the application of technology to the study of the humanities.

You don’t need to come to THATCamp with any special skills, other than an open mind and a willingness to participate, learn, and share — so do spread the word to friends and colleagues. You might even take a peek at some of last year’s THATCamp AHA conversations following the Twitter hashtag, #THATCampAHA. Don’t be shy: register today!

Still have questions? Ask away in the comments.

 

I would like to welcome AHA THATCampers to The New School, a university established in Greenwich Village in 1919, on January 6, immediately following the American Historical Association’s annual meeting, January 2-5, in New York City. I want to thank my colleagues Dan Royles, Monica Mercado and Shane Landrum for volunteering to organize. This is a particular gift at a moment when many of us are absorbed in activism against violence toward communities of color that have been highlighted by the grand jury decisions in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.

THATCamp is being co-sponsored by the Humanities Action Lab, a New School initiative of which I am co-director, and one that has put #DH at the center of its practice. Although our web site is still under construction and being edited, you can see more of what we are about here. This leads me to some of the things I am interested in pursuing at THATCamp:

• How does #DH intervene in moments of national crisis, like the one we are in now? How can we use the humanities, made public by our digital practice, to give voice to communities that are endangered by decades of escalated policing, and address the failure of understanding that white communities often have about conditions they do not experience or see?
• As we move forward with a progressive #DH scholarly agenda, how do we both compete for resources that support our practice and at the same time not reinforce the structural subordination of poor and marginalized populations who may not have access to our work?
• Does technology have the power to open universities to communities who are excluded from higher ed because of structural racism and classism?
• What tools might matter to the above agenda — what tools reinforce structural inequalities?

If these questions seem highly provocative, it’s only because they are! I am sure that many of us will be having these conversations at AHA, but the unconference would allow us to put them front and center.

Registration is now open. See you in New York!

Kazakh yurt

If you are coming to the AHA annual meeting in New York and planning to stay for THATCamp on January 6th you should register for the meeting and make your hotel reservations as soon as possible. The hotel rates at each of the three conference hotels are excellent and available for three days before and after the annual meeting itself. But there are a limited number of rooms available at this rate, and the allocation for the days following the meeting are selling out quickly. So if you’re coming to THATCamp and want to stay on either the 5th or the 6th I recommend registering as soon as possible.

We are very excited to announce that the AHA Annual Meeting will yet again have an associated THATCamp, and even more excited that it will be hosted by the Humanities Action Lab at The New School for Public Engagement. It will take place on Tuesday, January 6th from 10:00AM to 4:00PM. Information about registration and the event itself will be available soon, so watch this space for more news and details. You can also read more about the THATCamp movement and browse other THATCamps at thatcamp.org.

We look forward to seeing you in New York in January.