Jason M. Kelly's Blog, page 7

Digital Humanities in Promotion and Tenure

As more scholars have engaged in the digital humanities—and as this scholarship has become an increasingly prominent part of promotion and tenure cases—it has become incumbent upon professional organizations and university departments to educate faculty on 1) what we mean by digital humanities and 2) how to evaluate faculty research in the digital humanities. This post is a brief introduction to the digital humanities (a.k.a. DH) for university faculty whose responsibilities include reviewing...

Digital Audio for Public Historians (4): Editing Your Audio

Today, I am going to work with you on some basic audio editing techniques. As you will remember from class, we could use any number of programs to edit, such as GarageBand or Audacity. Since we all have a free subscription to Adobe Audition, I am going to demonstrate with it. While the techniques that I am showing you today look different in different programs, all audio editing programs have the functionality that I am demonstrating.

Digital Audio for Public Historians (3): Microphone Types

We’ve finally gotten to microphones. A quality microphone might be the most important factor in creating a good recording rather than a bad recording. I have already talked about onboard microphones a bit in the first entry in this series on recording devices. That’s pretty much all I have to say about built-in mics. They’re fine for getting the job done—if content is more important than quality. For many public history applications, we would much prefer to have great content anda quality...

Digital Audio for Public Historians (2): Mono and Stereo

In this second installment for “Digital Audio for Public Historians,” I want to have a look at one of the basic recording options available on mid-range recorders: the option to have a mono or stereo recording.We will use sample recordings from the 1960s to illustrate a few key principals, including recordings of James Baldwin, The Beach Boys, and The Beatles.

Digital Audio for Public Historians (1): Recording Devices

As we discussed in yesterday’s class, public historians might use audio recordings for a number of different projects: oral histories, podcasts, audio clips for exhibitions, documentaries, among other things. We were able to play a bit with different recording devices—from smartphones, to computers, to low and and high end voice recorders. It became obvious very quickly that both the equipment we used and the recording conditions had a huge effect on the quality of our recordings. Over my...

How Podcasting Works

An infographic explaining how podcasts work.

Indiana Invests Less in K-12 Education than Any of Its Neighbors

It may not be coincidental that the same year Indiana ranked #36 in per pupil primary and secondary spending in 2017 it ranked 34 in the percentage of the state population between 24 and 44 with postsecondary degrees.

Some Thoughts about Altering Historical Documents, Governmentality, & the US National Archives (and Michel Foucault)

In effect, the National Archives followed an unwritten, unspoken directive of the state. And, in so doing, they mirrored the politics of the state by presenting an alternative history, undermined public confidence in a governmental institution (in this case, the National Archives itself), and dismissed professional standards to appease the political winds.

Field Scan of Exhibitions on the Anthropocene

As part of the publicly engaged research project, Museum of the Anthropocene, this map provides a field scan of exhibitions that attempt to make interventions in our understanding of the concept of the Anthropocene.

I.M. Pei (1917-2019)

Remembering the work of I.M. Pei.