AAS 2020 CFP: “Hacking East Asia: Expanding the Horizons of Interdisciplinary Digital Methods”

CFP: AAS 2020 Digital Technologies Lightning Panel Session

Title: “Hacking East Asia: Expanding the Horizons of Interdisciplinary Digital Methods”

Dear Friends, 

I am organizing a special Digital Technologies lightning panel session for AAS 2020 which will focus on introducing a number of useful digital programs/platforms/media/methodologies and their practical applications in East Asian studies. Each presenter will be given approximately 5–8 minutes to present their work using no more than 3 slides, followed by an open question and answer period. Kindly find our working abstract below. 

Conceptualization of digital humanities is typically confined to the methodologies of textual and network analysis, and more recently, Big Data. Answering Patrik Svensson’s call (2016) for a broader vision of “big digital humanities” through engagement with the digital as simultaneously tool, object of study, and expressive medium, this lightning session will pragmatically demonstrate the potential of ‘big Asian digital humanities’ by providing a forum for scholars of different disciplines to discuss one digital tool/methodology/platform critical to their work. Special attention will be paid to underrepresented digital media and methodologies, such as wikis, video games, and netnography. Other tools may relate to translation, archive, pedagogy, knowledge organization, and collaboration. Drawing upon panelists’ unique competencies, the session will create a space for DH scholars and newcomers alike to discover new tools and discuss their methodological and theoretical applications. Short tutorials will be published online to complement presentations and sustain interaction.

Some of the topics to be covered include: the Scrible platform and taking rich digital ethnographic fieldnotes for Internet research (context: online Shinto communities), methods for studying wiki style databases as archives and community resources (context: disability technologies in Japan), digital image archives (context: religious photos shared online), and possibly Omeka.

If you have a favorite digital tool and project that you would like to share and are interested in joining what is sure to be an exciting and informative panel, please contact Kaitlyn Ugoretz at kugoretz@ucsb.edu at your earliest convenience! You will then be informed of the special application procedure for this particular panel.

Regards,

Kaitlyn Ugoretz

Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies

University of California, Santa Barbara

kugoretz@ucsb.edu