Big Data and Performance Historiography at the the NEH Institute 2018—Monday 18 June 2018
Channel: HowlRound Theatre Commons
Date: 2018-06-19

“Big Data and Performance Historiography”
7:45 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. PDT (San Francisco) / 9:45 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. CDT (Chicago) / 10:45 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. EDT (New York)
Lecture by Derek Miller.

The University of Georgia’s Department of Theatre and Film Studies presents the NEH Institute 2018: Digital Technologies in Theatre and Performance Studies livestreaming from commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Monday 18 June - Friday 29 June.

This institute is aimed at college and university faculty eager to integrate digital technologies into their curricula, and who would like to gain a deeper understanding of the technologies and techniques to make this possible. The program assumes no prior expertise in digital media. Through presentations and hands-on workshops with some of the country’s leading experts on digital performance and scholarship, the institute’s participants will gain valuable techniques and experience in how best to integrate digital methods and tools in teaching theatre studies and performance practice.
 
The first week focuses on the impact of digital technologies on performance scholarship, and the second, on digital performance practices. Both weeks balance lectures, seminars, and hands-on workshops. Participants will leave the institute with specific exercises, lesson plans, and references to support continued development in their classrooms and their home institutions.

The institute was jointly initiated by the leadership of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) and the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR).

Week One: Digital Scholarship and Theory

Monday 18 June​: Big Data

The directors, David Saltz and Sarah Bay-Cheng, will provide an overview of digital scholarship, followed by a lecture by visiting faculty member Derek Miller (Harvard) on the use of big data analysis techniques to gain new insights into theatre history. Dr. Miller will describe his Visualizing Broadway project, for which he created a massive data set of the cast sizes, genres, and run lengths (among other information) for every Broadway production since 1900, and analyzed these data to illuminate the ebb and flow of theatre practice. Following the lecture, he will be joined by Dr. Emily McGinn, coordinator of UGA’s DigiLab, to conduct a workshop giving participants hands-on experience with the digital humanities tools that Dr. Miller uses in his research, in particular the network analysis package Gelphi. This workshop will also give participants an opportunity to work with archival theatrical materials, such as playscripts and programs, from the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

http://howlround.com/livestreaming-the-neh-institute-2018-digital-technologies-in-theatre-and-performance-studies-at-the