Research Talks – Fall 2020 Graduate Fellows and Faculty Grantees Projects
Channel: Digital Matters
Date: 2020-12-02

John Flynn, DM / American West Center Graduate Fellow, PhD Candidate in Dept. of History, “Native Scholars Clearinghouse”
Native Peoples of Utah is a new site devoted to centralizing research activity related to Native American life from faculty across the University of Utah. It emphasizes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to a variety of topics.

Max Schleicher, DM Graduate Fellow, PhD student in the Dept. of English, “A Computational Analysis of Poetry Blurbs”

Using quantitative methods, my research models trends in poetry blurbs over time. Why blurbs? Analyzing the promises offered by blurbs offers scholars a shorthand way to gauge what readers expect from contemporary poetry—and provide a window into the sociology of contemporary poetry. This research will look to answer why, for example, the negative pleasures of reading (e.g., being “shattered”) are emphasized in blurbs.

Milad Mozari, DM Exhibition & Performance Faculty Grantee, Asst. Prof., School of Architecture, “Resonance Map (Remote Sensing and Possible Translations)”

A brief introduction to remote sensing through hardware alongside APIs and the potential bridges for sonification and visualization.

Marnie Powers-Torrey, DM Faculty Grantee, Assoc. Librarian, Marriott Library, “Interactive Website to Extend & Sustain Access to Artists’ Books”

The Marriott Library User Experience and Web Development team, graduate student Jonathan Sandberg and I are building a public-facing website that educates and facilitates the use of a controlled vocabulary by scholars, makers, and community users of artists’ books. The website, database, visual exemplars, and index aids in the discoverability of artists’ books from entry to advanced level. The site will provide information on artists’ books, directives for using the index to ascertain appropriate vocabulary for research and invite the public to submit commonly used terms that enhance discoverability. The searchable index seeks to continue the work of the Artists Book Thesaurus (ABT), but with a wider audience.

Todd Samuelson, DM Faculty Grantee, Assoc. Librarian, Marriott Library, “Negative Space: Visualizing Historical Illustration Processes”

The Negative Space project aims to develop a framework for distinguishing historical illustration processes in preparation for machine learning. After building a corpus of high-resolution photographic details of early illustrations, the effort will map characteristics of each process while incorporating 3D scans of matrices used to print natural history volumes from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. A final component of the project involves the production of a letterpress-printed artist’s book depicting notable historical presses and tools.