Suggestions for the Break

If you're looking for something to do over the break, here are a few exhibitions that are worth a visit:

• WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.  You can find more information here.
• "The Progress of Love" at the Menil Collection.  You can find more information here
• "Dear John and Dominique: Letters and Drawings from the Menil Archives" at the Menil Collection.  You can find more information here.

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY is $15 for students, and it is well worth the price.  The MFAH is open Tuesday through Sunday-- hours are posted on their website.

The Menil Collection is a free museum, and there is more to see there than just those two exhibitions.  The Menil Collection is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11:00AM-7:00PM.

Update!

Hi all,

Apologies for not posting immediately after our Public History gathering on November 16th.  I'm sure we are all equally busy this time of year.  Just a couple of quick updates before we take a short break before the Spring semester--

• Our first informal Public History gathering was a success!  We will be setting up a couple of meeting times for next semester, and I will keep you posted on those dates.  
• If anyone is still looking for classes for next semester, there are a ton of great options in the history department!  Also, there is an interesting opportunity outside of the history department-- Dr. Alessandro Carrera's History of Italy through Novels: Historic Novels and Film Adaptations.  This class is offered on Mondays from 4:00-7:00PM in the World Cultures & Literature department.  I have a copy of the syllabus if anyone would like one-- just send me an email.  If you'd like to contact Dr. Carrera directly, you can find his email address here.  He usually responds within a few hours. 

Last but not least-- GOOD LUCK with everything you have going on right now! Have a wonderful break!

-Lori

Food for Thought Presents Documentary "Food Fight" and Filmmaker Q&A, Nov. 27

Join us for the next Food for Thought Event:

Screening of the documentary film "Food Fight" and 

Q&A with Producer/Director Chris Taylor

Tuesday, November 27, 2012
4:00 p.m.
Roy G. Cullen Building, Room 104
Free and Open to the Public

About The Film:
FOOD FIGHT is a fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20^th century, and how the California food movement has created a counter-revolution against big agribusiness.

About The Filmmaker:
Chris Taylor received a B.A. from Harvard University in Folklore and Mythology. After attending the American Film Institute in 1988, Chris began his career as a Director of Photography by working as a DP with such talented filmmakers as Gary Oldman, Johnny Depp, Tim Burton, Michael Lehmann, and others. In 2005, Chris co-founded Positively 25th Street, a production company dedicated to creating original documentary programming with social and cultural significance. His first project, FOOD FIGHT, was awarded the Audience Award for 2008 by the International Documentary Association.

Sponsored by the El Paso Corporation Lecture Series, the UH Center for Public History, and the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication. The talk is free and open to the public.  Parking is available in the Welcome Center Parking Garage located on Calhoun Drive near Entrance 1.

A campus map and directions can be found at: http://www.uh.edu/maps/#map-directions
For more information, contact Temple Northup at temple@uh.edu or Monica Perales at mperales3@uh.edu.

Reminder!

Just a quick reminder of two things this week:

• Food For Thought Series with Gustavo Arrellano
• Thursday, November 15
• 5:00PM
• Roy G. Cullen, Room 104

• Public History Gathering
• Friday, November 16
• 4:30PM
• Brasil

Please comment/email/call/text with any questions!  

See you soon,

Lori

Food for Thought Presents Gustavo Arrellano, November 15

Gustavo Arrellano, best-selling author and popular syndicated columnist (“Ask a Mexican!”) will discuss his new book Taco, USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America as part of the Food for Thought Speaker series on Thursday, November 15 at 5:00 pm in Roy G. Cullen Building, Room 104.  A book signing will follow the event.

Arellano’s new book details why the U.S. loves all things folded in a tortilla, how salsa overtook ketchup as the country’s favorite condiment in the 1990s, how nachos became the third-largest concession food after popcorn and soda, and how the U.S. is the world’s largest consumer of tequila.  He addresses what constitutes “Mexican” food in the U.S. – what is “authentic” and what’s “Taco Bell,” and why does it matter?

Food for Thought is a speaker series promoting the scholarly study of food.  Presenters highlight the latest research on the multiple ways food shapes business and economy, nutrition and health, the environment, and social relations.  The goal of the series is to encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue and interdisciplinary collaboration through the examination of the food that sustains the cultural, economic, and physical lives of our diverse communities.

The lecture is sponsored by the El Paso Corporation Lecture Series, the Center for Public History, the Department of History, the Center for Mexican American Studies and Latin American Studies. The talk is free and open to the public.  Parking is available in the Welcome Center Parking Garage located on Calhoun Drive near Entrance 1.

A campus map and directions can be found at: http://www.uh.edu/maps/#map-directions

For more information, contact Todd Romero at tromero2@uh.edu or Monica Perales at mperales3@uh.edu.

Public History Gathering Information

Hi all!

It looks as if everyone is available on November 16th, so here is the info about the 'gathering'--  

Where: Brasil 
Date: Friday, November 16, 2012
Time: 4:30PM
Address: 2604 Dunlavy St.  Houston, TX 77006
Parking: You can park along both Dunlavy and Hawthorne, as well as parts of Westheimer-- basically anywhere on the street in the neighborhood behind Brasil (just be on the lookout for no parking signs).

Please let me know if 4:30PM doesn't work for you.  We chose this time so that we wouldn't get stuck in traffic getting to Brasil.  

I'll send a reminder email the week of the event, but please let me know if something comes up between now and then.  We really want to accommodate everyone for this first meeting.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

-Lori

Fall 2012 Digital Humanities Lectures

Hi all!

There are some Digital History lectures through the Digital Humanities Initiative coming up in November.  I thought some of you might be interested, so I'm posting the info here!

Fall 2012 Digital Humanities Lecture

The Promise and Perils of Doing History in the Digital Age

Andrew Torget (University of North Texas)

Friday, November 9, 2:30 pm | Room 104 Roy Cullen Building

Andrew J. Torget is a historian of nineteenth-century North America at the University of North Texas, where he directs the Digital History Lab. The founder and director of numerous digital humanities projects -- including Mapping Texts, Texas Slavery Project, Voting America, and the History Engine -- Andrew served as co-editor of the Valley of the Shadow project, and as the founding director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond. The co-editor of several books on the American Civil War, Andrew has been a featured speaker on the digital humanities at Harvard, Stanford, Rice, and the National Archives in Washington, D. C. In 2011, he was named the inaugural David J. Weber Research Fellow at the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. He is currently completing a book titled Cotton Empire: Slavery, the Texas Borderlands, and the Origins of the U.S.-Mexico War.

Area Events of Interest

• Rice University Digital History lecture, November 1, 5-6 pm, Humanities 119: Chad Black (University of Tennessee)
• Rice University  Digital History lecture, November 15, 5-6 pm, Humanities 117: Jo Guldi (Brown University)

Enjoy!

-Lori

Greetings from the Public History Coordinator

Thanks to Lori and Mai for starting this great blog.  We had a great meeting yesterday that left me feeling really excited about the program -- and super inspired by Lori's and Mai's enthusiasm!

I hope you are surviving that mid-semester slump (panic?) -- I had intended to make contact with you all way back in September, but somehow the message got lost wherever it is that messages go when they get lost . . . 

I am the new Assistant Director and Program Coordinator for the UH Center for Public History, and my job is to assist those of you who are working on public history degrees and minor fields with questions related to courses, internships, theses, etc.  To that end, I've set aside special office hours on Thursdays from 2:30-5:30 for public history advising.  Of course, I'm also available by email and appointment -- just contact me at mperales3@uh.edu.

I'm also happy to meet with those of you who would like to know more about the public history program -- I think this blog will be a great space to talk about all of the great opportunities there are in public history and the cool projects we have going.

I want this to remain a student-focused space, but hope it can also be a way for you to communicate with CPH about your needs and interests.

Looking forward to working with you -- and to the upcoming informal gathering! 

Public History Gathering

Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston. UH Digital Library.

Hello!

Mai and I had a wonderful chat with Dr. Perales this afternoon, and we are hoping to have a kind of informal gathering of all of the public history students (MAJORS AND MINORS) sometime in the near future.  We realize that a lot of us work during the day, so we are aiming for an evening gathering somewhere off campus (most likely).  

Right now, we are looking at the evening of Friday, November 16th.  Please comment if you are available or not.  If you're not available, and you would like to attend, please send me an email with your availabilities (daytime or evening).  If we can find a time when the majority of us are available, then we will aim for that.  

I look forward to hearing from everyone!

-Lori

Digital Public History and Crowdsourcing

This specific post is for those in HIST 6381:

Hi all!

On October 29, Michele Reilly will be our guest in HIST 6381.  There are a lot of websites listed on the syllabus, so I thought I would type them up and put them here for everyone.

Here you go!

Read: 

• D-Lib
• Digital Preservation Blog
• Finland Turns to Crowdsourcing
• Writing History in the Digital Age

Watch: 

• Webwise Video

Read and Explore:

• UH Digital Library

Have a great weekend!

Lori

Digital Humanities Initiative Event

Hi all!

I wanted to let you know about the Digital Humanities Initiative that is going on at UH right now.  I attended this kind of brainstorming/introduction conference/lunch last Spring to look at some of the ways we can work interdepartmentally to create a new focus on digital humanities at UH.  The amount of interest in digital humanities kind of spurred this initiative.

There is an upcoming event for the initiative on Friday, October 19th.  I just received an email this morning, and I'm going to paste the body of it in here.  If this particular event doesn't interest you, I'll try to keep you informed of other ones that might.  If you have any questions about this event or the initiative, please comment, and I'll send you their email address.  I didn't want to post it in here in case it gets mined and spammed or however that whole thing works.

Happy Friday!

-Lori

Upcoming Digital Humanities Event at the University of Houston

___________________________________________________

DH Tools: Introduction to Text Analysis

Friday, October 19: 1:00-3:00pm in Library classroom 10G

What is computational analysis?

How could I use it for my research?

This workshop introduces participants to word2word software which provides a variety of tools for computational text analysis.

During the workshop, we will perform hands-on semantic analysis on three data sets:

1) a comparison between two academic reference works

2) a comparison of transcripts from speeches given at the Republican and Democratic national conventions

3) an analysis of a popular novel

The demonstrations will be followed by a free play session, and participants are encouraged to bring texts of their own (plain text files, PDFs, or web pages) to explore.

Computers with the necessary software will be available for use during the workshop.

Pre-registration for this free workshop is required by Wednesday, October 17 due to limited space.  Sign up here.

How do you define Public History?

Hi all!

I'm sure we've all been asked, "Oooh, what's public history?" before and I'm sure most, if not all of us, have read various definitions of public history. But as I start writing my master's thesis, applying for jobs, and generally trying to have a life I wonder at just how different our definitions of public history are. How would YOU define public history? What is the purpose of studying public history?

When I'm talking with non-historians (my students or their parents) I say that public history "is fun, non-textbook history" and then elaborate that it aims to engage and spark the interest of the general public more than other forms of history. Do you agree? Why or why not?

~Mai (being super philosophical here)

Welcome!

Hello!

Mai McCarthy and I have been discussing the fact that we need a Public History Grad Student group to discuss the ins and outs of our small 'department.'  I think that this blog will be the first step in creating an outlet for us when it comes to questions about the program, or questions about public history in general.  Public history minors are welcome to join in the discussion as well!

Some of the things I hope to tackle with this blog are:

• Questions about course listings
• Questions about internships
• Questions about jobs
• Suggested reading
• Upcoming events/conferences
• Resources or guides for various topics (i.e. Oral History)

I'm going to give everyone permissions to post, etc.  Let's get this party started!