Students to present at humanities conference

Three New College students have been accepted to present projects at the second annual conference of the Florida Digital Humanities Consortium (FLDH) on March 27 at Flagler College in St. Augustine.
Pamela (Mellie) McCabe, Emma Solloway and Falon Mansfield have all created unique projects on the intersections of music, religion and technology, and they look forward to sharing their work with industry professionals.
McCabe, a fourth-year religion student (whose thesis is on Buddhist art), worked closely with fourth-year student Mansfield, Cal Murgu (research, instruction and digital humanities librarian), and Manuel Lopez (assistant professor of religion) on a digital project mapping out nunneries in Bhutan, South Asia. The interactive map displays nunnery data by year and establishment type, and the work from the project is hosted on a public website.
“One of the main purposes of this website was to record what could be lost,” McCabe said. “With the changing tides of nunnery in Bhutan, we want to make the information more well-known, to get it out there.”
Second-year music student Emma Solloway participated in a project much closer to home. She worked with Murgu and Mark Dancigers, assistant professor of digital media and music, on a project that uses music and visual representation to portray areas around New College.
Solloway surveyed the student body to gauge a general idea of how people feel about certain places on campus. The sentiments are rated on a scale, and the average score is paired with a piece of music (negative, neutral or positive). As the mouse hovers over different areas of a map of campus, the correlating music plays (her project can be found here).
“The results were surprising,” Solloway said. “It changed the way I thought about positive and negative emotions, and where the sentiments were coming from.”
The chosen students are thrilled to display their poster presentations in St. Augustine and hope to present their work at future conferences. FLDH is an exciting start, as it represents a collective of Florida institutions that promote the humanities in light of digital technologies and research. Each year, attendees discuss issues of interest, and set goals for future collaborations.
McCabe said, “I think people who are interested in the humanities or digital humanities in general should check out the website[s] to see what’s possible. We put a lot of really cool work into [them].”
Anna Wright is a student writing intern in the Office of Communications & Marketing.