The title says it all!

Ten years ago, the English Department at UPRM had one fledgling film studies course supplemented by film-related course content here and there and the inevitable film content in modern language courses. Ten years later and the English Dept. offers a film studies certificate and is at the apex of a budding DIY-Media and independent film-making scene that is dreaming big despite humble beginnings. As an alumnus of that fledgling course, I’m curious, and I hope you are as well, about how this all came about and about what Digital Humanities thinking can contribute to take this momentum to the next level.  In this session, I’d like to introduce Professor Mary Leonard, who spearheaded this movement – an academic and community-building project that has DH written all over it.  Bear in mind, we might ask you as many questions as you ask us – and you better ask Mary lots of questions!

On the subject, from Dr. Mary Leonard:

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the idea of how one can nurture a local film culture, perhaps we could call it a film ecosystem since it’s not just about watching films or about making them. So how about using the word ecosystem since it’s all about doing everything at the same time: to create a complete, balanced, and fertile environment that contributes to developing filmmakers and a film audience and simultaneously fomenting a creative/intellectual environment and a viable economic structure conducive to making film. The overall goal is to develop a complete film culture that is interesting, idiosyncratic, and appropriate for this particular place where we live, and above all sustainable and productive over time.

In this session, which I’m proposing, but in which I do not intend to be the only one talking by any means, I thought we could have an all-around discussion amongst participants to share the following:

a) How you became interested in DH and what you are currently working on

b) Who are the top scholars, artists, or groups that you follow or that have guided your work

c) What are your overall dreams, predictions, or vision for the future of DH

I think this would be helpful for people to get to know one another and the work that they’re doing and to help contextualize DH as a concrete and diverse area of research, activism, and creativity.

“How can it not know what it is?”
Deckard, the protagonist of the film Blade Runner, after interviewing an android that did not know it was an android and therefore behaved as if she were a human being.

With this in mind, I would like to propose a discussion of what happens to established literary or otherwise artistic genres (including painting, music, etc.) when confronted by “emerging” media and technology.  I see this discussion perhaps starting off from Marshall’s McLuhan’s monolithic proclamation in 1964 that “the medium is the message” and discussing the role of diverse forms of media in society, then fast-forwarding through almost 50 years of cultural production and technological development – so we can ask, “well, where are we now?”.  Are these cultural artifacts as “new” they are touted to be? Are they speech, discourses, or genres? Are they the wellspring of a new cultural current, or the latest addition to an ever-evolving continuum? The discussion is well under way when we think about literary adaptations in film, for example, but what about video games, mashups, and other digital texts? Other questions that come to mind would be:

• Would that which we call a tweet by any other name have 140 characters?
• If Art and Life imitate one another, what does SecondLife imitate?
• If José Martí were alive today, would he have a blog?
• Could citizen journalism and social media have saved the Tainos? Can it help the Caribe now?
• Where in the Caribbean is Puerto Rico? See Google Maps: 1898 Edition.

Satire and speculation aside, I see this session as a provocative discussion not only of how technology and new media can/will/may/won’t change scholarship in the humanities (and particularly within the Caribbean), but also of what this all means for or can contribute to the whole Caribbean as a Culture  (if such a thing exists – if not, we can always start its Wikipedia page).

Implementing technology in the classroom can be an exciting and daunting prospect at the same time.  Still, with a little ingenuity and without too much complication, technology can help motivate and engage learners and allow for instruction that reaches beyond the boundaries of the classroom. As an ESL teacher and instructional designer, I’d like to have a general discussion on this subject, especially considering the “peculiar” role of English in Puerto Rican education and society. I would like to share suggestions for using free or inexpensive and widely-used technologies in the second or foreign language classroom, including academic writing and professional communications; but I would also like others to bring their ideas and experiences as well. It would also be interesting to discuss whatever insights or concerns participants may have regarding the role of technology in language, media, and/or literacy education as well as how these benefit from or otherwise relate to the Digital Humanities agenda.