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Atlanta, GA | Posted: September 14, 2017
Summary Sentence:
Brad Rittenhouse will support the lab's infrastructure and help steer the direction of the lab.
Full Summary:
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Brad RittenhouseWe're thrilled to have Dr. Brad Rittenhouse join us as the Lab Manager for DILAC. Brad comes to us from the University of Miami where he recently completed his Ph.D. His dissertation looked at 19th century American literature and the ways that aesthetic devices are used to manage information in literary narrative. "I enjoy thinking about digital humanities (DH) as a methodology and how it can enable us to ask and think about questions in a different way than when we're considering a piece qualitatively," he said.
Dr. Janet Murray, Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs in IAC and Director of DILAC said, “We’re so happy to have Brad join us. His expertise in text analysis and other DH technologies and his pro-active management style is a real power-up for DILAC."
At DILAC, Brad will help faculty and students apply DH methodologies as they create their projects. "I wear many different hats," he explained. "I'm the managerial force developing the lab infrastructurally and helping to steer the direction of the lab." Brad hopes to support DILAC in taking advantage of its unique position at Georgia Tech and potential to become a national leader and innovator in DH.
Brad would like for Georgia Tech to become stronger in different variations of text analysis in literature, history and public policy. In addition, he said "I want to help people think through the possibilities of technologies like 3D printing, physical making, digital presentation, data visualization and virtual reality in their work." He plans for DILAC to regularly host virtual reality events coinciding with different holidays and themes.
Brad will also be working on a few projects of his own. His current project involves using quantitative methods to identify passages of information across as a corpus of literature. "The most exciting prospect for me is that computers can, for example, be used curatorially-- to find ways in which people are writing ways we might consider prestigious, but don't call prestigious because they aren't writing about western or male information," he explained. "A lot of the time we talk about a prestigious sub-genre of writing, but it's hard to see how females participate in that when the information is coded as being male."
Brad looks forward to being at Georgia Tech where students with advanced technical skills will be able to help him work with his corpus and his code in ways that he can't anticipate. "Georgia Tech is a really unique place to do digital humanities because in almost every other place digital humanities doesn't have this level of technical expertise," he said. "There's a lot of opportunity here to excel on the technical side while bringing a humanistic framework."
If you’re considering different ways to develop or execute your project, Brad recommends coming to the lab. “We have a graduate student team with a vast array of skills and aptitudes and a number of cutting edge technologies that can help any teacher or student put a cutting edge sheen on their work and help them ask new and interesting questions.”
