At the beginning of the capstone, I wrestled with several queries. I felt lost and unsure about moving ahead with my project, Hobo Archive. I struggled with realigning the project’s relationship with its audiences. I used the majority of my capstone experience to communicate with my co-creators on rewriting and refining our project objectives. Even though we did not directly work on the site, the time allowed us to critically assess what must be done to sustain the project long-term. I ended up drafting many project narratives that both the Studio and my co-creators reviewed. I found this exercise useful for reflecting on what it means to place community at the center of digital scholarship. My co-creators and I shared our concerns with one another and proceeded with a renewed commitment toward the project. In the end, we’re in a better place because of these challenges.

I also began thinking long-term about the project. I ended the semester considering how the project continues to serve its intended community. I relied too much on the project’s digital methodologies and not enough on the historical arguments and interpretation that the community desired. This was largely due to miscommunication between me and my co-creators. I focused too much on the crowdsourced data collection component then on the project’s primary research investigations. My co-creators want Hobo Archive to be “the resource for the researcher and for the inquisitive mind to find everything written about hobo”. They argue that historical argument and interpretation is equally if not more important than the project’s digital methodologies. So, we defined the temporal boundaries of the project and we clarified the differences between the historical and contemporary definitions of the hoboing community. We also outlined what research questions and historical themes are worth pursuing and how the project’s digital components will facilitate this research.

Needless to say, I began the semester feeling very uneasy. However, the capstone experience allowed me the time and autonomy to work out my own issues with what it means to create community engaged digital scholarship. Here is the reality. Community partnerships can be messy and complex. Digital scholarship is inherently collaborative and rarely unfinished. When combined, community engaged digital scholarship is about shared ownership and meaningful human partnerships in more intimate and personalized systems of production. I believe this was the core of my capstone experience. Many thanks to the Digital Studio for supporting me throughout the turbulence this past year!

During the National Hobo Convention last month in Britt, IA, I spent three long days spreading the word about the digital archival project that leaders of the hoboing and I have worked on for nearly a year now. This project is called Hobo Archive. Many folks were not familiar with the work we are currently doing, and many had no idea what constituted a digital archive. I paced up and down the hobo jungle in Britt as I spoke with people individually, handed out promotional materials, and gathered a sense of the many different preservation projects that a few hoboes created over the years. An overwhelming majority of the community expressed their enthusiasm and support for the long-term digital preservation of hobo history and culture. We talked about the cultural items they were interested in preserving, the stories they wanted to share, and the potential for utilizing digital technologies to support community participation amongst the hoboes in the writing of their own histories. Clearly, the hoboes are excited about Hobo Archive, which informs me that the archive has the potential to live well past my dissertation. My time at the convention informed my capstone experience this semester, which is largely focused on envisioning what this project might look long-term. I have been thinking a lot about what it means to create self-sustaining, community-driven digital scholarship and it is becoming increasingly clear to me we need to increase our digital scholarship and research capacity to seed and sustain digital projects on a broader scale.

First, there needs to be more support for the creation of graduate-level digital scholarship. We are blessed at the University of Iowa with the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, our incredibly research library, and faulty support for digital scholarship across campus. However, not every university is as fortunate. Furthermore, students need more robust evaluative models of digital work that encourage the pursuit of digital research rather than discourage it. Second, grant-writing should be prioritized more in the humanities. Whether or not graduate students pursue digital research projects, the secrets of success to grant writing are not shared widely enough. Third, we need to have a more open and honest conversation about what scholars need as they pursue their digital research. The answer: more available funding and more institutional/departmental support. Currently, I am grappling with these queries as I sit at a critical juncture with my digital project. I am constantly worried that the absence of funding and resources will either make or break this important work because it is not just for our scholarly pursuits. It is also for the communities we work with as well. I look forward to navigating these challenging aspects of digital scholarship throughout my capstone experience this semester.

Earlier in the semester, I had been thinking about the challenges of incorporating sensory research into 3D modeling with a goal in mind to complete a 3D digital model of an artificial cave in a Roman villa, one of my case studies for my dissertation. Throughout the semester, I had a different set of challenges, which I did not realize were all part of the process, and from these challenges, I learned three important lessons.

The first lesson is that my project would not come into fruition without my consultation with one of my dissertation committee members, who imparted me with his knowledge on architectural modeling of complex ancient structures. I recall spending 7 long hours on modeling a ribbed, half-dome and failing to do so after creating over 20 different models that appeared nothing like the ancient dome that I was attempting to replicate. I was able to create a half-dome close to the original structure after the discussion with my professor, which reminded me that collaboration and incorporation of a set of different voices into a project are critical to the success of the project.

My multiple attempts and failures to recreate the ancient half-dome also taught me a second lesson, which is the importance of learning from the process. By creating over 40 different models of the structure, I have gained a more intimate knowledge of the complexities in ancient architectural constructions than I would have just from studying the floor plans and/or cross-section plans of the structure. I also find comfort in learning—after reading a few journal articles—that several art and architectural historians as well as engineers have also been running into the same issues and trying to answer the same questions I had about the architecture of this complex dome through digital modeling.

The final lesson I learned is about setting realistic goals regarding large ambitious projects, taking into account technical obstacles that may potentially arise. While I was able to create a 3D model, I am still waiting for access to a rendering plug-in that I need to create my final product. I lost access to Adobe Suite for a few weeks, but thanks to the Digital Studio (cheers, Ethan!), I regained my access to create textures required for the model. I learned that no project is final, and I am grateful that I have a long-term support beyond this digital capstone course for continuing and completing this project for my dissertation.

My project for the PDH certificate capstone involves a 3D digital reconstruction of art, architecture, and hydraulic amenities in the manmade dining cave at the villa owned by Roman Emperor Hadrian, using AutoCAD and 3Ds Max. This 3D model makes up one of the four case studies in my dissertation, which uses 3D digital modeling to contextualize ancient sensory experiences in natural caves and manmade cave-like spaces with water features that elite Romans incorporated into their villas. I have dabbled with different digital approaches to my topic since my Master’s, including two 3D models, an Omeka site, and maps, but faithful replication of ancient spaces has always been a challenge. In fact, I have started contemplating on ethics and authenticity of digital reconstructions since my time as a Studio Fellow in Summer 2020 when I tackled the question of who ultimately decides what is authentic in a modern digital reconstruction of ancient architectural spaces that have long lost their embellishments. This question has now become more complicated when I am attempt to represent ancient senses that are lost to us today through a digital medium.

Many of us are fortunate enough to experience the world through all five canonical senses, and yet art historical discussions are predominantly focused on sight. Arguments surrounding senses beyond sight are often prematurely dismissed, even though museums in the recent decades are pushing the boundaries of art and visitor experience in their exhibitions. Reconstructing ancient senses, however, has its own complex challenges. Most of what we could gather about ancient sensory experiences came from writings of ancient elites—in my case, Roman authors like Pliny the Younger—and these descriptions provided only one aspect of the diverse sensory experiences of the ancient world. Scholars who engage in discussions of ancient senses turn to archaeological evidence to support ancient writings and to fill in the blanks.

Contextualizing ancient senses in modern terms is already a difficult feat, so what do I hope to achieve through these reconstructions? Firstly, I want to digitally interpret the ways in which elite Romans curated their natural and artificial caves, including bodily senses, emotional responses, and interactions of ancient visitors with their immediate environments. Secondly, I want to explore changes in light, sounds, movements, and temporality in these caves throughout the day and in different seasons and the possible effects of these changes on ancient visitor experience. For these two goals, I hope to conduct field research in the near future to gather quantitative sensory data, including measuring temperature, as well as light, sound, and humidity levels to paint a relatively more accurate picture of ancient sensory environments. Finally, I want to draw modern audience’s attention to the potentials of digital reconstructions in experiencing ancient architectural spaces whose multisensory stimuli are not fully attested today.

While I am eager to achieve these goals, I am well aware of the limitations of 3D reconstructions alone in interpreting ancient senses. I do not have easy access to advanced technology and equipment, such as haptic devices for 3D touch, or means to replicate smells in my 3Ds Max models, which could only replicate visual and auditory experiences. But as we know in digital humanities, we all work collaboratively, and so I hope to continue my project in some shape or form in my career down the road. As of now, I will have to be satisfied with the creation of 3D digital model of one artificial cave as the first of many steps towards my aforementioned goals. By the end of the semester, I hope to have completed a 3D reconstruction of the architecture and decorative program, as well as the artificial waterfall and river in the imperial dining cave of Hadrian in Tivoli.

-Myat Aung

My capstone project for the Public Digital Humanities certificate focused on creating a digital subject guide, or LibGuide, that describes material in the Iowa Women’s Archives (IWA) related to histories of sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, and other sexual and gender-based violence. The guide, entitled “#MeToo in Historical Context,” was intended as a research and discovery tool for students, faculty, and others interested in these topics. By drawing attention to the IWA’s holdings in this area, I hoped to encourage research and engagement with these topics and to inspire some reflection about the connections between the twenty-first century #MeToo movement and the much longer history of sexual and gender-based violence, both nationally and locally. In my case, the “digital” element of this project was more incidental than the research and writing required to develop the content. I had some prior experience with the LibGuides app, a WordPress-based platform, and I wanted to use this tool because it is the professional standard for librarians and an application that I knew I would continue to work with throughout my career. Because the LibGuides platform allows one to create multiple pages and tabs with a variety of content, I also hoped that I might be able to add material that would help the LibGuide serve multiple audiences, somehow connecting the list of historical resources to present-day concerns, activism, and organizational work related to sexual and gender-based violence.

I succeeded in my first objective of creating a digital tool that would help facilitate research in this subject area. The #MeToo in Historical Context LibGuide includes topically-focused descriptions for over forty relevant collections at the Iowa Women’s Archives. It is a remarkable body of material that no one has previously gathered together and conceptualized under the single subject heading of sexual and gender-based violence; as such, the list does important work by helping to identify new collection strengths and avenues for research. That list of forty can be divided further to identify which collections include material related to sexual harassment, domestic violence, or rape. I have also tentatively identified a number of sub-groups that suggest topical strengths within these collections and may be useful for researchers; these include but are not limited to victim/survivor organizations, politicians and legal reform, campus life, police handling of rape, and personal testimony. Once a revised version is made public, the LibGuide will be available indefinitely as a research and discovery tool, accessible through the University of Iowa Libraries’ website.

I was less successful in my second objective of finding a way to connect the LibGuide to the current work of community organizations or activists. From the beginning, I was hampered by the knowledge that my time at the University of Iowa was drawing to a close and I would not be here to do the work I really felt was needed to seek opportunities for community engagement. This was my last semester in the Library and Information Science MA program and the end of my appointment as a Graduate Research Assistant in the IWA. I wanted to connect with organizations like RVAP, the Domestic Violence Intervention Program (DVIP), and Monsoon Asians and Pacific Islanders in Solidarity, an organization that serves victims/survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking in Asian and Pacific Islander (API) communities in Iowa. If I were going to be at the IWA and UI for longer, I imagined more active efforts to promote the archives’ collections and that history in ways that would be meaningful to these groups. For example, offering a public talk for the staff and volunteers about our collections and some of that history; coordinating an event or resource-sharing in recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month; inviting organization members to an open house at the IWA. Knowing that I likely wouldn’t be here in 2022, it was harder to imagine what I could do with nothing but the standalone LibGuide. I reached out to a few colleagues, hoping for productive conversations that would expand my thinking about the possibilities, but a lightbulb moment never came. I thought about including short histories of those community organizations in the LibGuide itself; a colleague suggested that the guide could be tied to a student-run blog about sexual violence on campus and in the community. These ideas were interesting, but still required more work, recruitment, and coordination than I had time for. As I worked on the content for the LibGuide and more weeks passed, it seemed increasingly futile to try to start a conversation with any of these organizations at the end of 2021 when I wouldn’t be here in 2022. I just never got any further than brainstorming. Reflecting on the way this part of the project stalled out, I think I’m realizing that the tool and outreach/engagement are two separate things and it was unrealistic to try to accomplish them simultaneously with a very limited amount of time. I could easily have spent another semester or more trying to connect the LibGuide and its content to the community in some meaningful way.

Although it is relatively separate from the LibGuide, I did make a different and important connection between the IWA and one of these organizations this semester. I reached out to Monsoon to see if they would be interested in donating their records to the IWA. Mira Yusef, Monsoon’s co-founder and executive director, visited the archives and met with me, assistant curator Janet Weaver, and Special Collections intern Jin Chang, who is working on a major project to collect oral histories with Asian alumni and students at UI. The knowledge I gained from my work on the LibGuide informed my interactions with Monsoon and Yusef, as I wrote and spoke about the historical value of Monsoon’s records and the IWA’s existing commitment to preserving the records of related organizations like RVAP and the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault. On Tuesday of finals week – my last week as a student at UI and a student employee at the IWA – Janet, Jin, and I visited Monsoon’s Des Moines office to finalize the gift agreement and receive the first donation of their materials. In the months to come, as the IWA receives additional material and the collection is eventually processed, a description of Monsoon’s records can be added to the LibGuide and highlighted as another critical resource for the study of sexual and gender-based violence in Iowa. (Not to mention this collection’s value as a record of API experience, communities, and leadership.) “Digital” calls to mind something fast and sometimes fleeting; meaningful connections can be slow work, but the archives’ memory is long. The LibGuide now exists as a resource and tool; only time will tell how it will be used.

-Heather Cooper

At the start of the capstone semester, I found myself following three disparate threads related to digital scholarship. The first was about determining when a digital project was complete. The second was about how digital work related to seeking external support. The third was about how to incorporate digital scholarship into traditional academic norms. With the end of the semester upon us, I reflect upon the semester of tying these frayed threads together and finding that the questions were not what I expected them to be at all.

First and foremost, finishing digital scholarship cannot be done in isolation. With all my engagements with The Studio, the clear message is that it takes the productive collision of content knowledge, methodological insight, technical prowess, and digital publishing experience to get such work to the world. No single person has all of these skills. In terms of answering the question of when digital work is complete, the most important thing I have learned is that this is a collaborative decision for all who are involved across these domains of expertise. For better or for worse, none of my digital projects from this semester are done. This is because the collaborations continue to flourish, and I have been in the process of unlearning the mechanisms of doing scholarship in a solitary manner. While I had asked what digital projects need to be pursued to completion, the proper question was probably: Who decides when a digital project is complete?

For external funding, however, a scope of work needs to be declared and deemed finished (or able to be finished). This semester, I reckoned with what funding sources would be most appropriate and what attached strings would be acceptable. Ultimately, I intended to seek grant support for on-site research in Europe that would have digital project outcomes. As the COVID-19 situation worsened in Europe, and particularly in the Western Balkans, it became less believable that travel would be possible for data collection and timely project completion. As such, applying for grant funding for speculative travel contingent on global health policy seemed like a fool’s errand. Why seek funding for projects that could never happen, or would be forever deferred? As such, though I earlier wondered about the implications about certain grant sources, the proper question was probably: How do the current structures of academic grantmaking predicated upon speculative project completion stifle digital humanistic modes of inquiry?

This understanding expanded my third question about how digital scholarship runs up against the barriers of academic convention. This semester, I have been negotiating the scope of my dissertation proposal and trying to consider ways to incorporate digital work into the scholarly endeavor. It seems like my experience of doing digital work, and the experiences of others who have attempted the same, point to digital projects as a frosting on the cake of traditional scholarly output, rather than being the cake itself. Early in the semester, I had asked the question about how to include digital work into my field of higher education and student affairs (HESA), approaching this as an initiative to put forward digital scholarship as a fundamental component of my dissertation. Now I ask: How to include a bit of digital work in the dissertation as a foundation for future projects?

Unfortunately, despite the inclusion of methodological approaches that lend themselves to digital scholarship (such as photovoice) entering our field’s academic discussion, I am still searching for any HESA dissertation that has made such digital work central to its scholarly contribution. As such, instead of seeking to challenge disciplinary convention in a dissertation format right now, I intend to take what I’ve learned about the ongoing nature of digital projects – and the resilience it takes to challenge academic funding norms –  into my next academic step. In the meanwhile, I hope to make the tastiest digital frosting I can to enhance my upcoming dissertation.

-Nick Stroup