portfolio

A variety of in-depth digital LAM (Libraries, Archives, and Museums) projects have been undertaken during coursework for my Masters in Library and Information Science at Kent State. This includes creating and implementing a metadata schema as well as a cultural heritage informatics website.

This is the online companion tutorial for a digital humanities workshop I lead at Rice University in early April 2018. The tutorial focuses on developing a plan for building a digital humanities website that fits you and your team's unique skills and goals while utilizing open source content and platforms.

Visualizing Abolition maps the suppression of the African slave trade by tracing nearly 31,000 records of correspondence exchanged between the British Foreign Office and British commissioners, ministers, naval officers, and representatives of foreign governments around the world over the course of the nineteenth century.

An obituary in The Southeast Missourian lists Elaine “Tommie” Davis as the business partner of Mary Jane “Miss Jane” Barnett for over forty years (Elaine Davis Obituary). However, the family albums of the two tell a richer story, they were life partners as well as business partners, a radical act in mid-century America, and perhaps even a dangerous one in Southern Missouri. Their Christmas photos are a fascinating example of this.

Legend tripping and ostensive action are important ways in which people interact and transform legends, especially extraterrestrial experience legends. Stephen Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind engages these legends at every level of ostensive action, transforming itself into both the representative of and instigator of the legend trip. Just as Linda Dégh’s holiday of Halloween “…is based on legends, communicates legends, and creates legends,” so too is Close Encounters of the Third Kind.