If you dig this pre-digital "ASCII style" typed art (historical memes!), check out @ryancordell.org's "Programmable Type: the Craft of Printing, the Craft of Code" which includes many examples, including his ID of this early memed "The Dude" art below (1883!) ryancordell.org/research/pro...

In the @scholarslab.bsky.social, @literaturegeek.bsky.social and I try to practice what we call "gossip for good," performative and outspoken gratitude and appreciation to people's faces and also behind their back. Hear someone praising the work of someone else? They should know about.

On the gifts we give to others, writing against despair, and gratitude for others - "The Gift We Give." walshbr.com/blog/the-gif...

I just finished watching this. It’s really, really beautiful. There’s still a little bit of time to see it and you don’t need a reservation. Highly recommended.

And looking past next week through term, we've got many more makerspace workshops, & 3 more big talks: *11/18 "Can AI Read Biodiversity in Prose Fiction?" *12/2 "Humanistic Annotation with Machine Learning" *12/4 "Folkloric Futures: Designing a Digital Archive of Caribbean Speculative Storytelling"

Next week's free+public events @ Scholars' Lab: workshops & speakers on making (sewing tote bags, using hand tools for carpentry/etc DIY, crochet), zinemaking for advocacy, minimal computing for professional portfolio websites, & understanding AI benchmarks (measures of what/how well a tool works) +

QT'd 🧵 on the value & urgency of slow tech, pre-digital tech, non-digital craft & making for a critical & ethical digital humanities:

Photos by @josefbeery.bsky.social w/some nice SLab things too: @claudiaeberger.bsky.social data quilt, James Ascher+Sarah Berkowitz manuscript lightbox, @elikaortega.bsky.social @ryancordell.org @quinnanya.me print, 2nd of 2 zine racks; students, community members, staff from across library printing

This zine is by our VR/AR/immersive specialist @arinbb.bsky.social, who collaborated w/an English prof this past year teaching students writing concepts by having them build a MUD (text-based game/interactive fiction where you describe spaces etc you see in writing). Link to download zine +

🎉 Head of Student Programs @walshbr.bsky.social's full book draft! Scroll down on scholarslab.lib.virginia.edu/people/brandon-walsh to read some of his blog posts about writing this book & sharing early versions of its focus on the possibilities of embodied DH pedagogy & infra work for advocacy:

🧵from yesterday's Zines Now! event where @josefbeery.bsky.social taught us about connections between letterperss & zinemaking (democratization of info sharing!) and we made colorful zine covers using printing presses, wood type, craft foam, and inks:

This is in Scholars' Lab's VR Corner, in our public Common Room; we're on the 3rd floor of Shannon Library at UVA:

Today & tomorrow anytime between 10-5, free & open to everyone! Drop by for a 20min Emmy-winning VR experience, if you're interested in Indigenous rights & how virtual reality can support how we share history. (You can also sign up for a specificviewing time slot here: calendly.com/kluge-ruhe/c...)

Yesterday @rondagrizzle.bsky.social & I drafted a minizine on *why* to write collaborative project/working team charters 📚We're going to do a companion full-length zine on *how* to run/do the conversation & cowriting that produces the kinds of charters @scholarslab.bsky.social makes, eg:

Brandon's book on just & caring DH pedagogy is going to be amazing. You don't have to wait to get a glimpse: he's been blogging initial drafts on our blog (scroll down for list of just his posts: scholarslab.lib.virginia.edu/people/brand...) as well as his personal research blog (walshbr.com)

Next week's (all free+public!) SLab events: *11/5 learn to letterpress zine covers w/ @josefbeery.bsky.social: cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/14968895 *VR history film screenings 11/6-11/7 cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15640268 *11/6 learn to sew pencil cases w/zipper cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15417317 +

Livetweet thread of @mebrett.bsky.social's Coffee+Code talk for us today, on using the free @tropy.bsky.social for organizing & working w/photos you take when visiting a research archive (tropy.org) for her dissertation:

Wrote this week about how I try to differentiate the different phases of the writing process and end each session with what I need for the next one. "Filling the Cup of Each Writing Phase" - walshbr.com/blog/filling...

ICYMI I shared a project scoping exercise that I ran with our Praxis students. Take a neutral topic, develop a project idea on it, and then push/pull that thing in all sorts of directions to see the different shapes that come out.

Next week's free, public events: *@mebrett.bsky.social on @tropy.bsky.social (free tool for managing research photos, eg that you take in an archive; cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15167717) *Halloween crafts & costumes in our Makerspace all week! *learn to make narrative, multimedia maps w/Story Maps:

Huge thanks to @walshbr.bsky.social + entire @scholarslab.bsky.social team for organizing this series. These sessions are such a breath of fresh air & so thought-provoking! Today we're hearing about ways to help students build data literacy about their own data + a Twine digital history assignment

If you need hope about academia/knowledge work, @scholarslab.bsky.social grad Praxis Fellows' collaborative charters always help me—seeing the values & planned *practices* they design together, when given space to imagine+plan. Here's this year's charter (I'm helping them zineify it tomorrow!):

One last reminder of the #ByteSizedPedagogy event this week with @kairosdoug.bsky.social and @cynthiaheider.com. They'll be talking about surveillance, privacy, contingency and gaming. Join us this Thursday at 1PM ET online for some free conversations about teaching and learning.

I am teaching my first graduate course in the Department of English at the University of Virginia in the spring! Here is the description. It’s called Reading AI.

New blog post from Jessica Gómez called "Questions With No Answers" that describes the ways in which academia asks us to construct our identity, the questions we ask ourselves in response, and the space we need to figure out what really motivates us. scholarslab.lib.virginia.edu/blog/praxis-...

I wrote up the exercise I ran with Praxis this week where students practice taking an idea and scoping it every which way to see all the different shapes that can emerge. "Up, Down, Lateral Project Scoping" walshbr.com/blog/up-down...

Next week's free DHy events Pt 2: get mappy w/a friendly intro to the ArcGIS Online tool to create & share maps; & virtual #ByteSizedPedagogy event w/lightning talks by @kairosdoug.bsky.social (sharing lessons teaching students data privacy) & @cynthiaheider.com :

Next week's free! public! makerspace workshops: laserengraving coasters or your water bottle; electronics w/Arduinos from yr 1st circuit to a distance-sensing fan; DIY costume fantasy-horns; & kick off a week of Halloween costumes & decor dropin time incl 3D printing ghostly keychains or earrings:

I went to the amazing @scholarslab.bsky.social and they have a lot of cool stuff like zines! I took my favorites with me and I have now a #DHMakes space in my office

Local folks, join us @ 2 cool free zinemaking events @scholarslab.bsky.social (UVA Shannon Library 3rd Flr) 11/5 midday & 11/11 PM, open to all! Learn to letterpress print colorful zine covers, & to make zines advocating for change. Our makerspace is public (incl nonUVA!) & free too, supports zines.

I’m tabling @ the 3rd annual Charlottesville Zine Fest on Saturday! I’ll have stacks of my free ZineBakery.com zines for yall, +also repping @uvalibrary.bsky.social (supports ZB public print-zine distro), @scholarslab.bsky.social free public makerspace+zine events, + @virginiabookarts.bsky.social +

New blog post by Eleanor Ma describing the difficult balance between motivation and wellbeing as a graduate student. I love this work - speaks to much of what many feel (myself included). scholarslab.lib.virginia.edu/blog/me-and-...

And while I'm at it, one of our Praxis Fellows Ganiyu Jimoh has the first blog post from the cohort up. In "Digital Artefacts Series: Concept & Format" he describes how he hopes to use public writing to explore how African artists engage with digital art. scholarslab.lib.virginia.edu/blog/digital...

It's that time of year when the current Praxis cohort publishes their charter outlining their shared values, practices, and plan for developing a community together. This year's cohort is the 15th year of Praxis! Milestones! Check out their charter here - praxis.scholarslab.org/charter/char...

happening next week! excited to facilitate the conversation and learn~ don't forget to register ⚡️

I started the DH Slack 10 years ago today 🎉 3.8k legit DHer/DH-interested folks joined; we became a regular venue for asking questions & sharing opportunities+research; usually have several hundred folks active/week (more during DH conferences); 160k+ posts. Anyone curious about DH can join:

Digital humanities friends, @scholarslab.bsky.social regularly collaborates w/our data science school colleagues! & @histoftech.bsky.social @jhereia.bsky.social et al do awesome work there. (If you ever wanted to try letterpress; or do book-adjacent or DHy data sci+making, I'm here too.) Job ad:

These are 2-year postdoctoral fellowships (August/2026). Annual salary is $65,000 + research funding of $5,000/year. We sponsor visas as needed. Standard UVA resources will be provided. Register for info sessions: dtdlab.virginia.edu/event/dtd-la... @uvadatascience.bsky.social

We are hiring! The DTD Lab invites applications for our 2026 postdoctoral cohort. Areas I'd love to supervise: gender/techno-authoritarianism, data visibility, urban governance, night studies, cultural practices, and all things related to tech policy. More info: jobs.virginia.edu/us/en/job/R0...

Don't forget to sign up for our November *Zines Now!* free public workshops: @josefbeery.bsky.social teaches letterpress printing zine covers cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/14968895; Jess Walters teaches making advocacy zines cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15124934 (Public=no UVA affiliation needed to join)

Next week's free, public SLab events: learn to make a quick map of demographic or census data cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15216591 or sew a tote bag cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15378510; fresh coffee+ @shane.logoff.website elucidates pesky Python envionment+pkg mgmt cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15167768

SLab Makerspace Manager Ammon Shepherd hosted 4 UVA classes in our vibrant makerspace over the past week! Teach at UVA? We'd love to have your class in for a tour or free workshop supporting what you teach, or help build critical making into your syllabus. We cover craft both historical+new +

Free hybrid event: "Data Ethics for Historical Research" 11/10-12. 'Neither data nor computational techniques=neutral tools; historical source datafication risks amplifying inequity in access+infra+POV; diverse historical experience=>rigid categories entrenching existing bias' HT @dhnow.bsky.social

#DHmakes <3s experimenting w/new tools for longstanding crafts (here, letterpress printing blocks):

ICYMI we will be hosting @kairosdoug.bsky.social and @cynthiaheider.com at the next #ByteSizedPedagogy session on October 23, 2025 at 1PM ET. Free, open to the public, virtual. Come for your regular dose of fascinating work in digital pedagogy in a discussion-based and informal setting.

We're settling in for @aelang.bsky.social's @scholarslab.bsky.social talk connecting literary studies w/explorations in 3D making to visualize, explore, inspire new approaches to interpreting & appreciating poetry. Lovely to see colleagues from the west coast & UK time zones! Livetweeting 🧵: +

Join us on Zoom today for a free public talk: @aelang.bsky.social on using makerspace approaches to visualize & inspire thinking about poems. Register for link: cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15242444

For people wanting a distraction from the end of the world who are into critical making/literary DH/info viz/Dickinson, I'm giving a talk on 7 Oct (12pm EST/5pm GMT) at @scholarslab.bsky.social on plotspaces, a thing I invented to think about spatial imaginaries cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/15242444

Posted another bit of the book. This time talking about how cultures of intellectualism deny the ways in which academic labor affects the teaching body. walshbr.com/blog/teachin...