Not too many years ago, attempting to work with mapping software required specialized knowledge. This limited the work of scholars in the humanities who were interested in integrating spatial tools in their scholarship. Mapping Software such as ArcGIS were difficult to master. The launch of google maps in 2005 and the readily availability of google […]
Doing Digital History with CartoDB Read More »
Text mining is one of the ways of doing digital research in the humanities. It allows you to extract key terms or topics and see their continuity or change over time and also to correlate different sources. One helpful tool for doing text mining is Voyant. Voyant is an open source tool that allows you
Text Mining with Voyant Read More »
In a May, 2014 article published in The New York Review of Books, David Cole quoted the former CIA Director, General Michael Hayden as saying, “We kill people based on metadata.” This was in reference to the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency. In response to American citizens uproar over the
A Review of the Metadata of Music Online: African American Music Reference Read More »
African Americans have a rich musical heritage. For centuries, music has been one of the expressions of their culture. During the Middle Passage, they hummed traditional African tunes as they endured the excruciating pain and abuse of this voyage. It is said that John Newton, a slave ship Captain wrote the words of “Amazing Grace”
Review of African American Music Reference Read More »
As I reflect on some of the digital projects that have been done, one question that comes to mind is, what is the goal of doing a digital project? These projects require significant time commitment, money and hard work and people do not develop them for fun. Having fun doing a project is great, but
A Reflection on Digital Humanities Projects Read More »
In his new book, Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Bonny Ibhawoh examines the discourse of human rights in Africa. He challenges some of the dominant narratives that focus on ruthless violators and benevolent activists. Crafting the longue duree history of human rights in Africa, he argues that these rights were neither invented during the enlightenment period, nor
Interview with Professor Bonny Ibhawoh Read More »
AIDS is one of the primary causes of death in Africa. Of the more than 24 million Africans infected with HIV, only about 54% have access to the treatment that they need. Despite the progress made in mitigating this disease in the global north, unfortunately, Africa is left behind. In her new book Doomed Interventions: The
Interview with Professor Kim Yi Dionne Read More »
“Jesus is the reason for the Season!” It has become a cliche. In Christmas service sermons across Christian churches, we will hear this repeated over and over again. The priest in my parish reminded us of this. What does it mean for Jesus to be the reason for the season? I do not mean the
The Christmas Story I want to Hear Read More »
From The Gazette Review: As cliché as it may be, many believe that money makes the world go round. Upon second thought, this notion really doesn’t seem to be too farfetched at all. In general, some of the most powerful people in the world tend to be the richest ones, and some of the richest
Top 10 Poorest Countries in the World – 2017 List Read More »
The poverty of African states has been exacerbated by the unequal structures through which they find themselves linked to the world economy. As patronizing as it was, in the colonial system the metropole exercised some maternal role over the colonies. While the mission of the metropole was the exploitation of the colonized, nevertheless, it sometimes