The audiences for academic writing, academic writing on-line, and blogging present their own sets of expectations. Our roundtable pulls on many years of experience as readers, writers, and editors to share stories about writing on religion for a variety of outlets. Starting with the premise that academics want to write for a broad audience, we will cover issues of why you may want to write for popular venues, how to get started, what are some challenges you may face, and potential downsides. We will also show off some of our favorite tools. We are looking forward to a lively conversation.

Here’s the Google Doc of blogs …

Just to confirm some details in the email I sent out earlier today, THATCamp AAR13 will kick off at 9am on Friday, November 22 in the Baltimore Hilton, rooms Key 7-8. We’ll have coffee and tea available in the morning thanks to the generosity of DeGruyter Press, so feel free to show up at 8:30am to register and get some caffeine before we get started.

All of THATCamp will meet during this first session, where we will vote upon which proposed sessions we all want to schedule and run. After that we’ll break out into our smaller sessions and workshops. You can see all of the rooms we’ll have available over at the schedule, but make sure to come to that first session at 9am!

In addition to workshops on Omeka and statistical programming languages, THATCamp AAR is excited to also offer a workshop on utilizing technology in ethnographic research. Gregory Grieve, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Tim Hutchings, of Durham University, will be hosting the workshop, which will take place in our first breakout session.

Event Description:  “Virtual ethnography: Exploring religion in digital worlds” introduces and evaluates new methods in virtual ethnography and offers a perspective on the field of digital religious studies.  The first half of the workshop features Dr. Greg Grieve, a leader in the field of digital religion, and specializes in ethnographic approaches to the intersection of religion, media and popular culture.  He will draw from his work on Buddhist meditation in the virtual world and his forthcoming book from Routledge entitled: Digital Zen: Buddhism, Virtual Worlds and Networked Consumerism (2014). The second half of the workshop features Dr Tim Hutchings, who also uses ethnographic methods to study digital religion. Dr Hutchings will draw on his studies of online Christian churches (2006-2010) and Christian mobile apps (2012-2013), exploring the ethical challenges encountered in multi-sited and virtual ethnographic research.

In addition to Amanda French’s workshop on Omeka, Lincoln Mullen, a Ph.D. candidate at Brandeis University, has also agreed to offer a hands-on workshop on using statistical programs to analyze data sets relevant to humanities scholars. Mullen has also agreed to hold a kind of THATCamp office hours after his workshop, where he’s agreed to work one on one with interested campers. Thanks, Lincoln!

Humanities scholars now have access to a range of data sets and techniques for analyzing them that were previously regarded as the province of scholars in other disciplines. In this workshop, we’ll try our hands at a couple forms of analysis, using data sets of interest to scholars of religion. We will make maps from the missions of the Paulist Fathers and do some quantitative analysis of religious demographic data. By bringing these common kinds of data analysis together, we will learn the basic practices and theories which underlie all of them. Of course we will have occasion to discuss what data analysis means from a humanistic perspective. During this workshop we will get hands-on with the statistical programming language R. While there are many tools to make maps, mine texts, and analyze numbers, R is especially powerful because it can perform all of these types of analysis. R is a favorite tool of academics, Google, and the New York Times, so it has strong support. You are encouraged to install R (the programming language itself) and the desktop version of R Studio (a tool to help you use R) in advance. Self-starters can watch some of Google’s video introductions to R to acquire the basics. While you will benefit from learning some of the theory behind the analysis even without using R, there is no substitute for performing the analysis yourself, and you’ll pick up the basics of a powerful digital humanities tool. 

In addition to user-proposed sessions and meetings, THATCamps are also often great places to attend hands on workshops led by experts in the field. THATCampAAR is very fortunate in that will have a number of wonderful sessions offered by some very smart and generous scholars. Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll be posting brief abstracts of the workshops we’re hosting, but you can get a sneak peak at all of them over at the schedule right now.

Our first workshop preview is for learning the basics of Omeka, an open source program to create digital archives and web exhibits. The workshop will be lead by  Amanda French, Research Assistant Professor and THATCamp Coordinator at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, who has agreed to join us in Baltimore!

Building Scholarly Online Archives with Omeka

These days, any scholar or organization is almost certain to have a collection of digital material from research and teaching: scanned texts, digital images, original syllabi, even historic songs, oral histories, or digital video. Omeka is a simple, free system built by and for scholars and cultural heritage professionals that will help you publish and interpret such digital material online in a scholarly way so that it’s available for researchers, students, and the public in a searchable online database integrated with attractive online essays and exhibits. In this introduction to Omeka, we’ll look at a few of the many examples of Omeka websites built by archives, libraries, museums, and individual scholars and teachers; define some key terms and concepts related to Omeka; learn about the Dublin Core metadata standard for describing digital objects; and go over the difference between the hosted version of Omeka at omeka.net and the self-hosted version of Omeka at omeka.org. Participants will also learn to use Omeka themselves through hands-on exercises, so please *bring a laptop* (not an iPad). Learn more about Omeka at omeka.org and  omeka.net.

The complete Introduction to Omeka lesson plan is available on Amanda French’s website or via j.mp/intro-omeka.

We’re thrilled to announce that De Gruyter Press will be sponsoring the AAR’s first ever THATCamp. Now in addition to all of the great skills, connections, and ideas campers will get, we’ll also be able to offer free coffee and some swag! De Gruyter’s series of theology, Judaism, and religious studies texts has long been established in the field, and we’re excited the press is also showing an interest in digital scholarship.

So a special thanks to De Gruyter for the caffeine!

Registration for THATCamp AAR2013 is now live! If you’re interested in talking more about how technology is changing–or can change–the study of religion, come join us! Head on over to our registration page and sign up!

There’s a new THATCamp being planned! The details will be published here when known. Meanwhile, read more about the THATCamp movement and browse other THATCamps at thatcamp.org.