CV

BETHANY NOWVISKIE, MA Ed., Ph.D.
nowvisbp at jmu dot edu

Dean of Libraries, Chief Academic Technology Officer, and Professor of English,
James Madison University

Moody Hall 213c / MSC 1703
90 Bluestone Drive, Harrisonburg, VA 22807

Education

• Ph.D. in English Language and Literature,
  University of Virginia, 2004.
  concentrations: digital humanities/humanities computing; Victorian literature; hermeneutics, textual criticism, and the history of the book
  dissertation: Speculative Computing: Instruments for Interpretive Scholarship.
• MA Ed. in English Education,
  Wake Forest University, 1996.
  Master Teacher Fellowship awardee;
  thesis project: The John Keats Hypermedia Archive.
• BA with highest distinction in English Literature and Archaeology,
  University of Virginia, 1995.
  distinguished majors thesis: The Cult of Hestia in Ancient Greek Oikos and Polis.
  

Published Work

• scholarly/professional blog: http://nowviskie.org (widely-read, open access essays on higher ed and digital humanities, 2009-present)
• invited essay: “New Questions, Next Work” in “Between DH and Me – Special Issue on Black Studies in/for the Rising Digital Humanities Generation,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 16.3. 2022.
• invited essay: “Dialogue: Shorish and Nowviskie.” with Yasmeen Shorish, in “Library and Information Studies and the Mattering of Black Lives” Special Issue of the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies. 2021.
• foreword: “Foreword (to the Past)” to Electronic Legal Deposit: Shaping the Library Collections of the Future. Facet Publishing. eds. Melissa Terras and Paul Gooding. 2020.
• book chapter: “Libraries, Museums, and Archives as Speculative Knowledge Infrastructure.” in Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access, eds. Martin Eve and Jonathan Gray. MIT Press. 2020.
• encyclopedia entry: “Praxis,” (with Jeremy Boggs and Purdom Lindblad). Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Models, Concepts, and Experiments, eds. Rebecca Frost Davis et al. Modern Language Association, 2020.
• book chapter: “Speculative Collections and the Emancipatory Library,” in The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage Sites. eds. Hannah Lewi et al. Routledge, 2019.
• book chapter: “Capacity Through Care.” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, eds. Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.
• conference proceedings: “Bringing IRUS to the USA: International Collaborations to Standardize and Assess Repository Usage Statistics,” Proceedings of the 2018 Library Assessment Conference. (with Santi Thompson et al.), 2019.
• special journal issue: “Endangered Knowledge,” a special issue of KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies (co-edited with Rachel Mattson and Samantha MacFarlane, November 2018).
• book chapter: “Seeing Swinburne: Toward a Mobile & Augmented-Reality Edition of Poems and Ballads, 1866.” (with Wayne Graham). Seeing the Past with Computers: Experiments with Augmented Reality and Computer Vision for History. eds. Kevin Kee and Timothy Compeau. University of Michigan Press, 2018.
• book chapters: “On the Origins of Hack and Yack,” and “Resistance in the Materials.” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, eds. Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
• book chapter: “How to Play with Maps,” Cultural Mapping and the Digital Sphere: Place and Space, ed. Ruth Panofsky. Wayne State University Press, 2015.
• book chapter: “Between Bits and Atoms: Physical Computing and Desktop Fabrication in the Humanities.” (with Jentery Sayers et al.) In Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth (eds.) A New Companion to Digital Humanities. Oxford: Blackwell, 2015.
• book chapter: “Graduate Training for a Public and Digital Humanities.” A New Deal for the Humanities: Liberal Arts and the Future of Public Higher Education, eds. Gordon Hutner and Feisal Mohamed. Rutgers UP, 2015.
• article: “Digital Humanities in the Anthropocene.” Special 2014 conference issue of DSH: the Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (formerly LLC). Oxford Journals, 2015.
• essay: “Resistance in the Materials.” Between Humanities and the Digital, eds. David Theo Goldberg and Patrik Svensson. MIT Press, 2015.
• subversive book chapter: “Interpretation and Insider Threat: Re-reading the Anthrax Mailings of 2001 Through a “Big Data” Lens.” (with Gregory B. Saathoff). Mining Big Data for National Security: a Practitioner’s Guide to Emerging Technologies, eds. Babak Akhgar et al. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2015.
• article: “On the Origin of Hack and Yack,” Journal of the Digital Humanities 3.2, August 2014
• report: Report of the MLA Task Force on Doctoral Study in Modern Language and Literature. Modern Language Association, May 2014.
• guest editor: special issue of 16 selected papers from Digital Humanities 2013 and editor’s introduction: “Freedom to Explore,” LLC: the Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. vol.29; issue 3 (September 2014).
• encyclopedia entry: “Algorithm,” The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, ed. Lori Emerson, Benjamin Robertson, and Marie-Laure Ryan. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.
• book chapter: “Ludic Algorithms.” PastPlay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology., ed. Kevin Kee. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014.
• edited collection: #Alt-Academy: 24 Essays on Alternative Careers for Humanities Scholars. MediaCommons Press, 2013.
• article: “Geo-Temporal Interpretation of Archival Collections with Neatline,” in a special issue of LLC: Literary and Linguistic Computing highlighting top papers from Digital Humanities 2012. Oxford UP, 2013.
• book chapter: “ADHO, on Love and Money,” Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader, eds. Melissa Terras, Edward Vanhoutte, and Julianne Nyhan. London: Ashgate, 2013.
• article: “Skunks in the Library: a Path to Production for Scholarly R&D” Journal of Library Administration, vol. 53, issue 1, 2013. — also reprinted in “Make it New?” a dh+lib series ebook
• interview: “Scholarship & Advocacy at the UVa Scholars Lab: An Interview,” (Stephanie Davis-Kahl, with Eric Johnson) in Common Ground at the Nexus of Information Literacy and Scholarly Communication, eds. Stephanie Davis-Kahl and Merinda Kaye Hensley. ACRL, 2013.
• article: “Evaluating Collaborative Digital Scholarship (or, Where Credit is Due),” Journal of Digital Humanities vol 1, no 4, Winter 2012.
• invited essay: Praxis, Through Prisms: a Digital Boot Camp for Grad Students in the Humanities, special Digital Campus annual, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2012.
• essays: “Eternal September of the Digital Humanities” and “What Do Girls Dig?” Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Matthew K. Gold. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. (print and open access, online)
• article: “Where Credit is Due: Preconditions for the Evaluation of Collaborative Digital Scholarship.” Profession. Modern Language Association, 2011.
• book chapter “Uninvited Guests: Regarding Twitter at Invitation-Only Events,” in Hacking the Academy, eds. Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011.
• co-editor: special issue of LLC: the Journal of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, with John Nerbonne et al., featuring papers from Digital Humanities 2010 at King’s College, London. Oxford University Press. Fall 2011.
• editor, open access collection: #Alt-Academy: Alternative Academic Careers for Humanities Scholars. MediaCommons, 2011. Solicited and edited 24 essays, narratives, and dialogues by 33 contributors, composed an introduction to the collection (“Two Tramps in Mud Time“), and refined the online MediaCommons platform for continued grassroots publishing.
• article: “‘Inventing the Map’ in the Digital Humanities (A Young Lady’s Primer).” in Visualizing the Archive, special issue of Poetess Archive Journal, vol 2. no. 1, 2010: 1-46.
• invited articles: “Checking in with DH Answers” and “DH Answers by the Numbers,” in ProfHacker, Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 March 2011 and 8 December 2010.
• article: ““The #alt-ac Track: Negotiating Your ‘Alternative Academic’ Appointment,” in ProfHacker, Chronicle of Higher Education, 31 August 2010.
• book chapter: “Adapting an Open Source, Scholarly Web 2.0 System for Findability in Library Collections: Or, Frankly, Vendors, We Don’t Give a Damn.” With Bess Sadler and Erik Hatcher, in Library 2.0 Initiatives in Academic Libraries. Edited by Laura B. Cohen. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2008.
• article: “A Scholars’ Guide to Research, Collaboration, and Publication in NINES.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, No. 47: August 2007.
• article: “NINES: A Federated Model for Integrating Digital Scholarship.” With Jerome McGann, Electronic Book Review, Spring 2007: 1-40.
• article: “Collex: Collections and Exhibits for the Remixable Web.” Electronic Book Review, Spring 2007: 1-17.
• section in a book chapter: “Speculative Computing: Temporal Modelling” (by Johanna Drucker), A Companion to Digital Humanities. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2004.
• article: “Subjectivity in the Ivanhoe Game: Visual and Computational Strategies,” Text Technology, vol.12, n.2: 2003.
• bibliography: “Select Resources for Image-Based Humanities Computing.” Computers and the Humanities. Vol. 36, Issue 1, February 2002.
• article: “A Hypermedia Guide to the Life and Poetic Works of John Keats.” Studies in Teaching. 1995 Research Digest. Ed. Leah P. McCoy. Wake Forest University, Dec. 1995. ERIC microfiche, ED401261.

Selected Presentations

• “The Data That Divide Us (tentative).” Invited talk for Stanford University Mellon Sawyer Seminar. (January 2024.)
• “Keep Calm and Carrier On: Breaking New Ground in a Context of Change.” Invited talk for Designing Libraries X, University of Arizona. (October 2023.)
• “On Ecological Grief and the Work of Memory Insititutions.” Invited talk for Be)Holding Love and Loss: An Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities Series. James Madison University. September 2023.
• “Reflections on 30 Years of Digital Humanities at UVa.” Invited talk for DH@30 Conference, University of Virginia. (November 2022.)
• invited roundtable talk in memory of Stéfan Sinclair, DH Unbound conference. (May 2022.)
• “Cultural Memory and the Peri-Pandemic Library.” Annual James E. McLeod Memorial Lecture in Higher Education. Washington University in St. Louis. (April 2021.)
• “Open for Discussion: Digital Access, Inclusion, and the Humanities.” Panel discussion along with Anasuya Sengupta, Roopika Risam, and Gabriela Baeza. School of Advanced Study, University of London. (February 2021.).
• “Otherwise(,) an Archive(s).” Featured speaker at the 10th annual African, African American, and Diaspora Studies conference (“Black Temporalities: Past, Present, and Future“). James Madison University. (February 2020.)
• “What Colors the Historical Record?,” keynote address at 9th Tensions of Europe Conference (“Decoding Europe: Technological Pasts in the Digital Age”), University of Luxembourg. (June 2019.)
• “Change Us, Too,” opening plnary address at RBMS 2019: Special Collections and Climate Change, Baltimore. (June 2019.)
• “From the Grass Roots,” keynote address at RLUK 2019: Reshaping Scholarship: Transformation, Innovation, and Cultural Change. London. (March 2019.)
• “Performing the Data Drive: Speculative Design Archive Debate,” at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam. (December 2018.)
• “Reconstitute the World,” and “Machine-Reading Archives of Mass Extinction,” two invited talks: at Rare Book School, University of Virginia and closing keynote, Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI), University of Victoria. (June 2018.)
• “Five Spectra for Speculative Knowledge Design,” invited talk at An Ecotopian Toolkit for Anthropocene Challenges, University of Pennsylvania. (April 2017.)
• “Building Intellectual Community in the 21st Century Library,” invited talk at UNC-Chapel Hill. (March 2017.)
• “Speculative Collections and the Emancipatory Library,” invited talk at the Harvard Library Hazen Symposium. (October 2016.)
• “Alternate Futures, Usable Pasts,” invited talk at Marquette University. (September 2016.)
• “Everywhere, Everywhen,” on Afrofuturism, digital libraries, and media archaeology. Invited talk at Columbia University. (April 2016.)
• “Lasting Impact: Culture, Relationships, Ethos” at CNI’s Planning a Digital Scholarship Center. (May 2016.)
• “Grand Challenges and/in Graduate Education,” invited talk at the University of Michigan. (October 2015.)
• “On Capacity and Care,” keynote talk at 2015 National Endowment for the Humanities digital humanities project directors’ meeting. (September 2015.)
• “Creating a Mobile and Augmented-Reality Scholarly Edition: Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, 1866.” peer-reviewed paper, with Wayne Graham. ACH/CSDH-SCHN joint digital humanities conference, Ottawa. (June 2015).
• “Advocacy by Design: the #TakeBacktheArchive project.” peer-reviewed poster presentation, with Jeremy Boggs et al. ACH/CSDH-SCHN joint digital humanities conference, Ottawa. (June 2015).
• “Supporting Practice in Community,” invited opening statement for “Cultivating Digital Library Professionals” at IMLS convening on the National Digital Platform. (April 2015.)
• “A Game Nonetheless:” invited response to Kevin Hamilton’s “Beyond the Reveal: Living with Black Boxes” at “Algorithmic Cultures,” Institute for Advances Studies in Culture, UVa (March 2015).
• “Speculative Computing and the Centers to Come,” invited talk for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. (November 2014).
• “Johannes Factotum and the Ends of Expertise,” keynote talk at the 2014 Digital Library Federation Forum, Atlanta (October 2014).
• “Alt-Ac: an Introduction,” keynote talk and conference wrap-up at the 2014 Penn State CALS Symposium, Center for American Literary Studies. (September 2014)
• “Digital Humanities in the Anthropocene,” keynote talk at the 2014 Digital Humanities conference, Lausanne (July 2014)
• “Graduate Training for a Public and Digital Humanities,” invited talk at A New Deal for the Humanities, University of Illinois (September 2013)
• “Praxis Makes Perfect: New Models for Research and Learning in the Humanities,” invited talk as a Lansdowne Visiting Scholar, University of Victoria (March 2013)
• “Resistance in the Materials,” invited talk for the Presidential Forum, 2013 Modern Language Association convention (January 2013)
• “Space, Time, and the Problem of Scale: Digital Storytelling with Neatline,” invited talk for MITH Digital Dialogues (with David McClure), November 2012.
• “Too Small to Fail: the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia Library,” keynote talk at the 2012 conference of the Japanese Association for Digital Humanities, Tokyo, Japan.
• “Geotemporal Interpretation of Archival Collections Using Neatline,” peer-reviewed paper presentation at Digital Humanities 2012, Hamburg, Germany (with David McClure et al).
• “Realigning Digital Humanities Training: the Praxis Program at the Scholars’ Lab,” peer-reviewed poster presentation at Digital Humanities 2012, Hamburg, Germany (with Jeremy Boggs et al).
• “Reality Bytes, keynote talk at RBMS 2012, the ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Pre-Conference, San Diego.
• “Lazy Consensus,” keynote talk at Code4Lib 2012, Seattle.
• “Two and a Half Cheers for the Lunaticks,” invited panel presentation at MLA 2012, Seattle.
• “The Praxis Program at the Scholars’ Lab,” invited talk at CUNY Graduate Center, 2011.
• “How to Play with Maps,” keynote talk at Space/Place/Play, Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory Conference (CWRC), Toronto, 2011.
• “The “#alt-ac” Track: Digital Humanists off the Straight and Narrow Path to Tenure,” panel presenter and organizer, Digital Humanities 2011 conference, Stanford University.
• “Historic Interpretation, Preservation, and Augmented Reality in Falmouth Jamaica,” peer-reviewed paper presentation, Digital Humanities 2011 conference, Stanford University (with Wayne Graham).
• “DH Answers: Building a Community-Based Q&A Board for the Digital Humanities,” peer-reviewed poster presentation, Digital Humanities 2011 conference, Stanford University (with Stéfan Sinclair, Joseph Gilbert, and Julie Meloni).
• “Where Credit is Due,” invited talk at the NINES / NEH Summer Institute, 2011.
• “A Skunk in the Library: the Path to Production for Scholarly R&D,” University of Nebraska Libraries 2011 Visiting Scholar lecture, 2011.
• “From Digital Humanities to the Alternative Academy”, keynote talk for the NWO’s CATCH to eCATCH symposium (“Continuous Access to Cultural Heritage”), Amsterdam, 2011.
• “Inventing the Map,” as part of a panel on “Digital Texts and the Spatial Turn,” Society for Textual Scholarship International Conference, State College, PA, 2011.
• “Mambo Italiano,” invited position paper delivered in absentia at a roundtable on the “History and Future of Digital Humanities,” MLA Convention 2011.
• “Monopolies of Invention: Crossing Class Lines in the Digital Humanities.” Variations on a theme, delivered as keynote lectures at 3 Australian universities in 2010: University of Sydney Digital Humanities/Digital Editing symposium, a University of Canberra special event, and the University of Melbourne Libraries “Information Futures Forum”.
• “Expressive Archives,” invited lecture, University of Canberra Digital Design + Media Arts Research Cluster, 2010.
• “Instruments, Not Answers: A Pragmatist’s Approach to the Humanities Research Environment” and “Crossing Class Lines in the Digital Humanities,” two invited presentations at the Inaugural NZ-RED Workshop, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, 2010.
• “But Who Looks East at Sunset? Gerard Manley Hopkins and Scientific Observation,” at By the Numbers: the Victorian Quantification of Everything (2010 meeting of the Victorians Institute, Charlottesville, VA.)
• “Humanities 2.0: ‘Evidence’ and Llull’s Great Art” at Burdens of Proof: Emerging Issues in the Law & Humanities conference, University of Virginia 2010.
• “Negotiating the Cultural Turn(s): Subjectivity, Sustainability, and Authority in the Digital Humanities.” invited Rosenzweig Forum lecture (with Tim Powell), Georgetown University, 2010.
• “Inventing the Map: from 19th-century Pedagogical Practice to 21st-century Geospatial Scholarship,” peer-reviewed presentation at Digital Humanities, King’s College, London, 2010.
• “NINES as a Virtual Research Environment?” in Building the Humanities Lab: Scholarly Practices in Virtual Research Environments, invited panelist at Digital Humanities, King’s College, London, 2010.
• “Graceful Degradation: Results of the Survey,” peer-reviewed paper, with Dot Porter. Digital Humanities, King’s College, London, 2010.
• “Temporal Modelling: Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, 1866,” Canadian Historical Association, Congress, Montreal 2010.
• “GIS, Graphesis, and the Gift of Screws,” Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship, University of Virginia, 2010.
• “Digital Scholarship in an Academic Research Library: UVa’s Scholars’ Lab,” project briefing, with Michael Furlough and Anne Houston. Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Spring Membership Meeting, 2010.
• “Geospatial Scholarship and Data in the United States,” invited lecture at the British Royal Society, ESRC workshop on geospatial data, London, 2010.
• “Monopolies of Invention,” invited panelist (“Links and Kinks in the Chain: Collaboration in the Digital Humanities”), MLA Convention 2009, Philadelphia.
• “New World Ordering,” panel organizer and presenter, Digital Humanities 09, University of Maryland, College Park, 2009.
• “Graceful Degradation: Managing Digital Humanities Projects in Times of Transition and Decline,” (with Dot Porter). Two poster presentations: at Digital Humanities 09, University of Maryland, College Park, 2009 and at DRHA 2009, Queen’s University, Belfast, 2009.
• “The Flailing is Mutual: Scholarly & Administrative Responses to Geospatial Technology,” Scholarly Communication Institute 7, University of Virginia, 2009.
• “Geospatial Data Delivery and Historic Maps,” invited lecture, Seas of Change: ALA/ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section Pre-Conference, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2009.
• “New World Ordering: Shaping Geospatial Information for Scholarly Use.” MITH Digital Dialogues, University of Maryland, 2008.
• “Speculative Computing,” invited plenary talk, NEH faculty seminar, “The Humanities in the 21st Century”: Northern Virginia Community College, 2008.
• “Collex: Facets, Folksonomy, and Fashioning the Remixable Web.” Digital Humanities 2007 conference, University of Illinios, Urbana-Champaign, 2007.
• “Collex: NINES in the Semantic Web.” (with Duane Gran and Erik Hatcher). Digital Library Federation Fall Forum, Boston, 2006.
• several NINES-related presentations of Collex and Rossetti Archive redesign work (University of Virginia, 2003-present).
• “NINES and Digital Scholarship” (presented at annual Monuments and Dust conference — London 2004).
• “Lullian Method and Interpretation in Humanities Computing” at ACH/ALLC 2003 in Athens, Georgia.
• “Some Applications of Game Theory to Digital Game Design” (as part of a panel on the Ivanhoe Game for ACH/ALLC 2002: New Directions in Humanities Computing. Tuebingen, Germany — July 2002.)
• “Biblioludica: a game model for teaching material culture” at SHARP 2002 (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing). British Library, London — July 2002.
• “Ludic Algorithms: or, How to Make Games and Why” (invited speaker in Graduate Student Lecture Series, UVA English Department. April 2002.)
• “The Playful Scholarly Endeavor” (brief invited talk at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) Academic Summit, San Jose, CA — March 2002.)
• “The Temporal Modelling Project” (presentation and demo for the project’s funder, the Intel Corporation. October 2001.)
• “Ivanhoe and Game Design” (panel discussion on the Ivanhoe Game with Johanna Drucker and Jerome McGann, Humanities and Technology Association Conference 2001) — September 2001.
• “Interface, Interaction, and the Image-Based Edition,” (Panel organizer and speaker, “Re-Ma(r)king the Text, St. Andrews University, Scotland — July 2001.)
• “Interfacing the Rossetti Archive,” (Panel organizer and speaker, “Humanities and Technology Association Conference 2000″) — October 2000.
• “Interfacing the Edition,” (invited panelist, “Technology and Text: Computing in the Humanities”) Millenial Histories and Prophecies: Literary Truth and Scientific Method, University of Virginia Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference (2000)
• “Teaching Writing in a Computerized Classroom,” Virginia English Pedagogy Series (1999)
• “Gerard Manley Hopkins and Scientific Observation” at ut pictura scientia: Art, Science and Technology in the History of Art, Seventh Annual Art History Symposium, McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia (1998)
• “The Jesuit and the Volcano: Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Krakatoa Sunset Observations” in Academic Apocalypse Now: Thinking Towards 2000, Annual English Department Conference, UVA (1998)
• “Poetic Machines: Possibilities for Hyper-Scholarship” in Writing in the Academy Now: a University of Virginia colloquium (1997).
• “Romanticism on its Own Terms” in Prometheus Unplugged: National Romanticism Conference. Emory University (1996).
• “A Hypermedia Guide to John Keats” (talk and on-line demonstration) in Interdisciplinary Teaching Conference, Wake Forest University (1996).

Selected Grants (PI/co-PI only)

• Mellon Foundation award: “JMU Flowerings Project Phase II: Seeding and Tending Furious Flower’s Digital Archives and Infrastructure,” co-PI with Joanne Gabbin, 2022-2026.
• Mellon Foundation award: “Furious Flowerings: Developing a Partnership Model for Digital Library Support of a Living Center for Black Poetry,” co-PI with Joanne Gabbin, 2020-2021.
• IMLS LB21 Grant: “The HBCU Library Alliance + Digital Library Federation Authenticity Project: Fostering Dynamic Fellowship Cohorts, Strategic Organizational Partnerships, & Authentic Community,” co-PI with Sandra Phoenix, 2018-2021.
• Mellon Foundation award for the Digital Library of the Middle East (implementation phase), co-PI with Charles Henry. 2018-2020.
• IMLS LB21 Grant: “Common Mission, Common Ground: Digital Library Collections, Pedagogy, and Pathways at the HBCU Library Alliance/DLF Liberal Arts Colleges Pre-Conference,” co-PI with Sandra Phoenix, 2017-2018.
• NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, “Speaking in Code: Tacit Understanding in DH Software Development”, PI 2013-2014.
• Mellon Foundation award for Scholarly Communication Institute extension: graduate education, scholarly production, and humanities support. UVa Lead, 2009-2013.
• Library of Congress-funded project, “Omeka + Neatline,” co-PI with Tom Scheinfeldt of George Mason University. 2010-2012.
• PI, NEH Institute for Advanced Technology in the Digital Humanities, “Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship.” PI, 2009-2011.
• NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, “Neatline: Facilitating Geospatial and Temporal Interpretation of Archival Collections.” (joint funding from NEH and IMLS.) PI, 2009-2010.
  

Additional Leadership and Service

• HathiTrust Visioning Task Force member (2023-present)
• Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence. Co-chair. James Madison University, 2023-present.
• Educopia Institute board member (2022-present)
• Joint Faculty Senate/Provost’s Task Force on Shared Governance. Co-chair. James Madison University, 2022-2023.
• ReEngineering Madison Steering Committee. James Madison University, 2022-present.
• VIVA statewide library consortium elected Steering Committee Chair (2021-present)
• Mellon/Non-Profit Finance Fund “Building Resilience in the Digital Humanities” advisory board member (2020-present)
• The Maintainers Advisory Committee (2020-present)
• Presidential Task Force on Pandemic-Related Learning and Innovation. Member. James Madison University, 2020-2022.
• Alexandria Archive Institute / Open Context Sustainability Advisory Board. (2020-present)
• Advisory Board, Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey (2021-2022)
• National Digital Stewardship Alliance coordinating committee member and institutional host (2016-2019)
• Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) (Immediate Past President: 2014-2016; President: 2012-2014; Vice President and outreach chair: 2010 and 2011; executive committee member: 2008-2010; member: 2001-present.)
• Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) steering committee member: 2011-2014. Conference Coordinating Committee chair, 2014-2015. Inclusivity Working Group chair, 2013-2014.
• Past Chair, University of Virginia General Faculty Council. (representing all non-tenure-track administrative and professional faculty, librarians, and senior research staff of the University) Chair, 2012-2014; Chair-Elect, 2011-12; Ex officio member of the Executive Committee of the UVa Faculty Senate, 2013-2014.
• Modern Language Association (MLA) (Committee on Information Technology chair 2011-2013; Task Force on Doctoral Study member: 2012-2014; CIT member: 2010-present; MLA member: 1999-2019.)
• centerNet (International Executive Committee member: 2013-2015; steering committee member for North America: 2010-2013.)
• AIDA: Image Analysis for Archival Discovery (advisory board member, 2016-present).
• University of Cincinnati Digital Scholarship Center (DSC) Advisory Board (2019-present).
• Oceanic Exchanges (advisory board member, 2018-present).
• BitCurator.Edu (professional experts board member, 2018-present).
• Algorithmic Awareness/“RE:Search” – Unpacking the Algorithms That Shape Our UX. (advisory board member, 2017-present).
• Mozilla Leadership Network (advisory board member, 2016-2017)
• Center for Open Science (preprints advisory board member, 2016-2017)
• Open Access Week (international advisory board member, 2014-2018)
• Six Degrees of Francis Bacon (advisory board member, 2015-present)
• IMLS-funded project to create digital library (DL) design guidelines on accessibility, usability and utility for blind and visually impaired (BVI) users, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (advisory board member, 2016-2021)
• DH at NC State (advisory board member, 2017-2018)
• HathiTrust Research Center (advisory board member, 2011-2014)
• KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies (editorial board member, 2015-2020)
• Göttingen Centre for Digital Humanities (member, External Scientific Advisory Board, 2012-2013.)
• Open Library of Humanities (LibTech advisory board member: 2013-present.)
• MetaLAB Projects, Harvard University Press (editorial board member: 2013-2017)
• MediaCommons (editorial board member: 2011-2013.)
• Practices in the Digital Humanities, University of Michigan digitalculturebooks series (advisory board member, 2013-present.)
• HuNI: Australian Humanities Networked Infrastructure Project (member, Expert Advisory Group, 2012-present.)
• Scholarly Communication Institute steering committee (2008-2013.)
• University of Virginia General Faculty Council (chair; 2013-14; elected member, 2010-present; chair-elect 2012-13.)
• University of Virginia Faculty Senate Policy Committee (appointed member 2011-2015.)
• University of Virginia Library R&D committee (member: 2008; chair: 2009-2011.)
• Program Committee, Digital Library Federation Forum (2009-2011.)
• Program Committee, Digital Humanities joint conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (chair: 2013; vice chair: 2010; member: 2011.)
• Senior Advisor & Executive Council Member, NINES (the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship.) 2007-2012.
• Reviewer, ACH/ALLC and Digital Humanities conferences (2001-present.)
• Reviewer, various digital humanities grant programs: National Endowment for the Humanities (US), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canadian), Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and National Library of Australia (2007-present.)
• Reviewer, Digital Humanities Quarterly and DSH/Literary and Linguistic Computing (ca. 2007-present; member, LLC editorial board: 2010-2014.)
• University of Virginia PhD committee service: Alexander Gil (English, successfully defended 2012); Wendy Hsu (Music, successfully defended 2011); Beth Bollwerk (Archaeology, successfully defended 2012); Abigail Holeman (Archaeology, 2011-present); Jean Bauer (History, successfully defended 2015).
• Advisory board, Emory University Libraries Digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC). (2011-2013.)
• Co-organizer, THATCamp Virginia: the Technology and Humanities Camp, Scholars’ Lab: December 2010 (with Joseph Gilbert et al.); April 2012 (with Eric Johnson et al.); November 2013 (with Purdom Lindblad et al.).
• Co-organizer, New Horizons in Teaching and Research: University of Virginia faculty technology conferences, 2008 (with Stephanie Conley).
  

Selected Digital Projects

• scholarly toolset: Neatline. (Project Director: a set of Omeka plug-ins for spatial annotation, digital story-telling, and geo-temporal interpretation of archival or museum collections)
• community forum: Digital Humanities Questions and Answers. Co-creator and host.
• scholarly aggregation and toolset: NINES: the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship. (ca. 2004-2006). I conceived and designed the Collex software that powers this project, and later managed its implementation. I also contributed to design and implementation of NINES tools Juxta (for textual collation) and the Ivanhoe Game (for experimentation and play). From 2007-2012 I served as Senior Advisor and executive council member for NINES.
• hypermedia archive: The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Hypermedia Research Archive, IATH (1997-2000, 2003-04). As Design Editor, I contributed to content modelling and markup, and was sole creator of the interface and searching mechanisms for the first publication of Jerome McGann’s groundbreaking hypermedia archive. (See also a 1998 Demonstration Model of the Rossetti Archive.) Later, I returned to Rossetti after its XML/XSLT conversion to design the present interface.
• scholarly toolset: Collex. (Creator and former project director. Collex is the precursor to Project Blacklight.)
• scholarly tool: Temporal Modelling. (co-creator, former project manager/Design Architect)
• scholarly tools: the Ivanhoe Game and Juxta. (former designer/Design Consultant)
• hypertext: “Dreaming DeQuincey.” (designer) An experimental, interpretive hypertext using the texts of Thomas DeQuincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Suspiria de Profundis, and The English Mail-Coach. With an Authors Note. (1997)
• hypermedia archive: “A Hypermedia Guide to the Life and Poetic Works of John Keats.” (editor) This resource was, at the time of its creation, the sole set of pages about the poet John Keats available on the Web. See a 1997 snapshot from the Internet Archive.

Key Positions Summary

• Dean of Libraries, Senior Academic Technology Officer, and Professor of English, James Madison University (2019-present)
• Executive Director of the Digital Library Federation (DLF) at CLIR, the Council on Library and Information Resources (2015-2019)
• Research Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia (2015-2019)
• Director, Scholars’ Lab and department of Digital Research & Scholarship, University of Virginia Library. 2007-2015.
• Distinguished Presidential Fellow, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR.) 2013-2015, 2019.
• President of the ACH (elected position at the Association for Computers and the Humanities), 2012-2014. Immediate Past President, 2015-present; Vice President & Executive Council Member, 2008-2011; ADHO Steering Committee rep for ACH, 2011-2015.
• Chair, Conference Coordinating Committee and Inclusivity Working Group, Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations. 2013-2015.
• Founder and Director, The Praxis Network. (an international network of digital humanities programs, offering new models of methodological training and collaborative research.) 2013-2015.
• Special Advisor to the Provost, University of Virginia (for digital humanities scholarship and strategy.) 2013-2015.

Employment History

• current employment:
  • I presently serve as Dean of Libraries and Professor of English at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
• past employment:
  • From 2015-2019, I directed the Digital Library Federation program at CLIR and served as Research Associate Professor of Digital Humanities in the English Department at UVa. Before joining the University of Virginia Library as Director of Digital Research and Scholarship (2007-2015) and Special Advisor to the Provost (2013-2015), I was employed on the professional research staff at UVa, where I collaborated with Dr. Jerome McGann and other colleagues on the Rossetti, Juxta, and NINES/Collex projects.
  • Associate Director, Scholarly Communication Institute (a Mellon-funded thinktank for strategies to advance scholarship in the context of the digital revolution.) 2009-2013, a role held concurrently with my UVa Library position.
  • Between 2004 and 2007, I held general faculty positions with increasing responsibility: post-doctoral fellow, Research Associate, and Research Scientist in Media Studies at the University of Virginia.
• student and postdoctoral work:
  • Project Manager and Design Architect, Temporal Modelling Project. UVA SpecLab. An innovative timeline software project funded by a grant from the Intel Corporation to PI Johanna Drucker. I was responsible for aspects of the development process, including coordinating research and consultation with academics, technical conceptualization, testing, grant management, and supervision/collaboration with contracted artists and programmers. (2001-2003)
  • Co-Director (with John Unsworth): Is Humanities Computing An Academic Discipline? An Interdisciplinary Faculty/Graduate Student Seminar (1999-2000)
  • Design Editor, Dante Gabriel Rossetti Archive, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. Electronic text encoding and programming, research and bibliographic work. Archive structuring and interface design. I have also served as Senior Research Assistant and Project Manager (with a staff of six) at the Rossetti Archive. (1997-2001)
  • Instructor, University of Virginia English and Media Studies Departments. See “teaching experience,” below. (1997-2003)
  • Adjunct Publications Editor, University of Virginia Division of Continuing Education. Writing and editing of publications meant for resident and adjunct instructors employed by the Division. I have also served as a graduate research assistant in the Dean’s Office for Continuing Education. (1996-1997)
  • Electronic Texts Assistant, University of Virginia Special Collections Department (Electronic Center pilot program). Assisted in creation of an on-line file of manuscript guides. (1994-95)
  • Archaeological Intern, West Virginia Division of Culture and History and State Historic Preservation Office. Archaeological mapping, lab work, and on-site investigation. (summers, 1993-4).
  • Student Manuscripts Processor/Archivist, University of Virginia Special Collections Department. Processed, researched, and organized manuscripts collections from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Archived and catalogued manuscripts and rare books. (1991-95).
• teaching experience:
  • workshops/inservice training:
    • various regular and one-off workshops, courses, and consultations in digital tools, research methods, DH center administration, and pedagogical approaches, 2000-present.
    • Digital Humanities for Directors and Deans. Digital Humanities Summer Institute, University of Victoria, BC. (with Harold Short, John Unsworth, and Ray Siemens). Summers 2022-2024.
    • Ethical Reasoning in Action: the 8 Key Questions. Workshops for incoming JMU students, 2019-present.
    • Community Archives and Digital Cultural Memory. Week-long intensive Rare Book School course, Summers 2019-present.
    • Digitizing the Historical Record. Week-long intensive Rare Book School course, in collaboration with Andrew Stauffer. Summers 2011-present.
    • “Using Neatline.” Invited workshop, University of Victoria, 2013.
    • “Project Management.” Invited “Getting Started in the Digital Humanities” workshops, DH Commons at the Modern Language Association Convention, 2012 and 2013.
    • Hacking Wearables and E-Textiles. Invited workshop, with Bill Turkel. Great Lakes THATCamp, 2010.
    • “Digital Scholarship 101.” Invited Pre-conference workshop, Spotlight on Innovation, James Madison University 2009.
    • “Text and Image Encoding,” Royal Holloway College, University of London. Week-long class in markup and digital scholarship given in the summer of 2000.
  • instructor of record, University of Virginia:
    • Mellon Graduate Seminar (with Chad Wellmon): Composing the Humanities. (2014-15).
    • MDST 345: Game Design Workshop (2003) [note: archive.org cache. links operational on Toolkit site.]
    • MDST 344: Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Games (2002) [note: archive.org cache. links operational on Toolkit site.]
    • MDST 352: Material Textuality and the History of the Book (Biblioludica, a “book history mystery”) (2002)
    • ENWR 110 Accelerated Intro to Academic Writing (Themed Seminar: “Richard III”) (2001)
    • ENLT 255 The Text and the Book (a course in bibliography and textual studies) (2000)
    • ENWR 110 Accelerated Intro to Academic Writing (Themed Seminar: Jack the Ripper”) (2000)
    • ENLT 201M Intro to Literary Study (Prerequisite course for students majoring in English) (1999)
    • ENWR 101 Introduction to Academic Writing (Themed Seminar: “Virtual Realities”) (twice: 1998 and 1999)
    • ENSP 106 Rhetoric and Public Speaking (twice: 1997 and 1998)
  • teaching assistant and distance learning site facilitator:
    • UTK/UVA Program in Library Science (1996-1998) University of Virginia
  • high school teacher:
    • Language Arts, Grades 10 and 12, East Forsyth High School, Winston-Salem, NC (1995-1996)
  • tutor:
    • Families Learning Together Program, Johnson Elementary School, Charlottesville, Virginia ESL teaching and GED preparation for low-income and emigrant adults (1999-2001)
    • English as a Second Language, UVA Madison House Volunteer Program Charlottesville High School, Charlottesville, Virginia (1994-1995)

Teaching/Research Interests

• dissertation: Speculative Computing: Instruments for Interpretive Scholarship. Theorized the building and use of electronic tools and environments for humanities research, teaching, and interpretation. Included case studies on Ramon Llull’s medieval Ars Magna and current digital humanities projects such as Temporal Modelling, the Ivanhoe Game, and the Rossetti Hypermedia Archive.
• areas of expertise:
  • digital libraries and academic/research library administration
  • nonprofit organization leadership
  • digital humanities administration, project management, and online collaborative research.
  • ars combinatoria, game models, and ludic and algorithmic strategies for research and interpretation.
  • electronic editing, humanities computing, and information visualization (particularly in relation to geo-temporal visualization of humanities data).
  • bibliography, textual criticism, and print & material culture.
  • interface design and digital & generative aesthetics.

Continuing Education

• Crucial Conversations training. (upcoming at James Madison University), 2023.
• Prosci Certified Change Practitioner. Change Management certification program, 2023.
• “600 Years of Botanical Illustration,” Rare Book School course, Oak Spring Garden Foundation. 2023.
• Ethical Reasoning in Action training. James Madison University, 2019, 2022.

Selected Interviews and Press

• extended profile in the final chapter of The Emergence of the Digital Humanities, by Steven E. Jones. Routledge, 2013. (see esp. pp.191-197).
• “Devising New Roles for Scholars Who Can Code,” in-depth profile, “Ten Tech Innovators.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 29 April 2013.
• “Humanities Ph.D. Plus,” on the launch of the Praxis Network, which I founded. Inside Higher Ed. 21 March 2013.
• “Once Upon a Place: Telling Stories With Maps,” describing the initial release of the Scholars’ Lab’s Neatline. The Atlantic, 13 June 2012.
• “#Alt-Academy: An Interview with Bethany Nowviskie,” on my open-access book about alternative careers. Inside Higher Ed, 24 July 2011.
• ‘Hacking’ and ‘Yacking’ About the Digital Humanities,” describing a conference whose intellectual program I chaired, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. 3 Sept 2013.
• “Digital Humanities Scholar Earns Distinguished Appointment.” On my CLIR fellowship appointment & joining the UVa Provost’s office. UVa Today. 28 Aug 2013.
• “Telling Stories, Digitally,” University of Virginia Magazine Q&A, 22 Jan 2015.
• “Bethany Nowviskie to Lead Digital Library Federation,” 25 March 2015.
• “The Digital in the Humanities: An Interview with Bethany Nowviskie,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 9 May 2016.
• “An Intellectual and Cultural Crossroads,” interview on the vision for our Carrier Library renovation, Madison Magazine, Fall 2023.

Fellowships and Awards

• See “Selected Grants” above for recent major awards.
• Distinguished Presidential Fellowship, Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) (2013-2015; 2019)
• Lansdowne Visiting Scholar, University of Victoria (2013)
• NINES postdoctoral fellowship, funded by the Mellon Foundation (with Jerome McGann, 2004-2005)
• Intel Fellowship in Media Studies (2001-2002, with work done on Temporal Modelling in SpecLab)
• International Game Developers Association inaugural student scholarship (2002)
• Delmas Foundation funding in support of “Biblioludica” an innovative approach to the teaching of book history (in partnership with Johanna Drucker, 2001)
• Book Collector’s Award, Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia (for a collection of American editions of Victorian poets, 1998)
• University of Virginia Graduate AEP Fellowship (1996-2001)
• Wake Forest University Master Teaching Fellowship (1995-96)
• Phi Beta Kappa election (1995) and Dean’s List (1991-95)
• Departmental Honors Award in Archaeology (1995)
• University of Virginia Distinguished Majors Program: Highest Honors/Highest Distinction (1995)
• University of Virginia Wagenheim Scholarship in English (1994-95)
• West Virginia Governor’s Internship Awards (summers 1993-94)

Languages

• natural: English and German, with reading/writing knowledge of French and Scottish Gaelic
• unnatural: strong knowledge of various text encoding systems, metadata schemas, and markup languages; merely dangerous knowledge of assorted scripting, stylesheet, and programming languages