Archaeology is a field which has been impacted greatly by digital technology; the new technological instruments are developing both academic research and public mediation. Digital archaeology has been available at the museum for some time, but immersive technologies are recent introductions, which offer new experiences for museum visitors. Even though digital archaeology/virtual heritage have been studied for their technological virtues, the learning opportunities presented to the museum visitor has not yet been examined from a visitor’s perspective. In this dissertation, the visitor experience is the basis of analysis for determining how we can critically assess digital exhibitions using immersive technologies. This study examines if and how critical museology can be successfully applied to immersive digital displays; a detailed analysis of two case studies using VR (high immersion) and AR (low immersion) show that digital experiences are fully capable of communicating cultural content and that these multi-sensory technologies can successfully engage users in the creation of knowledge. The extent of sensory stimuli affecting the visitor is not accounted for in current critical museology, therefore the analysis of this study suggests a number of suggestions for future designs of digital displays using immersive technologies.

Cette étude explore l’ensemble des traductions de l’Odyssée d’Homère en langue française depuis la Renaissance jusqu’à nos jours. Elle participe à la constitution d’une histoire des traductions à partir du nouvel outillage technique et conceptuel offert par le numérique, qui permet d’envisager à nouveaux frais l’histoire des traductions d’un texte fondateur de la civilisation occidentale. Notre hypothèse, selon laquelle le tournant dans la manière de traduire Homère s’effectue entre la fin du XVIIIe siècle et le début du XIXe siècle en France, avec les progrès de l’archéologie et de la philologie, a pu être vérifiée tout au long de cette étude, grâce au programme que nous avons construit. Cette étude a donc pu retracer à la fois l’histoire des traductions de l’Odyssée et se rattacher à l’histoire plus large qu’est l’histoire des traductions. Notre étude a aussi pour but de rendre accessibles à tous les résultats que nous avons obtenus. Nous avons numérisé et rassemblé toutes les traductions de l’Odyssée en langue française dans un format XML enrichi. Nous avons traité 26 traductions de l’Odyssée, dont 23 sont intégrales. Hormis les textes sous droits, tous les textes sont en libre accès sous cette forme. L’outil numérique que nous avons créé de toutes pièces n’est pas seulement un instrument destiné à faciliter le travail du chercheur : il permet de trouver des phénomènes qui sont indécelables à l’œil nu, et d’obtenir des résultats qui ne peuvent pas, même avec la plus grande rigueur, être obtenus par un humain. Nous voyons ainsi la double fonction de l’outil informatique, qui sert à la fois d’outil de vérification et de découverte. D’une part, l’outil informatique permet de rendre vérifiable les intuitions de la philologie qui sont opérationnalisées et parfois visualisables de manière pédagogique. D’autre part, des phénomènes inattendus peuvent être rendus visibles par les expériences, comme des inflexions que la longue durée ou la quantité de textes auraient masquées. / This study goes through the whole of the French translations of Homer’s Odyssey from the Renaissance up to the XXth century. It is a further step in the study of the history of translations, based on a new technical and conceptual tool, using a wide range of new techniques in the field of Digital Humanities, which should help us enhance research about such a major text in Western civilization. Our hypothesis is to locate the turning point in the ways to translate Homer at the end of the XVIIIth century in France, with progress made in archeology and philology, a hypothesis that has been verified throughout this study, thanks to the software we made. We have studied both the history of the translations of the Odyssey and a wider history, that is to say, history of translations in general. Our study also aimed at giving access to the wider public to the results we got. We digitized and gathered all the French translations of the Odyssey in an enriched XML format. We have dealt with 26 translations, within which 23 are complete. Except for copyrighted texts, all our texts are open source. The digital tool we made does not only exist to ease the scientific work, but it also allows us to see new phenomena that would be impossible to spot with a human eye, and obtain results that cannot, even with rigorous expertise, be obtained by a human. We see there the double function of a digital tool that can both confirm and help discover. Firstly, the tool can allow us to confirm philological intuitions that can be operationalized and visualized in pedagogical way. On the other hand, unexpected phenomena can be found and visualized, such as changes that might have been hidden due to the wide period studied or the quantity of texts analyzed.

Progressivement, les technologies numériques prennent une place plus importante dans la recherche sur les phénomènes socioculturels. Des projets d’équipement se développent dans toutes les disciplines des sciences humaines et sociales (SHS) et des mouvements prônant une révolution instrumentale se multiplient. Cette thèse en sciences de l’information et de la communication propose d’interroger l’avènement d’une recherche « numériquement équipée » en SHS à partir d’une réflexion générale sur les liens entre sciences, technique et écriture. Quels sont les enjeux épistémologiques, mais aussi politiques, sous-jacents à ces logiques d’instrumentation numérique en tant qu’elles instituent de nouvelles techniques d’écriture au cœur des pratiques de recherche ? Le mémoire présente un parcours en trois grandes parties. La première partie inscrit la recherche dans une pensée des rapports fondamentaux entre instruments techniques et connaissance scientifique. Il s’agit également de reconnaître les spécificités d’une approche « communicationnelle » de l’instrumentation scientifique, et en particulier de l’instrumentation numérique. La deuxième partie propose une exploration critique des discours d’escorte qui accompagnent ces transformations en s’appuyant sur les projets émanant de deux courants majeurs du domaine de la recherche numériquement équipée en SHS : les « humanités numériques » et les « méthodes numériques ». Quelles sont les promesses portées par ces mouvements ? Quels imaginaires, quelles représentations de la science et du numérique ces projets de « renouvellement » de la recherche par le numérique abritent-ils, mais aussi à quels « obstacles » se heurtent-ils ? À partir de la théorie des médias informatisés et de l’écriture numérique, et sur la base d’une démarche d’analyse techno-sémiotique, la troisième partie interroge les formes et les pouvoirs de la médiation instrumentale numérique. Sur un plan morphologique et praxéologique, en quoi consiste la conception et la mise en œuvre de tels instruments ? Sur un plan plus politique, quels sont les effets « normatifs » de ces dispositifs instrumentaux sur l’épistémologie des disciplines qui s’en saisissent ? / Gradually, digital technologies are becoming more important in research on sociocultural phenomena. Equipment projects are developing in all the social sciences and the humanities (SSH) and movements advocating an instrumental revolution are multiplying. This thesis proposes to question the advent of a digitally equipped research in the SSH on the basis of a general reflection on the links between science, technology and writing. What are the epistemological and political issues that underlie these digital instrumentation logics as they institute new writing techniques at the heart of research practices? The thesis is composed of three main parts. The first part questions the fundamental relationships between technical instruments and scientific knowledge. It is also about estimating the specificities of a communication approach to scientific instrumentation. The second part proposes a critical exploration of the discourses that accompany these transformations by focusing on projects from two major currents in the field of digitally equipped research in the SSH: the "digital humanities" and the "digital methods". What promises, what "imaginaires", what representations of science do these research practices renewal projects by digital technology contain? But also what "epistemological obstacles" do they encounter? Based on a theory of digital writing, and on a techno-semiotic analysis approach, the thir part questions the forms and powers of the digital instrumentation. On a morphological level, what do the design and implementation of such instruments consist of? On a political level, what are the normative effects of these "dispositifs" on the epistemology of the disciplines that seize them?

Les travaux de cette thèse portent sur les conséquences du développement du numérique sur la pratique de recherche en SHS au sens large et en histoire en particulier. L'introduction du numérique bouleverse les pratiques de recherche en histoire en mettant à disposition du chercheur un grand volume de sources numérisées ainsi que de nombreux outils d'analyse et d'écriture. Si ces nouveaux moyens de recherche permettent à la discipline d'adopter de nouvelles approches et de renouveler certains points de vue, ils posent également des questions sur les plans méthodologique et épistémologique. Devant ce constat, nous avons choisi d'étudier plus en détail l'impact des outils de recherche d'information, bibliothèques numériques et moteurs de recherche de sources sur l'activité de recherche en histoire. Ces systèmes offrent un accès à un grand volume de documents historiques mais leur fonctionnement repose sur des traitements informatiques pour la plupart invisibles aux yeux des utilisateurs, qui peuvent ainsi s'apparenter à des boîtes noires. L'objectif principal de cette thèse est donc de donner les moyens aux utilisateurs d'observer et de comprendre ces processus dans l'optique de leur permettre d'en intégrer les effets de bord à leur méthodologie. Afin de mieux positionner notre objet d'étude, nous proposons un cadre conceptuel reposant sur la notion de ressource numérique. Ce concept représente les systèmes numériques que nous étudions au sein de leur contexte d'usage, de production et d'exécution, il fait le lien entre des usages attendus par les utilisateurs et des choix méthodologiques ou techniques issus des présupposés de ces concepteurs. Sur la base de ce cadre conceptuel, nous proposons une analyse des bibliothèques numériques et moteurs de recherche de sources en fonction de chacun des contextes. Ainsi, notre étude propose une analyse des usages de ce type de ressource numérique dans le cadre d'une recherche en histoire en adoptant une démarche expérimentale et en produisant des indicateurs de la pratique. Ces indicateurs sont ensuite croisés avec le fonctionnement du système, dans ces contextes de production et d'exécution, pour en révéler les biais méthodologiques. À l'issue de ces analyses, nous proposons un réinvestissement de ces résultats sous la forme d'un outil logiciel dédié à l'enseignement d'une approche critique de la recherche d'information en ligne pour les apprentis historiens. Ces travaux sont évalués par une démarche expérimentale. Elle est construite sur la base d'un prototype d'observation du comportement des utilisateurs en situation de recherche d'information et des outils de démonstration des biais associés au fonctionnement des processus informatiques impliqués lors des phases de production des contenus et d'exécution du système. Ce prototype a fait l'objet de plusieurs phases d'expérimentation liées à son développement, l'évaluation de ces fonctionnalités et de son impact sur la pratique dans un contexte de formation. / The work of this thesis focuses on the consequences of digital technology development on research practice in the humanities in the broad sense and particularly in history. The introduction of digital technology disrupts historical research practices by making available to the researcher a large volume of digitized sources as well as numerous analysis and writing tools. These new capacities of research allow the discipline to adopt new approaches and renew certain points of view, but they also raise methodological and epistemological questions. Given this observation, we have chosen to study in more detail the impact of information retrieval tools, digital libraries and search engines on historical research activity. These systems offer access to a large volume of historical documents but they depend on computer processes that are mostly invisible to users and acting as black boxes. The main objective of this work is to give users the means to observe and understand these processes in order to allow them to integrate their side effects in a suitable methodology. In order to better position our object of study, we propose a conceptual framework based on the notion of digital resource. This concept represents the digital systems that we study within their contexts of use, production and execution. It connects uses expected by users and methodological or technical choices based on the assumptions of system designers. Based on this conceptual framework, we propose an analysis of digital libraries and historical sources search engines according to each context. Thus, our study proposes an analysis of the uses of this type of digital resource within the framework of a research in history. The study adopts an experimental approach and produces indicators of the practice. These indicators are then crossed with the functioning of the system, in its contexts of production and execution, to reveal the potential methodological biases. Following these analyzes, we propose a reinvestment of these results in the form of a software tool dedicated to teaching a critical approach to online information retrieval for student in history. This work is evaluated by an experimental approach. It is built on the basis of a prototype of observation of the behavior of the users when they are looking for information. Our experimental approach is also based on demonstration tools of the biases associated with the functioning of the computer processes involved during the contexts of production and execution. This prototype has been the subject of several experimental phases related to its development, the evaluation of these features and its impact on practice in a training context.

Le dictionnaire étymologique du français de Walther von Wartburg, le Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (FEW), est en cours d’informatisation. Ses 25 volumes, répartis sur plus de 16000 pages, sont saisis puis jalonnés de balises sémantiques XML par une série d’algorithmes afin de permettre la mise en place d’un FEW électronique et son interaction avec différentes ressources extérieures. Or, l’encodage des données saisies ainsi que leur affichage dépendent directement de polices de caractères qui soient en mesure de formater l’ensemble du contenu du FEW, notamment une série de caractères inédits utilisés pour la notation de transcriptions phonétiques.L’objet de cette thèse consiste dans l’étude de la réalisation matérielle du FEW, en particulier sa typographie, des premières publications d’articles en 1922 jusqu’à leur diffusion actuelle sous une forme uniquement numérique. L’étude s’appuie pour cela sur une analyse des évolutions de la présentation du dictionnaire en abordant ses changements, d’ordre lexicographique mais aussi technique. Cette analyse est complétée par l’observation d’une série d’autres dictionnaires dont la mise en forme typographique est remarquable. La thèse participe ainsi à mettre en évidence la manière dont le FEW est un objet lexicographique unique.Le résultat concret de la thèse correspond à la création d’une famille de caractères adaptée aux usages du FEW. Ces polices sont exploitées au sein de deux interfaces: la première accompagne les rédacteurs du FEW lors de l’élaboration de nouveaux articles, la seconde permet aux utilisateurs de consulter et d’interagir avec la base de données du FEW informatisé. Issue d’une collaboration entre linguistes, informaticiens et designers, cette thèse propose un modèle d’intégration du design typographique au sein des humanités numériques / The etymological dictionary of the French language by Walther von Wartburg, entitled Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (FEW), is being digitalized. Its 25 volumes spread over 16,000 pages are currently being typed and tagged with semantical XML language using a series of algorithms, in order to create a computerized FEW, able to interact with several external resources. However, the encoding and the display of the data requires appropriate fonts to typeset the whole dictionary, including a series of specific characters for phonetic transcriptions.The purpose of this thesis is to study the material realization of the FEW, and more specifically its typography, starting from the publication of the first articles in 1922 up to their current circulation as an exclusively digital content. The study is based on an analysis of the evolution of the dictionary's layout, taking into account lexicographical but also technical changes. This analysis is completed by a study of a selection of other dictionaries whose typesetting is remarkable. This thesis hence contributes to highlighting the extent to which the FEW is a unique lexicographic object.The concrete result of this thesis consists in a typeface family tailored to the needs of FEW users. These fonts are implemented in two interfaces: the first one is used by FEW editors to structure and write new articles, the second one enables users to consult and interact with the database of the computerized FEW.The result of a collaboration between linguists, computer scientists and designers, this thesis proposes a new model for integrating typographic design within digital humanities

This dissertation is divided into two parts. The first is a critical study of the Dravyasamuddeśa, a chapter from the Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari, a 5th-century Sanskrit philosopher of language. It also deals with the 10th-century commentary of Helārāja, which was highly influential in shaping the interpretation of the text by later authors. Although the Vākyapadīya is a treatise on Sanskrit grammar, and this particular chapter purports to deal with the grammatical category of dravya, in the Dravyasamuddeśa, Bhartṛhari is mostly concerned with establishing a non-dual theory of reality. Helārāja, five centuries later, defends this theory and attempts to re-interpret other schools of thought, namely Buddhism and Sāṃkhya, in its terms. The second part of the dissertation is a critical edition and annotated translation of the Dravyasamuddeśa and the commentary. It also describes the making of the edition - for this project, an open source software package was developed to automatically collate diplomatic transcriptions of manuscript witnesses in order to generate an apparatus variorum. The resulting apparatus forms part of an interactive, online digital edition of the text, from which the printed edition is generated.

McKee Library has cultivated relationships with local artists as well as partnered with several departments on campus to exhibit a variety of art works in different mediums throughout the year. We have used our digital commons platform to digitally preserve these exhibits, promote the artists, and encourage future partnerships. In our presentation, we will discuss the following: developing partnerships around campus and the community, artist agreements, creation of digital exhibits, and gallery promotion.

Typified rhetorical situations are often a result of normalized ideologies within cultures; however, they also have the capability to produce new ideology. Within these discursive sites, identities are constructed among these normalized social acts. More importantly, these identities are constructed across many layers, not limited to one social act, but many that overlap and influence each other. In this paper, I focus on the identities that are constructed in marginalized spaces within sites of interacting discourse. Focusing on the rhetoric of abjection posited by Julia Kristeva, along with McKenzie Wark’s exploration of gamespace, a liminal theoretical space that encompasses the sites of analysis and ideology formation from the perspective of gamers, I analyze disruptions of normalized social practices in the gaming genre in order to implement the use of abjection as a method of understanding how sites of difference produce meaning for minoritarian subjects.

Prominent within various scientific journals, news media outlets, and online publications are conversations surrounding what is dubbed “climate anxiety.” This wide-stemmed social unrest is caused, in large part, by the unrelenting, consistent data from the scientific community reporting rising sea levels, species extinction, and “record-breaking” heatwaves as well as an increasing average of global temperatures, that seem to top the next every year for the past decade. However, an underlying thread to these reports remains largely consistent. Unless serious regard is given to our natural surroundings and how we have come to interact within it, regions of the Earth considered desirable for human life will likely become uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable to humans and other species. When addressed so simply and plainly, it seems that the response to such life-altering implications ought to be simple: do whatever it takes to ensure that a diversity of life, including that of humankind, can continue on the planet Earth. Voices of the scientific community have decreed that a driving force behind the lackadaisical approach to deterring such dire climatological circumstances, is the inability to grasp the immense scope of climate change issues. This thesis, then, aims at proposing a directive to correct this problematic mentality, and a specific generation to combat this nature. Using the lens of ecocriticism, the study of literature and the environment, combined with cutting-edge theoretical findings in the field, I will focus on the literary portrayal of climate change within young-adult dystopian fiction. While regarding the scholarship on the recent increase of YA fiction that takes a critical approach to human ethics and the portrayal of the demise of the natural environment in those texts, I will examine how this trend responds to my ideas of young-adult fiction functioning within Ecocriticism. Moreover, you will see a pattern charting how literature can revolutionize and evolve the mind frame of human ethics on a planetary scale, starting with the young adult readers. Further, I will highlight how these ideologies could and ought to be incorporated into a composition classroom. Composition already has a strong history of grounding itself in the notion of identity, and how contingent factors (social, political, economic, ecological, etc.) are integrated into the construction of that identity. This thesis poses that if we can introduce a sense of how those factors affect our ability to act in the natural world and potential consequences of these actions by way of pop culture outlets like YA Climate Fiction, readers can begin to re-shape our identities and actions, individually and collectively, towards Ecocritical ethics and awareness.

This thesis examines two works from different mediums, the short story “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien and the video game Battlefield 1, to compare how each constructs empathy using virtual reality and mimetic communication between audience and the work. The thesis draws from both digital media studies and affect theory to construct a nuanced view of how empathy functions in the works. The body responds to empathy physically. As social creatures, humans feel the emotions of those around them, even if those around them are virtually constructed. In other words, the thesis will explore how video games have been used historically and what their effects are on gamers, especially gamers’ bodies and emotional responses to the constructed virtual reality. This work aims to show how the lines of fiction and reality become blurred to establish empathy within a narrative and virtual reality space.