This thesis draws on the theory of new materialism to posit an alternative approach to cultural heritage digitization. Modifying the method of critical digitization and synthesizing it with the method of thick description for the study of damaged cultural heritage, this thesis proposes the method weird digitization which seeks to challenge traditional selection criteria for cultural heritage digitization as well as challenging practices of mass digitization. Seeking to identify the cultural heritage objects that may be overlooked using traditional selection criteria as well as ones that may pose challenges to digitization, this approach seeks to highlight the value of damaged or otherwise “weird” cultural heritage while exploring how the digitization of these materials may practically be undertaken. This approach is practically assessed through the exploratory digitization and analysis of selected damaged photographs in the IKFF (Internationella Kvinnoförbundet för Fred och Frihet) collection housed within the KvinnSam (the Swedish National Resource Library for Gender Studies) archive at the Gothenburg University Library. The discussion explores the pragmatic, affective, and artistic benefits of such an approach to cultural heritage digitization.

This thesis explores the remarkable dearth of old woman narrators in British fiction between 1790 and 1860, both documenting their under-representation and explaining it as, in part, a product of a wave of medical discourse disparaging the physical and mental vitality of post-menopausal women. Regarding methodology, I perform a random sample upon a corpus of first-person novels published in the period and categorize each according to the gender and age of the narrator. This analysis exhibits, unsurprisingly, that most narrators in the dataset are either in the first half of their life, male, or both. Old women represent only a fraction of the narrators in the set. Regarding explanation, I point to widely cited and republished writings of physicians from the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century. These documents suggested that menopause, though often occurring in what we today would consider middle age, marked the onset of female senescence. After this "change of life," as it was euphemistically termed, women who did not mellow and recede as expected were seen as transgressing biological "laws" that prohibited their bodies from biological reproduction. And as the biological was often conflated with the social, post-menopausal women were also, by extension, sometimes thought unfit for creative or literary production. Though such medical discourse is by no means the only influence on this era's marginalization of older women, it is a significant one that merits further study. By investigating how gyno-gerontological discourse came to bear on the inclusion--or rather, exclusion--of old female narrators within nineteenth-century fiction, this thesis contributes to a growing body of works within literary gerontology. The hope is that as literary gerontology continues to expand as a field of study, more scholars, students, and eventually general readers will become more conscious of the obstacles and frustrations faced by older generations--especially older women--in a world that, even by means of institutions as apparently disinterested as medicine and health care, is constantly overlooking, demeaning, or sidelining their experiences in favor of those of the young.

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<p>This dissertation proposes a definition and methodology to analyze the literary canon: the canon is the set of producers and products that accumulate the greatest amount of literary capital granted by institutions of consecration. In this concept, two categories are fundamental: literary capital and institutions. Literary capital refers to objectivations of literary value: manifestations of the agreement on the importance of authors and their literary work (inclusions in reading lists, awards and prizes, mentions in literary histories, among others). Institutions are communities that participate in literary activity; they are governed by norms and exercise power over other agents.</p> <p>This theoretical framework allows for the examination of the canon formation in literary criticism, anthologies, and Wikipedia. The accumulation of capital explains the existence of three positions within the Peruvian literary field: consecrated, legitimized, and aspiring writers. Furthermore, trajectory of capital is a concept that elucidates the changes in literary value. An ascending or descending trajectory shows when a writer's prestige has increased or decreased over time. Institutions located inside or outside the literary field is the basis for positing the difference between prestige and popularity: both concepts have a similar functioning, but literary agents have little or no involvement in the latter.</p>

This project draws upon material culture, digital humanities, and archival theory and method in the service of public history investigations. After selecting an artifact and performing object analysis, I will digitize the artifact and materialize a new object. I will then perform another object analysis on the 3D printed object. This exercise will provide the familiar benefits of object analysis, but the decisions and interactions necessary to digitize and materialize the object provide a fresh perspective. I will propose approaches for performing similar investigations in repositories, along with a pedagogical argument for doing so. By emphasizing modularity, flexibility, and minimal capital requirements, I hope these approaches can be adapted to a variety of institutions and audiences. Researchers will reap the benefits of intellectual and emotional engagement, hands-on learning, and technological experimentation. Public historians will have the opportunity to engage in outreach and innovative education and exploration of their collections. / History

This thesis explores the use and potential of digital timelines in public history projects. Digital timelines have become a popular and accessible ways for institutions and individuals to write history. The history of timelines indicates that people understand timelines as authoritative information visualizations because they represent concrete events in absolute time. The goals of public history often conflict with the linear, progressive nature of most timelines. This thesis reviews various digital timeline tools and uses The Print Center's Centennial Timeline as an in-depth case study that takes into account the multifaceted factors involved in creating a digital timeline. Digital history advocates support digital scholarship as an alternative to traditional narrative writing. This thesis illustrates that digital timelines can enable people to visualize history in unexpected ways, fostering new arguments and creative storytelling. Despite their potential, digital timelines often replicate the conventions of their paper counterparts because of the authoritative nature of the timeline form. / History

In the cities of Richmond, Virginia; Charleston South Carolina; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Baltimore, Maryland, this dissertation endeavors to find out what can be learned about the archaeology(s) of Black memory(s) through Africological Epistemic Visual Storytelling (AEVS); their silences, their hauntings, their wake work, and their healing? This project is concerned with elucidating new African memories and African knowledges that emerge from a two-tier Afrocentric analysis of Eurocentric cartography that problematizes the dual hegemony of the colonial archive of public memory and the colonial map by using an Afrocentric methodology that deploys a Black Digital Humanities research design to create an African agentic ritual archive that counters the colonial one. Additionally, this dissertation explains the importance of understanding the imperial geographic logics inherent in the hegemonically quotidian cartographies of Europe and the United States that sanction white supremacist narratives of memory and suppress spatial imaginations and memories in African communities primarily, but Native American communities as well. It is the hope of the primary researcher that from this project knowledge will be gained about how African people can use knowledge gained from analyzing select monuments/sites of memorialization for the purposes of asserting agency, resisting, and possibly breaking the supposed correctness of the colonial map. / African American Studies