People

 

Deanna Shemek

Deanna Shemek co-chairs the Humanities Center’s Digital Humanities Exchange (DHX), a group of faculty, staff, and graduate students who share interests in developing digital avenues for humanities research at UCI.  As technology alters the modes in which we approach and apprehend the objects of our study, Deanna and  DHX co-chairs Tatiana Bryant (UCI Libraries) and Dwayne Pack (UCI Humanities IT) welcome participants to join in exploring the information advances that are transforming reading, mapping, measurement, healing, navigation, visualization, storytelling and much more today, both within and beyond the research university. Deanna is a Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of European Languages and Studies, where she teaches courses ranging from the Renaissance to today, from chivalric romance to Italo Calvino, from Italian theater and the commedia dell’arte to opera, to works by a new generation of immigrant writers in Italy. Her research focuses especially on the Italian sixteenth century. Her most recent book, Isabella d’Este. Selected Letters (2017) is a translation that draws from an archive of nearly 16,000 pieces of manuscript correspondence by one of Renaissance Italy’s most prominent female cultural protagonists. It was also Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) and her massive communications network that drew Deanna to the digital humanities. IDEA. Isabella d’Este Archive, a collaborative, multi-media, an international project she co-directs, refracts the culture of the Italian Renaissance through the prism of Isabella d’Este’s correspondence, music, and art collecting to offer a distinctly feminine perspective on matters ranging from family life to luxury consumption to war.  Currently funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement Grant (2019-2021), IDEA’s Virtual Studiolo project enables the IDEA team to develop an immersive, interactive Virtual Reality instantiation of Isabella’s art space, one of the period’s most famous galleries.

Dwayne Pack

Dwayne Pack is the Director of Computing for the School of Humanities at UC Irvine and co-chair of the Digital Humanities Exchange (DHX). He has over 26 years of experience with higher education information technology. He specializes in supporting instructors with a wide range of technology-rich classroom and research services, focusing on multimedia projects, web development, distance learning, and digital humanities (DH). Dwayne is eager to highlight some of the great DH projects already started at UCI and help to develop a lively environment for creating and sharing future projects.

 

 

And you!

Would you like to get involved with DHX?