I’m a third year English PhD student studying the history of science in the 18th and 19th centuries. I also have an interest in new media, particularly new ways of approaching the ebook in general and the scholarly edition in particular. As a Digital Fellow with CUNY DHI, I work on digital initiatives around the GC. The Digital Fellows site is here. We have a blog, Tagging the Tower, and our workshop schedule should be going up soon.

Both my project ideas have to do with the aesthetics of science, including how science is portrayed in literature. The first idea is for an online archive or database of technologies as they appear in various works of science fiction. Visitors could view books by technology and see when new technologies were first introduced in literature. Ideally, they could also compare the advent of technologies in fiction with the real-world development of those technologies. I envision this database as primarily crowdsourced. Not sure how I’ll build it, though I’ve been experimenting with Django, a Python framework for building web apps. I also have some experience working with the Drupal content management system, although for various reasons I’d prefer not to build this project with it.

My second idea is a digital scholarly edition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s memoir, which is titled Memories and Adventures. The book is interesting from a history of science perspective because of the contradiction between Doyle’s invention of Sherlock Holmes and his fascination with spiritualism, psychical phenomena, and the occult. I’d like it to be something of a linearly curated archive, where readers could branch off the central text to explore information about  Doyle, Holmes, the Boer war, and other subjects covered in the book.

I’ve researched a lot of platforms and systems for publishing on the iPad, and most have pretty big drawbacks. I’d have to either bite the bullet and pick one of those frameworks or try to come up with something on my own, which might be tough going.

It’s been great to read about everyone’s background and scholarly interests. Looking forward to class tomorrow evening!