Clifford B. Anderson is Associate University Librarian for Research and Learning at the Vanderbilt University Library. He holds a secondary appointment as Professor of Religious Studies in the College of Arts & Science at Vanderbilt University and is affiliated faculty in the Comparative Media Analysis and Practice Joint-Ph.D. program. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering.
M.S. in Library and Information Science, 2012
Pratt Institute
Ph.D. in Systematic Theology, 2005
Princeton Theological Seminary
Th.M. in Theology, 1996
Princeton Theological Seminary
M.Div., 1995
Harvard Divinity School
A.B. in Philosophy, 1992
Kenyon College
CS 1000, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, School of Engineering
Fall 2018: TR 8:10 am - 9:25 am
Clifford Anderson, Associate University Librarian for Research and Learning
Fundamental concepts of computing including abstraction, algorithms, design, and distributed computation. Hands-on curriculum focusing on translating ideas into working computer programs and developing a mastery of practical computational literacy. The relevance and societal impact of computer science are emphasized. Students in the School of Engineering may only receive open elective credit for CS 1000.
GER 8205, German, Russian, and Eastern European Studies
Spring 2018: TR 1:10 pm – 2:25 pm
Clifford Anderson, Associate University Librarian for Research and Learning and Professor of Religious Studies, and Joy Calico, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Musicology.
This seminar explores the cultural history of Berlin in the twentieth century using theories and tools of the digital humanities. We examine the culture and geopolitics of twentieth-century Berlin from auditory and spatial perspectives, taking Walter Benjamin’s notion of the flâneur as our guide. The flâneur has long been a favorite emblem of urban modernity but it is also ripe for critique, as the freedom to wander a European cityscape at will has never been equally available to all. We engage classic texts about the city (Döblin, Roth, Simmel) and current scholarship on several topics (the Berlin Wall, urban planning, green spaces, migrant experience, queer Berlin, music, sport) to understand multiple ways of being and moving in that city at different moments in the twentieth century. We also work with questions and tools of the digital humanities based on the premise of Todd Presner’s HyperCities, “a collaborative research and educational platform for traveling back in time to explore the historical layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment.” As flâneurs in the world of digital humanities, students will peruse multiple digital tools (such as Atom, CityGML, Cloudant, GitHub, Mapbox, GeoJSON, QGIS, Neo4J and Wikidata) over the course of the semester, examining what they represent and exclude. Students work on projects in time travel, curating tours of Berlin built on historical maps since 1900 featuring still and moving images, audio, historical documents, and prose. As an exercise in digital public humanities, students’ projects will be featured on a public website.
REL 3986 / DIV 3986
Spring 2014: M 2:10 pm – 4:00 pm
Clifford B. Anderson, Director for Scholarly Communications in the Vanderbilt University Library, and David Michelson, Assistant Professor of the History of Christianity and affiliate Assistant Professor of Classics.
The course provides an introduction to the theory and methods of the digital humanities with particular attention to the disciplinary perspectives of history and religious studies. This course is designed for graduate students of history, religion, literature, historical theology or classics who would like to acquire research skills in the techniques of digital text editing and analysis. Students will learn the fundamentals of digital text editing and the computational analysis of digital corpora. Students will engage with theoretical questions concerning the nature of texts and the challenges of representing the past through new media. By the conclusion of the course, students will have crafted a future research plan specific to their for digital editing and/or analysis needs.