Memorizing the Future: Collecting in the 21st Century
In On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917), Edmund Husserl elucidated the structure of the lived experience of time, contending that experience of the present encompasses both the immediate past and the imminent future. He differentiated the temporal horizon of the present, which he termed ‘retention’ and ‘protention’ respectively, from conscious recollection of the past and anticipation of the future. As Husserl described it, the act of remembering is essentially curatorial. We judiciously relive past ’nows’ to hold onto significant experiences, allowing everything else to fade into indistinction. By recollecting the past in part, we curate who we are in the present and also anticipate who we will become. Archivists work similarly, selectively retaining objects while consigning whole classes of other materials to oblivion. The art of appraisal, that is, the series of decisions about what to keep and what to throw away, distinguishes professional archivists from amateurs. Depending on the circumstances, archivists discard personal medical records, financial documents, and mementos. The materials that become stored in archival boxes represent a culling to the essentials, a collection curated in anticipation of what prospective researchers will find relevant and pertinent. Contemporary data-intensive culture challenges both Husserl’s phenomenology of recollection and traditional archival practice. As techniques for capturing experiences proliferate and storage costs drop, the prospect of saving everything–the ephemeral and the trivial alongside the vital and the critical–becomes possible. Rather than curating our past through personal recollection and by professional appraisal, we might allow all our ’nows’ to accumulate and, so to speak, tell their own stories. What kinds of narratives would the data tell? What would it mean phenomenologically to depend on machine-retrieval of past experiences rather than on personal recollection? How might changes in the phenomenology of memory affect archival practices and, by extension, reshape our collective memory of the past?
Information Freedom, Ethics, and Integrity
How can librarians effectively teach patrons about digital privacy? How does instruction about digital privacy fit within a scholarly communications program? In the fall 2017, the Vanderbilt University Library experimented with a three part series on digital privacy, covering the concepts of encrypting communications, browsing the web anonymously, and keeping operating systems secure. In his session, we will reflect on the success of the program, its limitations, and how we plan to refine our privacy outreach to students in the future.
500 Years Of Reformation: Faith, Reform And The Challenges Of Ideology
What is the proper theological response to political exceptionalism? I examine two kinds of exceptionalism, the concentration camp and the nuclear threat, arguing that theologians must oppose both unequivocally.
Digital Humanities and the History of Slavery
Drawing on my experience co-teaching a course titled The Digital Flâneur, I explore how technologies in the digital humanities both represent and obscure concrete subjects of inquiry. If computational thinking is, in part, about fostering the appropriate kinds of abstraction, how do digital representations impact the lived realities of the people, places, and things that we study?
Christian Scholars' Conference
A ‘geographical indication’ is a form of intellectual property protection designed to protect products with spatial associations in the minds of consumers. Think ‘Cognac’ or ‘Dijon mustard.’ Continuing a series on the theology of intellectual property, I examine the relevance of ‘geographical indications’ to religious faith. Given the connection of religious beliefs to specific places, how do we discriminate between authentic and inauthentic ties? By tracing the spatial displacement of religious practices in an age of wide-scale population movement, I discern how equivalents to ‘geographic indications’ emerge, transform, and function in everyday religious experience.