Marsha Kinder News

The Labyrinth Research Initiative

Critical Studies professor Marsha Kinder recently gave the following conference presentations -- “The Discreet Charms of Database Narratives: Designing the Digital Humanities” at Claremont College on March 1.  This presentation was part of a conference titled “Page, Screen, Pixel: Media in Transition,” which commemorated the legacy of Brian Stonehill (1953-1997), founder of the Media Studies Program at Pomona College;  “Rewiring Baltimore: The Emotive Power of Systemics, Seriality and The City,” at the Society for Cinema an Media Studies Conference in Philadelphia on March 7.

This paper will be published in Film Quarterly.  Kinder has also been invited to give a presentation at UC Santa Cruz on April 17, titled “Designing and Funding Collaborative Projects in the Digital Humanities.”   She has also been invited by  Gert Lovink of the Institute of Network Cultures to contribute an essay to their Video Vortex Reader, which is being published in conjunction with two recent conferences on online video, recently held in Brussels and Amsterdam.  Her essay is titled: “On the Conceptual Power of Online Video: Five Easy Pieces.” 
 
Kinder reports that Labyrinth recently hosted two visiting delegations of scientists, media experts and government officials who are interested in promoting science literacy for students and the general public in Mainland China and Taiwan. 

A group of six delegates from the Chinese Academy of Science visited on Friday, March 21, and a group of six from the National Chengchi University of Taipei and National Council of Taiwan will visit on March 31 through April 2.  Both groups are particularly interested in “A Tale of Two MAO Genes,” the interactive science education project that Labyrinth produced in collaboration with Professor Jean Chen Shih from the USC’s School of Pharmacy, who co-hosted both of these visits.

The visitors are interested not only in distributing this work in China and Taiwan, but also in using it as a model for new collaborative works on other scientific topics and for designing an infrastructure for collaboration that is built on the one used by Labyrinth and Shih. The group from Taiwan has already collaborated with Labyrinth and Shih on producing a Mandarin version of “A Tale of Two MAO Genes.” 

The Labyrinth Research Initiative recently received the following grants for new projects in production or development: 

    * Jewish Home-Grown History: Immigration, Identity and Intermarriage, a $75,000 NEH Planning Grant in their “Public Programs” and “We the People” Initiatives. This planning grant qualifies Labyrinth to apply next year for the larger full implementation grant for this project, which is now in production.
    * Jews in the Golden State (the “California Pilot” for “Jewish Home-Grown History”), $50,000  Second Year of funding from the Haas Fund, and$10,000  Friends of Tel Aviv University.
    * Interacting with Autism (a new project in development), $20,000 in seed money from the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles
    * Russian Modernism and Its International Dimensions.  The NEH grant period for this on-line constructivist courseware project has been extended to June 30, 2008. This project will have its public launch on July 7 at an NEH-sponsored Summer Institute on Teaching Resources on Russian Visual Culture, which will be held at the New York Public Library.

Associated Person:

Marsha Kinder