Ray Siemens | University of Victoria (original) (raw)
Papers by Ray Siemens
Routledge eBooks, Sep 13, 2016
Today, academia's relationship with notions of care remains fraught: individual scholars, scholar... more Today, academia's relationship with notions of care remains fraught: individual scholars, scholarly communities, and the larger institutions that support them have all profited from the affordances of digital technologies and platforms while also having to contend with the concomitant social challenges of digital scholarship. George Veletsianos, for instance, declares that "academia's uncomfortable relationship with care is evident in many of its foundational processes" (Social Media 80). To be a scholar in the twenty-first century is-as in preceding centuries-to be a networked scholar. 1 But digital scholarship has introduced entirely new possibilities and problems, requiring academic communities to consider what fostering care looks like, in theory and practice, as the technologies mediating networks of researchers and research data continue to evolve. This paper invites further consideration of care in the networked world vis-à-vis the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Commons, an in-development research platform by the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Partnership. 2 Building on the work of Caroline Winter et al. ("Foundations"), we examine how open digital research commons can encourage responsible community-building and collaboration as two interrelated forms of care. In doing so, we draw on Bethany Nowviskie's interpretation of ethics or networks of care in accord with feminist thought-dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-that values "deep connection to others," and also in stark contrast to "economic systems that valorized a private profit motive and circumscribed the participation of women and the servile under-classes." 3 "A competitive capitalist marketplace," writes Nowviskie, "depends upon but does not assign much value to things we create through networks of reciprocity, compassion, generosity, mending, and care." In a sense, then, "care" in the larger historical and philosophical context described by Nowviskie, and adapted provisionally in this paper, might be understood as a diverse set of practices that are both community-minded and intensely opposed to systems or forms of interaction, including economic ones, that threaten the common good of those communities or the individuals that comprise them. Defined in this way, the concept of care-as a form of "deep connection" that is simultaneously at odds with "private profit motive[s]"-is highly relevant to discussions of digital spaces such as social networks and not-for-profit digital research commons intended to bring people together. Such platforms can help researchers freely produce, publish, and share research within and beyond their existing academic networks using sharing features that are at once familiar to users of popular commercial "academic social networking sites" (ASNS), yet frequently missing from "relatively siloed" institutional repositories (Fitzpatrick, "Academia"). Even so, while open research-sharing platforms such as the Canadian HSS Commons and the Humanities Commons-an academic platform for research-sharing and networking-provide exciting new possibilities for individual scholars and scholarly communities alike, their implementation also raises important questions about how digital knowledge environments can safeguard users and their work as yet another form of care in the sense(s) outlined above. At their core, these questions focus on how best to realize the high ideals excited by such spaces (e.g., openness and equitable access to information), especially in building communities of care around areas of inquiry, thoughts, and ideas. However, consideration of such questions also involves shifting
The Musical Quarterly, Mar 1, 2009
Public open participatory, Oct 31, 2022
Public open participatory, Oct 31, 2020
Digital Humanities Quarterly, 2015
A part of the special issue of DHQ on feminisms and digital humanities, this paper takes as its s... more A part of the special issue of DHQ on feminisms and digital humanities, this paper takes as its starting place Greg Crane's exhortation that there is a "need to shift from lone editorials and monumental editions to editors ... who coordinate contributions from many sources and oversee living editions." In response to Crane, the exploration of the "living edition" detailed here examines the process of creating a publicly editable edition and considers what that edition, the process by which it was built, and the platform in which it was produced means for editions that support and promote gender equity. Drawing on the scholarship about the culture of the Wikimedia suite of projects, and the gendered trolling experienced by members of our team in the production of the Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript in Wikibooks, and interviews with our advisory group, we argue that while the Wikimedia projects are often openly hostile online spaces, the Wikimedia suite of projects are so important to the contemporary circulation of knowledge, that the key is to encourage gender equity in social behavior, credit sharing, and knowledge organization in Wikimedia, rather than abandon it for a more controlled collaborative environment for edition production and dissemination.
Early Modern Literary Studies, 2009
1. Skelton's Bowge of Courte is a document that has met with some divergence in critical opin... more 1. Skelton's Bowge of Courte is a document that has met with some divergence in critical opinion, in large part because of its inherent ambiguity. Some believe, for example, Skelton's anti-court satire to be the textual representative of a now-lost early Tudor courtly entertainment;2 others, a larger group, hold that the Bowge is a verse satire that draws on the medieval tradition of the dream-vision. The form of the Bowge and its use of conventions leads to such disparate opinions, but a degree of the confusion must also be attributed to the interpretation of its subject matter - an act urged by the poet himself who, in the final rhyme-royal stanza, suggests that his audience consider the meaning of the dream-vision by re-casting its fictional events in corresponding terms of the contemporary world:I wolde therwith no man were myscontenteBesechynge you that shall it see or redeIn euery poynte to be indyfferenteSyth all in substaunce of slumbrynge doth procedeI wyll not saye it is mater indedeBut yet oftyme suche dremes be founde treweNow constrewe ye what is the resydewe (533-9; emphasis mine)Given this, and given the nature of typical re-castings of the Bowge's fictional contents, one might convincingly argue that the author-focussed context in which much criticism urges us to "constrewe" the Bowge's "resydewe."perpetuates the greatest degree of critical uncertainty.2. Such uncertainty, however, is rarely informed by the conditions of poetic production in which Skelton found himself during the period which led up to and included his work on the Bowge; though neglected, this context draws into question a number of the patterns of critical speculation regarding the "resydewe" of the Bowge.Patterns of Interpreting the 'resydewe' of Skelton's Bowge3. While not specifically engaging the matter of the Bowge's residue, an examination of the patterns governing such analysis is beneficial. A good number of interpretations, recent and older alike,3 find the Bowge to be a semi-autobiographical and personally-motivated satire of Henry VII's court, or court life on the whole, wherein the actions of the first-person narrator, Drede, are analogous to Skelton's own. There is, however, some difficulty with this type of interpretation. This difficulty becomes most apparent when one brings an autobiographical interpretation to the Bowge, when one begins the task of reasonably situating the Bowge within the personal circumstances of Skelton's life. Few autobiographical interpretations are satisfying, and several leave the reader wondering if such a context can be reconstructed at all.4. On a general level, of course, the Bowge of Courte is an anti-court satire, a work often taken to examine court life in general and standard terms; moreover, the Bowge itself probably draws upon the author's own experience of the English and foreign courts. From the general, though, critical interpretations quickly move to the more specific. The Bowge then can become an examination of the English court, at a particular moment in Skelton's life. For example, because the author/narrator takes on the role of the ship-jumping character Drede, one might read that Skelton himself has "jumped ship" (or is, perhaps, considering doing so) at the time of writing the Bowge. To this end, we note that Skelton did leave direct court service ca. 1502-3 for the rectory of Diss and, as is widely assumed, did so with some dissatisfaction. This situation, however, does not correspond with the slim set of facts available for exploring the autobiographical nature of the Bowge; the latest possible date for its authorship is established with its first imprint by Wynkyn de Worde in 1499 (STC 22597; Sale 573), some three or four years before Skelton actually left court.5. Working with evidence of the printing date, and against the generally-held presumption that the date of composition is ca. 1498-9, it has been suggested that the Bowge might have been composed as early as some two decades prior to its first printing (ca. …
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Aug 5, 2020
Open social scholarship highlights outreach and partnerships by emphasizing community-driven init... more Open social scholarship highlights outreach and partnerships by emphasizing community-driven initiatives in an attempt to bridge the gap between the practices of the university and the goals of the community. Over the last few years, the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at the University of Victoria has introduced a number of initiatives to this end, including the Open Knowledge Program and Open Scholarship Awards. In describing these initiatives, the article engages the larger framework of community engagement and public-facing scholarship. The guiding questions for this article and our work more broadly are: how can we productively put open social scholarship into practice? What type of scholarship is considered public facing? What is the best practice around co-creating knowledge in the humanities with communities that are academic-aligned or non-academic?
In Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University (2019), Kathleen Fitzpatrick ar... more In Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University (2019), Kathleen Fitzpatrick argues that academics must reconsider themselves within the "larger 'us' that we together form," rather than holding themselves apart from the wider community (8). How to enact more open, public work is not always obvious, however. Researchers often face barriers to engaging in open and public-facing scholarship, including lack of training, infrastructure, and technical and community support. The Open Knowledge Program at the University of Victoria's Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) facilitates intersections between the scholarly and public communities by supporting university and community researchers in creating open knowledge: "what open data becomes when it's useful, usable and used" (Open Knowledge Foundation). In this paper, we discuss the trajectory of the program so far, share examples of participants' contributions, and invite feedback and discussion about adapting the program for other contexts and its next steps.
Digital studies, Aug 1, 2005
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2022
Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, 1996
Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall is often seen as the first English monolingual diction... more Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall is often seen as the first English monolingual dictionary and has been traditionally viewed as an amalgam of previously existing word lists, glosses, didactic works, and bilingual dictionaries. There are elements within Cawdrey's work, however, which are unique unto him, and the foremost of these is found in that part of the Table which reflects the process by which he assembled his entries: the style of his definitions. This paper, which represents work in progress, seeks to explore Cawdrey's compilation process and, ultimately, to define the predominant syntactic structures which govern Cawdrey's work.
Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, 1998
The 1997 conference, with several panels sharing the title of "Technolog ising the Humanitie... more The 1997 conference, with several panels sharing the title of "Technolog ising the Humanities / Humanit ising</em the Technologies," enjoyed a good number of papers addressing aspects of this relationship -- not necessarily in terms of the individual but, rather, with terms referring moreso to aspects of our larger field of inquiry itself; that is, the conference contained papers which, implicitly or explicitly, drew attention to the ways in which the Humanities are being, themselves, affected by the new technology, as well as the Humanities' concurrent influence upon that technology. The papers of this volume, published jointly in Computing in the Humanities Working Papers and Text Technology, have grown out of those presented at the conference (see Table of Contents).
Digital Humanities (DH) as a discipline is highly collaborative and as such requires a departure ... more Digital Humanities (DH) as a discipline is highly collaborative and as such requires a departure from typical humanities work patterns with its focus on the lone scholar (Siemens 2009; Siemens et al. 2011). In particular, DHers must develop new skills and knowledge and negotiate new ways of conducting research and organizing people, financial resources, space and other factors (Scholars' Lab 2011). In this regard, the Sciences and Applied Sciences can provide guidance and suggest several models upon which DH can draw to ...
The Journal of Electronic Publishing
Open digital scholarship is significant for facilitating public access to and engagement with res... more Open digital scholarship is significant for facilitating public access to and engagement with research, and as a foundation for growing digital scholarly infrastructure around the world today and in the future. But the path to adopting open, digital scholarship on a national—never mind international—scale is challenged by several real, pragmatic issues. In this article, we consider these issues as well as proactive strategies for the realization of robust, inclusive, publicly engaged, open scholarship in digital form. We draw on the INKE Partnership’s central goal of fostering open social scholarship (academic practice that enables the creation, dissemination, and engagement of open research by specialists and non-specialists in accessible and significant ways). In doing so, we look to pursue more open, and more social, scholarly activities through knowledge mobilization, community training, public engagement, and policy recommendations in order to understand and address challenges ...
, an event aligned with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. 1 This event was a collaboration... more , an event aligned with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. 1 This event was a collaboration between the Implementing New Knowledge Environments Pedagogy Cluster, co-led by Constance Crompton and Laura Estill, and the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations Pedagogy Special Interest Group, represented by Ray Siemens. 2 Thanks to our session chairs
Routledge eBooks, Sep 13, 2016
Today, academia's relationship with notions of care remains fraught: individual scholars, scholar... more Today, academia's relationship with notions of care remains fraught: individual scholars, scholarly communities, and the larger institutions that support them have all profited from the affordances of digital technologies and platforms while also having to contend with the concomitant social challenges of digital scholarship. George Veletsianos, for instance, declares that "academia's uncomfortable relationship with care is evident in many of its foundational processes" (Social Media 80). To be a scholar in the twenty-first century is-as in preceding centuries-to be a networked scholar. 1 But digital scholarship has introduced entirely new possibilities and problems, requiring academic communities to consider what fostering care looks like, in theory and practice, as the technologies mediating networks of researchers and research data continue to evolve. This paper invites further consideration of care in the networked world vis-à-vis the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Commons, an in-development research platform by the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Partnership. 2 Building on the work of Caroline Winter et al. ("Foundations"), we examine how open digital research commons can encourage responsible community-building and collaboration as two interrelated forms of care. In doing so, we draw on Bethany Nowviskie's interpretation of ethics or networks of care in accord with feminist thought-dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-that values "deep connection to others," and also in stark contrast to "economic systems that valorized a private profit motive and circumscribed the participation of women and the servile under-classes." 3 "A competitive capitalist marketplace," writes Nowviskie, "depends upon but does not assign much value to things we create through networks of reciprocity, compassion, generosity, mending, and care." In a sense, then, "care" in the larger historical and philosophical context described by Nowviskie, and adapted provisionally in this paper, might be understood as a diverse set of practices that are both community-minded and intensely opposed to systems or forms of interaction, including economic ones, that threaten the common good of those communities or the individuals that comprise them. Defined in this way, the concept of care-as a form of "deep connection" that is simultaneously at odds with "private profit motive[s]"-is highly relevant to discussions of digital spaces such as social networks and not-for-profit digital research commons intended to bring people together. Such platforms can help researchers freely produce, publish, and share research within and beyond their existing academic networks using sharing features that are at once familiar to users of popular commercial "academic social networking sites" (ASNS), yet frequently missing from "relatively siloed" institutional repositories (Fitzpatrick, "Academia"). Even so, while open research-sharing platforms such as the Canadian HSS Commons and the Humanities Commons-an academic platform for research-sharing and networking-provide exciting new possibilities for individual scholars and scholarly communities alike, their implementation also raises important questions about how digital knowledge environments can safeguard users and their work as yet another form of care in the sense(s) outlined above. At their core, these questions focus on how best to realize the high ideals excited by such spaces (e.g., openness and equitable access to information), especially in building communities of care around areas of inquiry, thoughts, and ideas. However, consideration of such questions also involves shifting
The Musical Quarterly, Mar 1, 2009
Public open participatory, Oct 31, 2022
Public open participatory, Oct 31, 2020
Digital Humanities Quarterly, 2015
A part of the special issue of DHQ on feminisms and digital humanities, this paper takes as its s... more A part of the special issue of DHQ on feminisms and digital humanities, this paper takes as its starting place Greg Crane's exhortation that there is a "need to shift from lone editorials and monumental editions to editors ... who coordinate contributions from many sources and oversee living editions." In response to Crane, the exploration of the "living edition" detailed here examines the process of creating a publicly editable edition and considers what that edition, the process by which it was built, and the platform in which it was produced means for editions that support and promote gender equity. Drawing on the scholarship about the culture of the Wikimedia suite of projects, and the gendered trolling experienced by members of our team in the production of the Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript in Wikibooks, and interviews with our advisory group, we argue that while the Wikimedia projects are often openly hostile online spaces, the Wikimedia suite of projects are so important to the contemporary circulation of knowledge, that the key is to encourage gender equity in social behavior, credit sharing, and knowledge organization in Wikimedia, rather than abandon it for a more controlled collaborative environment for edition production and dissemination.
Early Modern Literary Studies, 2009
1. Skelton's Bowge of Courte is a document that has met with some divergence in critical opin... more 1. Skelton's Bowge of Courte is a document that has met with some divergence in critical opinion, in large part because of its inherent ambiguity. Some believe, for example, Skelton's anti-court satire to be the textual representative of a now-lost early Tudor courtly entertainment;2 others, a larger group, hold that the Bowge is a verse satire that draws on the medieval tradition of the dream-vision. The form of the Bowge and its use of conventions leads to such disparate opinions, but a degree of the confusion must also be attributed to the interpretation of its subject matter - an act urged by the poet himself who, in the final rhyme-royal stanza, suggests that his audience consider the meaning of the dream-vision by re-casting its fictional events in corresponding terms of the contemporary world:I wolde therwith no man were myscontenteBesechynge you that shall it see or redeIn euery poynte to be indyfferenteSyth all in substaunce of slumbrynge doth procedeI wyll not saye it is mater indedeBut yet oftyme suche dremes be founde treweNow constrewe ye what is the resydewe (533-9; emphasis mine)Given this, and given the nature of typical re-castings of the Bowge's fictional contents, one might convincingly argue that the author-focussed context in which much criticism urges us to "constrewe" the Bowge's "resydewe."perpetuates the greatest degree of critical uncertainty.2. Such uncertainty, however, is rarely informed by the conditions of poetic production in which Skelton found himself during the period which led up to and included his work on the Bowge; though neglected, this context draws into question a number of the patterns of critical speculation regarding the "resydewe" of the Bowge.Patterns of Interpreting the 'resydewe' of Skelton's Bowge3. While not specifically engaging the matter of the Bowge's residue, an examination of the patterns governing such analysis is beneficial. A good number of interpretations, recent and older alike,3 find the Bowge to be a semi-autobiographical and personally-motivated satire of Henry VII's court, or court life on the whole, wherein the actions of the first-person narrator, Drede, are analogous to Skelton's own. There is, however, some difficulty with this type of interpretation. This difficulty becomes most apparent when one brings an autobiographical interpretation to the Bowge, when one begins the task of reasonably situating the Bowge within the personal circumstances of Skelton's life. Few autobiographical interpretations are satisfying, and several leave the reader wondering if such a context can be reconstructed at all.4. On a general level, of course, the Bowge of Courte is an anti-court satire, a work often taken to examine court life in general and standard terms; moreover, the Bowge itself probably draws upon the author's own experience of the English and foreign courts. From the general, though, critical interpretations quickly move to the more specific. The Bowge then can become an examination of the English court, at a particular moment in Skelton's life. For example, because the author/narrator takes on the role of the ship-jumping character Drede, one might read that Skelton himself has "jumped ship" (or is, perhaps, considering doing so) at the time of writing the Bowge. To this end, we note that Skelton did leave direct court service ca. 1502-3 for the rectory of Diss and, as is widely assumed, did so with some dissatisfaction. This situation, however, does not correspond with the slim set of facts available for exploring the autobiographical nature of the Bowge; the latest possible date for its authorship is established with its first imprint by Wynkyn de Worde in 1499 (STC 22597; Sale 573), some three or four years before Skelton actually left court.5. Working with evidence of the printing date, and against the generally-held presumption that the date of composition is ca. 1498-9, it has been suggested that the Bowge might have been composed as early as some two decades prior to its first printing (ca. …
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Aug 5, 2020
Open social scholarship highlights outreach and partnerships by emphasizing community-driven init... more Open social scholarship highlights outreach and partnerships by emphasizing community-driven initiatives in an attempt to bridge the gap between the practices of the university and the goals of the community. Over the last few years, the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at the University of Victoria has introduced a number of initiatives to this end, including the Open Knowledge Program and Open Scholarship Awards. In describing these initiatives, the article engages the larger framework of community engagement and public-facing scholarship. The guiding questions for this article and our work more broadly are: how can we productively put open social scholarship into practice? What type of scholarship is considered public facing? What is the best practice around co-creating knowledge in the humanities with communities that are academic-aligned or non-academic?
In Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University (2019), Kathleen Fitzpatrick ar... more In Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University (2019), Kathleen Fitzpatrick argues that academics must reconsider themselves within the "larger 'us' that we together form," rather than holding themselves apart from the wider community (8). How to enact more open, public work is not always obvious, however. Researchers often face barriers to engaging in open and public-facing scholarship, including lack of training, infrastructure, and technical and community support. The Open Knowledge Program at the University of Victoria's Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) facilitates intersections between the scholarly and public communities by supporting university and community researchers in creating open knowledge: "what open data becomes when it's useful, usable and used" (Open Knowledge Foundation). In this paper, we discuss the trajectory of the program so far, share examples of participants' contributions, and invite feedback and discussion about adapting the program for other contexts and its next steps.
Digital studies, Aug 1, 2005
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2022
Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, 1996
Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall is often seen as the first English monolingual diction... more Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall is often seen as the first English monolingual dictionary and has been traditionally viewed as an amalgam of previously existing word lists, glosses, didactic works, and bilingual dictionaries. There are elements within Cawdrey's work, however, which are unique unto him, and the foremost of these is found in that part of the Table which reflects the process by which he assembled his entries: the style of his definitions. This paper, which represents work in progress, seeks to explore Cawdrey's compilation process and, ultimately, to define the predominant syntactic structures which govern Cawdrey's work.
Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, 1998
The 1997 conference, with several panels sharing the title of "Technolog ising the Humanitie... more The 1997 conference, with several panels sharing the title of "Technolog ising the Humanities / Humanit ising</em the Technologies," enjoyed a good number of papers addressing aspects of this relationship -- not necessarily in terms of the individual but, rather, with terms referring moreso to aspects of our larger field of inquiry itself; that is, the conference contained papers which, implicitly or explicitly, drew attention to the ways in which the Humanities are being, themselves, affected by the new technology, as well as the Humanities' concurrent influence upon that technology. The papers of this volume, published jointly in Computing in the Humanities Working Papers and Text Technology, have grown out of those presented at the conference (see Table of Contents).
Digital Humanities (DH) as a discipline is highly collaborative and as such requires a departure ... more Digital Humanities (DH) as a discipline is highly collaborative and as such requires a departure from typical humanities work patterns with its focus on the lone scholar (Siemens 2009; Siemens et al. 2011). In particular, DHers must develop new skills and knowledge and negotiate new ways of conducting research and organizing people, financial resources, space and other factors (Scholars' Lab 2011). In this regard, the Sciences and Applied Sciences can provide guidance and suggest several models upon which DH can draw to ...
The Journal of Electronic Publishing
Open digital scholarship is significant for facilitating public access to and engagement with res... more Open digital scholarship is significant for facilitating public access to and engagement with research, and as a foundation for growing digital scholarly infrastructure around the world today and in the future. But the path to adopting open, digital scholarship on a national—never mind international—scale is challenged by several real, pragmatic issues. In this article, we consider these issues as well as proactive strategies for the realization of robust, inclusive, publicly engaged, open scholarship in digital form. We draw on the INKE Partnership’s central goal of fostering open social scholarship (academic practice that enables the creation, dissemination, and engagement of open research by specialists and non-specialists in accessible and significant ways). In doing so, we look to pursue more open, and more social, scholarly activities through knowledge mobilization, community training, public engagement, and policy recommendations in order to understand and address challenges ...
, an event aligned with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. 1 This event was a collaboration... more , an event aligned with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute. 1 This event was a collaboration between the Implementing New Knowledge Environments Pedagogy Cluster, co-led by Constance Crompton and Laura Estill, and the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations Pedagogy Special Interest Group, represented by Ray Siemens. 2 Thanks to our session chairs