Toronto Metropolitan University
Centre for Digital Humanities
April 2025
- CDH events are open to the TMU community and beyond.
- Also, check out the workshops hosted by the Collaboratory!
The Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) is temporarily located on the 4th floor of the Podium (POD) building (where the School of Law is currently situated) and is planning to have a permanent home in the Library building (LIB) in the future. CDH events are held virtually (on Zoom) and in-person in the TMU Libraries’ Collaboratory.
Join us! If you have an idea for a CDH-hosted event or a question, please contact CDH Director Jason Boyd (jason.boyd@torontomu.ca) or CDH Manager Reg Beatty (rbeatty@torontomu.ca).
DH@TMU
3:30-4:30pm EDT
on Zoom
Wednesday April 16
3:30-4:30pm EDT
“Spatial Analysis and Digital Mapping in Environmental History”
Presented by Dr. Sean Kheraj
Please join us for the CDH’s final event of 2024-2025, a talk by Dr. Sean Keraj, Associate Professor of History and Vice-Provost, Academic, at TMU.
Sean describes his talk below:
“Do you lack any and all digital mapping skills, but you wish you could make a map to better understand and present your research? That’s how things started for me and that’s when I turned to Web-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools to map my historical research data. My textual primary sources contained spatial information that I needed to see on maps to better understand some of the work I was doing in environmental history. Environmental history examines the historical relationships between people and the rest of nature. Those relationships have spatial dimensions that I was able to analyze and illustrate using ArcGIS Online, a Web-based GIS tool.
In this presentation, I will deconstruct digital maps from two historical research projects. The first is a project on the history of livestock animals in nineteenth-century Canadian and US cities. The second is a study of the development of long-distance oil pipelines in Canada since 1947. I’ll show some of the ways I was able to translate my historical research data into maps and animations for analysis. I’ll also discuss the challenges and limitations of this research method.”
CDH Virtual
Drop-Ins
Each month, weekly drop-ins will be dedicated to a specific theme. Tiny Tools Tour, Web Walks, and DH Workbench are explorations of a digital resource or tool for research, creativity, and/or teaching. Stories in Play features discussion of entries in the Playable Stories Archive and episodes of the Playable Stories: Unarchived podcast, both of which are focused on storytelling in games. Reading Bytes is a reading group for discussion of published digital humanities scholarship. DH@TMU Talks feature CDH members presenting their research.
READING BYTES
Tuesday April 1
noon-1:00pm EDT on Zoom
Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI, Chapter 13: “Making Code Less WEIRD,” Chapter 14: “Reimagining AI to Invent More Moral Codes,” and Chapter 15: “Conclusion” (pp. 167-194)
Jason Boyd
Continuing in 2025, Reading Bytes will discuss Alan F. Blackwell’s Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI (MIT Press, 2024).
Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI focuses on a timely topic that is causing a great deal of concern and anxiety in higher learning and in society more broadly: recent developments in AI (artificial intelligence). Blackwell’s book provides an opportunity to discuss the possibility of a more equitable and beneficial approach to the design and use of AI.
Each month we will read and discuss one or more chapters of Moral Codes. Participants are free to join discussions any month without having attended earlier Reading Bytes.
Moral Codes is available in open access through MIT Press Direct.
STORIES IN PLAY
Tuesday April 8
Noon-1:00pm EDT on Zoom
“Adjusting the Virtual Dial: Video Game Adoptions and Adaptations of the Radio”
Jason Boyd
In this presentation, Jason Boyd will explore a range of games that feature radios in order to explore how the perceived limitations and obsolescence of the radio actually opens up interesting possibilities for gameplay design and for storytelling, as well as how these games reintroduce to game players an earlier form of communication technology and the cultures in which it operated, enabling reflection on the changing nature of how we keep in touch with each other and the world.
LAUNCH
In-person at the Library’s Collaboratory
Tuesday April 15
Noon-1:00pm EDT
The Theatre of the Arts: Thomas Hope’s Visionary Gallery Remediated
Led by Sophie Thomas (English), The Theatre of the Arts project includes a history and 3D recreation of the innovative “Theatre of the Arts,” a sculpture gallery constructed at the country house of the Regency-period collector, designer, and writer Thomas Hope (1769-1831). Join us in the TMUL Collaboratory for a presentation on Hope, followed by a tour of an immersive rendition of the Theatre of the Arts in the TMUL Immersion Studio, created by Michael Carter-Arlt.
Co-sponsored by TMUL and the CDH.
Finding The TMU Library Collaboratory:
The main entrance to the Library Collaboratory is via the SLC Building.
Elevator: Take the elevator (opposite the main entrance) up to the 3rd floor of the SLC Building. Exit and turn left: the Library Collaboratory is at the end of the hall, marked with large yellow doors.
Stairs: Take the main stairs (on the right of the entrance) up to the second floor. Keep to the right and follow the stairs up to the third floor. Walk past the DMZ and the DME to the end of the hall. The Library Collaboratory is at the end of the hall, marked with large yellow doors.