Kunshan Digital Humanities 2020 Project Proposals

The Humanities Research Center is currently accepting individual or group project proposals for the 2020-2021 academic year.

In 2019-2020 pilot project we:

  • Recruited students to create original artworks in any medium in and and around Kunshan in Fall 2019
  • Developed a database index for an archive of artworks and other media related to Kunshan
  • Curated an online exhibition of student artworks in Spring 2020

Continue reading “Kunshan Digital Humanities 2020 Project Proposals”

Kunshan Digital City of Arts and Culture: Recruitment

Kunshan Digital City of Arts and Culture is an initiative of the Humanities Research Center’s Kunshan Digital Humanities project.

In our pilot project, 2019-2020, we asked DKU students to create works of art in and around Kunshan. Students photographed Kunshan’s changing architecture, created original works of performance art, reenacted historical dramas, made a documentary about hairy crabs, visited local residents and interviewed them in their homes, learned about Kunshan’s internationalization, and sent drones into Kunshan’s night sky. Then we loaded all their work into a GIS database to create a virtual tour of Kunshan that we launched on June 5. 

We are recruiting new students to join the project as artists, researchers, database developers, and app developers. If you are interested in participating, please register your interest here.

Report on Kunshan Digital City of Arts and Culture

By Anisha Joshi

Class of 2022

In the rush and uncertainty with which many of us vacated campus as COVID-19 was taking shape as an epidemic in China, few of us had anticipated how much we would miss Kunshan and beloved DKU. Some of us left, afraid but also hopeful that we could return to campus, or China, safely, hopeful that we would be able to resume at least part of the semester on campus.

And yet, here we are, most of us, five months later still pining for Kunshan, our shining campus with its pristine waters, the trees and lakes most of us have come to recognize as a home away from home. Luckily, students collaborating with the Humanities Research Center under the Kunshan Digital Humanities have been hard at work over last year, carefully archiving unique ways of experiencing this beautiful city.

While initially the student artworks were meant to be displayed in a curated exhibition on campus in spring semester, given the circumstances the projects were presented in an even more innovative way—students who worked on the projects gave Dean James Miller a virtual guide around Kunshan’s many attractions over the course of a day through the ArcGIS StoryMap interface, taking Dean Miller (and the audience) through each of the locations and what was special about them. The student artists’ exploration of Kunshan took place through a variety of mediums, ranging from photography and documentary film making to even performance art. Continue reading “Report on Kunshan Digital City of Arts and Culture”

Call for Student Researchers and Artists: The Kunshan Digital Humanities Archive

The Kunshan Digital Humanities Archive (KDH) is a pilot project for the Humanities Research Center’s Computing in Arts and Humanities (CAH) Initiative. The pilot project, and the initiative as a whole, aim to foster the integration of computing, data, humanities and arts. Continue reading “Call for Student Researchers and Artists: The Kunshan Digital Humanities Archive”