Faculty and Student Projects
Faculty and student projects may involve the digitization of library materials, object hosting and metadata services, or a combination of the three. Faculty projects may live entirely within the CDI, or may be undertaken as a collaborative project with other groups on campus, such as the Instructional Technology Group (ITG) and/or the Scholarly Technology Group (STG). The Center for Digital Initiatives has been pleased to support the following faculty and student projects:
Brown Clocks Database
This digital catalogue showcases Brown's unique collection of clocks, begun in 1770 when the college settled in Providence. This project was the result of an undergraduate independent study, and provides detailed images and histories of many of these clocks.
Brown Portrait Collection
A digital catalogue of Brown's Portrait Collection, that features portraits of men and women whose lives, in one way or another, have had meaning for the university. The subjects of these portraits include administrators and faculty, trustees, benefactors, and graduates. The catalogue includes biographical vignettes of the subjects and artists.
Chronicles of Brunonia
The "Chronicles of Brunonia" presents historical narratives of life at Brown University, spawned by the archival documents in John Hay Library and written by undergraduates. Most of the narratives here were written in creative nonfiction workshops taught by Beth Taylor in the Nonfiction Writing Program in the Department of English.
Cultural Correspondence
A digital edition of Cultural Correspondence, a critical review of popular culture, born from the collapse of the New Left and hopes for a new beginning of a social movement, intermittently published in Providence from 1975 to 1985.
Educating Change
Powerfully illustrated through the lives of three Mexican/Chicana women - Ramona Medina, Socorro Gomez-Potter, and Yolanda Almaraz-Esquivel - Educating Change documents a history of Mexican women's migration and activism, and considers its relevance for today's US Latino communities, including Providence.
Garibaldi and the Risorgimento
The Garibaldi and the Risorgimento Project provides a comprehensive resource for the interdisciplinary study and teaching of the life and deeds of one of the protagonists of the Italian unification process (1807-1882), reconstructed with the help of newsprint and other textual and visual materials from special collections at the Brown University libraries.
Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923
The Reynolds Family, traveling aboard The Steamship "Taiyo Maru", survive a tsunami and arrive on the scene of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake disaster. This project, done in
collaboration with students of Modern Japanese History, features photographs and ephemera, documents the destruction to Yokohama, and serves as a unique travelogue.
Illustrated Quixote
This project reproduces illustrations of El Quijote created before the turn of the 20th century and printed in editions held in the Brown University Library. Illustrated Quixote will feature essays written by Brown University faculty and students. The essays will explore all aspects of El Quijote - the characters, the style, the language, the art, and its historical context.
Invested in Community
Brown University's Department of Music hosted the first conference on Applied Ethnomusicology. Participants from Europe and the United States discussed various ways in which Ethnomusicologists work directly in and on behalf of communities outside of academia. This project provides streaming video files of conference presentations.
Latin American Travelogues
This Project provides a selection of digitized Latin American travelogues, largely from the 19th century. Currently focused on Brazil, the works are linked to critical essays produced by undergraduate students enrolled in courses on Latin American history.
Modernist Journals Project
A joint project of Brown University and the University of Tulsa, the MJP provides fully-searchable online editions of the English-language journals and magazines that were important in shaping those modes of literature and art that came to be called modernist. This service is supported by the CDI.
Paris: Capital of the 19th Century
This project, initiated by the French Studies and Comparative Literature Departments, facilitates research across disciplines by digitizing library resources in various formats and media, and centralizes access to materials related to 19th century Paris.
Perry Visits Japan: A Visual History
This project evolved from the work of Brown students, faculty, and library staff who examined an anonymous Japanese scroll and the Heine lithographs as visual evidences of Perry's encounter with the Japanese.
Radical America
A digital edition of Radical America, a periodical published by Students for Democratic Society from 1966-1999. The original intent was to bring about the beginnings of a learning process inside SDS ranks about the radical traditions of this country and to provide a forum for students of American radicalism to exchange views on their field.
Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice
An archive of a wide array of historical documents, from the records of slaving voyages to student commencement orations, digitized in support of the work of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice.
Theatre That Was Rome
This project features a selection of works from the extraordinary collection of Vincent J. Buonanno '66, focused on views and maps of the Eternal City from the 16th-18th centuries. Festival prints and architectural treatises from the collection of the John Hay Library are also included.
Underground Rhode Island
In the spring semester of 2004, the students in Paul Buhle's oral history class investigated the arts in 20th c. RI. The corpus of oral histories, now called Underground Rhode Island, will continue to grow each year as successive oral history classes interview members of the RI arts communities.
