Advice for Graduate Students from the Chronicle's New "Vitae" Column

The Chronicle of Higher Education, one of our resources for insight into the well-being (or lack) of the academic job market, is in the process of launching a new column, "Vitae," exploring the vicissitudes of the market and the professional skills needed to navigate it. A recent column "Advice for Graduate Students" provided a refreshing change of pace from the more detail-oriented articles about how to tailor your cover letter or how to strategize campus visits when you have childcare concerns, highlighting instead a big-picture state of mind  that helps us keep our studies and research and job search in perspective.

One caveat: It would be easy to take the author's reflections as platitudes, but I think that she is offering an important observation, that our psychological well-being is an important part of our professional toolbox and appeal as a candidate. In our search for the minutiae that will help us nail down that dream job, it's easy to forget the bigger picture of the life of the mind, and the passion that drew us to graduate studies in the first place.

What we built at OWOT: Serendip-o-matic.

Well, it's been an intense week here at One Week | One Tool, but we've built something, and it works! We're proud to announce the launch of Serendip-o-matic, the serendipity engine where your sources are your search.

The idea is simple: we wanted to restore some of that serendipity-in-the-stacks feeling to the digital research process. As historians, we're used to keyword or subject searching for materials, but with Serendip-o-matic, you can use your own materials — whether a web page, a bibliography, your CV, a paper you've written, or an article you like — as your query. Serendip-o-matic processes your text, extracts a random set of key terms, and returns results from the collections at the Digital Public Library of America, Europeana, and Flickr Commons. Try it for yourself and see what you get. It's pretty fun.

You can watch the video of our live launch broadcast at One Week | One Tool.

A dispatch from One Week | One Tool.

Hello HoSTM folks! I'm reporting from the field here at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, where I'm attending One Week | One Tool, a digital humanities barn raising in which I and eleven other academics, programmers, designers, students, and librarians are working to conceive, design, and implement a digital humanities tool in just under seven days. The first step: figuring out what that tool is going to be.

We had our big brainstorming session this afternoon, and are now opening up the floor to you, the public, to send us your feedback. We've set up a site where you can vote on the potential tools we've come up with, as well as to comment on our ideas. Voting closes at 10 a.m. eastern time tomorrow, Tuesday 30 July 2013, so make your voice heard!

You can follow our progress on twitter by paying attention to #owot.

6th Annual CHE Graduate Student Conference - Pictures!

This past weekend was the 6th Annual CHE Graduate Student Symposium, which had a strong History of Science presence, both faculty and students. It was a great success!

Professor Rick Keller, giving the kickoff address

Graduate Student Alex Rudnick presenting
on her dissertation proposal

Graduate Student Melissa Charenko presenting on
Evangelicalism and Environmentalism

Hipster Jesus

Graduate Student Anna Zeide, Professors Gregg Mitman, Sue Lederer, and Lynn Nyhart

The brave souls who made it through the whole day, capping off the conference with a
keynote address from recent Geography PhD and current University of Minnesota
faculty member, Dr. Abby Neely

(Photos courtesy of Brian Hamilton)

Fallout: The Mixed Blessing of Radiation and the Public Health

The selection for UW Madison's common reading program this year is Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss. Ebling Library's librarian and curator, affiliate of the department, and always fabulously bescarved Micaela Sullivan-Fowler designed an accompanying exhibit for the Ebling Library Historical Reading Room entitled "Fallout: The Mixed Blessing of Radiation and the Public Health." This past week, the evening of February 7, the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library sponsored a tour of "Fallout" with Micaela and a guided discussion hosted by History of Science Department's own Dr. Richard Staley.

Despite the wicked weather, intrepid visitors - many of them Friends of the Library - traced the story of the discovery of radiation and its mixed blessings for public health. Case by case, Micaela told the story of the Curies, the discovery of radioactivity, the initial medical promise (and the consumer products) that x-rays and radium inspired, the practical and professional ramifications of radiation through WWII, and the discovery of the atomic bomb and its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Throughout, Micaela deftly draws out the tensions between the advancing science of radioactivity and its impacts on public health. As in other exhibits, she makes a point of drawing attention to ways that UW was connected to this unfolding history. UW Professor of chemistry Dr. Norria F. Hall, for example, was trained by Marie Curie when he was part of the American Expeditionary Corps in 1919. 

Alongside the collection of texts from Ebling's vaults, "Fallout" includes rare objects of material culture from the history of x-ray and radiation technologies, freshly dusted from the basements of UW Hospitals.  In addition to the medical apparatus, "Fallout" provides the chance to see The Switch, normally tucked away in University Archives.  The Switch comes from Julian Mack of UW's Physics Department, who served as head of the optics unit at Los Alamos and was in charge of photographing the first bomb test. The Switch was used at Los Alamos to turn the power on and off during the explosive work carried out there (note the fantastic big red OFF button). A Special thanks goes to David Null, UW archivist for pulling it out of the University Archives' cabinet of extraordinary objects.

It should be noted that Micaela always puts together a provocative collection of objects and texts in her exhibit work, but she hit this event particularly hard with the awesome stick. First of all, there was swag, and who doesn't like atomic swag?  Glow in the dark bracelets, collectible quotes on radioactivity and the atomic age from Pierre and Marie Curie, postcards with the exhibit poster design, and a raffle for x-traordinary copies of Redniss's book, courtesy of the Friends. Visitors toured the cases literally glowing, pockets stuffed, munching on Bomb Shelter Browies and Gamma Ray Grapes, sipping Atomic Punch.

Following the tour, Dr. Staley began the discussion with a few remarks that drew parallels between Micaela's exhibit work on "Fallout" and Redniss's collecting strategies as she prepared to write Radioactive, which she disclosed during her campus visit in October. (Video and transcript of Redniss's visit available here.)  Staley touched on the idea of a graphic novel addressing two invisible central themes: love and radioactivity. The discussion noted how the pace of reading changed from page to page, how Redniss guides the story and its themes through the use of visual tools of color, image, typeface. There were, as ever, questions about the sourcing of objects in the exhibit: where they come from, where they are kept, how they cooperate to tell the story of radioactivity and public health.

As a karmic reward for his troubles, Dr. Staley won not one but two raffled copies of Radioactive for the kids. You may not be quite so lucky if you visit the exhibit on your own, but I bet Micaela has a stash of glowing bracelets to wear during your tour. Make the trek to Ebling, whatever the weather, to visit "Fallout: The Mixed Blessing of Radiation and the Public Health." 

More information about the exhibit and how to find it is available at the Ebling Library website.

Sixth Annual CHE Graduate Student Symposium

Many graduate students and faculty in the UW-Madison History of Science Department are also affiliated with CHE (the Center for Culture, Humans, and Environment). We even share a building with them! So, it should come as no surprise that the upcoming CHE Graduate Student Symposium features several of our own. Please join us Saturday, February 9th to here from Professor Keller, Alex Rudnick, Melissa Charenko, and many more. Here is the program:

CENTER FOR CULTURE, HISTORY, AND ENVIRONMENT SIXTH ANNUAL GRADUATE STUDENT SYMPOSIUM

9 February 2013 · Science Hall 175

An interdisciplinary showcase of graduate research around issues of culture and environmental change, bringing together history, geography, literature, science, and action.

PROGRAM OF EVENTS

8:30 AM Breakfast
Coffee and bagels provided, Science Hall 175

Symposium Kickoff
9:00 Dr. Richard Keller, Medical History and the History of Science

“Toward a World History of the Environment”

I. NATURES OF THE STATE
Moderator and Commentator: Brian Hamilton, History
9:30 John Suval, History, “Of Squatters and Statesmen: The Chocchuma Land Sale and the Nature of Jacksonian Democracy” 
9:50 Alex Olson, History, “Byzantium’s Eastern Border: Ecology, Mentalities, and the State”

10:10 Alex Rudnick, History of Science, “Diets and Landscapes of Deficiency: Pellagra, Sacks of Corn Meal, and Economic Underdevelopment in the American South, 1907-1940”
10:30 Comment and Discussion

10:50 20 Minute Break

Poster on view:

Kaitlin Rienzo-Stack, Entomology/Holtz Center, and Amy Alstad, Zoology

“If you build it, they will come: testing paradigms of restoration ecology using a historical dataset”


II. IDEOLOGIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION

Moderator and Commentator: Nathan Germain, French and Italian
11:10 Noah Theriault, Anthropology, “Saving Souls, Forests, and Traditions: The (Neo)Colonial Genealogy of a ‘Last Frontier’”
11:30 Melissa Charenko, History of Science, “The Second Coming and Environmentalism: The Historical DebateAbout End Times and Environmental Action Among Evangelical Christians”
11:50 John Porco, History, “Second Growth: Changing Notions of Economic Value in Northern Wisconsin’s Forests”
12:10 Comment and Discussion

12:30 Lunch
On your own in Madison

III. INTERPRETING PEOPLE AND PLACE: STORYTELLING IN ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH
1:30-2:30

Moderator: Kaitlin Rienzo-Stack, Entomology/Holtz Center
1:35 Bethany Laursen, Forestry and Nelson Institute, “The World is Made of Stories of Atoms: Narratives and Networks in Driftless Area Landscape Governance”
1:45 Amanda McMillan, Community and Environmental Sociology, “Ghosts of Farming Past and Future: Narrative and the Graying of Agriculture”
1:55 Kara Cromwell, Limnology, “Telling Science Stories: When It Gets Ugly”

Comment and Discussion

Keynote Address
2:45 Dr. Abby Neely, University of Minnesota, Geography, Environment and Society

“Research and Writing Through Teaching”

3:30 Reception, Science Hall 175