Gerald R. Lucas » humanities

Take Survey of Humanities on iTunes U!

Gerald Lucas — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:14:29 +0000

It’s official: my fall section of HUMN 2155 will be Macon State’s first iTunes U-supported class. Each registered student will have access to an iPad for the semester, curtesy of the MSC tech fee and our Provost. This summer, my team and I will be developing much of the material for the course to be delivered through iTunes U.

This course satisfies a core requirement, but it hasn’t been offered in a long time — if ever. Unfortunately, it may not make. Hopefully, the poster I have made above will help. Tell your friends.

Take Digital Humanities

Gerald Lucas — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:12:12 +0000

Last fall, I taught a section of HUMN 2151 — a course that our catalog just calls “Humanities.” Here’s the generic:

The course will explore a selected topic in the humanities from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Straight to the point. I called my first section “The Art of Science” and positioned it as a study of postmodern culture in general and digital culture in particular. I think it worked pretty well, so I will borrow some ideas from that course for my new offering: “Digital Humanities.”

I think there’s a misperception of the digital humanities even among those who profess to know what it is, so opines Stanley Fish. I tend to agree with him. To many, it seems to be a catch-all that unfortunately catches nothing. If you Google “digital humanities,” the first hit is from the venerable Wikipedia that defines it as: “The digital humanities is an area of research, teaching, and creation concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities.” This is about as enlightening as the catalog description of HUMN 2151 above.

This course will look at defining “digital humanities” and examining both primary and secondary texts that seem to relate. More on this as my syllabus develops.

MSC Humanities Upgraded

Gerald Lucas — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:34:21 +0000

Yes, it’s finally finished. The migration from Drupal to WordPress on the MSC Humanities site is complete. Yes, the Leopard Server upgrade gave me some issues, but I think the result is worth it. Let’s just hope the next system update from Apple doesn’t break anything. It shouldn’t.

I still have some work to do to this site, the HumX, and to Big Jelly, but I’m pretty pleased with my migrations. Drupal served me well for a long time, but WordPress seems to be much more advanced — at least for my purposes. Yes, WP has its quirks, but in the big picture, it is just a better platform. Besides, it seems to have many more professional designers working for it.

I’m Addicted

Gerald Lucas — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:03:57 +0000

I seem to be, anyway. When I found Elegant Themes, I had to change the look of my photography web site. And this site with the Quadro theme. (I’m resisting the urge to move install one of these themes on HumX. No, I won’t.) Yes, for $20 a year, you too can have some pretty nice themes for your WordPress site.

So, I spent all day uploading some of my 2008 photography. Check it out. And leave a comment, especially if you got your gravatar on.

I’m planning on upgrading our departmental Xserve tomorrow with Leopard Server. With that will be a new Humanities web site, run on WordPress and Elegant Themes’ Who’s Who theme. Drupal just seems sluggish compared to the WordPress, so there’s nothing like a vacation to move everything.

I just hope the addiction will continue.

Humanities 2.0

Gerald Lucas — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 17:16:00 +0000

I’m very proud of my recent work on the Humanities web site. I designed it a couple of years ago, and since the college just updated their site, I figured ours needed to be better.

I updated the software to Drupal, ditching the difficult-to-use GeekLog. The new 4.7.2 version of Drupal adds some excellent features, like the ability to name URLs. The design is based on Ken Collins’ Meta Theme; I changed the masthead images, but it is essentially just as he made it. This theme is so well done, that it alone might convince all CMS users to switch to Drupal.

I plan to devote some more time to finishing the site this summer, and some time in the fall to train the faculty on how to use it. I’m happy to be excited about our web site again.