The Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship at Kelvin Smith Library has announced the selection of the 2021-22 Freedman Faculty Fellows. The annual fellowship program supports tenured or tenure-track faculty as well as clinical research faculty and aids these researchers in integrating digital tools and technology into their work across multiple disciplines to support learning and advance scholastic discoveries.
The 2021-22 Freedman Faculty Fellows program is generously funded by the Freedman Fellows Endowment, established by Samuel B. and Marian K. Freedman.
This year’s faculty recipients are highlighted below.
George Blake
George Blake, a full-time lecturer in the Department of Music, studies music and urban life. Prior to working as a teaching fellow in SAGES, he was the postdoctoral scholar in the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. His Freedman Fellows project, “Cleveland Swings: The Rise and Fall of Jazz at University Circle 1950-1970,” explores the hidden histories of jazz in Cleveland’s “second downtown.” Blake intends to map the history of Cleveland’s jazz venues—with a particular focus in the University Circle area—using ArcGIS; and he aims to digitize newspaper articles and other documentation that point to the jazz cultural heritage of the city and on the CWRU campus. Ben Gorham, Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship research data and GIS specialist, will collaborate with Blake this year as his project liaison.
David S. Busch
David S. Busch is a SAGES teaching fellow in the Department of History. He is a digital historian who focuses on politics, higher education and transnational social protest. With technical support from the Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship, Busch is using the digitized collections of Mohandas Gandhi’s writings and the data visualization tool Gephi to reconstruct Gandhi’s discourse and political communities in the 20th century. Tentatively titled “The Gandhian Social Network,” the project uses Gandhi’s writings as an entry point into the larger social, political and intellectual environment that shaped the formulation and spread of nonviolence. Amanda Koziura, Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship digital scholarship librarian, will collaborate with Busch this year as project liaison
Kevin Inouye
Kevin Inouye is assistant professor of movement, acting and stage combat in the Department of Theater. His project, titled “Augmented Reality in Movement Learning,” examines the use of digital motion modeling and augmented reality as a pedagogical tool for learning movement patterns. Motion-capture data will be recorded and mapped onto a semi transparent avatar, viewable via an augmented reality headset, creating a model that can be followed not just through various traditional perspectives but also from stepping inside the model. This is a proof-of-concept experiment in the viability of true first-person learning of full-body motions, with potential implications in distance learning, instructional video, game design and more. Jared Bendis, Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship creative new media officer, will collaborate with Inouye as his project liaison.
Ryan V. Scherber
Ryan V. Scherber is assistant professor of music education and director of bands at Case Western Reserve as well as instructor of tuba and euphonium within the Joint Music Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music. The art and science of teaching music relies upon the ability of educators to emote both expressivity and intent. Given the nature of musical performance, musical leaders must often rely upon facial affect, gesture and gaze to elicit the intended musical responses instead of traditional verbal instruction.
This project is designed to investigate the potential of using objective facial analysis software to supplement traditional instruction as a means to help young musical leaders better understand how they express musicality and intent. Jared Bendis, Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship creative new media officer, will collaborate as project liaison.