Center for Teaching, Learning and Research

Sam Liebhaber has been working on converting his existing Mahri Poetry Archive from a WordPress site to Scalar, which provides a platform for non-linear content exploration. The project is under contract to be published by Stanford University Press. The October 25th,12:15-1:30 Behind the Scenes will feature Sam and his Summer Research Assistant, Jeff Holland ’19, discussing the work done to create the project.

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP at go.middlebury.edu/DLARSVP

Join us on Wednesday, January 25th from 12:15-1:30 for our next Behind the scenes presentation. Caitlin will present new work visualizing the effects of Texas HB-2, a law that caused more than half of Texas’ abortion clinics to close their doors in late 2013. Working with Middlebury students Anna Cerf and Birgitta Cheng, Caitlin has tracked and visualized the closures of abortion clinics across Texas. She combines this information with data on health outcomes to estimate how decreasing access to abortion services has impacted women’s health.

Once again the Annual Writing & Teaching Retreat will take place at the Mountain Top Inn, Chittendent, VT. Watch for updates and registration information in late spring.

Andrew Flowers, former Quantitative Editor and Economics Writer for FiveThirtyEight.com, will profile six types of data journalism stories. Several stories will serve as examples, such as p-hacking in nutrition studies, police officer shootings, Uber’s effect on taxis, and what local characteristics explain Donald Trump’s electoral victory.

Sponsored by: Middlebury Mathematics, Political Science, Economics, and CTLR. 

Some of history’s most creative and accomplished scientists, writers, and artists produced great works while spending far fewer hours “working” than we would expect. Other famous figures led governments, built commercial empires, won Nobel prizes, or developed medical breakthroughs while also having second lives as authors, explorers, and athletes. How did they do it? In this talk I argue that rest played an under-appreciated but critical role in making people more creative and successful.

Computers, smartphones, and the Internet all promised to make us smarter, more connected, and more productive; but all too often living with them leaves us feeling busier, more distracted, and more unfocused. Responses to this have ranged from negative (technologies are dehumanizing and antisocial) to positive (computers are rewiring our brains to read status updates rather than Steinbeck) to fatalistic (progress is unstoppable). In this talk, I present an alternative view. Humans have used technologies to extend our minds and augment our abilities for hundreds of millennia.

A section of the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display from April 11 through April 29. The Quilt was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, and is today the largest community art project in the world. Today it consists of more than 48,000 panels with the names of more than 94,000 individuals who died of AIDS. The display will be open during the Davis Family Library regular open hours. Sponsored by: Center for Teaching, Learning and Research; American Studies Program; Davis Family Library; Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life; Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies

A section of the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display from April 11 through April 29. The Quilt was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, and is today the largest community art project in the world. Today it consists of more than 48,000 panels with the names of more than 94,000 individuals who died of AIDS. The display will be open during the Davis Family Library regular open hours. Sponsored by: Center for Teaching, Learning and Research; American Studies Program; Davis Family Library; Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life; Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies