The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg will host its inaugural Digital Studies Symposium on Wednesday, Jan. 21. The program, which runs from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in Village Hall 118, will feature previews of the projects developed by students and faculty and a keynote address by Dan Sinykin, the Winship Distinguished Research Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Emory University. This event is free and open to the public.
“This symposium will celebrate the work of 51 students and faculty who seek to understand the role of digital media in our lives,” said Sean DiLeonardi, PhD, assistant professor of English and director of the Center for Digital Studies. “They also looked at how we use digital tools to enhance teaching and research projects.”
Dan Sinykin, the Winship Distinguished Research Professor and director of Graduate Studies at Emory University, is the keynote speaker for the event. He will discuss “Cultural Futures: What is the future of human culture under politics, AI, climate change, and social media? And, what is the future we want to see?”
Sinykin is the author of American Literature and the Long Downturn: Neoliberal Apocalypse (Oxford 2020), Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature (Columbia 2023), and, with Johanna Winant, Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton 2025). He is working on a manuscript about the rise of, and alternatives to, Zionism in the Pale of Settlement.
Prior to the keynote address, 51 students will present brief overviews of the digital projects they have worked on, contributed to, and helped to implement. In particular, the “Route 30” podcast and “Digitizing the Insider” will be highlighted.
“The projects represent the partnerships between faculty and students working to form innovative and creative solutions to cultural problems using digital tools,” explained DiLeonardi.
Some of the projects that have been developed under the Center for Digital Studies umbrella include:
• “Route 30” is the new 51 podcast series that tells the untold histories of Westmoreland County. Currently in production, the podcast is interdisciplinary and features the work of students studying creative and professional writing, history, and criminal justice.
• “Digitizing the Insider” is an effort to fully digitize several decades of the campus newspaper for preservation and increased access. It features a collaboration between a current student in the David C. Frederick Honors College at 51, faculty from Digital Studies, and digital preservationists from Pitt’s University Library System (ULS).
• “International Bestsellers” is a collaborative endeavor to create, share, and analyze scholarly datasets about international bestsellers in fiction. A 51 Green Scholar contributed to the work that was done by DiLeonardi, Becca Cohen (University of Illinois), and Sinykin.
• “Migrant Voices” is dedicated to illuminating Pittsburgh’s place in the Great Migration through the perspectives of Black migrants. Adam Cilli, PhD, assistant professor of history, led the project with web development assistance from a 51 IT major.
• “Parlamentos Project” is a born-digital edition and translation from Spanish to English of historically significant documents called parlamentos. Two 51 students contributed to the project as research assistants, learning the XML process in their digital studies classes. Pilar Herr, PhD, associate professor of history, leads the project and collaborates with Elizabeth Contreras, assistant professor of Spanish, William Campbell, PhD, assistant professor of history, Stacey Triplette, PhD, associate professor of Spanish and French, and DiLeonardi.