Trained in Romantic studies, aesthetic theory, and the history of science, and self-trained in the digital humanities, I work as the Humanities Computing Researcher/Facilitator in Rice’s Center for Research Computing, where I enable researchers to make fuller and better use of their data; qualitatively transform their work by scaling it with the use of research computing resources; and conduct innovative humanities and humanities computing research in collaboration with others and in solo projects in order to lead infrastructural and theoretical developments in interdisciplinary fields.
I. Currently Active Projects
a. NEH/AHRC Grant: technical expertise
Towards a Digital Archive of the Atlantic Slave Trades: Unlocking the Records of the South Sea Company: https://securegrants.neh.gov/publicquery/main.aspx?f=1&gn=HND-284968-22
b. NEH Grant: technical expertise
Global Passages: Creating a Public Database of Slaving Voyages across the Indian Ocean and Asia: https://securegrants.neh.gov/publicquery/main.aspx?f=1&gn=MN-290193-23
c. Bridget Riley’s Real Abstractions
Current essay & computational humanities project (Code: https://github.com/johnMulligan/riley)
II. Digital Humanities Projects
a. SlaveVoyages.org
Since 2021, as the Humanities Computing Researcher/Facilitator in Rice’s Center for Research Computing, my colleagues and I have maintained and upgrade SlaveVoyages.org. Highlights from our work include:
- The inclusion of more rich, interpretive, humanities content on the site
- Oracle Cloud’s inaugural Eureka award
- Front-page feature in the Houston Chronicle
- In-house design and construction of a new, highly-interactive mapping interface to display complex data on the African diaspora (see below screenshot)
b. COVID-19 Excess Mortality Visualizations
Interactive dashboards for exploratory data analysis started in 2020. These containerized data visualization applications allow users to see CDC/NCHS data from new perspectives, in order to gain deeper insights into the broader impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on American mortality.
- Media Appearances
- Fox 26 News: https://www.fox26houston.com/video/980037
- R application
c. Interpassive Media, Critical Code Studies, and Radical Media Archaeology
In addition to the useful, interactive data visualization applications that I have designed, built, and written about, I have collaborated with software and mechanical engineers in building complex interfaces that guide users to reflect on the value of interactivity, as well as built such projects on my own. Are we expecting too much of these interfaces? How could our use of them be more creative of knowledge and meaning if we changed those expectations? Our articles on these subjects have been published in top-tier journals.
- The Electronic Vesalius (installation piece)
- Article (MIT)
III. Peer-Reviewed Publications
Much of my published work is multi-author; collaborative work enables more creative interdisciplinary inquiry, and the sciences’ laboratory model of credit-sharing, for all its problems of hierarchy, has much to recommend it over the humanities’ privileging of single-author works. Many of the papers below were published in direct conversation with digital projects listed above; some, such as my solo article on Chardin, were written as a direct consequence of a digital project and publication; still others, such as my work on Blake’s Newton (1805), are good, old-fashioned humanities research articles.
Preprint, February 2023: Goldman, Fulk, et al., “Microbial sensor variation across biogeochemical conditions in the terrestrial deep subsurface” https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.01.526704v1
“Computation and Interpretation in Literary Studies,” Critical Inquiry (University of Chicago Press), Autumn 2021. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715982 (and associated dataset: https://doi.org/10.25611/kk2a-8888)
“Chardin and Vesalius’ Inhuman Interiorities,” Notes & Queries (Oxford University Press), December 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjaa141
Mulligan, ed. (2020) “Hurricane Harvey,” Green Theory and Praxis, 13:1.
http://greentheoryandpraxisjournal.org/gtpj-volume-13-issue-1-january-2020/.
“The Herschels’ Knowledge Discovery: Exploring the Aesthetics of Big Data through the History of Astronomy,” Leonardo (MIT Press), August 2019. https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_01832 (and associated dataset:
https://doi.org/10.25611/7EE9-RW96).
“Digital Humanities Application Development in the Cloud,” Proceedings: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC), 2019. https://doi.org/10.1145/3355738.3355753
“Corporate Medical Cultures: MD Anderson as a Case Study in American Corporate Medical Values,” Medical Humanities (The British Medical Journal), June 2019. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011556
“The Electronic Vesalius: Embodying Anatomy Atlases,” Leonardo (MIT Press), February 2019. https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_01700
“Blake’s Use of Geometry in Newton (1805),” Notes and Queries (Oxford University Press), April 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjw044
Review: Dancing with Disaster, by Kate Rigby. Nineteenth-Century Contexts, March 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08905495.2016.1160467
IV. Custom, interactive humanities data visualizations for:
- Kirsten Ostherr
- Health Humanities Syllabi Repository, 2021: http://healthhumanitiessyllabi.rice.edu/s/health-humanities-syllabus-repository/page/heatmaps
- Translational Humanities for Public Health, 2021:
- Niki Kasumi Clements
- Co-Citational Networks in the Cognitive Science of Religion, 2021 (access now restricted)
- Citational Flows in Michel Foucault and Christianity, 2020 http://www.nikiclements.com/foucault/
- Brian Riedel, The Reservation. Custom, data-driven map of historical property ownership data in Houston’s fourth ward, 2018. (Firewalled on Rice network.)
V. Positions
Humanities Research Computing, Rice University
Center for Research Computing, Rice University, 2017-present.
Lecturer, Rice University
Humanities Research Center, 2015-2019; English Department, 2014-2015.
Lecturer, University of Rhode Island
English Department, 2014.
Composition Instructor
English Department, Brown University, 2012.
VI. Education
Ph.D. Department of English, Brown University, 2015.
Focus: Romantic-era British literature, aesthetic theory, the history of science.
B.A. Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, 2006, Summa cum laude.
Major: English, honors thesis.
Minor: Mathematics.
VII. Awards & Leadership
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Eureka Award, 2022.
Project Lead, “The Public Humanities, Post-Harvey Think Tank,” Rice Humanities Research Center, 2018-19.
Fellow, Cloud Support Engineer, Pervasive Technology Institute, Indiana University and the Microsoft Corporation, 2019 ($14,000 plus use of Azure cloud resources).
P.I.: Resilient Networks for Inclusive
DH, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2018.
“The Herschel Machine”
($5,000 plus student salary support).
Co-P.I.: Leadership Initiative Award, Rice’s Doerr Institute, 2017. “Medical Leadership for Healthy Communities” ($12,000).
P.I.: Faculty Research Fellowship, Rice
Humanities Research Center (HRC), 2016.
“Electronic
Vesalius” project ($4,000 plus student salary support).
Dissertation Fellowships, Brown University, 2012-14.
VIII. Dissertation
Romantic Experiment: The Second Scientific Revolution and 19th-century English Literature
Chair: William Keach (English)
Readers: Marc Redfield (English), Jacques Khalip (English)
IX. Digital Humanities Project Facilitation
Translational Humanities for Public Health and the Health Humanities Syllabus Repository. P.I. Kirsten Ostherr. Database-backed sites providing access to a knowledge base in health humanities scholarship & pedagogy for the advancement of the field.
SlaveVoyages.org. P.I. Daniel Domingues da Silva. Rice University is the current host of SlaveVoyages. We are working on a flexible SlaveVoyages API to enable creative uses of the dataset, and were recently awarded an NEH/AHRC grant to make the underlying primary source documents relating to the South Seas Company digitally available.
Critical Archive of Latin American Cinema (CALAC. Site internal to Rice). P.I.: Luis Duno-Gottberg. Custom Drupal site for creating a structured database of formal devices used in independent Latin American films. Also aided in the writing of a successful (2019) grant for future developments.
The Reservation. P.I. Brian Riedel. Custom map of historical property ownership data in Houston’s fourth ward (2018-present).
Between Oceans and Continents and Visualizing Abolition. P.I. Daniel Domingues da Silva. Custom data visualization websites for for 19th-century slave registry archives in Mozambique and 19th-century British slave abolition archives (2017).
X. Invited Lectures
“Interpassive Digital Media.” Critical Platform Studies Seminar, HRC, Rice, March 2019.
“Introduction to Supercomputing.” Data & Donuts Series, Fondren Library, Rice, October 2018
“Network Diagrams and Ridiculograms.” Guest lecture on digital humanities for “The Social Lives of Buildings” course, Rice, March 2018.
“Turning the Screw.” Guest lecture on Henry James and unreliable narration for “A Brief History of Madness” course, Rice, March 2018.
“Two uses of automated and user-generated network graphs.” Guest lecture on digital humanities for “Introduction to Computing for Humanities & Social Sciences” course, Brown University, April 2013.
“The aesthetics of Google Earth.” Guest lecture on digital mapping media for “Uninhabitable Worlds” course, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), May 2013.
“Astronomy and timekeeping, from the transit of Venus to the Herschels’ catalogues.” Invited lecture for Brown University’s Astronomy Department’s Transit of Venus lecture series; April and May 2012.
XI. Selected Talks
a. Aesthetic Theory and the History of Science
“Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way,” Cosmic Harmonies, York Festival of Ideas, June, 2022.
New Views of William Herschel (1738-1822), American Astronomical Society, 2021.
“Romantic Data: Knowledge Discovery in the Herschel Archive,” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR), Chicago, IL, August 2019.
“Aesthesis and Māthesis in Romantic Abstraction,” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR), Brown University, Providence, RI, June 2018.
“Romantic Abstraction: Blake After ‘Newton After Blake’,” NASSR, UCAL Berkeley, August 2016.
“Informational and Intellectual Properties,” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Panel, New York, April 2014. Co-organizer, moderator, and participant.
“Richard Proctor’s Sense of Scientific Duty and the 1874 Transit of Venus,” Northeast Victorian Studies Association (NVSA), Boston, April 2013. presentation
“Visuality and Spatiality in Blake and Kant: A Reconsideration of Romantic Science and Romantic Aesthetic,” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Providence, April 2012.
b. Literary History
“Thomas De Quincey’s Extravagant Utility,” NASSR, Ottawa, Ontario, August 2017.
“Credits, Rights, and Wordsworthian Writing,” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR), Manitoba, August 2015.
“Thomas De Quincey’s Literary Economies,” ACLA, New York, March 2014.
“Coleridge, Brontë, and the ‘Despotism of the Eye’: Intensive Consciousness in Romantic Literature,” ACLA, New Orleans, April 2010.
c. Digital Humanities
“Middle-Distant Reading: Big Data Meets Big Humanities Scholarship,” Rice Data Science Conference, Houston, TX, October 2019.
“Digital Humanities Application Incubation in the Cloud,” Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC), Chicago, IL, August 2019.
“Algorithmic Politics,” Panel Respondent. Western Political Science Association (WPSA), San Diego, CA, April 2019.
“Digital Facsimiles: The ‘Electronic Vesalius’ and Archival Remediation,” Digital Frontiers Conference, Rice University, September 2016. presentation
d. Medical Humanities
“American Medicine’s Corporate Past and Corporate Future,” Future of Healthcare Symposium, Texas A&M, College Station, April 2018.
“Hooked: Measuring Addictive Pleasure from Romanticism to Neoliberalism.” Rice/UT History and Culture of Disease and Healing Series, Nov 2017. presentation
XII. Selected Courses
Health Humanism and Society Scholars, Rice University. Undergraduate, year-long medical humanities research practicum, 2018-19.
Practica in the Medical Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Rice University. Hybrid experiential course dedicated to undergraduate research in Houston institutions, 2016-Present.
“Storytelling in the Digital Age,” Brown University Continuing Education (CE). Web-based, digital media production course with a focus on narrative, Summers 2013, 2014, 2016.
“Future Perfect: Science Fiction and the Politics of Imagination,” Brown University CE. Introduction to speculative fiction, Summers 2013, 2014, 2016.
“Brain, Mind, and Body in the 19th Century,” Rice University. A 200-level critical course in cognitive cultural studies and the history of ideas, Spring 2016.
“Introduction to British Romanticism,” Rice University. A 300-level survey course, satisfied distribution pre-1800 requirement, Fall and Winter 2014-15.
“Early Shakespeare,” Rice University. A focused 300-level survey course, with an equal balance between dramatic and scholarly works, Fall 2014.
“Eighteenth-Century Poetry,” University of Rhode Island. An introductory-level poetry course focused on the long eighteenth century, Spring 2014.
“Theater & the Passions,” University of Rhode Island. A survey course of drama from the British Restoration, Spring 2014.
XIII. Service
Rice Office of Information Technology Internship Program co-lead and mentor, 2020-2023.
Curriculum Review Committee, Rice School of the Humanities, January 2016-2020.
Public Humanities Steering Committee, Rice HRC, September 2015-2020.
Medical Humanities Steering Committee, Rice HRC, September 2015-2020.
Secretary, Brown University Graduate Student Council (GSC), Jan 2013-Jan 2014
Housing Liaison, Brown University GSC, October 2012-June 2013. Served on committee to evaluate property developer proposals to construct graduate student housing
Co-organizer of Brown University English Dept. Graduate Student Forum, Spring 2013-present
Organized interdepartmental poetics colloquium for humanities graduate students, Summer 2010-2012
XIV. Programming Languages/Skills
Python, Django, Flask, SQL, Javascript, Linux, Apache, Flask, VBscript, HTML5, various API’s (e.g., JSTOR), Natural Language Processing, OpenMPI, SLURM, HTCondor. Certified Software Carpentries instructor.