Rails Girls: A Programming Space for Women

On Saturday, I was one of a number of coaches for Rails Girls at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.  This wonderful event is designed to help teach women the basics of Ruby and Ruby on Rails, and to ultimately help them build an application.  It was an excellent experience:  I was so impressed with how quickly all the attendees picked up the basics of the command line, programming, and web development.  

For those of you who would like to see exactly what we covered, we first went through much of Ruby in 100 Minutes and then jumped right in with building a Ruby on Rails address book application that lets users input their name, twitter info, picture, bio, and address, and then plots the address on a map.  Students who wanted a further challenge then followed instructions to put their app online using Heroku.  For example, Elizabeth Hopwood, one of the attendees I worked with, put her excellent app online and populated it with "Downtown Abbey" characters. 

I'm so grateful to Jeri Wieringa and Celeste Sharpe for organizing this event.  I'm thrilled to have been part of something that helps teach women how to code and that can actually help change the programming culture:  on numerous occasions at conferences, I've had people insist that I couldn't have created my two digital projects and that, as a woman, I must be taking credit for the programming work of a man.  Programs like Rails Girls can help change those horrible perceptions, by helping women feel welcomed into coding and into a supportive programming community and by publicly claiming programming spaces for women.  

I look forward to hearing of future Rails Girls events, and I hope to volunteer as a coach for other similar nearby programs in the future.

Songs of the Victorians is complete!

I am happy to report that with today's release of Arthur Somervell's "Come into the Garden, Maud" (1898), Songs of the Victorians is complete! This song joins three others--Caroline Norton's "Juanita" (1853), Michael William Balfe's "Come into the Garden, Maud" (1857), and Sir Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord" (1877)--and, as before, includes an archive page (which includes a high-resolution scan of the first edition printing of the song integrated with an audio file, so each measure is highlighted in time with the music) and an analysis page (which includes an article-length essay on the song's interpretation of the poem it sets with musical excerpts of the score that are highlighted in time with the music).

Unlike Balfe's parlor song setting of the same text, which was designed for home performance and uses harmonic changes to critique the speaker's insanity, Somervell's art song setting was designed for public performance in a concert hall and presents a more sympathetic portrait of the speaker.  Although the song has harmonic irregularities, they are of short duration and therefore appear hidden in the song even more than in Balfe's setting.  This results in a musical depiction of the speaker from within the prison of his own mind rather than a critique of him from an external perspective.

Although Somervell's setting marks the end of this stage of development for Songs of the Victorians  the project will not lie dormant.  I plan to add new material over the next few years, and I am also seriously contemplating accepting submissions from other scholars (I have already had some volunteers) starting in the fall of 2014.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Songs of the Victorians:  it's always nice to hear feedback, so leave comments below!

Keep following this blog for updates on future plans and for development information on Augmented Notes!

New Content: Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord" Live on Songs of the Victorians

I've now added new content to Songs of the Victorians!  Users can now view the archive page and the analysis page of Sir Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord" (1877), a song setting of Adelaide Procter's "A Lost Chord" (1860).  Many of you may know "The Lost Chord," since it, along with Balfe's "Come into the Garden, Maud," is one of the most famous Victorian parlor songs.  It has often been interpreted as a sentimental poem about the vital importance of religion and religious music in an uncertain world, but these interpretations do not take into account the surprising harmonic twists and the publication contexts of the poem (the poem was first published in The Englishwoman's Journal, a feminist periodical, and later in Legends and Lyrics, a volume of Procter's collected works).  I'm arguing that the song actually undercuts the expected sentimental solace and gives the poem new access to the political and social message of its two publication contexts: it unites the feminist and the religiously questioning reading.  By examining the musical reception history of Procter’s poem through multiple incarnations and remediations, we can rediscover this “lost chord,” hear its overlooked commentaries on women’s lives and religious doubt, and reinstate it in the polyphony of critical discourse.

The final section of Songs of the Victorians (until I start accepting submissions from other scholars), on Arthur Somervell's Maud (1898), a song cycle that uses Alfred Tennyson's monodrama Maud (1855) as text, is almost done.  I hope to have it go live next week.

I'd love to hear your comments on this new section, so please leave your thoughts below.  Thanks!

Publicity

I'm back in Charlottesville after five weeks of traveling in Europe for conferences.  I had a wonderful time both at NAVSA Venice (read my thoughts on the conference and workshop here) and at the Ninth Biennial Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, held in Cardiff.  I met many scholars whose work I've admired and quoted for years and met many new colleagues and friends, and Songs of the Victorians received an enthusiastic response.  Next week, I'll be posting news about more updates to Songs of the Victorians (including, I hope, an announcement that the archive and analysis pages for the next song are live).

For this week, I wanted to inform you of two interviews I've given since getting back in the country about my digital projects.  First, I was interviewed by feminist blogger Jaclyn Munson for "Onward and F-Word" as part of her "women to watch series" about my research, digital projects, and investment in feminism.  I was honored to be the first woman interviewed in this group, and you can read the interview here.

This morning, my interview about Augmented Notes with Hope Leman for Critical Margins went live. As many of you probably know, Critical Margins is a blog on "book culture, technology, reading, and publishing in the digital age."  My interview is part of a series that Hope is conducting about advances in digital publishing, and I'm thrilled to be included.  If you want to learn more about Augmented Notes, you can read that interview here.

More next week!

Professionalization Workshop & Venice Conference Update

Greetings from Munich!

It’s been an eventful two and a half weeks!  I spent a wonderful week as a participant at a Professionalization Workshop in Venice, organized by Dino Felluga and a joint venture of NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA (the North American, British, and Australasian Victorian Societies).  The workshop was held on a little island called San Servolo, about a ten minute vaporetto ride away from Venice.  We dedicated a day each to conferences, grants, and publications, and we had a perfect combination of listening to lectures from guest speakers, asking questions, and practicing the principles we learned.  Our activities involved workshopping our own conference proposals, writing part of a sample grant proposal, and looking at the introductory paragraphs for multiple publications so we could get a sense for the different styles each journal has.  The final two days of the workshop included a crash course on the job market:  we learned about the differences between the American, Canadian, UK, Australasian, and continental European job market, and we also learned more about what makes a good cover letter, writing sample, cv, and teaching statement.  We were also given tons of examples of each type of document, so I have no lack of models as I draft my own materials for the market in September.  We also heard about alt-ac job options, the role digital humanities will play in changing the field, and the differences between liberal arts colleges and larger research universities.

In addition to new information, we also gained new acquaintances:  there were 39 of us in the workshop from the US, Canada, UK, Australasia, and continental Europe, and after a week of eating together, chatting about our fears of the job market, and being roommates (we were three to a room), we got to know each other well and to become not just colleagues, but friends.  We also got to know many professors more closely, both because we were paired with a faculty mentor for the workshop and conference (mine was Catherine Robson) and because we spent time chatting with them during coffee and lunch breaks and as we waited for the vaporetto to arrive.  These connections helped make the ensuing conference even more enjoyable.

After the workshop, the supernumerary conference began.  Feel free to check out the twitter hashtag #glocal19 to follow the conversation from home.  Although I’ve been to many conferences (and organized one myself), this was by far the best conference I’ve ever attended.  The papers, which were well-written and well-presented, formed coherent and thought-provoking panels, and the Q&A sessions for each were especially informative and spilled over into excellent discussions long after the sessions ended.  The conference included additional, non-traditional activities as well:  there were “first-come, first-serve,” works-in-progress, and material culture seminars.   I sat in on an excellent “first-come, first-serve” seminar, run by Marjorie Stone and Beverly Taylor on the “The Risorgimento, 19th-Century Movements, and the Transnation” where presenters submitted a 5-page position paper in advance and participants would spend an hour discussing them.  I also attended a material culture seminar by Cornelia Pearsall on Robert Browning’s “A Toccata of Galuppi’s,” which was especially a treat because I had presented on the same poem the previous day and was therefore able to hear and respond to multiple new perspectives on a work with which I was very familiar.  I also participated in Pamela Gilbert’s works-in-progress seminar, for which we were all given a chapter of her new book project in advance, and we asked her questions about the scope of the project and particular elements of her argument.  It was especially illuminating for my own work, as a section of the chapter I’m currently revising addresses a topic she discussed. Throughout the conference, everyone was friendly, generous with their time, and genuinely interested in talking with junior scholars about their work.  It was a truly lovely time, and I think all the participants will miss Venice as well as the friends, conversations, and experiences we associate with it.

As I write this, I’m currently on a train to Vienna, where I will be for a week, seeing the manifold musical sites as I continue working on Augments Notes, on Songs of the Victorians, and on revising my chapter and my job market documents.  After Vienna, I’ll be at Cardiff to present on Caroline Norton’s “Juanita” with the help of Songs of the Victorians.  I’m looking forward to presenting my ideas to an audience composed predominantly of musicologists.

Tschüss!!

European Academic Adventure TIme!

I don't have any updates on Songs of the Victorians or Augmented Notes for today, because I spent last week finishing up the third chapter of my dissertation, polishing my writing sample for the job market, and working on my talk for NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA in Venice! I'll be presenting on Robert Browning's "A Toccata of Galuppi's," although my talk is not actually part of my dissertation, and I'll also be attending the professionalization workshop, where I'll learn more about the job market, grant writing, and tenure from experts in the field.  I plan to make lots of progress on Augmented Notes this week, and I'll add the Sullivan section of Songs of the Victorians soon, but I don't anticipate making any of these changes public until after NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA.

I'll actually be in Europe until the end of June, because I'll also be presenting at the Ninth Biennial Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain (MNBC) in Cardiff.  I'm on a panel with Phyllis Weliver, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre, and Donna Parsons, organized and moderated by Maura Dunst, and I'm thrilled to meet and to present alongside other scholars who are interested in the connections between music and Victorian poetry.  I'm giving a version of my paper on Caroline Norton's "Juanita," the first analysis I put on Songs of the Victorians, and I'm looking forward to demonstrating my project and "Juanita" analysis page at a music conference, since I've presented more frequently at English conferences.

I'll still post updates here about both my projects, but don't expect one until I arrive in Europe, and possibly not until after NAVSA/BAVS/AVSA (an acronym I'm enjoying more than I should).

New Content for Songs of the Victorians!

Today, I added new content to Songs of the Victorians:  specifically, I incorporated my analysis of Tennyson's Maud (1855) and of Michael William Balfe's setting (1857) of it.  Some of you may have heard of Balfe's "Come into the Garden, Maud," since it is one of the most famous (and most parodied) Victorian songs.  It was widely considered to be a fairly traditional love song in which a man waits in a garden for the woman he desires and sings of his affection for her, and many critics faulted it for being too sentimental.  I'm arguing that, while the song can be performed to sound like a traditional love song, it also gives voice to the speaker’s insanity, violent tendencies, and repetitive, obsessive speech through harmonic instability.  As with the "analysis" page for Caroline Norton's "Juanita," users can read my analysis and then click on the icon of a speaker interspersed throughout the analysis to see and hear the musical excerpts:  for each excerpt, a box, highlighting each measure, will move in time with the music so that all readers, regardless of musical expertise, can follow the score and my argument.

I'm planning to add my analysis of Sir Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord" (1877) around the end of May/beginning of June, and then add my analysis of Sir Arthur Somervell's Maud (1898) around the end of June/beginning of July.  I'll make sure to post updates or changes to that schedule here and through my twitter account (@annieswafford) to keep everyone in the loop.

In the interim, please feel free to leave a comment on my blog! I'd love to know your thoughts about Songs of the Victorians:  are you enjoying it?  Have you used it in a particularly interesting way? (I've heard from one kind reader that he used the archive page it to learn how to play one of the songs for residents in a a retirement community who had requested it.)  Are you incorporating it in your classroom?  I'd be curious to hear how the site is being used!