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  • Program in the Arts of the Moving Image

Duke University
Smith Warehouse, Bay 12, Room A103
114 S. Buchanan Blvd.
Box 90766
Durham, NC 27708

Phone: (919) 660 3030
Fax: (919) 681 1378
Email: a-m-i at duke.edu

    Victoria E Szabo

  • Victoria E Szabo

  • Assistant Research Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies and Program Director, Information Science and Information Studies
  • Arts of the Moving Image, Program in
  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Specialties

    • Digital Media, Multimedia Digital Art and Theory;
    • Expanded Media-Oriented Poetics; Virtual Reality
    • Computer Arts
    • New Technologies for Visualizing Historical Materials

  • Research Summary

    new media, visual studies, digital humanities, maps, virtual worlds, multimodal archives

  • Research Description

    My primary research interest is in digital media authorship and its potential to transform scholarly research and its expression, especially in the humanities. Most recently I have been focusing on how spatial media forms - maps, virtual worlds, games, and data viz - might converge in diverse, multimodal, immersive, shared hypermedia places and spaces. Some "test cases" include: visualizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, mapping the contemporary Muhuru Bay community in Kenya, and modeling Duke and Durham, past and present.

    I am a co-director of the new Franklin Humanities Institute GreaterThanGames Lab, which grew in part out of the "Experiencing Virtual Worlds" Interdisciplinary Working Group I co-convened in 2009-11. I am also an affiliate of the FHI Haiti Labs and BorderWorks labs, where my primary connections are through digital representation and cultural mapping. I am a core collaborated in the new Wired! Lab for Digital Historical Reconstruction as well.

    As the Program Director for Information Science + Information Studies, Iencourage students to explore these topics in both theory and practice through highly interdisciplinary project-based collaborations. I am also affiliated with the program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), the new MFA program in Experimental and Documentary Arts (MFAEDA), and the English Department.

    Before coming to Duke, I worked as an Academic Technology Manager and Specialist at Stanford University, where I also taught in the Introduction to the Humanities program. It was at Stanford that I developed many of the digital media authorship competencies and novel pedagogical practices I apply to my work at Duke today.

  • Current Projects

    Multimedia Mapping: Muhuru Bay, Kenya,  The Virtual Crystal Palace,  Walltown Neighborhood History Project,  Psychasthenia (collaborative RENCI dome project), Second Life: Ouida Basevi

  • Areas of Interest

    virtual worlds
    digital mapping
    games
    database driven narratives

  • Education

      • Ph.D. in English,
      • English,
      • University of Rochester,
      • 2000
      • Certificate in Gender and Women's Studies,
      • Susan B Anthony Institute for Research on Women and Gender,
      • University of Rochester,
      • 1996
      • B.A. in English,
      • English,
      • Williams College,
      • 1990

  • Awards, Honors and Distinctions

      • Co-Director, FHI GreaterThanGames Lab,
      • Franklin Humanities Institute,
      • April, 2011
      • Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship,
      • University of Virginia Scholar's Lab/NEH,
      • May 2010
      • Co-Convener, Interdisciplinary Working Group - Experiencing Virtual Worlds,
      • Franklin Humanities Institute,
      • 2009-2010; renewed for 2010-11
      • Grant: RENCI VIsualization Grant,
      • Renaissance Computing Institute,
      • 2010

    • Talks

      • Digital Humanities and Historical GIS: A Conversation at the Interface
        • November 18, 2011
        • UNC Chapel Hill, NC
        • HGIS Carolina Presents: Historical GIS and the Digital Humanities: A Conversation at the Intersection Friday, November 18, 2011 2PM, Davis 214 (Davis Library on UNC-CH Campus) Panelists: Victoria Szabo (Duke) Richard Marciano (UNC) Pam Lach (UNC) Moderator: Susanna Lee (NC State) "This will be the event of the year for historical GIS and digital humanities scholars around the Triangle!" More info at http://www.unc.edu/hgis and http://hgiscarolina.web.unc.edu Contact: Dr Rebecca Dobbs, grdobbs@email.unc.edu
      • A Primer for Digital Media Authorship: Placing the Crystal Place
        • November 16, 2011
        • Duke Wired! Lab
        • Campus talk designed to introduce my Wired lab related work to the Duke community.
      • Digital Scholarly Communication – Notes from the Wired! Lab for Digital Historical Visualization
        • December 02, 2011
        • HASTAC V Conference, Ann Arbor, MI
        • This panel addresses the promise and pitfalls of digital scholarly communication in the context of a multi-year, multidisciplinary research and teaching collective actively rethinking the methods and foundational questions that frame the discipline of Art History and Visual Studies. Each talk raises in turn a set of interrelated issues: collaboration, translation, dissemination and critique.
      • Respondent: Science, Industry and the Environment
        • October 22, 2011
        • American Studies Association (ASA), Baltimore, MD
        • Formal respondent to the following: Emma Kreyche, New York University (NY) Central America and the New Geographies of Empire Anthony R. Acciavatti, Princeton University (NJ) ONE NATION UNDER CHEMURGY: Cultivating a Colloidal Commonwealth Sara Denise Shreve, University of Iowa (IA) Selling the Sun: Promoting Solar Housing in American Culture, 1933–1968
      • Gaming the Real: The Convergence of Maps, Social Media, and Virtual Worlds
        • September 16, 2011
        • Society for Literature, Science & the Arts (SLSA), Kitchener, Ontario
        • In 2007, the authors of the Metaverse Roadmap asked: "What happens when video games meet Web 2.0? 
When virtual worlds meet geospatial maps of the planet? When simulations get real and life and business go virtual? When you use a virtual Earth to navigate the physical Earth, and your avatar becomes your online agent? 
What happens is the metaverse" (metaverseroadmap.org/). This initial formulation set up four distinct areas of metaverse development: augmented reality, mirror worlds, lifelogging, and virtual worlds. Five years later, the boundaries between these areas are already collapsing as disparate technologies converge in annotated, immersive 3D spaces. Social media development, videoconferencing, virtual world creation, 3D mapping, GPS-based tagging systems, and game modifications are all increasingly accessible to casual users. Non-specialists now can and do create their own digital cultural and historical reconstructions, online exhibitions, avatar-driven training sessions, and augmented reality systems. Increasingly these projects either leverage game engines, or introduce game-like elements into their construction. The effect is to blend physical and virtual into a set of reality systems whose persistence depends on the active engagement of the user-author. Collectively these developments bring into daily life an increasingly game-like experience of the world. This paper will discuss how game aesthetics are become increasingly prevalent in non-game immersive 3D experiences, with special attention to projects that attempt to construct interactive, participatory mirror or hybrid world representations of "real" places and spaces, past and present.
      • "The Ethics of Virtual Cultural Representation" (Poster Session)
        • June 20, 2011
        • Big Tent Digital Humanities Conference, Stanford, CA
        • Poster session and presentation
      • "Writing in 3D: Immersive Virtual Writing as Authorship and Critique"
        • February 05, 2011
        • NC Symposium on the Teaching of Writing
        • panelist on "Virtual Worlds: Pedagogies of Play." https://sites.google.com/site/ncsymposium/schedule-of-events
      • "Analog and Digital: Texts, Contexts, and Networks," special session organizer
        • January 07, 2011
        • Modern Language Association conference, Los Angeles, CA
      • Invited Panel Respondent - Sherry Turkle Lecture, "Alone Together: New Intimacies and Solitudes of the Digital Age."
        • November 04, 2010
        • NC State University
      • "Virtual Worlds and Community Medicine"
        • July 12, 2010
        • Graduate Medical Education, Duke University School of Medicine
        • Invited talk for Community Medicine Resident training program.
      • "Visual Studies and Digital Humanities"
        • March 30, 2010 - April 01, 2010
        • University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
        • Invited speaker for lecture and workshop in honor of the anniversary of Visual and Cultural Studies at UR.
      • Panel Discussion - "Before the Flood"
        • February 20, 2010
        • Nasher Museum, Durham NC
        • At 1:00 pm Duke University's Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies and the Nicholas School of the Environment are sponsoring a viewing of Het Verloven Land (Before the Flood) by Dutch filmmaker Jos de Putter and to participate in a discussion about art, science and communication in the Lecture Hall at the Nasher Art Museum (www.nasher.duke.edu). Bill Chameides, Dean, Nicholas School of the Environment, will moderate a panel including Larry Band, Director, UNC-CH’s Institute for the Environment; Rick Hooper, President & Executive Director, Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI), Linwood Pendleton, Director, Ocean & Coastal Policy for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions; and Victoria Szabo, Program Director, Information Science + Information Studies, Duke Dept of Art, Art History & Visual Studies. /Het Verloven Land/Before the Flood /is part of a national series *Let's Talk About Water *coordinated by Linda Lilienfeld (letstalkaboutwater.com). *Let's Talk About Water* has been at UC-Irvine and Ohio University. It will be at UMass-Boston in the fall. Contact Bill Holman at the Nicholas Institute (bill.holman@duke.edu) or William Noland at the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies (William.noland@duke.edu) for more information.
      • "Games and Digital Storytelling," moderator
        • February 17, 2010
        • CHAT Festival, Chapel Hill, NC
      • "A Primer for Digital Media Authorship"
        • December 29, 2009
        • MLA Conference, Philadelphia, PA
      • "Virtual World Building as Collaborative Knowledge Production: The Online Crystal Palace"
        • December 28, 2009
        • MLA Convention 2009, Philadelphia, PA
      • "Multimedia Mapping for Research and Discovery in Muhuru Bay, Kenya"
        • November 05, 2009
        • Educause, Denver, CO
      • "Digital Media Writing as Academic Authorship"
        • June 13, 2008
        • New Media Consortium Conference, Princeton, NJ
      • ""Designing and Implementing Podcasting (Webcast)
        • 2008
        • Academic Impressions - Online
      • "Media-Enriched Critical Writing as Gray Market Transgression"
        • December 29, 2007
        • MLA Conference, Chicago, IL
      • "Texts in Virtual Contexts: Reading Scholarly Work in 3D Environments"
        • December 28, 2007
        • MLA Conference, Chicago, IL
      • "Podcasting in Education” and “Videocasting in Education"
        • August 25, 2007
        • E-Sanitas Symposium on Mobile Learning, Bogota, Colombia
      • "Digital Media and the Hybrid University"
        • February, 2007
        • Podcast Academy V (Duke)
      • "Institutional Podcasting and Media Sharing"
        • August, 2006
        • Educause Leadership Institute, Snowmass, CO
      • "The Mobile User" (panelist; televised, webcast)
        • March, 2006
        • Ready2Net, Cal State, Monterey, CA
      • "Millennial Students and Technology at Stanford"
        • February, 2006
        • Parents' Advisory Board, Stanford Development, Stanford U
      • "Course Management Tools for the Humanities"
        • December, 2005
        • Sakai Developers Conference, Austin, TX
      • "iPods and iTunes in Higher Education" (panelist)
        • November, 2005
        • Apple Digital Campus Leadership Institute, Georgia College and State U, Milledgeville, GA
      • Designing and Evaluating Multimedia Projects
        • June, 2005
        • Computers and Writing Pre-Conference Workshop, Stanford U, Stanford, CA
      • "Higher Education Implications: Teaching and Learning with Technology in Undergraduate Education"
        • February, 2005
        • Apple Technology Leadership Institute Executive Briefing, Stanford U, Stanford, CA
      • "Persuasive Pervasive: Real Learning or Hype?" (panelist)
        • February, 2005
        • National Learning Infrastructure Initiative Conference, New Orleans, LA
      • "Avatar: Techno-Embodiment(?)"
        • January 22, 2010
        • John Hope Franklin Center, Durham, NC
        • AVATAR A panel discussion with: Ralph Litzinger, Cultural Anthropology Walter Mignolo, Literature and Romance Studies Victoria Szabo, Information Science and Information Studies Moderator: Orin Starn, Cultural Anthropology Avatar may soon become the biggest-grossing movie of all time. Is it a formulaic fable, Dances With Wolves with a sci-fi twists? An innovative commentary on war, species boundaries, and technoscience? Neither or both? Join us for a discussion of the film. When: Friday, January 22, 2-3:30 pm Where: John Hope Franklin Center 240

    • Other

      • Instructor, Digital Visualization (WIRED) Workshop
        • June 13, 2011 - June 17, 2011
        • Smith Warehouse, Duke University
      • Instructor, Digital Visualization (WIRED) Workshop
        • June 7, 2010 - June 18,2010
        • Smith Warehouse, Duke University
        • co-Instructor for faculty workshop
      • "Teaching and Learning in Second Life"
        • May, 2009
        • CIT Lunchtime Demonstration (Duke)
      • Duke News Online "Office Hours"
        • 2009-01-06
        • Live, webcast interview with Duke News about new media topics.
      • "Second Life in Undergraduate Education at Duke"
        • April 24, 2008
        • CIT Instructional Technology Showcase
      • "Mashing the Nasher: the ISIS Virtual ‘Gnasher’ Project"
        • May, 2007
        • CIT Instructional Technology Showcase
      • "Multimedia Mapping for Engagement and Discovery"
        • April 03, 2009
        • CIT Instructional Technology Showcase

  • Recent Publications

      • V.E. Szabo.
      • (Fall, 2012).
      • Transforming Art History Research with Database Analytics: Visualizing Art Markets.
      • Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America
      • ,
      • 31
      • (2)
      • ,
      • 158-75.
      Publication Description

      http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/668109

      • V.E. Szabo and Joyce Rudinsky.
      • (February, 2012).
      • Psychasthenia 2.
      • .
      • [web]
      Publication Description

      Psychasthenia 2 is an interactive artwork that explores the culture of psychological diagnosis and treatment within the context of a highly mediated consumer culture that often produces the ills it purports to treat. The project is a navigable 3D interactive space built with the game engine Unity.

      Project was publicly displayed at the CHAT Festival in 2012. A related augmented reality version will be shown at CAA in February 2013.

      • MLA Committee for Information Technology.
      • (January, 2012).
      • Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media.
      • .
      • (Modern Language Association Committee for Information Technology Advisory Guide)
      • [web]
      Publication Description

      The following guidelines are designed to help departments and faculty members implement effective evaluation procedures for hiring, reappointment, tenure, and promotion. They apply to scholars working with digital media as their subject matter and to those who use digital methods or whose work takes digital form.

      • V.E. Szabo.
      • (2012).
      • Augmented Reality Gallery Guide, CHAT Festival 2012.
      • .
      • [web]
      Publication Description

      Augmented Reality experience at CHAT Festival 2012

      • Deborah Jenson , Victoria Szabo, and the Duke FHI Haiti Humanities Laboratory Student Research Team.
      • (November, 2011).
      • Cholera IN Haiti.
      • Emerging Infectious Diseases
      • Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Eds.),
      • ,
      • 17
      • (11)
      • 1600 Clifton Rd NE Mailstop D61 Atlanta, GA 30333:
      • .
      • (http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1711.110958)
      Publication Description

      http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/11/11-0958_article.htm

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