MIT Fellow, Julia Panko Joins Faculty of Weber State University to Pioneer State of Utah's First Digital Humanities Program

OGDEN, Utah, Aug. 19, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Telitha E. Lindquist College of Arts & Humanities at Weber State University (www.weber.edu/cah) today announced Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) English fellow, Julia Panko will join the faculty of the college beginning in August of 2014. Panko will be responsible for teaching courses to students and collaborating with other entities in the Ogden community and throughout the region on ways to combine computing technologies with scholarship and study in Communication, English, Performing Arts, Foreign Language and Visual Arts.

 "The discipline of digital humanities is not new, but what we as a college and university aim to do is intervene and transform this emerging field" said Madonne Miner, Dean of the Telitha E. Lindquist College of Arts & Humanities. "The world is without question shifting and expanding each day. Our focus on this subject will allow us to chart a course to imagine a new future, whereby humanities connect not only with computing, but with all other fields of study."

Panko researches the intersections between literature and media. She is currently working on her first book, which studies the links between the emergence of new information storage media in the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries and experimentation in the print novel during these periods. Her teaching interests include twentieth-century British and Irish literature, the theory and history of media, experimental writing, contemporary fiction, and the social impact of digital technology.

"Students of all ages are not only living in a new media culture, they are shaping that culture in ways that will address the most significant questions of our time," said Panko. "The course offerings and research on Digital Humanities at Weber State University will address how digital technologies are changing the ways that we read and write, which helps us explore the fundamental question of what it means to be human in a digital age. I look forward to exploring this topic not only with students, but with all Utahns."

Panko received her Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she was a University of California Graduate Fellow in the Humanities. She also received a Master's degree in Irish literature from Trinity College, Dublin.

About the Telitha E. Lindquist College of Arts & Humanities
The Weber State University Telitha E. Lindquist College of Arts & Humanities teaches students to excel as they seek, understand, question and express complexities critical to the experience of being human. The Lindquist College of Arts & Humanities offers undergraduate degree programs in the following five areas: Communication, English, Foreign Language, Performing Arts and Visual Arts. Master's degrees also are offered in Communication and English. The college serves nearly 2,000 undergraduate majors and 200 graduate students. The Lindquist College of Arts & Humanities is the Western region's foremost institution for student-centered teaching and research that investigates the human experience and aims to educate global citizens who are responsible, creative and critical artists, performers and communicators. For more information please visit (www.weber.edu/cah).

Contact:
Christie Denniston, APR
Director of Marketing and PR
Lindquist College of Arts & Humanities 
Weber State University
Phone: 801-626-6431
Cell: 303-827-5164
Email: [email protected] 

SOURCE Weber State University’s Telitha E. Lindquist College of Arts & Humanities