Photo Credit: © Shane Lin
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Justin Greenlee, Ph.D.
Teacher. Technologist.
Digital Scholarship Specialist.
I have experience as a digital humanist in multiple modes, including work as a digital humanities project developer, a digital pedagogy specialist, and a professor and lecturer of art history. As a Digital Scholarship/ Digital Humanities Specialist within the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA, I collaborate with faculty, postdocs, students, and staff on projects related to multimodal scholarship and digital storytelling, data analysis and visualization, creative uses of AI-powered tools in research and teaching, digital pedagogy, online teaching, and digital scholarship in the arts. I also visit classrooms, offer one-on-one consultations, co-work on digital scholarship projects, give presentations, facilitate workshops, and advise on graduate student training and professional development.
(Last edited 7/26/2023).
Digital and engaged humanities
My support for faculty and students is meaningful integrated with a drive for social justice. I am particularly interested in digital projects that involve art and local histories.
Dissertation
My dissertation, “Bessarion’s World: Art, Science, and Crusade” examined the patronage and collecting practices of the émigré Basil Bessarion (b. ca. 1403, d. 1472) within the fifteenth-century culture of Crusade in Europe and Byzantium. I argued that Bessarion’s patronage of the arts and sciences was fueled by two closely related endeavors: first, the cardinal’s lifelong travels through the Byzantine world and Europe as a diplomat and preacher for Crusade; and second, his fervent desire to launch a Crusade to reclaim territories lost to Mehmed II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81) and his Ottoman army. Dissertation published open access, Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0), issue date 5/7/2020.
Skills
teaching; research; writing;
use of digital scholarship tools;
leadership of teacher trainings; mentorship; team building; athletics coaching;
grant writing;
project management; event planning;
collaboration; community engagement;
public speaking; presentation of information;
content knowledge of the arts, history, and the humanities;
digital and multimodal scholarship and storytelling; design thinking
DH Portfolio
Scroll to learn more about digital and engaged humanities projects undertaken by Justin Greenlee with collaborators.
The ART
Project
Role: Justin joined The ART Project as a Primary Investigator in summer 2021, when he developed a set of question to help students notice more about the conditions of their learning environment within higher ed.
Project summary: The ART Project was created by Dr. Spyros Simotas, Assistant Professor in the French Department at the University of Virginia. ART, which is short for attention and reflection tracker, involves a survey with prompts that encourage micro-attentions and micro-reflections from students that engage with elements of focus and distraction, enthusiasm and apathy, energy and fatigue.
The Preservers of the Daughters
of Zion Cemetery, Charlottesville, VA
Role: Used WordPress as a content management system to develop a public-facing website that presents genealogical research related to the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, a two-acre burial ground established in 1873 for African Americans in Charlottesville, VA
Project summary: The website includes an A-Z index of the names of people known to be buried within the cemetery, a search feature, new photo documentation of gravestones, genealogical information, and scans of archival and other digitized sources collected by descendants and Preservers of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery.
Monuments Working Group
Role: Founder of the Monuments Working Group, creator of the project website, compiler of a Flickr photo journal of over 1,500 images for teaching the history of race and place in Charlottesville, gatherer of a monumentsemorialsuva Zotero repository of related sources, and publisher of Twitter content related to the histories of Charlottesville and Richmond.
Project summary: A campaign for racial conciliation in Charlottesville and Richmond through forms of commemoration that either acknowledge a history of violence against African Americans in these cities or celebrate their accomplishments (also see Logan Heiman, "Monuments Working Group Combats White Supremacy with DH Tools," DH@UVA News, 9/4/2019).
Photo Credit: Martin Falbisoner, photo taken 9/7/2013, modified by Justin Greenlee.
Wikimedia Commons (image source).
Photo Credit: Keeping Up With the Kardashians season 9 wallpaper, Brian Bowen Smith/E! Entertainment (image source)
DASH-Amerikan
Role: Lead designer and creator of the "DASH-Amerikan" public user interface using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Co-author of the digital essay and related print publication “DASH-Amerikan: Keeping up with the Social Media Ecologies of the Kardashians."
Project summary: The DASH-Amerikan digital humanities project uses web scraping and topic modeling of the Kardashian family’s Twitter feeds, closed captioning from Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and the content of Us Weekly articles to explore the sometimes-competing constructions of femininity, ethnicity, and cultural power in the social media ecologies of the family. Also published as: Jordan Buysse, Alicia Caticha, Alyssa Collins, Justin Greenlee, Sarah McEleney, and Joseph Thompson, “DASH-Amerikan: Keeping up with the Social Media Ecologies of the Kardashians,” American Quarterly 70, no. 3, September 2018: 609-11.
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Silk Road:
The Path of Transmission of Avalokitesvara
Role: Creator of a wireframe for a website linked to a content management system for Dr. Dorothy Wong’s digital project Silk Road: The Path of Transmission of Avalokiteśvara, based on a controlled vocabulary and database created by staff from the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) at the University of Virginia.
Project summary: The mock-up for a public user interface relates to a pre-existing project that explores the path of transmission of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, on the Silk Road.
3D model and print of an Italo-Byzantine reliquary
Role: Provided historical expertise and photographs during the creation of a 3D model and five-part print of an Italo-Byzantine staurothēkē, a work of art that is a reliquary, or container, for relics of the True Cross from the crucifixion of Christ.
Project summary: The digital model and print of the reliquary were created by Victoria Valdes, the Assistant Director of the Visual Resources Collection at University of Virginia, based on photographs taken by Justin Greenlee in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, Italy and his primary and secondary research. The printed object and collaborative process were eventually discussed during a joint conference presentation delivered at the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) 2019 Conference.
Photo Credit: Victoria Valdes and Justin Greenlee
Select Public Writing
Posted to the UVA Arts & Sciences Learning Design & Technology blog March 2021
A blog post that reflects on my work as a digital pedagogy specialist at the University of Virginia from 2020 and 2021, during the spread of COVID-19 and when so many students, graduate instructors, faculty, and staff engaged in their first semesters of online learning. During the pandemic I also taught four art history classes with an online component at colleges and universities beyond UVA, and this essay summarizes instructor and student experiences of in-person, hybrid, and fully online course instruction modes. I discuss the struggles we faced within the learning environment, the solidarities we established, and the absolute necessity of flexibility and compassion in online teaching.
Posted to the UVA Arts & Sciences Learning Design & Technology blog January 2021
I co-wrote this blog post with Nenette Arroyo, an art and architectural historian and digital pedagogy specialist, ahead of the spring semester at the University of Virginia in 2021. We wrote as members of a learning design and technology team at UVA, and our essay presents a list of instructional techniques to review before a first class meeting as well as during a course. Sections within the essay remind teachers to evaluate the space they teach from, learn about student learning conditions, complete an equity assessment, plan for and do active learning, and return to learning outcomes again and again throughout the semester.
Posted to Medium
November 2019
A summary of community organizing related Virginia House of Delegates bill No. 2377, an amendment to the Code of Virginia that was introduced by former Delegate David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, with co-patrons to the 2019 General Assembly. The bill would have given localities the power to decide what happens to war memorials in their jurisdiction but failed in Subcommittee #1 of the larger Committee on Counties, Cities, and Towns in the House of Representatives by a vote of 2–6.
Posted online using Adobe Spark January 2019
A short, social media-style presentation on the history of Colonel Thomas Preston, his descendants in Albemarle County, and the people who were enslaved on his plantation near the University of Virginia. The piece was written during Dr. Councilman Wes Bellamy's attempt to rename Preston Avenue in Charlottesville and concerns the history of the plantation house known as Wyndhurst at 605 Preston Place as well as the board and batten house next door, the so-called “Norris-Preston Cottage,” built around 1840, that was inhabited by tenant farmers and/ or enslaved people.
Posted online using Adobe Spark
January 2019
A mini-essay related to Judge Michael Graffeo's ruling regarding the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Birmingham, Alabama. The judge's decision pertained to a case brought by the State of Alabama vs. the City of Birmingham and its current mayor, Randall Woodfin. At issue was a plywood screen that the city put around the base of a Confederate monument in Linn Park at the center of the city. I discuss Judge Graffeo decision, namely that the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act is "VOID, and of NO legal effect or authority," and ask what his reasoning might contribute to the ongoing debate over monuments in the state of Virginia.
Posted to Medium
September 2018
This essay contributes to the debate on Confederate monuments in public spaces and suggests that the re-contextualization and/or removal of the Monument to the Confederate Dead at the University of Virginia is necessary. I argue that the monument at UVA is closely related to the history of the monument known as Silent Sam at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which in September 2018 was located at McCorkle Place, a plaza that sits between two major streets on the UNC campus and is adjacent to the Old Well and the Unsung Founders Memorial. I pursue the connection between the statues as a call to take a closer look at the landscape of public art at UVA, and use my analysis of the works as a call to the community to decide what becomes of the Monument to the Confederate Dead.