Bard Graduate Center is a research institute for advanced, interdisciplinary study of diverse material worlds. We support the innovative scholarship of our faculty and students as well as resident fellows, guest curators and artists, and visiting speakers.

Jesse Merandy is the Director of the Digital Media Lab at Bard Graduate Center. Prior to this he was a web developer and web designer at The CUNY Graduate Center, Rutgers University, and for the Mickle Street Review, a peer-reviewed Walt Whitman and American studies journal. He has taught courses and workshops at Bard Graduate Center, The CUNY Graduate Center, John Jay College, and Rutgers University. He is currently a PhD candidate at The CUNY Graduate Center.

In this talk, Merandy discussed his development of a location-based mobile game which takes users to the streets of Brooklyn Heights to learn about the life and times of the poet Walt Whitman. He focused on the potential of mobile devices to create hybrid, situated learning experiences, where we are connected simultaneously to physical places and the growing layer of digital information attached to them. He detailed how this digital humanities project creates an immersive learning experience that explores our connections to the past, while making visible our own dynamic relationship to place and its influence on our modern composing practices. He also uncovered the challenges and difficulties of developing this project and shared some lessons learned throughout the process.