Education
- 2013 Ph.D. in History, University of Virginia
- 2007 MA in History, University of Virginia
- 2005 MS in Mathematics, University of Virginia
- 2003 BS in Mathematics and History, College of William & Mary
- Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude with High Honors
Employment Experience
- George Mason University, 2018-present
- Director of Public Projects, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
- Assistant Professor of History
- Carnegie Mellon University, 2014-2018
- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2013-2014
Books
Jessica Marie Otis, By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion, and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2024)
Digital Projects
Mathematical Humanists, with Ashley Sanders
Gaming the Great Plague of London, with Stephanie Grimm and Nathan Sleeter
DataScribe, with Lincoln Mullen
World History Commons, with Adam Clulow, Kelly Schrum, Nathan Sleeter, and Merry Weisner-Hanks
Bridges of Pittsburgh, with Matthew Lincoln, Emma Slayton, and Scott Weingart
Digits, with Matt Burton, Matt Lavin, and Scott Weingart
Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, with John Ladd, Daniel Shore, Christopher Warren, and Scott Weingart
Identifying Early Modern Printed Books, with Meaghan Brown and Paige Morgan
Articles and Book Chapters
Jessica Marie Otis, “Republic of Tweets,” in The Changing Shape of Digital Early Modern Studies, ed. by Randa El Khatib and Caroline Winter (Chicago: Iter and the University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2024).
Jessica Marie Otis, “Constructing and Contesting the Past: Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia,” in Digital Pedagogy in Early Modern Studies, New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies Series, ed. by Andrea Silva and Scott Schofield, New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 10, ed. by William R. Bowen and Raymond G. Siemens (Chicago: Iter and the University of Chicago Press, March 2024): 70-104.
Jessica M. Otis, James Safley, Megan Brett, and Lincoln Mullen, “DataScribe: An Omeka S module for structured data transcription,” Journal of Open Source Software 9 (93), 5661 (January 2024), https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.05661
Megan Brett, Jessica M. Otis, and Mills Kelly, “Reframing the Conversation: Digital Humanists, Disabilities, and Accessibility” in Debates in the Digital Humanities 2023, ed. by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, July 2023).
Jessica Marie Otis, “‘Follow the Money?’ Funding and Digital Sustainability,” in Project Resiliency in the Digital Humanities Special Issue, ed. by Martin Holmes, J. Matthew Huculak, and Janelle Jenstad, Digital Humanities Quarterly 17, no. 1 (2023), http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/17/1/000666/000666.html .
Jessica Marie Otis, “What’s In a Name? Six Degrees of Francis Bacon and Named-Entity Recognition,” in Renaissance Studies and New Technologies III, ed. by Matthew Evan Davis and Colin Wilder, New Technologies in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 9, ed. by William R. Bowen and Raymond G. Siemens (Chicago: Iter and the University of Chicago Press, 2022).
Jessica Marie Otis, “A Silver Lining: Teaching through the Covid-19 Pandemic,” in The Sixteenth Century Journal 53, no. 4 (2022): 1055-1058.
Matt Burton, Matthew J. Lavin, Jessica Otis, and Scott B. Weingart, “Digits: Two Reports on New Units of Scholarly Publication,” Journal of Electronic Publishing 22, no. 1 (April 2020), doi: 10.3998/3336451.0022.105.
Meaghan Brown, Jessica Otis, and Paige Morgan, “Identifying Early Modern Books: Citation Practices in Bibliographic and Early Modern Studies,” Archive Journal (November 2017).
Hannah Rasmussen, Brian Croxall, and Jessica Otis, “Exploring How and Why Digital Humanities is Taught in Libraries,” in A Splendid Torch: Learning and Teaching in Today’s Academic Libraries, edited by John Maclachlan, Christa Williford, and Jodi Reeves Eyre (CLIR, September 2017).
John Ladd, Jessica Otis, Christopher N. Warren, and Scott Weingart, “Exploring and Analyzing Network Data with Python,” Programming Historian (September 2017).
Jessica Otis, “‘Set Them To the Cyphering Schoole’: Reading, Writing and Arithmetical Education, circa 1540-1700,” Journal of British Studies 56, no. 3 (July 2017), doi: 10.1017/jbr.2017.59
Jessica Marie Otis, “‘Sportes and Pastimes, done by Number’: Mathematical Games in Early Modern England,” in Playthings in Early Modernity: Party Games, Word Games, Mind Games, ed. by Allison Levy (Medieval Institute Publications: 2017).
Alison Langmead, Jessica M. Otis*, Christopher N. Warren, Scott B. Weingart, and Lisa D. Zilinski, “Towards Interoperable Network Ontologies for the Digital Humanities,” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 10, no. 1 (2016): 22-35, doi: 10.3366/ijhac.2016.0157 [*corresponding author].
Christopher N. Warren, Daniel Shore, Jessica Otis, Lawrence Wang, Mike Finegold, and Cosma Shalizi, “Six Degrees of Francis Bacon: A Statistical Method for Reconstructing Large Historical Social Networks,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 10, no. 3 (2016), http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/10/3/000244/000244.html.
Select Other Publications
- “History need not repeat itself when we write the journal of our plague year,”
The Guardian, July 19, 2020.
- “Six Degrees of Francis Bacon and Network Analysis in Early Modern Studies,” with John R. Ladd, The Shakespeare Newsletter 67.2 No 300 (Spring/Summer 2018).
- “Gender Inclusivity in Six Degrees,” with Scott Weingart, Six Degrees of Francis Bacon blog, January 2016.
- “The Oxinden Cipher,” Folgerpedia.
Select Grants and Fellowships
- NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities Grant, 2023-26, coPI Ashley Sanders
- Project: Mathematical Humanists
- NSF Science & Technologies Studies Grant, 2021-24
- Project: Death by Numbers
- ACLS Digital Extension Grant, coPI Kelly Schrum, Nathan Sleeter, 2020-22
- Project: World History Commons
- NEH-ODH Digital Implementation Grant, coPI Lincoln Mullen, 2019-22
- Project: DataScribe
- NEH-ODH Digital Implementation Grant, coPI Kelly Schrum, 2018-21
- Project: World History Commons
- Berkman Faculty Development Grant, coPI Scott Weingart, 2018-20
- Project: Bridges of Pittsburgh
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, coPIs Matt Burton, Matt Lavin, and Scott Weingart, 2017-19
- Project: Digits: a Platform to Facilitate the Production of Digital Scholarship
- NEH-ODH Digital Implementation Grant, coPIs Christopher Warren, Daniel Shore, 2016-18
- Project: Six Degrees of Francis Bacon
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Microgrant, coPIs Meaghan Brown, Paige Morgan, 2015-16
- Project: A Text By Any Other Citation: Identifying Early Modern Printed Books
Professional Affiliations
- American Historical Association
- North American Conference of British Studies
- History of Science Society
- Renaissance Society of America
- Sixteenth Century Society
- Association for Computers and the Humanities