DH Long View Seminar Series: Amy Earhart (Texas A&M University) on "Complicating the whiteness of Digital Humanities: The Deep History of Black DH"
While projects focused on Black culture, texts and artifacts are not as rare as they once were there remains a lack of understanding of the rich and deep histories of Black DH and its impact on the field. Sharon Leon’s foundation chapter, “Complicating a ‘Great Man’ Narrative of Digital History in the United States,” serves as a model of the necessary documentation that scholars must compile of alternative histories of digital humanities. Accordingly, this talk will document a deep dig into the ecology of digital humanities, centering Black DH work in the field. Among the scholars’ work discussed will be Abduhl Alkalimat, creator of e-black studies, Bryan Carter, Virtual Harlem, Marilyn Miller Thomas-Houston, iBlack Studies and co-editor of the multi-media journal Fire!!, Ronald Bailey, who developed www.dignubia.org and www.nubianet.org and Afro Publishing without Walls, and Maryemma Graham, History of Black writing. An ongoing project, I am conducting interviews with such foundational Black dh scholars to better understand their contributions to the field.
This is the seventh event in the Digital Humanities Long View, a joint seminar series co-hosted by the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) at Stanford and UCL's Centre for Digital Humanities that explores the history of DH and how this past informs the future of digital humanist methods.