An Invitation Towards Social Justice in the Digital Humanities

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July 30, 2015

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Welcome to a conversation on designing best practices for digital humanities praxis committed to social justice. We are glad that you are here.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 The living document on this site, “Creative and Critical Precepts for Digital Humanities Projects,” emerged from the De/Post/Colonial Digital Humanities course at HILT 2015. The course originated when Jennifer Guiliano and Trevor Muñoz invited Roopika Risam to teach a course on postcolonial approaches to the digital humanities for HILT. Roopika requested micha cárdenas as her co-instructor, and the two designed a course that blended theory and praxis, following Frantz Fanon’s mandate, “We must discuss, we must invent” in The Wretched of the Earth (1963).

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 The syllabus for the course was informed by postcolonial and decolonial theory, postcolonial science and technology studies, new media studies, and digital humanities. Class meetings emphasized the importance of both theorizing and making, and each student was tasked with designing a project inspired by the course – whether by trying out a new tool, revisiting an existing project through the lens of decolonization, or designing a new project.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 1 Through our discussions, however, we realized that we were generating ideas that may be of interest and value to the digital humanities community. While there are a number of excellent documents on getting started with digital humanities projects, we identified a gap in guides for designing digital humanities projects with demonstrated commitments to social justice. Through an iterative process beginning with a chalk talk exercise, we generated the document on this site.

Participants at HILT 2015 brainstorm practices for social justice and DH

The list of ideas on the whiteboard grows

The whiteboard is covered in ideas

Post-it notes indicate thematic groupings

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 As we recognized that our conversations were limited to 11 participants with the privilege of attending HILT, we decided to share the fruits of our course publicly. Moreover, we decided not to provide a prescriptive approach to digital humanities but to offer an invitation to digital humanists of all stripes to join a conversation about access, material conditions, method, and ontologies and epistemologies that shape digital humanities. The goal here is to make visible the critical and theoretical processes that subtend digital humanities practices.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Please join the conversation by commenting on the document. You are invited, though certainly not required, to register on the site. Share your thoughts, tools, blog posts, reflections, articles, and ideas. Together, over time, we can build a compendium for social justice in the digital humanities – this is the long game of the digital humanities.

¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 We welcome all comments, in any language. As we are committed to providing a platform that is safe from harassment, please contact the site administrator, Roopika Risam at rrisam AT salemstate DOT edu with concerns.

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Warm regards,

¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 Roopika Risam (Salem State University), micha cárdenas (University of Washington | Bothell), Jeremy Boggs (Scholars’ Lab, University of Virginia Libraries), Ashley Byock (Edgewood College), Vinamarata Kaur (University of Cincinnati), Joan Lubin (University of Pennsylvania), Emily Sessions (Yale University), Danica Savonick (CUNY Graduate Center), and Sveta Stoytcheva (Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa)