"What can the Black digital humanities be?"

Dr. Jim Casey, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, History, and English, Associate Director at the Center for Black Digital Research 

Denise Burgher, Ph.D. Candidate in English, University of Delaware, Senior Research Associate at the Center for Black Digital Research

Over the past few decades, an increasing number of scholars and practitioners have extended the work of Black Studies into deep engagements with digital culture and technologies. The scope of this growing community almost defies description, ranging from efforts to map the histories of slavery and Black freedom struggles to critiques of algorithmic bias and oppression.

This talk will go behind the scenes on two long-running Black digital projects called the Colored Conventions Project and Douglass Day to reflect on the principles and trends defining an area of scholarship that we might name as Black digital humanities.

Both of these projects have spent many years using digital technologies to bring new life to scattered and fragmented histories of nineteenth-century Black political activism and community organizing. These projects, however, depend on reflexive critiques of those very same technologies, particularly in the silences created by data on early Black women activists.

These projects, now housed at the newly formed Center for Black Digital Research (#DigBlk), offer space for a dialogue about what might happen as Black Studies remixes fields such as information, library, and computer sciences.

If attending virtually, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uK8cJOugQQGCAHrfze3xpw