HASTAC 2015: The Art and Science of Digital Humanities

In recent years, scholars have begun pushing back against the ways that digital humanities (DH) has traditionally defined itself, making the case for theoretical approaches that emerge from domain knowledge. For example, #transformDH provides a lens grounded in critical ethnic studies, Indigenous Studies has raised important questions about tribal sovereignty and the "openness" of knowledge, and #dhpoco integrates postcolonial theory into the digital humanities. Along with possibilities provided by these frameworks for DH, we encounter resistance and limitations. On this curated panel of lightning talks, five scholars offer five-minute provocations on the affordances and limits of indigenous, postcolonial, anti-colonial, and decolonial approaches to DH. These short talks precede a conversation with the audience about how the fields in which the presenters work are influenced by DH and how they reshape DH in turn.

Participants

Building on Chela Sandoval’s Methodology of the Oppressed and Edouard Glissant's Poetics of Relation, micha cárdenas’s talk proposes that building relationships and embodied skills for avoiding violence are communications strategies that learn from digital networks, creating embodied communication networks which can be described as post-digital and decolonial.

Dhanashree Thorat will discuss the September 11 Digital Archive to draw connections between colonial and digital archives, and underline how digital archives become complicit in national(ist) projects.

Siobhan Senier will discuss Writing of Indigenous New England, a collaborative online literary anthology. Existing digital archives have tended, unwittingly, to privilege elite non-Native institutions, while new content management systems designed for greater community access and control have had relatively slow uptake. Senier will discuss the results of a recent NEH-funded workshop convened to discuss the distribution of power and resources in indigenous digital projects.

Annemarie Pérez will discuss experience using blogging technology in the Chicana/o studies classroom, in order to link to and expand Latina/o connections on the web, digitally echoing the experience of Chicano Movement print culture.

Roopika Risam will serve as presider and moderator for the roundtable discussion following the lightening talks.