Description
Book SynopsisExploring the intersections of digital humanities and African diaspora studies
How can scholars use digital tools to better understand the African diaspora across time, space, and disciplines? And how can African diaspora studies inform the practices of digital humanities? These questions are at the heart of this timely collection of essays about the relationship between digital humanities and Black Atlantic studies, offering critical insights into race, migration, media, and scholarly knowledge production.
The Digital Black Atlantic spans the African diaspora’s range—from Africa to North America, Europe, and the Caribbean—while its essayists span academic fields—from history and literary studies to musicology, game studies, and library and information studies. This transnational and interdisciplinary breadth is complemented by essays that focus on specific sites and digital humanities projects throughout the Black Atlantic. Covering key debates, The Digital Black Atlantic asks theoretical and practical questions about the ways that researchers and teachers of the African diaspora negotiate digital methods to explore a broad range of cultural forms including social media, open access libraries, digital music production, and video games. The volume further highlights contributions of African diaspora studies to digital humanities, such as politics and representation, power and authorship, the ephemerality of memory, and the vestiges of colonialist ideologies.
Grounded in contemporary theory and praxis, The Digital Black Atlantic puts the digital humanities into conversation with African diaspora studies in crucial ways that advance both.
Contributors: Alexandrina Agloro, Arizona State U; Abdul Alkalimat; Suzan Alteri, U of Florida; Paul Barrett, U of Guelph; Sayan Bhattacharyya, Singapore U of Technology and Design; Agata Błoch, Institute of History of Polish Academy of Sciences; Michał Bojanowski, Kozminski U; Sonya Donaldson, New Jersey City U; Anne Donlon; Laurent Dubois, Duke U; Amy E. Earhart, Texas A&M U; Schuyler Esprit, U of the West Indies; Demival Vasques Filho, U of Auckland, New Zealand; David Kirkland Garner; Alex Gil, Columbia U; Kaiama L. Glover, Barnard College, Columbia U; D. Fox Harrell, MIT; Hélène Huet, U of Florida; Mary Caton Lingold, Virginia Commonwealth U; Angel David Nieves, San Diego State U; Danielle Olson, MIT; Tunde Opeibi (Ope-Davies), U of Lagos, Nigeria; Jamila Moore Pewu, California State U, Fullerton; Anne Rice, Lehman College, CUNY; Sercan Şengün, Northeastern U; Janneken Smucker, West Chester U; Laurie N.Taylor, U of Florida; Toniesha L. Taylor, Texas Southern U.
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction: The Digital Black Atlantic
Kelly Baker Josephs and Roopika Risam
Part I. Memory
1. The Sankofa Principle: From the Drum to the Digital
Abdul Alkalimat
2. The Ephemeral Archive: Unstable Terrain in Times and Sites of Discord
Sonya Donaldson
3. An Editorial Turn: Reviving Print and Digital Editing of Black-Authored Literary Texts
Amy E. Earhart
4. Access and Empowerment: Rediscovering Moments in the Lives of African American Migrant Women
Janneken Smucker
5. Digital Queer Witnessing: Testimony, Contested Virtual Heritage, and the Apartheid Archive in Soweto, Johannesburg
Angel David Nieves
Part II. Crossings
6. Digital Ubuntu: Sharing Township Music with the World
Alexandrina Agloro
7. Text Analysis for Thought in the Black Atlantic
Sayan Bhattacharyya
8. Austin Clarke’s Digital Crossings
Paul Barrett
9. Radical Collaboration to Improve Library Collections
Hélène Huet, Suzan Alteri, and Laurie N. Taylor
10. Digital Reconnaissance: Re(Locating) Dark Spots on a Map
Jamila Moore Pewu
Part III. Relations
11. Heterotopias of Resistance: Reframing Caribbean Narratives in Digital Spaces
Schuyler Esprit
12. Signifying Shade as We #RaceTogether Drinking Our #NewStarbucksDrink “White Privilege Americana Extra Whip”
Toniesha L. Taylor
13. Slaves, Freedmen, Mulattos, Pardos, and Indigenous Peoples: The Early Modern Social Networks of the Population of Color in the Atlantic Portuguese Empire
Agata Błoch, Demival Vasques Filho, and Michał Bojanowski
14. Digitizing the Humanities in an Emerging Space: An Exploratory Study of Digital Humanities Initiatives in Nigeria
Tunde Opeibi
15. Black Atlantic Networks in the Archives and the Limits of Finding Aids as Data
Anne Donlon
Part IV. Becomings
16. Africa and the Avatar Dream: Mapping the Impacts of Videogame Representations of Africa
D. Fox Harrell, Sercan Şengün, and Danielle Olson
17. Musical Passage: Sound, Text, and the Promise of the Digital Black Atlantic
Laurent Dubois, David Kirkland Garner, and Mary Caton Lingold
18. What Price Freedom? The Implications and Challenges of OER for Africana Studies
Anne Rice
19. On the Interpretation of Digital Caribbean Dreams
Kaiama L. Glover and Alex Gil
Acknowledgments
Contributors
