Week 1: Approaching the Digital Humanities

As I explored the different sites, I found a common thread of digital archiving. It’s crucial for these forms of story-telling to exist, and to be materialized in something that people can interact with, learn from, and share with others.

I was particularly drawn to Torn Apart / Separados. Beyond serving as a series of informative visualizations, I feel as if this project embodies how digital humanities extends beyond the “academic” in the creation of digital tools used for survival. The scholars of Torn Apart recognize that “visualizations and data are mere parts of” a larger conceptualization of the “carceral geographies of immigrant detention in the United States”. I am interested to see the ways that this project can continue to expand, and possibly document the historical rise of incarceration threatening immigrant communities throughout time. How have borders (and how the US enforces them) changed? What moments in time demarcate an increased surveillance of immigrants, and how does that reflect violence enacted at sites of incarceration at the border?

In centering an understanding about what digital humanities is around the Colored Conventions Project and The Early Caribbean Digital Archive, I would redefine digital humanities to encompass digital spaces of multiplicity. These sites serve as archives of digital humanities scholarship, as well as community resources in pedagogy for their respective focuses. In serving as a digital space for different projects to exist within, and for opportunities of entry to the field through community events, no singular definition of digital humanities is put forth in a way that allows for people to explore existing possibilities and envision new ones.