The Digital Black Atlantic

The Digital Black Atlantic

Edited by Roopika Risam and Kelly Baker Josephs

Exploring the intersections of digital humanities and African diaspora studies

272 Pages, 7 x 10 in

BUY
BUY
BUY

Details

The Digital Black Atlantic

Series: Debates in the Digital Humanities

Edited by Roopika Risam and Kelly Baker Josephs

ISBN: 9781517910808

Publication date: March 16th, 2021

272 Pages

11 b&w illustrations

10 x 7

Exploring 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.

Roopika Risam is associate professor of secondary and higher education and English at Salem State University. She is author of New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy.

Kelly Baker Josephs is professor of English and digital humanities at York College/CUNY and the CUNY Graduate Center. 

Contents

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