Digital Humanities in (and out) of the Classroom

I was privileged to participated in a panel at the 128th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Washington, DC from January 2nd-5th.  Digital Humanities is a loaded term in academia and I've learned not to try to define it.  However, I can speak with some authority about my own actions. My presentation at the conference explored the creation and continued evolution of Project Mosaic, a collaborative digital project supported by the Africa and African-American Studies program at Rollins.


Project Mosaic serves many purposes and by its very nature it is connected to ongoing discussions about digital technology in education.  Project Mosaic asked participating faculty to create module in their courses that explore the African Diaspora.  The explanation is simple, but the process is layered.  As a digital project, Mosaic allows faculty to "opt in" to a dialogue about the black experience in a way that explore subjects local and global.  Every cycle we shift the topic and allow a new group of faculty to create and innovate. The response from the audience at the AHA conference makes me believe that our efforts are having an effect.   This positive feedback comes as we are about to embark on new project cycle.   Project Mosaic: Legacies will provide a diverse group of scholar-teachers the chance to explore their disciplines while engaging their students with issues that intersect with the African Diaspora. 

The Confess Podcast Episode 6

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Every Tongue Got To Confess

Black & ___________ : Seeking Meaning Around Words and Deeds

The Michael Dunn verdict adds to our collective disappointment around race and justice in the United States. I share the frustrations that Mr. Dunn's conviction does not seem to address the crime committed. Students approached me about the trial and I'm sure some will ask about the verdict. I will be honest with them. I will explain that I agree with comments that racism mattered in this case. I will discuss how a systematic prejudice linked to African Americans (especially males) in the public sphere allows violence against their persons.  I will point out that the mechanisms that created and encouraged this way of thinking are greatly diminished, but the legacy persists. However, rather than rest on statements alone, I decided to illustrate my point using Google Ngram, a phrase-usage graphing tool integrated into Google Books. Below is a series of usage charts between words used as racial descriptors for African Americans such as negro, blacks, and colored and several American English words in books printed between 1800 and 2000. I omitted African American from the comparison because it came into use late in the 20th century.

Google Ngram functions by searching millions of scanned texts. This tool shows the association between words over time.  Thus, the relationship between black and gun versus blacks and gun suggests a pattern of collective thinking shaping their use in printed material. The implication provides some window into comments from social critics.  Despite civil rights activism, racialized thinking links people of African descent to incivility. Based on that association, those that are inclined to do so can react violently against black people. Michael Dunn's claim of self-defense should give us pause, not because he claimed it, but because the jury could accept it.  However, their actions merely affirmed what the collective narrative suggests, that black equates to dangerous.   Using that logic a rational white person faced with a black person (especially a group of black people) acting outside the strict bound of civility (whatever that may be) should fear bodily harm.  I hesitate to suggest a reversal of those circumstances would provide a different legal outcome (I leave it to your imagination). Instead, my goal, the best goal for anyone, is to consider the intersection of culture and history.  The words we use to tell our collective story point to an anti-black sentiment in the public sphere.  If we can raise awareness of the historical legacies that are influencing our contemporary,  perhaps we can overcome its effects.

Project Mosaic | Rollins College | One, One Thousand

Project Mosaic | Rollins College | One, One Thousand

My colleague Dawn Roe has been a powerful and important contributor to a digital project I conceived called Project Mosaic.  Project Mosaic grew from a number of project involving online tools that I began experiment with in 2007.  Looking for a way to get students engaged with history and mindful of the complex stories in the surrounding community, my initial efforts were focus on traditional narrative linked to community history.  Those lessons were crucial to my thought process when I took over the Africa and African-American Studies program in 2008. I recognized the African-American experience offered an important point of intersection in Central Florida. By exploring African-Americans, I could continue to engage with the community, but I could also have the minor program engage with the college.  Project Mosaic emerged digital reclamation project of a sort. The African-American oriented theme acts as a lens to bring together course across the campus. By highlighting the African-American heritage all around us, the participating course have done much to raise awareness of the black experience.