Blog – African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities

Taking Care: The Question of AR, VR, and Blackness

Jessica Lu — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 16:00:11 +0000

I can’t breathe. At once: the wheezing out of a severely singular experience. Yet and also: a hailing of the social, political, economic, and environmental phenomena surrounding Eric Garner’s loss of breath. My dissertation, On Black Breath: A Theory and Praxis, undertakes a partial genealogy of breath as it has been racialized within the

The post Taking Care: The Question of AR, VR, and Blackness appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.

From Analyzing to Actualizing Apartheid: A Journey in Realization

Jessica Lu — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 16:00:09 +0000

As an educator, scholar, journalist and filmmaker, my work has sat at the intersection of black digital humanities and creative scholarship for the last decade. A TV nerd, I spent the first half of my career examining the representation of black women in television. I was consumed by depictions of black women on the

The post From Analyzing to Actualizing Apartheid: A Journey in Realization appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.

Standing Together Across Time and Space: Black Social Networks in Late Nineteenth Century Tennessee

Jessica Lu — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 16:00:28 +0000

On October 25, 1865, Henrietta Joyce and Elisha Helms stood before a clerk of the court of Davidson County, Tennessee, to confirm Henrietta’s marriage to her late husband, John Joyce. They appeared before the court in Henrietta’s effort to secure a Civil War widow’s pension based on her husband’s military service in the United

The post Standing Together Across Time and Space: Black Social Networks in Late Nineteenth Century Tennessee appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.

“Is this thing on?”

Jessica Lu — Mon, 27 May 2019 16:00:32 +0000

Like many graduate students, I have a very difficult time explaining my project. In my mind it feels enormous and abstract; on paper it feels niche and surely uninteresting to anyone else. Presentations often leave me floating somewhere in the middle, my eyes searching over the audience for any hint of recognition: “This means

The post “Is this thing on?” appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.

Transformational Intersections

Jessica Lu — Tue, 14 May 2019 16:36:00 +0000

As an extension of AADHum’s 2017-2018 Conversation Series, “Transformational Intersections: Digital and Public Humanities” explores how the digital humanities create, perceive, and interact with cultural heritage. Universities, museums, and other cultural institutions’ exploration of technology and new media are changing the ways communities engage with history. How can we create similar impacts for historically,

The post Transformational Intersections appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.

Join the AADHum Team as Our New Assistant Director

Trevor Muñoz — Fri, 10 May 2019 13:29:37 +0000

Assistant Director, African American History, Culture, and Digital Humanities (AADHum) Initiative The African American History, Culture, and Digital Humanities (AADHum) Initiative at the University of Maryland is seeking a new colleague who shares our commitment to creating a space for intersectional digital humanities scholarship attuned to Black studies in order to help us build on

The post Join the AADHum Team as Our New Assistant Director appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.

Making the Digital Physical: AADHum’s “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black” Conference

Jessica Lu — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 16:03:33 +0000

The following post has been reprinted with permission from the author, Ravynn K. Stringfield, from Black Girl Does Grad School. To view in its original form, please click here. Following the opening session of University of Maryland’s African American History, Culture and Digital Humanities’ (AADHum) “Intentionally Digital,

The post Making the Digital Physical: AADHum’s “Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black” Conference appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.

UMD Remembers Ira Berlin, “Influential Historian of Slavery”

Jessica Lu — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 23:24:50 +0000

Reposted with permission from the College of Arts and Humanities. Ira Berlin, the influential historian, AADHum advisory board member, and distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland (UMD) known for his scholarship on the history of slavery in early America and the United States, passed away at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C.

The post UMD Remembers Ira Berlin, “Influential Historian of Slavery” appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.

Sharing “The Lost Boys”: Making a Marriage Between a Book and a Website

Jessica Lu — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 13:30:27 +0000

I recently built a new professional website on squarespace. The website is a place for me to share details about upcoming talks that I’m giving, and a place for visitors to find information about my research and teaching than I cannot easily display on my standard history department faculty profile page. The squarespace site

The post Sharing “The Lost Boys”: Making a Marriage Between a Book and a Website appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.

Toward A Deeper Understanding of Digital Humanities Research in Black Studies

Catherine Knight Steele — Thu, 10 May 2018 18:33:48 +0000

Fresh off the completion of a bachelor’s degree in African American Studies, I was introduced to the intersection of Black Studies and the digital humanities through AADHum. Hearing about the initiative at the start of my doctoral coursework triggered immense curiosity. Digital humanities has its own wow factor; there are shiny new applications and ultra-modern

The post Toward A Deeper Understanding of Digital Humanities Research in Black Studies appeared first on African American History, Culture & Digital Humanities.