September 2018 – DH @ W&L

Rewriting the Code: Women and Technology–Join Our Creative Technology Cohort!

Apply to the Creative Technology Cohort, and attend Fall Workshops!

Join us this year as we explore opportunities at the intersection of technology and the humanities. Our Fall Workshops will introduce the Creative Technology Cohort to the basics of web development and programming in a relaxed and supportive environment. The Winter Forum will feature Chelsea Barabas as the Keynote Speaker and breakout sessions following her talk.

Workshop #1: How the Web Works
Saturday, October 6th at 10:30am-3:30pm
IQ Center

Participants will learn the basics of web design, HTML, and CSS. They will also get their own web domain so they can start working on a personal or professional website. This workshop will be run by Katherine Donnally. Lunch is included. Apply to the Cohort to attend.

Workshop #2: Coding 101
Saturday, October 20th at 10:30am-3:30pm
IQ Center

This workshop will serve as an introduction to computing and Python. No experience is necessary for either workshop. Coding 101 will be run by Zoe LeBlanc out of UVA Scholar’s Lab. Lunch is included. Apply to the Cohort to attend.

Keynote Speaker: Chelsea Barabas
Friday, March 1st at 5-6pm

Chelsea Barabas studies the role of data and algorithms in the US criminal justice system and writes and speaks on gender and diversity in technology. She works with communities around the world to examine how technology can serve the public good.

Check out the Women and Technology website to learn more! If you have questions, e-mail Sydney Bufkin at bufkins@wlu.edu and Kellie Harra at kharra@wlu.edu.

DH Speaker Series: Roopika Risam

We are beyond excited to welcome Dr. Roopika Risam to campus next week! Join us for her talk on September 20th, 2018 at 5pm in Northen Auditorium. Refreshments will be served.

Historicizing the College Color Line: Digital Humanities, Activism, and the Campus Climate

As our students renew demands for equity and justice on their campuses, how can digital humanities be engaged to address the college color line? Risam begins this talk by exploring the complicated relationship between digital humanities, public scholarship, and activism through her work on the Torn Apart/Separados team. She then considers how digital humanities can be used to assist activist-minded students in addressing pressing issues of race on our college campuses, based on her work at Salem State University. While Risam urges caution against quick conflation of digital humanities and activism, she argues that its methods can be effective tools for shedding light on histories of campus activism and supporting today’s student activists.

Roopika Risam is Assistant Professor of English, Faculty Fellow for Digital Library Initiatives, and Coordinator of the Digital Studies Graduate Certificate Program, and Coordinator of the Secondary English Education BA/M.Ed. Program at Salem State University. Risam is the author of New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Worlds in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (Northwestern UP) and co-editor of The Digital Black Atlantic for the Debates in the Digital Humanities series (University of Minnesota Press). She is the director of the NEH and IMLS-funded Regional Comprehensive Digital Humanities Network and co-founder of Reanimate (http://reanimatepublishing.org), an intersectional feminist publishing collective. Her scholarship has appeared in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Debates in the Digital Humanities, Popular Communications, South Asian Review, and College and Undergraduate Libraries, among others. Risam is also a recent recipient of the Massachusetts Library Association’s Civil Liberties Champion Award for her work promoting equity and justice in the digital cultural record. More information and her CV is available at http://roopikarisam.com.