This roundtable addresses how applications and interfaces encode specific cultural assumptions about race and preclude certain groups of people from participating in the digital humanities. Participants present specific digital humanities projects that illustrate the impact of race on access to the programming, cultural, and funding structures in the digital humanities.
Photo: "Race and Ethnicity 2010: Atlanta" by Eric Fisher illustrates segregation in Atlanta. Red dots signify white population, blue signifies black population, green signifies asian population, orange signifies hispanic population, yellow signifies other. One dot signifies 25 people. Data is taken from the 2010 census.
Instructor in the English and Writing Department, Morehead State University
Lee Bessette’s academic interests are varied: postcolonial speculative fiction, contemporary Haitian literature, translation studies, and life writing. She primarily teaches writing, and thus is also interested in pedagogy, non-traditional learners, and the integration of technology and social media in the classroom.
Ph.D. Candidate in Information Studies Department, UCLA
David Kim has worked on various digital humanities projects that combine his past professional experience as archivist and digital collections manager with his commitment to critical cultural studies approaches to digital representations of knowledge and data-driven analysis.
Associate Professor of Gender and Critical Studies, USC School of Cinematic Arts
Tara McPherson is author of Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender and Nostalgia in the Imagined South (Duke UP: 2003), co-editor of Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (Duke UP: 2003), and editor of Digital Youth, Innovation and the Unexpected (MIT Press, 2008).
PhD Candidate in Rhetoric and Writing, Michigan State University
Jennifer Sano-Franchini’s research interests are in rhetorical theory, time, and the intersection of cultural and digital rhetorics.
Assistant Professor of English, Washington State University
Roger Whitson is coauthor of William Blake and the Digital Humanities: Collaboration, Participation, and Social Media (Routlege, 2012). His work at the Digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC) at Emory University in 2011-2012 included a project on Lynchings in Georgia 1875-1930.