RECOMMENDED: Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black

African American History, Culture and Digital Humanities Initiative (AADHum) at the University of Maryland recently held its first national conference, Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black. The conference explored:

What happens to digital humanities inquiry when we begin with Black culture, Black thought, and Black persons at the center of our endeavors? How does this shift challenge and expand both the humanities and the digital? What happens to Black and African American humanities research when we lead with the digital?

Interdisciplinary inquiry into both the online practices of black users and humanities research focused on black history and culture using digital tools has expanded in the past decade. Too often, this work happens on the margins of established disciplines, boundaries, and paradigms. Rather than arriving at black digital research as an afterthought or a tactic to achieve “diversity”, privileging black theory and black culture in our scholarship can provide alternate paradigms through which to understand the digital and the humanistic.

The keynote included Dr. André Brock (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins University), which was live-streamed and recorded. From reconstructing digital humanities pedagogy, to decolonizing archives, presenters and participants engaged in a variety of practical and theoretical topics. View the conference abstracts to read more, and see recordings of selected sessions on AADHum’s YouTube channel.