PROJECT: Printed Pathways in US Latino Periodicals

Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage’s US Latino Digital Humanities program (USLDH) launched a new digital project, Printed Pathways in US Latino Periodicals. According to a recent news release, this “is a comprehensive authority list that contains robust bibliographic information about Latina/o authors and poets who published in US Latino periodicals. With over 4,800 records, “Printed Pathways” makes visible the complex network of Latina/o authors–who published where and who was mentioned in which newspapers. The records include data such as author name, nationality, gender, newspaper title and place of publication, genre, pseudonym and more.”

Led by Gabriela Baeza Ventura (co-founder of USLDH, Executive Editor of Arte Público Press, and Associate Professor of Hispanic Literature in the Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston), the project features a network visualization of Latinx writing “that enacts a powerful counter narrative to any belief that our community was inactive intellectually, that they did not write or publish.” Built on Graph Commons, the visualization, which was designed by Graduate Research Assistant, Isis Campos, “allows searches on the digital project and users can zoom in and out to explore the network. Purple dots represent authors, while red dots represent the periodicals.” Utilizing a Twitter bot, Filling the Gaps (@Fillingthe_gaps), Research Assistants extracted data about Latinx authors and the newspapers they publish in to build the visualization.

“Printed Pathways” was created by USLDH at the University of Houston with support from the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation, which “awarded UH a grant to establish a first-of-its-kind US Latino Digital Humanities Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. The program gives scholars expanded access to a vast collection of written materials produced by Latinas/os and archived by the Recovery program and Arte Público Press, the nation’s largest publisher of contemporary and recovered literature by Hispanic authors from the United States.”

Printed Pathways Research and Data Team

Carolina Villarroel, PhD: research, data, project ideation
Isis Campos: digital platform research, project management
Roselia Bañuelos: data entry
María Borjas: data entry
Tanya Campos: data entry
Melanyn Cabrera (SER Bank of America Intern): data entry
Emily Deleon (SER Bank of America Intern): data entry
Sonia Del Hierro: data entry
Sylvia Fernández: data entry
Victoria Moreno: data entry
Elías David Navarro: data entry
Jose-Luis Quintero: data entry
María Sánchez Carbajo: data entry

USLDH Team
Gabriela Baeza Ventura, PhD (Co-Founder)
Carolina Villarroel, PhD, CA (Co-Founder)
Lorena Gauthereau, PhD (Digital Programs Manager)
Linda García Merchant, PhD (USLDH Postdoctoral Fellow)