Charis Books & More will host a hybrid panel discussion, in person in Decatur, Georgia, and online via Crowdcast, of Lauren Klein’s Data by Design: Visualization and Power from Abolition to the Dawn of Data Science (MIT Press) on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, at 7:30pm ET, the same day the book is published. The book traces how data visualization has been used both to consolidate knowledge and power and to expose oppression and bring about change. Its examples include a diagram of captives in the hold of a slave ship made by British antislavery activists, and a map a Ñudzahui (Mixtec) painter created to document his people’s claims to their land. The book also includes new visualizations by Klein and her research team, which can be explored on an accompanying interactive website.
Klein, Professor of Data & Decision Sciences and English at Emory University and director of its Digital Humanities Lab, will be joined by contributors Margy Adams, Shiyao Li, Tanvi Sharma, and Jay Varner of the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. Catherine D’Ignazio, Klein’s co-author on Data Feminism and director of MIT’s Data + Feminism Lab, will moderate. The event is free, with registration required for virtual attendance.
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This post was produced through a cooperation between Melissa Horak-Hern, Mariam Ismail, Trip Kirkpatrick, and Mimosa Shah (Editors-at-Large), Molly McGuire and Rachel Starry (Editors for the week), Claudia Berger, Ruth Carpenter, Caitlin Christian-Lamb, Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Pamella Lach, Hillary Richardson, and Christine Salek (dh+lib Review Editors), and Tom Lee (Technical Editor).