As a community the Global Digital Humanities Symposium is committed to supporting work at the intersections of critical DH; race and ethnicity; feminism, intersectionality, and gender; access; and anticolonial and postcolonial frameworks. We approach the humanities with an interdisciplinary lens, and we welcome scholarship and projects that work across borders.
Your proposal will be initially reviewed by members of the Global Digital Humanities Community. Their feedback will be taken into consideration when the conference organizers make their final decisions. If your proposal is selected, this abstract will be published online on the conference website.
Reviewers will evaluate proposals based on the following criteria:
- General Evaluation
- The presentation’s subject matter would be of interest to a wide variety of symposium attendees
- The theoretical framework and/or method used will be of interest to those attending a digital humanities symposium
- The abstract describes an original, significant contribution
- The abstract demonstrates an ability to communicate clearly to an interdisciplinary audience (Note: this criterion refers to the ability to reach audiences of many disciplines and not to language-specific or English-language knowledge)
- Alignment with the interests of the symposium, generalized from the CFP
- The focus is global, transnational, Indigenous, non U.S.-centric, on border cultures and migrations, etc.
- This proposal would enhance the symposium’s goals of centering cultures, languages, or regions that are not traditionally and historically centered in other digital humanities conferences, particularly those in North America and Europe
- The presentation aligns with the CFP’s interests in discussions of identity, equity, or larger systems of power, such as of Indigeneity, migration, documentation status, postcoloniality, gender, sexuality, disability, class, and/or labor.
- The presentation aligns with the symposium’s interest in how DH can understand, or intervene in, complex problems in the larger world.
- The presentation reflects on the status of the field of DH in meaningful ways.
- When applicable, returning presentations critically examine the life cycle of how DH projects develop, pivot, and sunset, as well as its implications for Global Digital Humanities as a field.
We encourage you to take a look at examples of the wide range of previously accepted abstracts (listed under “Past Symposia”).
Examples of accepted proposals
Accepted abstracts from previous symposia are archived and viewable on our website, under the menu “Past Symposia.” All abstracts are provided as links in each symposium’s Schedule.
For example, abstracts from the 2024 Symposium can be found here: https://2024.msuglobaldh.org/abstracts/
Below, we offer some examples for each type of proposal. We encourage you to take a look at further examples of the wide range of abstracts by visiting schedules of past Symposia.
15 Minute Presentation
Jennifer Ross, (University of Toronto, Canada), “A Geography of Terror and Repression”
(From 2022)
Since the inauguration of the War on Terror in 2001, couanterterror rhetoric and policy have grown ever more present in responses to domestic crisis and, increasingly, democratic expression. Following Hurricane Katrina and the 2005 flooding of New Orleans, heavily armed police, military, and paramilitary forces herded “looters,” “insurgents,” and, in one instance, assumed terrorists into an outdoor detention facility modeled after Guantánamo Bay. Paramilitary units also deployed to Puerto Rico in 2017 to secure San Juan’s exclusive Santurce District, guard infrastructure workers, and protect fresh water supplies. More recently, private security contractors have been used to suppress democratic movements for social justice and Native sovereignty. In Standing Rock, North Dakota, contractors and state prosecutors portrayed water protectors as a “pipeline insurgency” to be quashed by paramilitary forces. Just a few years later, contractors snatched up Black Lives Matter protestors in Portland, Oregon and drove them away in unmarked vans.
An act of sousveillance, “A Geography of Terror and Repression” turns the tools of mapping and surveillance against a state deploying draconian tactics in the name of security. This project marshals GIS, a medium steeped in military conquest and Western imperialism, to pinpoint individual eruptions of counterterror state violence against racialized populations. Moreover, the project reveals the interrelation of security tactics and personnel by tracing the movement of contractors from one area of real or perceived crisis to another. Hosted initially on ArcGIS Story Maps to provide a national overview of counterterror state violence, each marker then links to a location-specific digital project utilizing Omeka, Leaflet, or Python to document security tactics and public resistance. By visualizing the continuously expanding purview of contractor deployment, this project ultimately reveals a disturbing trend growing out privatization, the quest to protect white supremacy, and the erosion of civil and human rights in the name of security.
60 Minute Panel
Anne Cong-Huyen (University of Michigan), Viola Lasmana (University of Southern California), and Kush Patel (University of Michigan), “En-Compassing Latitudes: Methodologies, Pedagogies, and Trajectories of Global DH”
(From 2019)
This panel brings together Asian American scholars, both librarians and academic researchers, to share and reflect on the breadth of scholarship and pedagogy informed by the interrelated frames of transnational Asian American and global digital humanities. We will discuss ongoing pedagogy, research, and collaborations that both adhere to and defy understandings of digital humanities scholarship. Despite their varied forms and subject matter, at the heart of these presentations and the projects that inspired them, are a core commitment to transformative, anti-colonial, social justice work informed by women of color feminisms, queer feminisms, and third world feminisms.
Our first panelist will discuss the ongoing work of FemTechNet and the feminist “hang-based pedagogy” methodology practiced by its Situated Critical Race + Media committee (SCRAM), a feminist anti-colonial distributed network of women and non-binary scholars of color whose work pushes expectations of collaborative digital scholarship. Over the past several years this network has met virtually, collaboratively authored scholarship, organized in-person Network Gatherings at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, and piloted Media Map, an interactive platform about race, feminism, and technology created through transnational collaboration and collective grant sharing.
Our second panelist will explore alternative articulations of global digital humanities by focusing on transpacific digital media that engage both the analog and the digital. They will examine how transmedia storytelling transforms understandings of the place and space of narrative, temporality, history, and social justice in transpacific contexts. A global and transpacific understanding of digital humanities allows for new imaginaries and praxis, and offers a definition of a Global Digital Humanities focused on transpacific connections, as well as the Global South.
Our third panelist will talk about the processes of supporting digital community engagements in a public university with queer, feminist, and anti-colonial methodologies. Critiquing disparities in power and privilege not just at the intersection of technologies and gender, but also between non-academic and academic groups, they will discuss how this work stems from and addresses the labor of survival within neoliberal infrastructures of higher education. Equally, this talk will highlight related DH pedagogy collaborations between the Global North and Global South as bridging features of our contiguous worlds lest we look past how we learn and who we learn with.
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Gabriela Baeza Ventura (University of Houston, USA), Montse Feu (Sam Houston State University, USA), and Paloma Vargas Montes (Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico), “Humanidades Digitales Latinas y Decolonialismo”
(From 2024)
Descripción del panel:
Este panel ofrece una visión de las posibilidades que existen cuando se trabajan las humanidades digitales desde una perspectiva latina. Las tres presentaciones muestran el trabajo con archivos latinos en EEUU desde donde se recuperan documentos, voces, vidas. Esta actividad permite documentar la participación de la comunidad latina en la creación de nación.
“Métodos decoloniales y las humanidades digitales latinas,” Gabriela Baeza Ventura, University of Houston
Esta presentación se centra en lo que está en juego en la realización de proyectos de humanidades digitales a través del lente de humanidades digitales latinx con el fin de crear métodos decoloniales que impugnen las narrativas coloniales. Los archivos institucionales se han apropiado del conocimiento, han etiquetado erróneamente y han descontextualizado las historias de la gente de color, perpetuando un trauma generacional que informa la representación de la gente Latinx en los Estados Unidos. Los proyectos digitales realizados por el Centro de humanidades digitales, como el Proyecto de literatura puertorriqueña (PLPR), tiene el potencial de crear una comprensión más inclusiva de la literatura y la historia. Además, la aplicación de herramientas digitales a archivos subrepresentados puede amplificar las complejas voces de historias y lenguas multiétnicas, ejemplificar las tensiones entre comunidades e instituciones formales, recuperar voces ancestrales y ofrecer la oportunidad de reescribir historias marginadas en el discurso nacional.
“Arte gráfico de los periódicos antifascistas en español” Montse Feu, Sam Houston State University
El arte gráfico de los periódicos antifascistas en español de Nueva York, Frente Popular (1936-1939), España Libre (1939-1977) e Ibérica (1953-1974), denunciaron el fascismo español gracias a las noticias de redes de trabajadores en la resistencia. En particular, las ilustraciones recrearon una cultura visual de solidaridad, acción directa y conmemoración. Frente Popular y España Libre mantuvieron una política de publicación abierta al público que permitió a los trabajadores expresar su antifascismo. La acción directa de SHC creó una cultura de solidaridad y de activismo participatorio. Las imágenes examinadas aquí están curadas en el proyecto digital Fighting Fascist Spain – The Exhibits (FFSTE). Con una metodología interdisciplinaria y con el objetivo de la justicia histórica, FFSTE recupera la historia de la organización antifascista estadounidense, Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas, su activismo y la cultura impresa.
“Indigenous Episteme of the Borderlands: el horizonte hermenéutico de sus metadatos” Paloma Vargas Montes, Tecnología de Monterrey
El proyecto Indigenous Episteme of the Borderlands parte del establecimiento de un corpus de documentos del Archivo General de Indias que describen la interacción entre los grupos indígenas y los europeos durante los siglos XVII y XVIII en el sureste de Texas y el noreste de México. Desde una perspectiva metodológica que integra la filología, la hermenéutica y la etnohistoria, el análisis de este corpus textual y sus potenciales visualizaciones plantea la creación de una matriz de metadatos cuyo horizonte hermenéutico abordan el territorio como región cultural, la movilidad de los grupos indígenas como parte de su cosmovisión y las transfiguraciones del imaginario de lo indígena durante el período colonial.
7 Minute Lightning Talk
Farinaz Basmechi (University of Ottawa, Canada), “Digital Intersectional Gender Responsive Approach to the Issue of Sexual Violence Against Women in the Global Pandemic”
(From 2024)
COVID-19, as a global crisis, exacerbated women’s situations all over the world, regardless of their geo-political contexts. In my presentation, I will focus on the issue of sexual violence against women (SVAW) in the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ways we can utilize digital humanities to highlight and ameliorate the problem with SVAW in the situation of crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic, one of the deadliest global crises, mainly caused social and economic vulnerability in the global population. Since the beginning of the pandemic, many scholars have criticized the socio-political orders reigning the globe, concentrating on a global initiative and response to face the impacts of COVID-19. Although the necessity of global response and implementing positive biopolitics are promoted by some scholars, including Benjamin Bratton (2022), many others believe that such a viewpoint cannot protect individual human populations, and more specifically, it is unable to reduce women’s vulnerability in the situation of a crisis. Since gender-based violence (GBV) and sexual violence (SV) are social problems that largely target women, and more intensely marginalized women, during the situation of a global health crisis, a Digital Gender Responsive Intersectional (DGRI) perspective would be the most efficient choice of approach to counter sexual violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic alerted individuals and governments to the possibility of the global outbreak of more viruses in the future. Many women experienced a higher level of social and economic vulnerability during the pandemic, which resulted in a higher rate of GBV and SV against them. Although some approaches aim to decrease the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people’s lives, many failed to consider the issue of SVAW during the pandemic. The issue of SVAW during COVID-19 can be tackled with the DGRI approach through its focus on the role of digital literacy, education, awareness, supportive community and organization, women and minorities’ empowerment, and SV preventive policies.
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John Adebayo (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, USA), “Advances in Open Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Scholarly Information Retrieval in Digital Humanities Research”
(From 2024)
Advances in technology continue to redirect humans’ activities on different landscapes; one of the products of these technological innovations is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is applied in the process of the information lifecycle. Concurrently, the increase in the dominance and use of Artificial Intelligence has become a regular conversation in different platforms, including humanistic communities, as it reshapes humans’ engagement with technology. Specifically, while the connection between AI and scholarly activities is multifaceted and enshrined with possibilities, examining some of the challenges associated with its cognitive, responsible, and ethical use for academic purposes is necessary. Therefore, this study explores the implications of using Open AI services for scholarly information retrieval in Digital Humanities. The objective of this study focuses on assessing the use of an Open AI solution, ChatGPT, by information seekers to recommend strategies that enhance cognitive, contextual, and inclusive scholarly information retrieval among researchers in digital humanities.
The study will use a literature-based research approach to explore the historical and theoretical views of information retrieval and different developmental phases in Open AI. Moreover, a comparative analysis among ChatGPT, search engines, and other language models (Bing and Google Bard) will be done. Consequently, the qualitative data will help generate thematic content highlighting some criticisms of using ChatGPT for scholarly information retrieval. While there are different dimensions to evaluating the use of Open AI for academic purposes, the study will focus on the cognitive, moral, legal, and ethical aspects and risks associated with using technological innovation in digital humanity research. While this study serves as the basis for exploring different stages in evaluating AI applications, the findings are expected to enhance collaborative efforts among researchers, developers, and policymakers to address the concerns, improve the transparency of AI models, and ensure responsible and ethical use in digital humanities research endeavors.
Project Showcase
Gabriel Calarco (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), Iñaki Cano García (Universität Potsdam, Germany), Pamela Gionco (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), Rocío Méndez (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), David Merino Recalde (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain), Federico Sardi (Universidad de la República, Uruguay), Maria Alejandra Sotelo (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), Gabriela Striker (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina), Cristian Suárez-Giraldo (Universidad EAFIT, Colombia), “El mismo texto, diferentes ediciones digitales. Resultados y experiencias de estudiantes de ‘Digital Publishing with Minimal Computing/Ediciones digitales con minimal computing’ Global Classrooms (UMD/USAL)”
(From 2021)
Entre septiembre y diciembre de 2020, se desarrolló el curso “Digital Publishing with Minimal Computing/Ediciones digitales con minimal computing”, una iniciativa “Global Classrooms” entre la University of Maryland (EE.UU.) y la Universidad del Salvador (Argentina), a cargo de Raffaele Viglianti (UMD/MITH) y Gimena del Rio Riande (USAL/CONICET). Se impartió en modalidad online con el apoyo de las investigadoras Nidia Hernández y Romina De León (HD CAICYT LAB/CONICET), con clases semanales con un enfoque teórico-práctico.
La virtualidad que impuso la pandemia redimensiona la globalización de la asignatura, pues permitió configurar un grupo más heterogéneo, integrado por personas de diferentes ámbitos académicos y profesionales, y una mayor diversidad de lugares de procedencia.
La actividad central del seminario implicó un trabajo colaborativo en grupos de ambas instituciones participantes, a través de un sistema de control de versiones (GitLab), con el objetivo de crear una edición digital bilingüe (inglés-español) de un fragmento de un texto francés del siglo XVII: la “Descripción de Buenos Aires” incluida en la “Relación de un viaje al Río de la Plata”, de Acarete du Biscay, a partir de la traducción inglesa de la época y, traducida a su vez de esta, una versión en español de mediados del siglo XIX.
Para realizar estas ediciones, siempre bajo las perspectivas de la minimal computing, trabajamos con marcado XML-TEI. Su publicación en línea se realizó también con herramientas de acceso abierto, en sitios estáticos, creados con Jekyll y alojados en GitLab. Todos los recursos utilizados permitieron ejercer soberanía digital sobre nuestras ediciones.
Nuestra propuesta es presentar los resultados de las ediciones realizadas durante el curso, que manifiestan una amplia variedad de enfoques, así como relatar nuestra experiencia con un trabajo colaborativo en un entorno bilingüe y llevado a cabo con tecnologías y metodologías de las Humanidades Digitales.
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Anguelina Popova and James Plumtree (American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan), “‘Singing the Song of the Land You Are In’– Digital Humanities and Post-Colonial Study of the Kyrgyz Manas”
(From 2024)
Since the date of their first known transcription during a Tsarist Russian military reconnaissance in 1856, Kyrgyz oral verse narratives about the legendary hero Manas and their study have been impacted by Russian colonialism, technological limitations, and detrimental comparison with Western and classical literary models. This collected material is often inaccessible, buried in foreign archives or available in publications too expensive for residents of the 146th highest economy in the world. Scholarship, typically in Russian, uses unfamiliar terminology and concepts that judge Manas by remote criteria. Manas is consequently seen in Kyrgyzstan through these Russian-Soviet perspectives, and in the West it is unhelpfully considered as an antiquated a repository of customs and history, as a representation of a ‘people’, something not worthy of being examined, yet something in dire need of saving as it staggers towards extinction.
The Digital Humanities project of the Analysing Kyrgyz Narratives (AKYN) Research Group, based at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA) is assisting local performers to show that Manas is currently very alive, rich, and full of individual virtuosity. By recording and making available contemporary performances, conscientiously avoiding previous judgmental assumptions and biases of Western and Russian colonial scholarship, AKYN has, with its preservation, celebration, and broadening access to cultural materials, challenged the cliched view of decline by showing the immense creativity, innovation, and individual artistry present in living Manas narration. The often obscured individual agency, local contexts, and overshadowed Kyrgyz viewpoints are being emphasised, with DH providing an online space for this ongoing cultural creativity to be engaged with, appreciated, and continued.
Poster Presentation
Lydia Bremer-McCollum and Caroline Schroeder (University of Oklahoma, USA), “OCR for Coptic Literature: Digitizing an Under-resourced Historical Language Corpus”
(From 2024)
The Coptic language is the last phase of the ancient Egyptian language family (a language family that also includes hieroglyphs). Although Coptic literature comes from late antique and medieval Egypt, most Coptic manuscripts now reside in Global North repositories, and almost always in fragments, with pages from the same codex in two, three, or more different archives. Many works have not been published even in print, or if published not in their entirety. Digitization and then reassembly of literary works in the digital realm are processes essential for basic access to the literature, especially since this literature has been inaccessible to the heritage community of origin. As David Smith’s and Ryan Cordell’s working paper, “A Research Agenda for Historical and Multilingual Optical Character Recognition” argues, developing public infrastructures for historical language OCR is critical for humanities research. Although previous researchers have developed OCR for Coptic, software updates render models obsolete, requiring new development. This situation poses significant challenges for researchers with small teams or without significant engineering and programming support. This poster will outline processes and results of developing OCR for Coptic and will include lessons learned and best practices for other projects working in under-resourced historical languages.
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Ali Bolcakan and Christi Merrill (University of Michigan, USA), “Translation Networks”
(From 2024)
Our project, Translation Networks (http://www.translationnetworks.com), is intended for researchers, scholars, students, and educational staff and helps them extend, edit, and create connections between the sources found in the catalogs of archives, libraries, and museums. It combines the functionalities of reference management and diagramming/concept mapping software.
With extensive multilingual support, our software allows users to customize and add, change, and correct critical information and metadata for existing and new records—for example, the name of the translator, the language translated from or into, its relationship to other translations, or to the source it is translated from. Furthermore, our interface allows users to create custom collections, and two-dimensional diagrams/concept maps to visualize work non-linearly.
Our focus from the inception has been on making links between translated materials and their sources across languages since most records do not make this specific information available to users.
We have been working on achieving AA ADA compliance for the site for the past year, specifically focusing on supporting users with low or no vision. Starting in the fall, we will add more robust interpretive frameworks for collection and concept map features. We will also improve the ability to work across even more writing systems.
Our next goal is to tackle the name authority issue for transnational and multilingual research. For example, the city of Istanbul, depending on the language of the source, can be represented as Κωνσταντινούπολις, قسطنطينيه, Պոլիս, קושטה , and so on. Most of the time, old records found in archives and library catalogs will be a) not linked to other related records correctly, if at all; b) would be transliterated and cataloged erroneously or are outdated; and c) missing crucial metadata. Any research project that spans languages and/or time periods will encounter similar issues and will see them extend to the names of contributors, titles, dates, etc.
