We had the most amazing time at the Africana Digital Humanities @ HBCUs convening. Ashanti and Brian, alongside Dr. Myburgh, presented on two projects that they've been working on as part of our lab - The JSU Permanent Art Collection Digital Collection and the JSU Audio Walking Tour! Thank you to the JSU Dean of Liberal Arts, Dr. Rico Chapman, for all of his work organizing this event and to the folks at the Clark Atlanta Africana Digital Humanities Center for making us so welcome.

Join us in welcoming our new faculty advisor, Detrice L. Roberts, to the team! Detrice graduated with her Bachelor of Arts degree from Tougaloo College and later received her Master of Arts degree in History from Jackson State University. She has worked for JSU’s College of Liberal Arts since 2019, while also serving on numerous boards and working with local and national non-profit organizations.

Our co-director Dr. Brittany Myburgh is to present at the Annual Zora Neale Hurston Conference, "Zora Rebooted: AI, Language, and Literature" on a panel alongside Professor Danielle Littlefield! Her talk explores the idea of the AI knowledge base and the concept of a cultural codex. She will examine generative AI’s limitations as an interpreter of cultural artifacts, while Professor Littlefield highlights Zora Neale Hurston’s linguistic brilliance as an example of a different kind of AI (Ancestral/Anthropological Intelligence.)

Our team will present at DH2024: Reinvention & Responsibility on a panel that focuses on the next generation of digital humanities! Join us August 8, 2024 at 10:30AM to 12:00PM ET to hear about our findings from a kitchen table conversation around our experiences developing this lab across geographies, institutions, and social positions. Our work will include conversations around things like alleviating the "digital divide," the geographic specificity of doing DH work in the South, and what it means to keep ourselves fed.

Keith gave a presentation at the Open/Technology in Education, Society, and Scholarship Association's conference on June 20, 2024 on the process of developing the Black Digital Humanities Lab, arguing for the power of digital humanities within community development work.

Drawing upon Nancy Fraser's framework of justice, he maps out some of the theoretical groundings that underpinned the creation of the lab, highlighting both the complexities with doing this work cross-geographically and at an HBCU, as well as the creative strategies employed to subvert institutional harm.

At the end of the presentation, he asks the following:

Catherine Knight Steele, the keynote at our April symposium, discussed how their work at UMaryland’s Black Communications and Technology Lab (BCaT) drew from the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast Program - that is, to do this work requires us to be fed, both literally and figuratively.

Within these digital spaces, what does “being fed” look like? What do we need to feel nourished in the digital? While the neoliberal university seeks consumption (of us as workers, students, people, etc.), how can we envision an alternative future of fullness? What does that look, smell, sound, taste, and feel like?

Slides from his presentation can be accessed via this hyperlink. A proceedings article is currently in the works.

HUGE thank you to all the attendees, panelists, moderators, and facilitators who participated in our symposium last Friday 💗 As the organizers, we found ourselves incredibly inspired by the rich insights you all brought to the space and hope that this has provided folk with new connections, new ways of seeing, and new directions forward.

An extra special thank you and congratulations to our lab members Azza Osman and Ashanti Stiff who led our amazing concluding workshop “Quilting Black Futures” that led to the creation of our digital quilt that weaves together all the insights gathered from the symposium. The produced quilt can be accessed on FigJam.

Keep up to date with future updates by following us here and by joining our mailing list via the contact page of our website. We are working to get the symposium recording uploaded and will let folks know when it’s ready!