Symposium flyer

Global Digital Humanities Symposium at Michigan State University

April 8-9, 2016

Digital Humanities @ Michigan State University is proud to sponsor its first symposium on Global DH with a focus on the Global South. Michigan State University has been intentionally global for more than 60 years, with over 1,400 faculty involved in international research, teaching, and service. For the past 20 years, MSU has developed a strong research area in culturally engaged, global digital humanities. Matrix, a digital humanities and social science center at MSU, has done dozens of digital projects in West and Southern Africa that have focused on ethical and reciprocal relationships, and capacity building. WIDE has set best practices for doing community engaged, international, archival work with the Samaritan Collections, Archive 2.0. Today many scholars in the humanities at MSU are engaged in digital projects in the Global South.

In the last decade, Digital Humanities has developed in a range of disciplines and locations across the globe. Initially emergent from initiatives in textual encoding, database building, or critiques of design and media cultures, the field is increasingly drawn together. Present scholarship works at the intersections of what had been disparate approaches. Much digital humanities scholarship is driven by an ethical commitment to preserve and broaden access to cultural materials. The most engaged global DH scholarship values digital tools that enhance the capacity of scholarly critique to reflect a broad range of histories, as well as present geographical and cultural positions.

However, with the growth of the digital humanities, particularly in the Global South, a number of vexing and complex issues continually surface, including, among others, questions of ownership, cultural theft, virtual exploitation, digital rights, the digital divide, and minimal computing needs. We view the symposium as an opportunity to broaden that conversation about these issues. This symposium, which will include an extended workshop and a mixture of presentation types, engages squarely with issues of power, access, and equity as they affect scholarship in the digital humanities.

The invited speakers and local presenters at this two-day symposium will address how the interdisciplinary practices of digital humanities can and should speak to the global cultural record and the contemporary situation of our planet. Of particular interest is work relevant to or stemming from the Global South. The symposium seeks to strengthen networks of exchange among DH scholars nationally and internationally.

Themes and topics of this symposium will include: