Call for Posters and Demonstrations

Digital Humanities and African American/African Diaspora Studies Conference

University of Maryland, College Park May 2-3, 2008

URL: http://www.mith2.umd.edu/diaspora2008

The Digital Humanities and African American/African Diaspora Studies
Conference is issuing a call for posters that highlight digital humanities
projects, tools or techniques or work in progress as they relate to the
themes of the conference. We especially encourage submissions from
independent scholars and scholars associated with academic institutions.
Posters may include a demonstration, traditional printed poster, or a
combination of both. Wireless internet access will be available at the
poster venue.

Short abstracts (250-500 words) should be submitted to Neil Fraistat at
fraistat_at_umd.edu by 6 p.m. on February 25, 2008. The proposals will be
reviewed by the planning committee and successful applicants will be
notified by March 10, 2008. The poster session will take place on the
afternoon of May 3, 2008.

This conference will address the increasing centrality of digitization to
the archiving of materials, as well as the growth of digital technology in
the teaching, scholarship and artistic production in the field of African
American/African Diaspora Studies. The conference is a collaboration
involving the African American/African Diaspora Area Group of the English
Department, the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH),
and the School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, as well as other
faculty and students from the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) and the
College of Behavioral and Social Sciences (BSOS).

The conference, the first of its kind, will bring together approximately
150 national and international scholars, high school and middle school
teachers, artists, students and attendees to discuss a growing body of work
that has not as yet benefited from an organized forum that would allow
practitioners to meet one another not only to discuss on-going projects,
but also to debate the theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical issues
raised by the intersection of the fields of Digital Humanities and African
American/African Diaspora Studies. As the field of African American/African
Diaspora Studies can benefit from a thoughtful consideration of the
application of new media tools, so, too, can the field of digital
humanities benefit from a focused discussion of scholarship informed by
critical race studies.

The program will begin on May 1st and 2nd with hands-on workshops,
including one sponsored by the TEI Consortium and funded by the NEH, which
will provide a practical introduction to text encoding and another that
will focus on navigating online resources in African American and African
Diaspora Studies. The workshops will be followed by a panel showcasing work
by scholars in the field of African American/African Diaspora Studies that
address and/or make use of digital technologies and new media. The chair
and the respondents will be University of Maryland graduate students. The
keynote address by Abdul Alkalimat (University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign) will be followed by a reception and the presentation of a
multi-media art installation. The last day will be taken up by panels and
seminars, one of which will be geared toward middle and high school
teachers; digital "poster" sessions, using laptops, to introduce projects
by students, faculty and independent scholars; and a closing multi-media
performance. Confirmed participants include Abdul Alkalimat, Howard Dodson,
Anna Everett, Jerome Handler, Paul D. Miller (AKA DJ Spooky), Alexander
Weheliye, and Pamela Z.

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Received on Sun Jan 27 2008 - 17:41:18 EST