The collaborative and progressive nature of digital humanities as a field has lent itself to uplifting and emphasizing the voices of minority communities. While last semester we focused on the idea of Afrofuturism as a form of revisionist history, the ability of digital humanities to create a “space” for focus on Afrofuturism and Black History as well as the creations of collaborative projects such as the Mapping Black Imaginaries and Geographies has and currently is forming a structure to bring Black Voices and Narratives to the forefront of the digital scholarship landscape.

In Kim Gallon’s article “Making A Case for Black Digital Humanities” the theme of humanity as it is linked to Black digital experiences, a powerful idea that asks the question, “How do racialized thoughts surrounding digital humanities reinforce or work against the work of scholars examining Black experiences?” As an introduction to the subject matter, Gallon’s questions make readers reframe the way in which a variety of digital platforms can be utilized to explore the experiences, history, and voices of Black communities. Gallon also gives a brief history of the development of Black use of digital spaces and the themes surrounding the expression of power and societal structures that Gallon argues should be the focus in how these digital projects or spaces are conceived.

Afrofuturism is one lens through which to engage with these communities and focusing on both the real and imagined spaces of Black creators and thinkers through multimedia projects like Mapping BIG makes the topic approachable. In recent years the concept of Afrofuturism has been popularized (by that I mean the term has reached white digital spaces where non-academics have been exposed to the term) through works like Marvel’s Black Panther but the idea has existed for far longer within the real and imagined words, like those examined in the Mapping BIG project.

Black digital humanities have become more than simply a place to simply identify and share black history and ideas but also a place for activism. Both Gallon’s article and the article by Chambliss and French speak to the necessity of sharing meaningful information that can have real-world connections, if not effects throughout the Black community.

Bibliography

Holly Baker and Julian Chambliss, “501- Dr. Julian Chambliss and Afrofuturism and the Zora Neale Hurston Festival,” 2020 in Every Tongue Got to Confess, podcast, 30:00, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/everytonguegottoconfess/15/.

Kim Gallon, “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities,” Debates in Digital Humanities, 2016.

Julian C. Chambliss and Scot A. French, “A Generative Praxis: Curation, Creation, and Black Counterpublics,”Scholarly Editing 39, (2022).

Julian Chambliss, “Whose History?,” August 12, 2018, in Reframing History, podcast, 39:16, https://anchor.fm/julian-chambliss7/episodes/Episode-10-Whose-History-e1takb/a-a4g5ck.