Nevada, Knuckles, some Events, and Requests
Dear Readers,
I want to share a small essay with you, announce a few events, and ask a couple favors.
First, the essay. (Here, scroll down a bit.) My publisher MCD books is celebrating its fifth year operating as a spin-off from (or laboratory within) Farrar, Straus and Giroux. My editor, Sean McDonald, asked me if I'd read this book Nevada, which MCD was re-releasing after it had already enjoyed a first act as a book published by a small trans/queer press. It had ascended to the status of a classic, but had also fallen out of print. Not anymore! I highly recommend it.
I wrote back with my thoughts just as the entirety of Macmillan (which includes FSG and MCD) endured an elaborate cyber-attack and shut down for days. So, the essay is dated July 8, but i assure you I was writing it at the tail end of Pride month! Here's how I began it:
I wasn’t sure what I was in for, when I opened this book. Sean asked me to read it, maybe because I’m part of a queer household—and indeed that did make Imogen Binnie’s Nevada easy to relate to. But if I am honest, I would prefer to believe he invited me to read it because he thought I cared as much about the dignity of the folks I write about as Binnie cares about these characters.
Anyhow, I hope you like the book and also my appreciation of it, which involves some politics and also some writing on my own knuckles.
In a little over one month, DEMOCRACY'S DATA will be out in the world: a little book about data sandwiched between cloth covers, waiting to have its spine cracked, ideally again and again. (My favorite thing is to look at how my most beloved books swell---the books I come back to again and again accordion out, displaying my affection with their unruly splay.)
But we don't have to wait a full month to start talking about why it's important to study the histories of datasets. I'm happy to share with you a pre-release online event on August 11 at 12-1pm ET, hosted by my friends at Data & Society (register here). Indeed, I mean that literally, my friend Ronteau Coppin---the People & Culture Manager at D&S---has generously agreed to host this conversation. That's after she generously agreed to read the entire manuscript last year, offering just the sort of helpful insights I had hoped for. And now she's agreed to read it all again for the event. Thanks so much, Ronteau!
We'll be joined by Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). I asked Alex to join us because she is a scholar I admire and I know she can speak better than I can to the ways that looking at the genealogies of datasets might help in the projects of building better AI systems or reigning in those dangerous ones that already exist. (I'm also really curious to hear what she makes of the book!) I was so thrilled when Alex signed on. Thanks Alex!
I will have quite a few other exciting book-related events to let you know about soon, with some pretty terrific conversation partners and hosted by some of my favorite history/book-centric institutions.
In the meantime, you can sign up (here) to watch me talk about DEMOCRACY'S DATA online (all by my lonesome) as part of the American Inspiration series produced by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, on August 30, 6-7pm ET.
For those of you who are teachers out there, and particularly history teachers, check out this assignment, free for you to use or adapt. It's designed to introduce students to the puzzles and pleasures of digging through census records. And it---not coincidentally---pairs perfectly with DEMOCRACY'S DATA.
If you end up using it, I hope you'll let me know how it goes---or how you improved it!
Finally, I have two requests for you.
1) Is there a podcast that you think would be the perfect place to hear more about DEMOCRACY'S DATA? If so, could you reply to this newsletter and let me know? (If you want to let the podcast know too, that would be worth many, multiple bonus points.)
2) If you're a NYer, why don't you check out a (deceptively boring) spreadsheet presented in this post by an advocacy organization fighting for smaller classes. The spreadsheet reveals the drastic cuts being made to NYC's public schools thanks to Mayor Adam's most recent budgets. Earlier today, protestors gathered in front of the mayor's office today to protest those cuts. You can help by signing this petition calling on Governor Hochul to sign a bill (already passed by the Assembly and Senate) that will limit class sizes and force the Mayor's hand (to some extent).
That's more than enough of an update for today.
Thanks for reading. Be well.
take care,
Dan
p.s. Whenever I write Farrar, Straus and Giroux, I think about that missing oxford comma, and I wonder if the original Farrar, Straus, and Giroux decided to leave it out as some sort of elaborate troll aimed at future writers.... ;p