March 2, 2022

Season 2 Episode 5: Things We Can Do

Sunflowers, via unsplash.com user Todd Trapani

Every week feels like a year. I’ve found it hard to keep on top of everything, simply because everything changes so radically, so quickly. I am, as they say, very online; and being too much online overwhelms. But early on in the present conflict, the video of the lady saying to the soldier, “Take these seeds so sunflowers grow when you die here” (link) demonstrated that this was going to be a very different kind of conflict.

And so I continue to remain online; doomscrolling oddly enough feels like an act of trying to keep control, to keep powerlessness at bay (but see this for strategies on dealing with misinformation. If it feels ‘right’ to you, if it strikes a chord, don’t retweet, don’t repost, until you’ve dug a little deeper). But a person needs more, and doomscrolling isn’t healthy.

I’m no historian of Eastern Europe. But I do read and write a lot about social media. And Ukraine’s people and government are providing a masterclass in how to leverage social media. To write the history of this present conflict historians will have to trawl through the posts, the disinformation, the bots, the sockpuppets with neural-network-generated photos of ‘journalists’ and ‘bloggers’. The approaches and methods of the digital humanities are more needed than ever.

So what can we do right now? This newsletter goes out to the Digital Humanities community here at Carleton, and we have some skills that are of immediate use. The cultural heritage of Ukraine is under attack; Putin does not believe the Ukrainian people deserve an independent existence, and so cultural targets are under attack:

The digital infrastructure of Ukraine’s galleries, libraries, archives, and museums is at risk; if that digital infrastructure goes dark, we will not know what we have lost. One thing we can do is join this effort:

https://www.sucho.org/

We are a group of cultural heritage professionals – librarians, archivists, researchers, programmers – working together to identify and archive at-risk sites, digital content, and data in Ukrainian cultural heritage institutions while the country is under attack. We are using a combination of technologies to crawl and archive sites and content, including the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the Browsertrix crawler and the ArchiveWeb.page browser extension and app of the Webrecorder project.

We can also use tools like Gallery-DL to download images of cultural heritage; it may be that photogrammetric reconstructions become necessary. Help where you can.

Happier Items

Underhill Graduate Colloquium March 18 2022

Registration for the Underhill Colloquium is now live! You can register directly here: https://carleton.ca/underhill/2022/2022-colloquium-registration/. Attendance is open to everyone, and we’re especially encouraging undergraduate students to attend and see what a grad History research is like!

We are honoured to welcome these presenters to the Underhill Colloquium 2022:

Opening Keynote - Dr. Cheryl Foggo, ‘John Ware Reclaimed’ (12:30pm-1:30pm ET)

Author, filmmaker and playwright Cheryl Foggo shares the challenges she has encountered in her excavations of western Canada’s Black history. Through images and examples she offers her perspective on rethinking the ways we preserve, examine and disseminate our stories.

Cheryl Foggo is a multiple award winning playwright, author and filmmaker, whose work over the last 30 years has focused on the lives of Western Canadians of African descent. Recent works include the release of her NFB feature documentary John Ware Reclaimed, available on nfb.ca, as well as the 30th anniversary edition of her book Pourin’ Down Rain: A Black Woman Claims Her Place in the Canadian West. She has multiple projects upcoming in 2022, including a production of her play Heaven at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary. Cheryl is the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Outstanding Artist Award, The Doug and Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award and the Arts, Media and Entertainment Award from the Calgary Black Chambers, all in 2021.

Closing Keynote - Krista McCracken and Skylee-Storm Hogan, ‘Decolonial Archival Futures: Reflections and Practice’ (5pm-6pm ET)

Researchers, historians, and archivists can reframe and better analyse historical narratives in settler states through meaningful partnerships with Indigenous communities and knowledge keepers. Much of the work taken on by Krista McCracken and Skylee-Storm Hogan has been a reimagination of archival structures and a practical community-based approach to their archival and historical practises. From discussions of ownership and access, to ceremonial care in the archives, Hogan and McCracken have explored meaningful alternatives to settler-colonial archival systems that impact all levels of historical and educational scholarship. By examining archival practises that push against and actively counter settler colonialism, this talk will challenge non-Indigenous practitioners to consider constructs of knowledge, which histories we tell, and how we present the past.

Krista McCracken (they/them) is an award winning public historian and archivist. They work as a Researcher/Curator at the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, in Baawating (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario) on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and Métis people. Krista’s research focuses on community archives, Residential Schools, access, and outreach. They have two ongoing book projects, Decolonial Archival Futures with Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey and Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries with Kalani Adolpho and Stephen Krueger.

Skylee-Storm Hogan-Stacey (they/them) is an emerging Indigenous public historian whose research focuses on Indigenous archival practice, residential schools, and Kahnawá:ke history. During their time with Know History’s Ottawa office, Skylee-Storm has worked on projects large and small, including oral history and documentary film, with a particular focus on Indigenous clients. After working with the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, Skylee-Storm has become an advocate for critiquing power dynamics in heritage and settler Canadian historical narratives. Their forthcoming book with Krista McCracken, Decolonial Archival Futures, continues this work.

More information can be viewed here: https://carleton.ca/underhill/2022/2022-colloquium-keynote-announcement/

Carleton University Graduate Students’ DH Conference May 6th

Join us for the first Carleton Graduate Students’ Digital Humanities Conference on May 6, 2022! Students and other scholars from all disciplines who engage with Digital Humanities are invited to present their work. This conference is organised by the Carleton Digital Humanities Graduate Student Society (CDHGSS).

Our theme is New Directions in Digital Humanities. We want to know about your perspectives on the ground-breaking innovations in the field of digital humanities! Where is digital humanities going in the future and how is getting there? What do you find exciting about the future of digital humanities and what is your experience in taking digital humanities down these new paths? What is the potential of digital humanities? We hope these questions (and more) inspire you to share with us the projects and/or papers you’ve been working on. Or perhaps they stimulate more questions in you and motivate you to start a panel! Our hope is that, through this conference, you’ll share your ideas on new perspectives related to either methodology and subject matter, or reflections on practices and tools with other digital humanities enthusiasts like us.

Presentation formats can include:

1.) Showcase a project or essay (completed or in-progress). 2.) Co-lead a panel discussing questions, topics, or tools within the field. 3.) Host a workshop teaching a specific tool, approach, or method.

Participants have the option to host a 15-45 minute talk or take part in panel discussions.

Submission details:

Submissions will be accepted until Sunday, April 3rd, 2022 at 11:59 P.M.

To submit your application, please fill out this form.

If you have any questions about how to submit or if you are unsure if your idea fits our theme, please send us an email! You can contact us at carleton.dhgss@gmail.com. Or follow us on Instagram @carleton.dhgss.

You will be contacted by April 15th if your submission has been accepted.

Upcoming Professionalization Events

X University’s Centre for Digital Humanities has a number of upcoming talks and workshops; see their newsletter for a great line up of things to participate in and things to learn.

At the U of O, the DH Toolbox Series continues this month; see the full list here, including videos of past workshops; the next event is March 16th with Dr. Vanessa Blais-Tremblay (Musique, UQAM) ‘Digital tools to build a feminist research partnership in Quebec’s music industry’

Finally, the Carleton DH Graduate Students’ Society is also putting on a workshop on ‘Digital Storytelling: Using Twine for you Creative Writing Project’. It will be on Thursday March 10th at 7pm and will be hosted on zoom.

Take care everyone

• Shawn