Yale Mellon Sawyer Seminar: February Newsletter + Digital Praxis in the Humanities
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to the February 2022 newsletter of The Order of Multitudes, Yale’s 2020-2022 Mellon Sawyer Seminar on the long history of big data.
We are excited to share some new Conversations that examine the material architectures and infrastructures of knowledge:
Fernando Domínguez Rubio, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego, discusses the museum as an “ecological machine” that regulates our modern approach to art.
Shannon Mattern, Professor of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research, discusses the ubiquity of data infrastructures and posits modes of speculation and ethical reflection that complicate our understanding of them.
With questions about health and data perpetually in the air as we enter the third year of the pandemic, we offer two new Conversations that interrogate how knowledge systems in the history of science shape legacies of social inequality and health disparities:
Ayah Naruddin, a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow with the Society of Fellows at Princeton University, discusses her research on racial science and eugenics and addresses their ongoing impact on African American articulations of racial formation.
Beans Velocci, a Postdoctoral Fellow (and an Assistant Professor effective July 2022) in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the historical construction of the scientific category “sex” as both a binary and a multitude of possibilities.
This March and April we are convening leading scholars from the Digital Humanities in a series of online events on “Digital Praxis in the Humanities.” These events will feature Geoffrey Turnovsky (University of Washington), Marlene Daut (University of Virginia), Christina Boyles (Michigan State University), Norah Karrouche (Free University of Amsterdam), Ángel David Nieves (Northeastern), Roopika Risam (Salem State), Andie Silva (CUNY), Maxim Romanov (University of Hamburg) as well as respondents from the Yale community. Additional information on the series and registration links are included below.
Do not hesitate to contact us at admin@orderofm.com with ideas, responses, or pitches. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @OMultitudes.
Sincerely,
Michael Faciejew
Digital Praxis in the Humanities: A DH@Yale Conversation Series
Digital tools and praxis have reshaped the humanities. For decades, access to new data has challenged established methods, canons, and scopes, and new digital tools have reconfigured cultural and historical interpretation. In addition, the ubiquity of electronic devices and collaborative platforms has made it increasingly difficult to distinguish specifically digital academic practices from traditional approaches. Yet some critics still look upon the “digital humanities” with skepticism.
In this series of conversations, leading DH scholars speak about how the digital reorganization of scholarship has triggered new research questions and outcomes. Centering four main practices–editing, archiving, mapping, databasing–these conversations highlight how digital projects begin, how their conclusions intersect with current critical discourses, and how their methods transform what it means to work in the humanities.
EDITING
March 7, 12:30 - 1:30 pm
Geoffrey Turnovsky (University of Washington)
Marlene Daut (University of Virginia)
Respondent: Jesús Velasco (Yale)
Zoom registration:
https://yale.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwkd-ytqD8pHdQqGr8PhJPk71LCYzIWrI0p
ARCHIVING
March 14, 4:30 - 5:30 pm
Christina Boyles (Michigan State University)
Norah Karrouche (Free University of Amsterdam)
Respondent: Michael Faciejew (Yale)
Zoom registration: https://yale.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwqduytrj4iE9zXwfKGPttoQnPZHTDVvDtY
MAPPING
April 4, 4:30 - 5:30 pm
Ángel David Nieves (Northeastern)
Roopika Risam (Salem State)
Respondent: Laura Wexler (Yale)
Zoom registration: https://yale.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tdOigpjMpHNGzK5tJUJp73RqyKYemGNC8
Databasing
April 11, 12:30 - 1:30 pm
Andie Silva (CUNY)
Maxim Romanov (University of Hamburg)
Respondent: Christophe Schuwey (Yale)
Zoom registration: https://yale.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUtdeuorz0iGdzFXp0cNrgT3c6PQ9MFekVW
All events on Zoom. Registration required. For full registration information, visit: whc.yale.edu/events
The Digital Praxis in the Humanities series is a launching pad for shaping an intellectual community around the DH@Yale group, an interdisciplinary group of faculty, students, researchers and librarians. Supported by the Mellon Sawyer Seminar “The Order of Multitudes: Atlas, Encyclopedia, Museum,” the working group expands the crucial work undertaken at Yale’s DH Lab by anchoring questions about DH techniques and practices in the intellectual and theoretical dimensions of the humanities. The aim is to situate the digital as an infrastructure for the humanities rather than an alcove.