Yale Mellon Sawyer Seminar: October Newsletter
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to the October 2021 newsletter of The Order of Multitudes, Yale’s 2020-2022 Mellon Sawyer Seminar on the long history of big data.
With the fall semester in full swing, we would first like to share new additions to our Conversations series, which engages diverse scholars on the methods and ethics of knowledge organization. Expanding the “Repair/Reparation in Collections” topic launched last month, we have published one additional interview on our website:
Alexandra Alberda, Curator of Indigenous Perspectives at the Manchester Museum in the United Kingdom, discusses the decolonization of museum institutions, with emphasis on practices of indigenization that entangle accountability and reconciliation.
Our Conversation series on “Atlasing” considers how contemporary mapping techniques can excavate new histories and envision alternative futures:
Samaneh Moafi, Senior Researcher at Forensic Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London, discusses the evidentiary techniques and visualization practices that are central to her practice’s investigations of environmental violence.
Jay Cephas, Assistant Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University, engages mapping as a historiographical practice that centers the histories of race and labor in the architectural archive.
VanJessica Gladney, a doctoral student in History at the University of Pennsylvania, shares insights about how Augmented Reality can help excavate the history and legacy of slavery.
On November 10, at 5 pm via Zoom, the Sawyer Seminar hosts the interdisciplinary event “Public Knowledge in the Age of Private Data” with invited speakers Molly Crockett (Yale University), Nick Seaver (Tufts University), and Angela Xiao Wu (New York University). Moderated by Lisa Messeri, one of the Sawyer Seminar’s faculty leaders, the event examines how the increasing privatization of data in corporate digital archives impacts the creation of public knowledge by scholars and social scientists. The poster for the event is attached below and registration is possible here.
Please stay tuned in November for an announcement concerning our next round of our seed grants, which will focus on initiatives in the digital humanities.
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