Wondering how to get started with teaching at the intersections of digital humanities and ethnic studies? Here are some of the resources that frequently come up in DEFCon conversations.
To Read
Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Edited by Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers, this volume offers curated collections of assignments, syllabi, and classroom activities organized around keywords.
Reviews in Digital Humanities: Edited by Jennifer Guiliano and Roopika Risam, this journal offers peer review of digital humanities projects and other forms of digital scholarship. Check out the special issue on Digital Pedagogies and project registry pages on Education and Curriculum & Pedagogy for ideas.
A Primer for Teaching Digital History: 10 Design Principles (Duke UP 2022): Written by Jennifer Guiliano, this is a guide for instructors who are teaching digital humanities for the first time or for experienced teachers who want to reinvigorate their pedagogy.
The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy: Edited by a knowledgeable collective, the journal promotes open scholarly discourse around critical and creative uses of digital technology in teaching, learning, and research.
The Digital Humanities Coursebook (Routledge 2021): Written by Johanna Drucker, this book is an excellent introduction to digital research methods and offers guidance on how to get started.
Using Digital Humanities in the Classroom (Bloomsbury 2022): This updated edition of Clare Battershill and Shawna Ross’s book on how to teach with digital humanities is an indispensable guide.
New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (Northwestern UP 2019): Written by Roopika Risam, New Digital Worlds has a chapter on “Postcolonial Digital Pedagogy.”
Keywords in Caribbean Studies: Directed by Kelly Baker Josephs and Roopika Risam and inspired by Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, this project offers curated collections of materials for teaching Caribbean studies using digital resources.
The Data-Sitters Club: Run by Quinn Dombrowki, Katia Bowers, Anouk Lang, Lee Skallerup Bessette, Roopika Risam, and Maria Cecire, this is a casual and colloquial guide to computational textual analysis.
“Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth”: Tara Yosso’s article in Race, Ethnicity, and Education is inspiration for DEFCon’s commitment to teaching that foregrounds an asset-based and strengths-based approach to students, drawing on their cultural wealth, by recognizing that they bring multiple forms of cultural capital: aspirational, social, linguistic, familial, navigational, and resistance.
“Anti-racist Community Engaged Pedagogy”: Written by Roopika Risam, Joanna Gonsalves, Cindy Vincent, Cynthia Lynch, Wafa Unus, DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld, Asher Jackson, David Weiss, Will Cortezia, Christina Santana, Aldo Garcia Guevara, Nabin Malakar, Andrew Piazza, Deborah Keisch, Koseph Krupczynski, Lindi Sibeko, TreaAndrea Russworm, Elaine Ward, and John Reiff, this statement is designed to serve as a resource for community-engaged faculty adopting anti-racist pedagogy and practices.
“Collaboration, Reciprocity, and Partnership”: A great resource from IUPUI’s materials on building relationships with communities, including specific advice for both project planning and course planning.
“Literature on Collaborative Research with Indigenous Communities”: An excellent bibliography from Washington State University on collaboration, Indigenous research methods, and related topics.
To Play
Voyant Tools: This free, open source computational textual analysis tool creates visualizations of uploaded or copy-and-pasted text, such as word clouds, collocations, and frequency.
Omeka: Omeka is a content management system that allows you to share digital collections and create digital exhibits with archival materials. There is a free version with limited hosting and a self-hosted version. DEFCon Fellowship recipients and Mentors can email digitalethnicfutures@gmail.com and request access to a sandbox to play around with Omeka.
WordPress: WordPress is a content management system that allows you to create websites. There is a free version with limited hosting and a self-hosted version. DEFCon Fellowship recipients and Mentors can email digitalethnicfutures@gmail.com and request access to a sandbox to play around with WordPress.
Scalar: Scalar is a multimodal publishing tool that allows you to upload text, image, and other forms of content and create multiple routes through the content. There is a version hosted by Scalar and an option for self-hosting. DEFCon Fellowship recipients and Mentors can email digitalethnicfutures@gmail.com and request access to a sandbox to play around with WordPress.
Timeline.JS: This is a free, open source way of creating visually appealing timelines—and it’s as easy as filling out a Google Sheet.
Tableau for Teaching: Tableau is a data visualization platform that allows you to connect your data and create charts, graphs, maps, and dashboards. Tableau offers free licenses for instructors and students.
ArcGIS Story Maps: This free tool allows you to create interactive, web-based, map-driven stories and is relatively easy to use. The Humanities Story Map collection is a great way to get ideas for classroom projects!
