Global Scholars Seminar

Smiling scholars pose for a photo

By introducing students to undergraduate research, providing them with opportunities to learn more about study and research abroad, and helping them think about ways they might integrate international into their post-graduate lives, the seminar serves as the foundation for the Global Scholars program.

 

2025 Seminar: Digital Humanities, Technology, and Postcolonial Cultures

Thursdays | 1:00-3:30 | Venue TBD

Dr. James Yeku, Associate Professor of African Digital Humanities

Digital humanities as the interdisciplinary study of the application of digital technology tools and platforms to traditional humanities inquiry enables an understanding of how these tools go beyond print culture and become used in humanities research and beyond. In this introduction to the digital humanities (DH), students are invited to think critically about the role of digital technologies in the humanities through the lens of postcolonial studies. Rather than focusing primarily on the digital cultural record from canonical North American and Western European authors and artists, this seminar overturns the centrality of such dominant modes of thinking and introduces students to how computational methods enable a deeper understanding of postcolonial knowledge-making. The seminar aims to cover how the digital humanities promote the democratization of knowledge and access to information, considering the gaps and absences in the field. Participants will also examine how a postcolonial (and even decolonial) approach might shape the larger field of DH and foster principles of collaboration and community. In light of Africa and other places in the Global South, we will explore topics such as digital archives and their historical holdings that overlap with the legacies of colonialism, textual analysis, social media and digital storytelling, mapping and visualization. We will investigate what ethical and political considerations result in digital representations of the histories and cultures of these regions.

Some readings

  1. Roopika Risam, New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy
  2. Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, “A DH That Matters” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019
  3. Kim Gallon, “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities”
  4. Kelly Baker Josephs and Roopika Risam, “Digital Black Atlantic Introduction”
  5. James Yeku, “Social Media Images as Digital Sources for West African Urban History”

Some websites

  1. African Digital Heritage: https://africandigitalheritage.org/category/digitisation/
  2. Digitized Nigerian Newspapers: https://archivi.ng/
  3. Open Restitution Project: https://openrestitution.africa/