A quote that resonated with me in The Digital Humanities Moment was by Stephen Ramsay from his talk “Who’s In and Who’s Out” from the 2011 Modern Language Association Convention, “If you are not making anything, you are not . . . a Digital Humanist.” I feel like I am still new to the DH field, but if this statement is true, the sites presented for this weeks ‘sites to explore’ justify this sentiment.
Torn Apart/ Separados is a site I was first introduced to at NYCDH ’19. The project was powerful to hear about then and is still remarkable to explore. Alex Gil spoke about the project at the conference, and its intent, and I immediately thought to myself “how can one person do all of this research by themself?” As I soon found out, and continue to realize, great work is usually a collaboration between many minds. The layout to the map is simple and straight to the point. The visitor to the site is prompted with a note of the sites purpose and then left to explore the thousands of plots on the map. A legend at the bottom showcases the three different sized and colored points. The top header allows the viewer to observe additional visualizations, change between the two versions created, read a description of the project, showcases allied organizations, bibliography, and the 100s of researchers and contributors to the site.
Caribbean Digital was another informative site to explore. During our first class I was thinking if there was already a DH presence in the Caribbean. This site confirmed to me that, yes, there is. One of the first aspects of the conference I searched for was the location. It was wonderful to see that the site of the conference was held within the Caribbean. One of the first links when brought to the site directs the viewer to a YouTube channel with videos of sections of the conference. Which I feel is important for allowing a greater audience to enjoy and feel included. Another exciting aspect was that you could go to older versions of the conference’s webpage.
Create Caribbean Projects and ECDA both confirmed my thoughts on DH in the Caribbean. They had numerous projects to showcase detailing the locations rich history with pedagogical tools to encourage the creation of more projects.
