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2023 Latin American & Caribbean Digital Humanities Symposium 

The University of Florida and the University of North Florida will host their first Latin America & Caribbean Digital Humanities Symposium at the George A. Smathers Libraries in Gainesville FL on Friday, March 3, 2023. 

We seek proposals for papers, posters, and lightning rounds, on any topic related to Digital Humanities focusing on Latin America and Caribbean Studies. We welcome proposals not only from those in higher education, including students, faculty and staff, but also from cultural institutions and other organizations doing work in the digital humanities. 

Proposals of no more than 250 words may be submitted in English, Spanish, or French by February 5, 2023. We encourage people to submit proposals for projects at any stage of completion. You can submit your proposal using our submission form. 

This is an in-person event. For anyone interested in participating remotely, please consider submitting a proposal for possible inclusion in the Florida Digital Humanities Consortium (FLDH) Webinar Series (information to come soon). 

Position Vacancy Announcement: African American Studies Librarian at UF

African American Studies Librarian

Assistant University Librarian or Associate University Librarian

University of Florida

George A. Smathers Libraries

The University of Florida’s George A. Smathers Libraries seek a candidate for the African American Studies Librarian position, who will be responsible for the overall development and management in all formats of the African American Studies collections in Library West, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences disciplines. This position also serves as a key partner, collaborating with and advising Special and Area Studies Collections (SASC) on related African American collections and programming. This is a year-round (12 month) tenure-track library faculty position.

The position supports the African American Studies Program, as well as related interdisciplinary programs offered by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in areas such as the Departments of English and History. Responsibilities include analyzing the University’s programs in and related to African American studies, collaborating with librarians and academic faculty to establish collection profiles and selection guidelines, and evaluating existing collection strengths and current collecting intensities.  The position collaborates with other employees, providing support in the broader areas of the humanities and social sciences, especially overlapping, interdisciplinary areas; provides general and specialized subject area reference services, research assistance, and library instruction; and participates in branch and libraries-wide outreach programming.

The search will remain open until January 24, 2023, and applications will be reviewed as received. For a full description of the position and instructions on how to apply, please refer to the George A. Smathers Libraries faculty recruitment webpage at https://hr.uflib.ufl.edu/prospective-employees/current-openings/vacant-faculty-positions/.

The University of Florida is an equal opportunity employer and is strongly committed to the diversity of our faculty and staff. Applicants from a broad spectrum of people, including members of ethnic minorities and disabled persons, are especially encouraged to apply.

Publication of our Book Chapter: “An Institute-Based Approach to OER in Digital Caribbean Studies”

I am very excited to announce that our book chapter discussing our May 2019 NEH institute has been published in the open access edited volume Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Social Justice, published by the Association of College and Research Libraries. The book is available online as an Open Access PDF and we are chapter 16.

New Recording of Charlotte Denoël’s Presentation: “Preserving and Disseminating Medieval French Manuscript Heritage. Current Research Programs and Future Perspectives at the Bibliothèque national de France.”

The video recording of Charlotte Denoël’s Presentation Preserving and Disseminating Medieval French Manuscript Heritage : Current Research Programs and Future Perspectives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France is now available online.

CIFNAL Speaker Series on June 10: “Preserving and Disseminating Medieval French Manuscript Heritage : Current Research Programs and Future Perspectives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France “

Join us on June 10 at 12pm EDT for the last session of the CIFNAL Speaker Series.

To register: https://ufl.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUrcOCpqTkqGtyZGvwVCpRkJY4Us88EWBxL

Preserving and Disseminating Medieval French Manuscript Heritage : Current Research Programs and Future Perspectives at the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Heir to the collections of the kings of France, the Bibliothèque nationale de France holds one of the largest collections of medieval manuscripts in the world, with nearly 40,000 documents. This collection, which continues to grow through purchases and donations, covers all fields of knowledge and includes many illuminated manuscripts.  The BnF preserves and promotes this collection through its online resources (Archives and Manuscripts catalog, Gallica digital library, Mandragore database). The BnF also leads or participates in numerous national or international research programs and uses artificial intelligence technologies to exploit manuscript corpora in order to support new research practices and new appropriations of this French medieval heritage.

Charlotte Denoël is archivist paleograph and chief curator at the Department of Manuscripts of the Bibliothèque nationale de France where she is in charge of the medieval service. In 2019-2020, she was member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Her research on the manuscripts focuses on the Early and High Middle Ages and addresses images in a transdisciplinary perspective. Manuscripts and their decoration are analyzed through the prism of cultural history, history of art, and iconography. Among her current projects are a survey of manuscripts illuminated in France during the 10thand 11th centuries (Harvey Miller) and a collective book about the links between medieval art and contemporary art (Brepols).
Charlotte Denoël curated four exhibitions on the art of the Early and High Middle Ages, “Trésors carolingiens” (BnF, 2007), “Les temps mérovingiens” (Musée de Cluny, 2016), “Make it New. Carte blanche à Jan Dibbets” (BnF, 2018), and “Chefs d’œuvre romans de Saint-Martial de Limoges » (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges, 2019).
She participated in major research programs at the BnF which include digitization, scientific description, restoration, and/or dissemination of some corpus of manuscripts: Europeana Regia (2009-2012), Biblissima (2013-2019), and the Polonsky program “France-Angleterre, 700-1200: manuscrits médiévaux de la BnF et de la British Library” (2016-2018).

CIFNAL Speaker Series May 20

Join us on May 20 at 12pm EDT for a presentation by Quinn Dombrowski entitled “Corpus Hebdo: Building Infrastructure for Multilingual Digital Humanities.” Register here.

“Corpus Hebdo: Building Infrastructure for Multilingual Digital Humanities”

The computational analysis of literature and other cultural media has recently blossomed within the interdisciplinary sub-field of “cultural analytics”, a community within the larger tent of digital humanities. The ability to track patterns across cultural production at a larger scale than previously feasible holds a great deal of promise as an avenue of research, but it depends on language-specific technical and data infrastructure. This talk will explore the state of this infrastructure for scholars of Francophone literatures and cultures, compared to what’s available for scholars of the Anglophone world. As “data” and “computation” make larger inroads in the humanities, how can librarians apply their linguistic and cultural expertise to the table in developing some of the necessary resources for supporting this new kind of scholarship? This talk will suggest opportunities for collaboration and advocacy that can make a difference for the future of Francophone cultural analytics.

Quinn Dombrowski is the Academic Technology Specialist in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and in the Library, at Stanford University. Prior to coming to Stanford in 2018, Quinn’s many DH adventures included supporting the high-performance computing cluster at UC Berkeley, running the DiRT tool directory with support from the Mellon Foundation, writing books on Drupal for Humanists and University of Chicago library graffiti, and working on the program staff of Project Bamboo, a failed digital humanities cyberinfrastructure initiative.  Quinn has a BA/MA in Slavic Linguistics from the University of Chicago, and an MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since coming to Stanford, Quinn has supported numerous non-English DH projects, taught courses on non-English DH, started a Textile Makerspace, developed a tabletop roleplaying game to teach DH project management, explored trends in multilingual Harry Potter fanfic, and started the Data-Sitters Club, a feminist DH pedagogy and research group focused on Ann M. Martin’s 90’s girls series “The Baby-Sitters Club”. Quinn is currently co-VP of the Association for Computers and the Humanities along with Roopika Risam, and advocates for better support for DH in languages other than English.

CIFNAL Speaker Series April 15

Join us on April 15 (12pm EDT) for Nathan H. Dize’s presentation: “Translating Haiti in the Archives of Predominantly White Institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” Register here.

Translating Haiti in the Archives of Predominantly White Institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities 

Where is Haiti located in institutional archives of US universities? How is the Caribbean nation translated, or made legible to researchers and visitors of these archives? How is Haiti translated in the archives of Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) versus Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)? And how might these translations help us create more durable, accessible, and open collections in the future?

Nathan H. Dize will talk about his experience working, researching, and volunteering at numerous colleges and universities in the United States, including: Fisk University, Morgan State University, West Virginia State University, the University of Florida, the University of Maryland in College Park, Vanderbilt University, and Oberlin College.

Nathan H. Dize is Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Oberlin College. His work is situated at the crossroads of literary and intellectual history, cultural studies, translation studies, and the digital humanities. Nathan is particularly interested in how literature enables Haitians to practice intimate and collective rites of mourning across generations and beyond national borders. He is the translator of three Haitian novels: The Immortals by Makenzy Orcel (SUNY Press, 2020), I Am Alive by Kettly Mars (UVA Press, 2022), and Antoine des Gommiers by Lyonel Trouillot (Schaffner Press, 2023). Nathan has written for publications such as archipelagos, Caribbean Quarterly, Francosphères, the Journal of Haitian Studies, sx salon, and Transition; he also serves on the editorial board of the online magazine, ReadinginTranslation.com.

You can find recordings from the previous presentations on the CIFNAL Speaker Series’ page.