Category Archives: Academia

Caribbean Scholarship in the Digital Age is a webinar series showcasing digital and/as public research and teaching in Caribbean Studies. The series provides a collaborative space for professionals to share on projects and experiences to foster communication and support our shared constellations of communities of practice.
Please join us for an upcoming event, Ramble Bahamas, May 7, 2018, 11am-12pm (Miami Time).
Presenters: Dr. Tracey Thompson and Jessica Dawson, University of The Bahamas
Click here to participate in the online event: https://ufl.zoom.us/j/8927374603
About the Presentation:
2017 marked the fiftieth anniversary of a watershed in Bahamian political life: the advent of majority rule. So as to pay tribute to that anniversary in an appealing and enduring way, “From Dat Time”: The Oral & Public History Institute of the University of The Bahamas (“FDT”) launched an ambitious venture in the field of digital humanities. The “FDT” team, guided by the Institute’s mandate to develop curricular and recreational materials in a variety of media, committed itself to fashioning a digital heritage trail through which Bahamian students could retrace important steps in the Bahamian political story. The team went further: it envisioned building a platform that could serve as a publication engine for all research undertaken by the Institute. Such a platform, so the team judged, would augment limited scholarly publication in the field of Bahamian political history. It would widen access to historical literature among students and educators located throughout the far-flung Bahamian archipelago. It would draw on the Institute’s strength as a vehicle devoted to collecting and preserving oral narratives of community elders, many of whom had played significant roles in social, educational, and political transformations in the mid-1900s. It would press into service a media archive consisting of rare photos and film from the 1960s and 1970s – images long hidden from public view. The result of the team’s investment was Ramble Bahamas. Utilizing the Omeka content management system and the Curatescape framework, Ramble Bahamas presents geographically-tagged exhibits about historically significant places and objects in The Bahamas. Each exhibit is comprised of a narrative outlining the importance of the location or object, relevant historic and contemporary images, and oral history audio or video clips in which informed narrators speak of events associated with the location or object. Since its launch in November 2016, Ramble Bahamas has been introduced to students at the University of The Bahamas and to high school teachers of History and Geography. Plans are under way to integrate the platform into national curricula in History so as to advance the nation-building mandate of the university.
About the Speakers:
Tracey Thompson, PhD: As Director of “From Dat Time”: The Oral & Public History Institute of the University of The Bahamas, Tracey Thompson oversees the research programme and administrative processes of the institute. Tracey has been involved in research, teaching, and administration at the University of The Bahamas for more than twenty-five years. Her research foci lie principally in African and African Diaspora History, in Philosophy of History, in Oral History, and in Public History.
Jessica Dawson, MA: In her capacity as Public History Fellow in Research & Technology for “From Dat Time”: The Oral & Public History Institute of the University of The Bahamas, Jessica Dawson acted as webmaster and curator for Ramble Bahamas. Prior to this, she taught tertiary courses in the field of cultural anthropology and worked in historic preservation. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Washington State University and an M.A. in American Studies & Public History from Youngstown State University.
About the Caribbean Scholarship in the Digital Age Webinar Series:
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), in partnership with the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries (ACURIL), the Graduate School of Information Sciences and Technologies of the University of Puerto Rico, the Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives roundtable (LACCHA)of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), and the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), has organized a series of online events, Caribbean Scholarship in the Digital Age, a webinar series showcasing digital and/as public research and teaching in Caribbean Studies. The series provides a collaborative space for professionals to share on projects and experiences to foster communication and support our shared constellations of communities of practice.
Webinars in the 2018 series are:

• April 2, 11:30-12:30pm: Digitization Training for dLOC Contributors (English)
  • Presented by Laura Perry, University of Florida
• April 9, 11am-12pm: Demystifying Digital History (English)
  • Presented by Dr. Debbie McCollin, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad
• May 7, 11am-12pm: Ramble Bahamas (English)
  • Presented by Dr. Tracey Thompson and Jessica Dawson, University of The Bahamas (Facilitator: Crystal Felima)
• May 16, 11am-12pm: Endangered Archives Digitization Grant and More (French)
  • Presenter: Marie-France Guillaume, Bibliothèque Haïtienne des Frères de l’Instruction Chrètienne (Facilitator: Dr. Hélène Huet)

Please join us for next stage conversations at ACURIL’s 2018 annual conference, focusing on Open Access in Caribbean Libraries, Archives and Museums: Opportunities, Challenges and Future Directions http://acuril2018republicadominicana.com/
Twitter: #digcaribbeanscholarship