Ravynn Stringfield is an MA/PhD student in American Studies at the College of William & Mary. Herwork considers representation of Blackness in comics and graphic novels through literary and historical lens, and though she hesitates to label herself a DHer, you can find her blogging her grad school experience on her site, Black Girl Does Grad School.
I got involved with Race, Memory and the Digital Humanities Symposium (#RMDHatWM or RMDH) by accident. When I first arrived at William & Mary as a new graduate student in 2016, unsure of my label of “Digital Humanities scholar,” I fell into Liz Losh’s Equality Lab. The hot topic at the first few meetings was the symposium. As it turned out, attending this conference addressed all the concerns I have about the Academy, the role of scholarship as activism, and how I fit into the Digital Humanities (DH) world.
Tag Archives: memory
Call for Guest Contributors on the Black Atlantic, c. 1400-1860
Calling all contributors!
December 12-16, 2016. The Junto will host an online roundtable on new scholarship and historical themes that enhance our understanding of slavery and the Black Atlantic, c. 1400-1860. We welcome posts that approach these topics through a focus including—but not limited to—recent scholarship, teaching, public history, or historical memory. Continue reading
Regional Remembering and Joseph Warren—America’s First President?
Since moving to Massachusetts, in September 2015, I’ve taken great pleasure in visiting some of Boston’s historic sites. I’ve walked (part of) the Freedom Trail and visited the Old State House, Faneuil Hall, the Granary Burying Ground, the Old South Church, and the Adams crypt in Quincy. A few weeks ago, I took it a step further: I went on a duck boat tour. While on the tour, the on-board historian told passengers that Joseph Warren would have been America’s first president if he was not killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill. *MIC DROP* Continue reading
Guest Post: Seneca Village Memory: The Problem of Forgetting
Today’s guest post comes from Alexander Manevitz (@historicities), a Ph.D. candidate in History at New York University.
When I started my doctoral program, “memory studies” struck me as more of a trend than a field. Something everyone talked about doing but couldn’t really define. After all, isn’t all history sort of a study of memories and how they’re made and used? Well, as with all things trendy, I was late to the party.[1] My first year of graduate school, I read Michele-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past and David Blight’s Race and Reunion within a few weeks of one another, and I realized how wrong I’d been, and my interest has only grown from there.[2] I have since turned to questions of memory and amnesia in my own scholarship.
My work focuses on Seneca Village, a once-vibrant community in upper Manhattan where community activism and urban development collided when the city evicted the residents to clear land for Central Park in 1857. Despite its significant role in the development of African-American social activism in the early republic and its place in relation to one of the young nation’s largest urban development projects, Seneca Village has been almost entirely forgotten in popular and scholarly memory.[3]
Then, Thenceforward, and Forever Free
We can’t let 2013 begin without marking the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which Abraham Lincoln issued on January 1, 1863.
Harold Holzer describes the anxiety many Americans felt on that day as they waited for confirmation of the act. Allen Guelzo weighs Lincoln’s legal options. Annette Gordon-Reed discusses the document’s significance. Eric Foner discusses what it did–and did not do. Continue reading
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