"DH by Design: Alternative Origin Stories for the Digital Humanities." A DH at Berkeley Summer Institute Keynote Address by Tara McPherson, Associate Professor of Critical Studies at USC

The story of the digital humanities is often narrated at a decades-long history of the computational manipulation of print.  What alternative histories are concealed by such a story? How might we imagine DH differently if we move beyond a focus on text toward multimodal expression and design?  What audiences might such work reach? This talk will trace some of the alternate histories of DH, paying particular attention to the visual and the political by engaging the work of feminists, artists, and scholars of color.  I will also consider how scholarly evidence might be engaged anew through the aesthetic possibilities of the digital archive.  By taking up the work of the Vectors Lab, I will approach these questions through concrete examples of digital scholarship today. Tara McPherson is Associate Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.