My name is Vanessa Jackson, and I use she/they pronouns. I’m a double major in Political Science and Africana Studies.
As a Political Science and Africana Studies major, I’m often examining history; specifically, American history and, in contrast, the history of Black people across the diaspora. Of course, those two aspects of history are starkly different; those differences highlight the significance of certain lives and lived experiences. I believe that will also be the case for this course considering that we’re learning about a group of people that have been significantly disadvantaged on a larger scale throughout history and even presently. Also, the act of exploring this topic digitally because, in that regard, we have to depend on what information is accessible digitally, who’s telling these stories, and who those stories center. I imagine that digitally exploring Indigenous people’s history will be difficult -but not impossible- because, again, they’re very often overlooked.
The upcoming topics I’m excited about are “Storytelling Traditions, Oral History, and Podcasting” and “Digital Art History, Visual, and Material Culture,” In regards to the former, this is interesting because (1) the stories of minority groups are often overshadowed by the culture and experiences of the majority–making their stories and the distribution of their stories even more important and (2) the way that stories are told will be different for each subject. In like manner, the latter topic is so significant because oral history, art, and visuals aren’t preferred among archivists, who center preservation around physical materials. Also, the digitalization of these histories is vital not only to these people’s lives but also to the accessibility within the community. On the other hand, I’m nervous about the topic of “Geospatial Analysis and Mapping” because I don’t completely understand what it means to map out history from a geospatial reference. Not to mention, I imagine that this process is even more complex with it being digital.
I believe, to do history “digitally,” means to digitalize the stories of people, including public and private histories, in a quantitative method. A major function of digitalization is the accessibility of information on a large scale. The digital mapping of people’s lives is the thing that I’m not interested in during this course. I hope that this course will teach me how to accommodate the preservation of information based on the needs of certain individuals, and how to make the information available to all people, not just academics or financially stable individuals.
Vanessa– thank you so much for this introduction and welcome to the class! I am glad you’re here. I think your interests and background in both Political Science and Africana Studies are going to intersect with the topics of this course very well, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the topics we cover in discussion.
Your thoughts on the representation of Indigenous history through digital mediums touches on a key point that we will continually revisit throughout the course. Even in building the syllabus for this class, I struggled at times to find resources, projects, and other information (particularly by Indigenous authors), because Native digital history is still an emerging field. With that said, there are still lots of incredible scholars out there and it is so important to present this information through the voices and experiences of Indigenous people themselves.
I completely understand your apprehension about the week on digital mapping, and that is completely expected. On one end of the spectrum it can be very complex– such as coding your own map– yet there are a number of beginner tools to help us get started and still create powerful maps. This is actually one of my favorite topics close to my own research, because I am interested in how Indigenous perceptions of space and place can be used to challenge and “deconstruct” settler placemaking. We will explore questions like how space is socially constructed, how space is created and presented in digital forms, and how we can use digital maps to ask and answer questions.
Thank you for all of these thoughts and I look forward to your contributions throughout the course!