Feature Friday: Getting Black Humanities Research on the Map
Posted September 19, 2024 in Educational Technology News, Feature Friday, Featured News, Giving to JMU Libraries News, JMU Libraries News
For the last nine years, JMU faculty member Mollie Godfrey and former faculty member Seán McCarthy have been working alongside local Harrisonburg community members and students on a project to recover the histories of a local Black teacher–Lucy F. Simms–and the Harrisonburg school named in her honor. The Celebrating Simms project not only commemorates a beloved teacher and a school that was a cornerstone of the Black community in Harrisonburg for decades, it also helps students learn about local history and adds to our nation’s historical record of the experiences of the Black community before, during, and after desegregation.
But small, rural projects on Black history and culture can be hard to find. “We felt very alone, frankly,” Seán recalls. “We were imagining what it would be like to have an interactive map where we could easily find projects like the Simms project around the country. Were they clustered around cities where there are research institutions? Where are the stories not being told?”
“Our goal was to make it easier to find and support Black history and culture projects that actively engage with audiences beyond the university. This includes digital projects but also other public-facing projects like exhibits, walking tours, and more,” adds Mollie. “We especially wanted to make it easier to find smaller projects, and not just the huge grant-funded projects in major cities that tend to get a lot of attention already. Smaller projects on Black history and culture are everywhere, but a lot of that work is kind of invisible. It can also be pretty hard to sustain these projects, because the funding tends to go to certain places and not others. In thinking about this, we were remembering our own funding difficulties with the Simms project, as well as those of our local community partners. Funding and visibility are often even harder for small organizations or projects that are not attached to a university.”
With help from JMU Libraries, Mollie and Seán created an interactive map of Black Digital and Public Humanities projects across the globe. Having partnered with JMU Libraries on many digital projects in the past, Mollie and Seán knew the Libraries could partner with them to make their idea a reality. Mollie and Seán wanted to provide a resource that would allow users to search for Black humanities projects based not only on topic or theme, but also on location, how they’re funded or staffed, and whether they’re community-run or run by academics. Using data visualization software called Tableau, Mollie and Seán worked with students and JMU Libraries to create a website called Mapping the Black Digital and Public Humanities that includes a map detailing over 450 Black humanities projects, and that number is growing.
“What JMU Libraries does is allow faculty to get beyond wondering,” Seán reflects. “There’s a real gap between wondering whether you can do something and applying for a grant. So to have folks in the Libraries who are trained in digital humanities work is such a great gift, because we can do so much stuff that we could never do on our own. We just don’t have the time or the expertise. I think it’s important as JMU becomes a more research-intensive university that we have the opportunity to collaborate with people who have both technical ability and research expertise.”
Let’s hear more from Mollie and Seán!
What are some of the most interesting projects on the map?
Seán McCarthy: “One that’s really close to my heart is a project called “Black and Irish.” It’s an Instagram-focused project on the young Black community in Ireland, which has grown over the last 20 years to become a really visible, vibrant presence. And they’ve got a great Instagram and online presence. Most of the projects on the map are U.S.-based, but we’re branching out into international stuff.”
Mollie Godfrey: “I love all these projects. There’s a lovely project called Project STAND that’s about Black student organizing during the 1960s, and it looks at the work that students did to revolutionize the university and create Black Studies programs to start hiring Black faculty. The project honors local, grassroots organizing, and the network they have created allows you to search for materials across almost a hundred different universities.”
How did you get connected with the Libraries?
Seán McCarthy: “We work with Kevin Hegg [the Head of Digital Projects in JMU Libraries] all the time. Kevin had already been doing data visualization and different kinds of mapping projects. Then we had Iliana Cosme-Brooks, a graduate student in WRTC [and Libraries graduate assistant], come on board. She and Kevin really did the heavy lifting to get our data set [of Black humanities projects] into an interactive map. It started out as an idea in a paper that was published last year, and it took on a life of its own once we had the team together, and Iliana driving the research and technology behind it.”
Mollie Godfrey: “We thought we were going to spend a year with Iliana figuring out if this was doable, and she just went ahead and did it. We developed the categories we wanted to use with her and Kevin, and she did a deep dive into over 450 projects and combed through their websites to categorize them.”
Were any other students involved in the project?
Seán McCarthy: “Mollie was teaching a graduate class in Black Digital Humanities. In the same way that we got a class involved in building the Celebrating Simms project, we got these students to build out the website and comb through the data. What we’re good at is impact-driven research that involves students and faculty.”
Mollie Godfrey: “The students spent the first half of the class reading and exploring projects in the Black digital humanities and learning about key terms. Like, what does funding look like in this field? What do ethics look like in terms of student involvement in these kinds of projects? So when they finally were assigned [to review] 30 projects each, they already had the data that Iliana had collected, and their job was to fine-tune it and reach out to each project and make sure [our data about it] was accurate and that we had project directors’ consent to include their project on the map.”
Now let’s hear from some of the Libraries folks who helped to create the map!
Iliana, what was it like for you as a graduate assistant working on this project?
Iliana Cosme-Brooks: “It’s been a huge learning experience. I don’t have a background in Black history, Black digital humanities, or anything like that. So this was a wash of new information that was just incredibly interesting. I never thought that I’d work on something so important this early in my academic and professional career. If you told my 10-year-old self that I’d be working in a library in 12 years, I would have been so tickled.”
Kevin, you’re the Head of Digital Projects, part of the Digital Scholarship and Distinctive Collections department in JMU Libraries. How did your team help with this project?
Kevin Hegg: “I did some consultations with Iliana on using Tableau [data visualization software]. Kirsten Mlodynia [Digital Projects Specialist in JMU Libraries] helped Mollie’s graduate class build the website.Then I wrote code to eliminate some tedious, redundant tasks, saving us over 200 hours of copying and pasting. The data set behind everything you see on the website is a fancy spreadsheet, and we were able to write some code to convert each of the 450 rows into blog posts that you’ll see on the site.”
Seán and Mollie…
Is this project more about research or teaching? And does JMU’s new R2 classification for “high research activity” affect your approach?
Mollie Godfrey: “What I’d like to stress—which has been central to all of the projects that we’ve done together—is that treating JMU as a space that emphasizes and cares about teaching undergraduates as we move to R2 status gives us an opportunity to work with undergraduate students as research partners. Many undergraduate students don’t have the opportunity to do research or to think about themselves as researchers. This is a way of making research visible and available to these students. We have seen lots of our former undergrads go off to graduate school or become teachers based on the strength of this kind of experience.They also brought things to the projects that we couldn’t have done on our own. They’re bringing their own experiences to the project in ways that can actually shape it.”
Seán McCarthy: “I would emphasize that collaboration is happening with faculty, students, the Digital Projects team in the Libraries, and community partners. We’re really working with each other rather than for each other. The students aren’t working for us. We’re developing this with them, and same with Digital Projects and community partners. We’ve got ongoing projects with members of the community, and that’s a really important and deep aspect of what is possible at JMU.”
Mollie Godfrey: “That was one of the things that really motivated us. A lot of the big articles about best practices in the digital humanities are often about how you do this work at an R1 [a Doctoral university with the highest research activity], which is just different–you have easier access to resources like teams of graduate students, centrally-supported research centers, or millions of dollars in grant funds. You need different strategies [for an R2 university like JMU]. But it’s not just a need–it’s also an opportunity. Part of the mapping project was to showcase all these different kinds of universities and community groups who are figuring out how to make this work happen.”
Seán McCarthy: “It’s a really different way of doing it than applying for grants where you have a grand scheme in place, detailed from the get-go. We almost sandbox things because we’ve got people who’ve got access to the technology and the know-how and are willing. We come to Kevin with very big ideas, and he’s like, ‘Sure, let’s give it a go.’ That’s worth celebrating.”
Do you have any advice for other faculty that might be interested in working with Digital Projects in JMU Libraries?
Mollie Godfrey: “First, just really think about your students as research partners so they’re not just doing a task for you but have space to innovate, to create, to theorize. The second thing is to think about projects as having phases or stages–start with something small and see how it goes. ‘Design thinking’ is the way Seán would talk about this, where you’re prototyping, and that can lead to a better prototype or a bigger phase. I think that’s also respectful of the Digital Projects team’s time. They might be able to commit to a small project, not a big one. And if you can phase things out, that makes it easier to partner with all the people involved.”
Seán McCarthy: “And don’t be afraid to ask. You might have a great idea and no idea about how to implement it. Part of the process for the Libraries’ Digital Projects team is to consult with you and make that idea realizable, which might change it some. But don’t be afraid to reach out and go, ‘Hey, I’ve got this wild idea. How would we go about doing this?’ Because they’re very good at scoping those kinds of things, and that is hugely valuable.”
How do you see this project expanding in the future?
Mollie Godfrey: “Our current goals are to start adding more public humanities projects and projects from around the globe, not just America. Iliana has been working to come up with lists of African projects, South American projects, Caribbean projects in particular, as well as public humanities projects. That’s short term. Long term, we’re thinking about getting some grant funding to sustain the project. So we’re actually thinking about a digital infrastructure funding project. We’re also thinking about the viability and ethics of sharing the data set with other researchers who might be interested in working with it. We’ve also had some interest in possibly putting together an edited book volume that would invite contributors to work with the data.”
Seán McCarthy: “We’ve talked about all sorts of possible tie-ins, like podcasts, guest curators, social media. But one thing at a time.”
What kind of feedback have you been getting on the project?
Seán McCarthy: “The feedback has been really good, and people are excited to participate. When we did a soft launch last May, that created quite a stir on Twitter/X. There were a lot of Black studies and Black digital humanities folks who circulated it really quickly, even though we were still in beta mode at the time. We also got an honorable mention in the American Studies Association Digital Projects caucus, the Garfinkel Prize for 2022. We were invited to write for the Humanities for All blog, an amazing resource for public humanities projects.”
Mollie Godfrey: “On the News and Awards page on our website, Iliana created links to stories about it, including a couple of social media posts that went viral. One shared by Left of Black in June 2023 got almost 30,000 shares. It’s just been amazing. People were hungry for the visibility, because everyone’s working so hard, and aside from journals and conferences, the field hasn’t really had the infrastructure for that work to be easily shared. I’ve also heard a lot from folks who were excited to share the map with their students.”
Seán McCarthy: “There’s a submission form on the website so anyone can submit new projects. We’re always happy to hear from people that read the work or who’ve got ideas for projects to be included.”
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Seán McCarthy: “Just a big shout-out to the Digital Projects team in the Libraries, because they’re creating all these possibilities for us to do this kind of work that literally would be impossible. It would be impossible. There’s no way we could have done this without library support.”