Recovering Black Speculative Space: Digital Humanities and the Re-Construction of a Black Future Industry

Julian Chambliss, Professor of English, Michigan State University
April 30, 2021
12:00-2:00pm CST

In her 2016 essay, “Making the Case for Black Digital Humanities,” Dr. Kim Gallon articulated a framework for how technology, employed in an “underexamined context” could further our understanding of a “racialized social construction” that shapes global society. Gallon’s call for black digital humanities has been manifested in DH projects that seek to recover, refine, and recontextualize race and culture questions. In this address, I will explore the manifestations of this Black DH ecosystem and articulate links between my own exploration of black speculative practice through real and imagined space as a manifestation of this Black DH framework.

Julian C. Chambliss is Professor of English with an appointment in History and the Val Berryman Curator of History at the MSU Museum at Michigan State University. In addition, he is a co-director for the Department of English Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab (DHLC) and a core participant in the MSU College of Arts & Letters’ Consortium for Critical Diversity in a Digital Age Research (CEDAR). His research interests focus on race, culture, and power in real and imagined spaces. An interdisciplinary scholar he has designed museum exhibitions, curated art shows, and created public history projects that trace community, ideology, and power in the United States.

Website: www.julianchambliss.com
Twitter: @JulianChambliss