Unfinished Conversations

“Unfinished Conversations” (UC) is a new form of curatorial practice, public engagement, and programming to collect, give voice to, and provide a platform for untold histories, memories, and narratives related to the history of racialized slavery and its afterlives. By sharing experiences, histories and memories from people around the world who have experienced the legacies of racial slavery and colonialisms in different ways, scholars, educators and the public will have a new understanding of this global system and how it continues to shape communities today — in both shared and regionally specific ways. This website is a resource for educators and scholars about the history and legacies of global racial slavery and colonization told by those who have personally experienced it. The website is a part of the broader Unfinished Conversations collaborative project.

Contributors to this project include Tony Bogues (PI), Shana Weinberg (Simmons Center), Kiku Langford McDonald (Simmons Center), Tarika Sankar (CDS), Ashley Champagne (CDS), Elizabeth Yalkut (CDS), Patrick Rashleigh (CDS), Khanh Vo (CDS), Bianca Pallo (John Hay Library), Karyn De Paula Mota, Yannick Etoundi

Dunes Photovoice

The project seeks to engage residents of “The Dunes” encampment in arts-based methods designed to develop representations of the lived experience of homeless individuals and groups in illegalized encampments in greater Providence. Specifically, the project uses the participatory Photovoice method and discussion circles to engage residents in collecting photos and short audio recordings as well as creating captions for the images they capture. The images will be shared in a physical exhibit for residents of The Dunes, in an accessible website, and in the Brown Digital Repository. The project aims to engage public discourse around the nuanced and layered problem of homelessness in Rhode Island, a state rarely included in national conversations on homelessness, share stories and perspectives from unhoused people in Rhode Island, and generate dialogue and creative approaches to developing new solutions.

Contributors to this project include Karen Andres (co-PI), Megan Smith (co-PI), Tarika Sankar (CDS Lead), Ashley Champagne (CDS Lead), Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, Elizabeth Yalkut, Patrick Rashleigh

In the Wake of George Floyd

Since the May 2020 death of George Floyd, anti-racist social movements and  counter-movements have captured the attention of the public in the US and around the world. The In the Wake of George Floyd Project explores and documents the various forms these protests took in Rhode Island and the responses to them, especially by the state and the police. We are particularly interested in understanding how RI communities’ experiences of police violence and structural racism resonated with the broader national (and global) racial justice movement. The project also explores and records the responses of Brown University– departments, student organisations, senior administration, DIAP committees, inter alia, to these events. The project, a collaboration between The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and the Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS), documents these movements for social justice through a timeline of events, analysis of data, and interviews with community members. These protests and the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on Black and Latinx people,  reflecting deep racial, social, education and health disparities, underscore the importance of engaging more mindfully with the challenges that confront our communities.

Contributors to this project include Patsy Lewis (PI), Tarika Sankar (CDS Lead), Ashley Champagne (CDS Lead), Maria Victoria Taborelli, Shereece Rankine, Marcus Waller, Gabriela Venegas-Ramirez, Patrick Rashleigh, Cody Carvel, María Inclán, Kate Goldman, Karthik Saravana, Niyoshi Parekh, Isabella Garo, Liliana Mack, Alexis Gordon, and Sophia Ellis

Experiments in Artificial Intelligence & Digital Scholarship

The Center for Digital Scholarship is committed to exploring the use of AI for digital scholarship and digital humanities. Our project on “Experiments in Artificial Intelligence & Digital Scholarship” documents a few of the smaller projects and work our team is developing with researchers at Brown University to utilize advancements in AI for digital scholarship.

Contributors to this project include Patrick Rashleigh, Tarika Sankar, Khanh Vo, and Ashley Champagne

U2 Aerial Photography of Egypt

This project aims to digitize a series of recently declassified aerial photographs that document the Nile Delta and Nile Valley. Shot by U2 spy planes, this imagery provides much higher resolution images than any currently available imagery (for instance the CORONA satellite imagery that has revolutionized archaeology in this area in the past two decades), and shows the landscape prior to the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Given the relatively early date of the imagery, there is excellent potential for site discovery and heritage mapping—these images provide an invaluable view of a landscape prior to the extensive expansion of agriculture and urban development in Egypt that, over the past six decades, has significantly altered the ability to see earlier material remains. For those archaeologists interested in landscape studies or tracing settlement patterns, these aerial photos have significant potential to offer valuable insights. For researchers seeking to identify damaged or threatened cultural heritage sites the U2 imerary will be a valuable tool to support a variety of research efforts across and beyond the Egyptological community. Our aim is to make these images publicly available via a website that shows their location and how to download them from a digital repository. This project seeks to make these high resolution images free for any interested researchers and the general public.

Contributors to this project include Laurel Bestock (co-PI), Patrick Rashleigh, Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, Tarika Sankar, Oren Siegel (co-PI), Justin Uhr, Khanh Vo (CDS lead), and Elizabeth Yalkut

Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past

A digital archive and collection created in Omeka Classic in 2018-19.  The purpose of the project is to document, geolocate, describe, and interpret monuments, memorials, and sites of slavery. “Slave past” encompasses a broad range of commemorative works related to the Middle Passage and enslavement, the plantation as site of Black labor, the resistance to enslavement, the Underground Railroad, the participation of black soldiers in the Civil War, and emancipation and freedom. The project is most interested in telling stories about where, how, and why communities are engaging the slave past and memorializing it in public space including voices of stakeholders who engaged in the tasks of remembrance and commemoration of slavery.

The project database currently contains approximately 115 commemorative works to the slave past that are located in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Mexico, South America, and the United States. All commemorative works in the project have an Omeka record with identifying data, description, and geolocation information. Each commemorative work also includes photographs of the objects and landscapes in which they are located, collected through the PI’s travels to visit the varied sites of slavery. Also included on Omeka are exhibits that highlight specific memorials or groups of commemorative works with similar themes. The project is housed currently on Reclaim Hosting through a personal subscription. 

Contributors to this project include Renée Ater (PI), Mairelys Lemus-Rojas, Justin Uhr, Khanh Vo (CDS lead), Elizabeth Yalkut, Grace Yasumura (former project lead), Yui Suzuki (editor/data cleaner), and Nélari Figueroa Torres (undergraduate researcher)

Funding for this iteration of the project comes from The Office of the Provost, Brown University. The project has received funding from National Endowment of the Humanities-Mellon Foundation, Getty Research Institute, and the Smithsonian Institution Office of Fellowships. It has also been supported by the Michelle Smith Collaboratory of Visual Culture, Department of Art History at the University of Maryland and the National Humanities Center with Duke Digital Art History and Visual Culture Research Lab.

In and Out of Place: Resource Extractions from Treaty Lands

In and Out of Place: Resource Extractions from Treaty Lands uses a decolonizing, collaborative and Lakotan-centered approach to map scientific and military expeditions that entered the 1868 Treaty Territory in the Black Hills region from the mid-19th century to the turn of the 20th century. The project is a prototype map tracking Custer’s and other expeditions’ day-by-day travels across Treaty lands, contextualized with newspaper reports, journal entries, and other primary sources. “In and Out of Place” aims to generate interest and conversation among Lakotan and other Indigenous communities impacted by this history.

The project hopes to receive feedback from communities to guide its future directions and offer a space to think critically about the role of maps and other “objective” modes of scientific representation in the long history of American imperialism and settler colonialism.

Contributors: Craig Howe (co‑PI, CAIRNS); Lukas Rieppel (co‑PI); Tarika Sankar (CDS Lead); Khanh Vo (Digital Methods Lead); Audrey Wijono, Owen Blair, Cormac Collins, Dante Cavaz, Sofia Gonzalez, and Colten Edelman

New Frameworks for Born-Digital Art

This project will develop new frameworks for the long-term preservation and presentation of born-digital art. Preserving born-digital work can be challenging because platforms, hardware, and software are often updated or replaced, changing and even degrading how the original art is displayed. Through “containerization” — a portable, low-cost method of preserving and presenting the code, operating system, and text for experimental, born-digital art — future readers will still be able to view, distribute, collaborate on, and experiment with the original work even if its infrastructure has been altered or discontinued. This project was featured in the Brown Alumni Magazine in the April-May 2023 issue.

Contributors to this project include John Cayley, Ashley Champagne, Patrick Rashleigh, Cody Carvel, Hilary Wang.

Data For Publications

This collection contains open and publicly-funded data sets created by Brown University faculty and student researchers. Increasingly, publishers, and funders are requiring that protocols, data sets, metadata, and code underlying published research be retained and preserved, their locations cited within publications, and shared with other researchers and the public. The deposits here endeavor to be in line with FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

While Herbarium (plant specimen archive) collections have increasingly been digitized and made available online, digitized herbarium collections remain somewhat inaccessible to large portions of the population—in large part because the interfaces to these collections assume the user has specialized knowledge of plants, knows what they are looking for, and is deeply engaged.

Building on previous experimental interface work, the Herbarium User Experience project (HerbUX) seeks to address this problem by generating a user study / needs document by talking to herbarium stakeholders (undergraduate science educators, herbarium staff, and museum professionals), and generating interface proposals based on the findings of the user study.

HerbUX is a collaboration between CDS, the Brown University Herbarium, and the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum, and is generously funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Contributors to this project include Patrick Rashleigh (PI, CDS Lead), Rebecca Kartzinel(Co-PI, Herbarium Faculty Co-Director), Tim Whitfeld (Bell Museum Herbarium Collections Manager)

Black Maternal Health

The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately impacting the African-American community. A recent analysis indicates that counties with majority African-American populations account for more than 50% of COVID-19 cases and 60% of deaths. The toll on African-American women could be even greater, as they are overrepresented in low-income essential jobs, such as nursing aides, sanitation and food service where social distancing may not be an option. Additionally, African-American women are more likely to have risk factors for COVID-19, including hypertension and obesity. The occupational and health risks associated with COVID-19 may further exacerbate adverse birth outcomes among African-American women, including higher risk for maternal and infant mortality, as well as low birth weight. To this end, it is important to document the health, social and mental health concerns regarding pregnancy for Black/African-American women during the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this project is to gain a better understanding of concerns being shared on twitter related to pregnancy for Black/African-American women during the COVID-19 crisis. We hope to use this information to better understand the needs of Black/African-American women and to inform interventions to appropriately address these needs.

Contributors to this project include Adam Bradley, Ashley Champagne (CDS Lead), Patrick Rashleigh, Justin Uhr.

A Mother’s Cry

A Mother’s Cry is the harrowing story of Marcos’s incarceration and his family’s efforts to locate him and obtain his release. Marcosï’s mother, Lina Penna Sattamini, was living in the United States and working for the U.S. State Department when her son was captured.