HILT 2020: Latinx Digital Praxis

Registration is open for Humanities Intensive Learning and Training (HILT) 2020. HILT is a 5-day training institute that includes keynotes, ignite talks, and local cultural heritage excursions for researchers, students, early career scholars and cultural heritage professionals who seek to learn more about Digital Humanities theory, practice, and culture. In addition to the conference’s day-time sessions, participants can enjoy opportunities to explore the city through local dining and special events.

This year, HILT will take place at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska, May 18-22, 2020. Scholarships to help defray costs are available for students and groups of 5 or more, as well as UNL faculty, staff, and students. (These cannot be combined.) To apply, click here. Registration is open till May 1, 2020.

Instructors

Carolina Villarroel, Ph.D., C.A. Brown Foundation Director of Research, Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage, University of Houston

Gabriela Baeza Ventura, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Spanish, University of Houston

Latinx Digital Praxis: From the Archive to the Digital

Latinx Digital Praxis: From the Archive to the Digital explores analog and digital methodologies to create scholarship and knowledge around the experiences of US Latinx peoples. Participants will be introduced to the process of developing toolkits and resources to explore archival sources of Latinx peoples while taking into account their historical, cultural and political context. Participants will be guided through processes involved in rescuing materials that have been or could fall through the cracks of the institutional apparatus to ask why and how we can rethink these processes in order to incorporate these underrepresented communities and their history within the institutional discourse. We will interrogate the lived experiences of transnational, exile, native, immigrant peoples which are crucial at the time of researching, reading, understanding and writing about them.

Questions that this course will cover include, but are not limited to:

How do we approach US Latinx experience? How do we understand the importance of ethnic materials in the US? How do we approach and incorporate languages other than English into DH? How to identify materials for future projects (research, copyright issues, etc.)? How do we create meaningful and respectful data? How do we work with the community owners of the knowledge? How do we create knowledge and scholarship based on these materials? How do we engage our local and immediate communities?

We expect participants will complete this course with knowledge of how to use digital surrogates to expand access and dissemination of underrepresented collections, as well as develop  plans for community-building and partnerships that could help further the mission and scope of the projects. The course uses an interdisciplinary approach that at its very base questions archival politics and praxis. Additionally, participants will learn about strategies necessary to advocate for programming, grant writing, and faculty and student engagement (undergraduate and graduate).No prior technical knowledge is required in this course. Anyone with an interest in Latinx studies and digital humanities is welcome.This course is based on the work of the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage program located at the University of Houston, one of the premier research programs for US Latinx scholarship with a trajectory of more than 27 years of locating, preserving, and making available the written legacy of Latinx in the US since colonial times until 1960.

For more information about HILT, including costs, please visit: http://dhtraining.org/hilt/conferences/hilt-2020/