Humanidades Digitales is the Spanish name for Digital Humanities (DH). While this might be seen as a mere translation, for many of us it materializes our scholarship and everyday experience that moves between languages, communities, and connections to diverse geographies.

In the context of the US, it also implies acknowledging that Spanish has been spoken in these territories for centuries– as both, English and Spanish, have a colonial history. Additionally, naming DH in Spanish while writing in English also makes evident the existence of communities that think and feel in both languages. 

This year, as part of my work as a digital fellow, I started a blog to explore the work in humanidades digitales created by CUNY students, faculty, and alumni. Among the many reasons for creating this resource, I want to highlight that CUNY is a Hispanic-serving institution and it is important to understand how DH contributes to  the institution across its many colleges. The second reason is that even for those of us who are part of the Spanish departments it is unclear how humanidades digitales have been developing at CUNY.

The blog includes DH projects in Spanish about a multitude of topics and around issues that communicate with the identities imagined as “Speanish-speaking”, and OER projects about those communities or the Spanish language. The emphasis on “imagined as Spanish-speaking” here is for two reasons: first, associating the language to a specific community comes from preconceptions that have been challenged in the sociolinguistic fields, particularly on the perspective of raciolinguistics; second, within the Latinx community not all individuals speak Spanish. The blog, then, includes this perspective in which the projects related to communities might not be in Spanish and still could be considered humanidades digitales, such as the podcast mentioned below which uses translanguaging practices. 

When identifying projects to write about, I have started to understand that there is much more being done than what I might have previously imagined. I have learned about faculty and alumni working on public-facing projects for the memory of different communities, such as the archive by Professor Aranzazú Borrachero, the digital editions by the alumn Clayton McCarl, or the collection Libros en Español by CUNY Manifold’s Open Educational Technologist Robin Miller.

In the process, I have also been surprised by the quality of the Open Educational Resources produced by fellow students of the PhD Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino cultures, such as the Open Educational Resource to teach about Spanish in New York City created by Tania Aviles, Anthony J. Harb, Andrea Ariza, Rosalía Reyes Simon, and Ricardo Martín Coloma. Along the same line, I have been delighted by projects like the podcast Latinx Visions, created by  Baruch College professors Rojo Robles and Rebecca L. Salois and their students.

These are only a few of the projects the blog will include, and there will be room to continue learning about humanidades digitales in CUNY and beyond. The blog is open to collaboration: to volunteer, please join the  Humanidades Digitales group on CUNY Academic Commons and express your interest in the forum. The Graduate Center Digital Fellows and I look forward to reviewing and including your work!