Fall 2023 Call for Solidarity Fellows
The Diaspora Solidarities Lab is having an open call for Academic Year 2023-2024 Solidarity Fellows in our Open Boat Lab and Community Knowledge Lab microlabs! See below!
All of the calls below use the same intake form, please fill out the form here and we will be in touch with more information! Please direct any questions to DSL Project Manager Tatiana Esh (tatiana@dslprojects.org).
The Open Boat Lab
Open Boat Lab (OBL) supports curation, storytelling, and community organizing development in the DSL. Taking its title from Edouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation (““We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. Our boats are open, and we sail them for everyone”), the OBL comprises six microlabs which engage in digital humanities methods that center community story-telling, documentation/archiving, and creative/public art. Together OBL creates digital archives, public projects, museum and gallery exhibits, and community workshops informed by community centers, and organizing practices. We offer online and in-person workshops and events that help to transform how we approach knowledge production, storytelling, documentation, and archives. Building on existing relationships at Michigan State University and institutions in New York and Puerto Rico the six microlabs of OBL include independent scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and postdoc and early career faculty from the US and the Caribbean. The OBL is directed by DSL PI Dr. Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez (MSU).
After the Storm: Call for Solidarity Fellow in Francophone Catastrophes
ATS is searching for a candidate with research interests in catastrophes within the Francophone Caribbean or West-Central Africa. Candidates with Digital Humanities technical knowledge are especially encouraged to apply. The ideal candidate would be an advanced graduate student or postdoctoral associate who has a background in oral histories and ethnography and who has previously collected data on catastrophes in their region. Those in the fields of Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Caribbean Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies at the crux of Digital Humanities (DH) are especially encouraged to apply.
About After the Storm:
After the Storm (ATS) is one of six micro labs within the OBL and is currently seeking a Solidarity Fellow to join the team. ATS builds on Proyecto Palabras x Yagrumo Taller Experimental de Imagenes [#ProyectoPalabrasPR] and the testimonies of Afro-Puerto Rican women conducted after Hurricane Maria alongside archival materials collected after Hurricanes Camile and Betsy in Mississippi during the 1950s. Building on previous endeavors and their own research, ATS curates digital archives of survival and restoration via audio/visual media and digital maps that trace the stories of survivors across ecological disasters in the Caribbean and the U.S. South. ATS contributes to the body of work by conducting interviews, researching archives, and mining social media to build an archive that is attentive to the temporal and spatial expanse of storms and disasters. One of the final projects includes an interactive and accessible StoryMaps that centers Afro-diasporic and Indigenous reflections on and in response to climate change, ecological and political upheaval.
Taller Electric Marronage
Join the Diaspora Solidarities Lab as a Solidarity Fellow with the microlab Taller Electric Marronage!
DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES
Conduct Research Related to Blackness & Indigeneity
Create Flyers for Events and Calls for Papers
Keep up with email & message correspondence
Add Content to Website Using Squarespace
About Electric Marronage:
Established in 2018 and revealed in 2020, Taller Electric Marronage (EM) began when a group of Black/Latina queer, writers, and artists decided to plot points across their escape matrix. Inspired by the petit marronage of our ancestors, we steal away on this electric platform, share our journeys, and offer what we find along the way. Electric Marronage is a digital site, events, and workshop series that showcases scholarly, political, creative and personal work that engages with themes of fugitivity, escape, survival (inside and outside the academy), “worlds/otherwise,” “Black femme freedom,” and decolonizing diaspora studies. Created and curated by Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez (MSU), Jessica Marie Johnson (JHU), and the “electricians”, EM is a collective bound by four rules of fugitivity: escaping, stealing, feeling, and whatever. We abscond and reveal. We build [futures] to which we can return.
The Community Knowledge Lab
The Community Knowledge Lab trains DSL members in digital skills, supports research initiatives, and runs incubators where members learn methods and theories for centering community/indigenous knowledge practices.The CKL Microlabs engage computational humanities, digital archives, documentary editing, and public humanities and art projects. In these microlabs, DSL members are at work on a range of research, analog as well as digital. The analog artifacts range from publications, conference presentations, murals, museum exhibitions, white papers, and course syllabi. The digital artifacts range from digital archives, documentary editions, online art exhibits, virtual reality sculptures, and podcasts. The CKL is directed by Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson (JHU).
Archipelagos of Marronage
Archipelagos of Marronage (AOM ) is looking for a Baltimore-based researcher interested in reproductive justice, history, and Black/Caribbean maternal health. As part of the Diaspora Solidarities Lab (DSL), a digital humanities project, AOM is seeking a researcher who has a willingness to learn and build in the digital world! Work may include research in physical and digital archives, meetings with community organizations and partners, and collaborations with other microlabs in the DSL, along with all of the responsibilities attendant to Solidarity Fellows of the DSL.
About Archipelagos:
Founded in Fall 2020 as Geographies of Marronage; Archipelagos of Marronage (AOM), a micro-lab of the Diaspora Solidarities Lab (DSL), has explored the actions taken by enslaved people to challenge bondage. As primarily, though not exclusively, a Caribbean digital research project, AOM has asked questions surrounding gender, reproduction, and revolts through interpreting metadata from runaway slave advertisements in New Orleans. This year, AOM plans to further interpret the intersection of slavery and gender through the lens of reproduction.
Black Louisiana History Incubators
Black Louisiana History Incubators is looking for a New Orleans-based researcher interested in media, Black Louisiana history, public history, and collaborations with community organizations. Work may include research in physical and digital archives, research on and with African and African diasporic communities in the region of the Gulf Coast, along with all of the responsibilities attendant to Solidarity Fellows of the DSL. The ideal candidate will be willing and enthusiastic to work with/along side/ and uplift our community partners in a way that is ethical, responsible, and patient. The DSL is a digital humanities project; a willingness ot learn and build in the realm of the digital is a plus! A multilingual (French and/or Spanish) skillset is also a plus, though not required.
About the Incubators:
Founded in Fall 2022, Black Louisiana History Incubators are intensive, virtual events exploring how Black history has been maintained at the grassroots level in the face of slavery, segregation, divestment from historical institutions, and resource extraction by academics. Incubators range from hands-on workshops to lectures to tutorials with invited practitioners and DSL members.
Taller Entre Aguas
Taller Entre Aguas seeks a multilingual (English + Spanish + PR Spanish preferred) scholar to work with the Criadas Project. The Criadas project is a part of the microlab Taller Entre Aguas (TEA), a collective centered on Black Feminist ethics of care and nurturing the already standing Caribbean notions of historical memory. TEA is sifting through the personal notes of late Puerto Rican Historian Fernando Píco from the 19th century (the Píco papers), through over a thousand micro-bios, synthesis, and Pico’s notes to garner a better understanding of Black life pre and post-emancipation. We are fixing our primary intention on understanding Afro-Puerto Rican women’s world in history, focusing on the “Criada.” Criada holds multiple definitions in current contexts; initially it a fixed-age-gender-and-labor category assigned to young Black girls who are given room and board to families a domestic laborers. Mining the data present in the Pico papers and re-presenting it through spreadsheets and OMEKA we aim to contribute to the limited scholarship on young Black life in Puerto Rico and also join discourses about how the legacies of enslavement seep into our everyday lives as Puerto Rico continues to craft its present and future in the afterlife of slavery
About Taller Entre Aguas:
Taller Entre Aguas explores best practices around doing Black Puerto Rican digital history. Led by Afro-Puerto Rican scholars Dr. Sarah Bruno and Jessica Marie Johnson, members will learn to use Omeka, Wax and Jekyll and learn how initiatives like Minimal Computing are bringing research relating to the histories of slavery and Indigenous genocide into the public sphere. Taller Entre Aguas (TEA) is comprised of two main projects: The Registro and The Criadas Project. We are interested in expanding the ways Black Puerto Ricans gather and think together towards liberation, progress and action. These forms may include methodologies, curriculum, and other documentations for public use that offer best practices for decolonial work. We also aim to engage digital humanities through a diasporic, Black and ethnic studies approach.
Taller Entre Aguas busca a unx academicx multilingüe (preferiblemente inglés + español + español puertorriqueño) para trabajar con el Proyecto Criadas. El proyecto Criadas es parte del microlaboratorio Taller Entre Aguas (TEA), un colectivo centrado en la ética feminista negra del cuidado y que nutre las nociones caribeñas ya existentes de memoria histórica. TEA está revisando las notas personales del difunto historiador puertorriqueño Fernando Picó, en especial aquellas relacionadas al siglo XIX. Además, se estarán revisando más de mil microbiografías, síntesis y notas de Picó para obtener una mejor comprensión de la vida negra antes y después de la emancipación. . Estamos fijando nuestra intención principal en entender el mundo de las mujeres afropuertorriqueñas en la historia, enfocándonos en la “Criada”. Criada posee múltiples definiciones dentro de los contextos actuales; Inicialmente, se trataba de una categoría de edad fija, sexo y trabajo asignada a niñas negras jóvenes a las que se les daba alojamiento y comida por brindarle servicios doméstico a una familia. Al extraer los datos presentes en los documentos de Picó y volver a presentarlos a través de hojas de cálculo y OMEKA, nuestro objetivo es contribuir a la erudición limitada sobre la vida de las jóvenes negras en Puerto Rico y también unir discursos sobre cómo los legados de la esclavitud se filtran en nuestra vida cotidiana como puertorriqueñxs y continúa labrando su presente y futuro en el más allá de la esclavitud
Sobre Taller Entre Aguas:
Taller Entre Aguas explora las mejores prácticas para hacer la historia digital de lxs puertorriqueñxs negrxs. Dirigidos por las académicas afropuertorriqueñas Dra. Sarah Bruno y Dra. Jessica Marie Johnson, lxs miembrxs aprenderán a usar Omeka, Wax y Jekyll y aprenderán cómo iniciativas como Minimal Computing están llevando la investigación relacionada con las historias de la esclavitud y el genocidio indígena a la esfera pública. Taller Entre Aguas (TEA) está compuesto por dos proyectos principales: El Proyecto Registro y El Proyecto Criadas. Estamos interesadxs en ampliar las formas en que lxs puertorriqueñxs negrxs se reúnen y piensan juntos hacia la liberación, el progreso y la acción. Estos formularios pueden incluir metodologías, currículos y otra documentación para uso público que ofrezca las mejores prácticas para el trabajo decolonial. También pretendemos involucrar a las humanidades digitales a través de un enfoque de estudios étnicos, negros y diaspóricos.
Contact
Project Manager Tatiana Esh at tatiana@dslprojects.org
