This year’s Digital Humanities Summer Scholars Program will continue remotely once again! This year’s application process was very challenging, but ultimately rewarding, and still highly competitive: 28 interviews, and 7 Summer Scholars chosen out of 23 applicants. One Summer Scholar was accepted into the 2020 DHSS cohort, and deferred entrance into DHSS until the 2021 program, totaling 8 Summer Scholars joining the program this year.
The program is being held from May 31 – July 9 this year. Research & Instruction Librarian Angela Perkins will again lead the program.
The stipends received by the DH Summer Scholars are funded by the generous Bruce Marshman gift, which has been earmarked for this purpose.
DH Summer Scholars 2021:
Yazdan Basir, Class of 2023,Computer Science major, plans to research mathematical and computer science methods and their implications in the real-world, e.g. geometrical approaches toward understanding and stemming the spread of gerrymandering, or parsing the relationship between deepfake videos and artificial intelligence text generators, misinformation, and authoritarian governments.
Meltem Pelin Çetin, Class of 2024, International Affairs (undeclared), will examine the history of marginalized groups in the country of Turkey, e.g. LGBTQ+ or Armenian communities.
Mariatou Coulibaly, Class of 2023, Africana Studies major,intends to develop a project about the New York City LGBTQ+ ballroom scene, examining specific categories within a ball which are glamorous reflections of how society sees or interprets queer and non-conforming bodies in public, and exploring its history through a diverse and detailed timeline.
Isaiah Moore, Class of 2022, Environmental Studies and Economics major, will explore how contemporary urban agricultural movements are transforming the cities they are situated in by mapping a food movement; a good example of such a city would be Detroit, Michigan because of its connection to the revitalization of marginalized communities and commitment to upholding food justice.
Olivia Newman, Class of 2022, International Affairs and Environmental Studies major, is interested in the political and cultural aspects of areas globally which are predicted to be vulnerable to climate change in the future, especially whether or not there is an overlap between areas with long-running conflicts and areas where more droughts and/or floods are expected, and whether or not there is a preponderance of certain ethnic groups living in those areas.
Catherine O’Connor, Class of 2023, Government and Law and History major, will focus her research on COVID-19 and healthcare, including a history of how pandemics have affected global populations and how human beings have physically and mentally reacted to pandemics throughout history.
Sarah Scally, Class of 2022, English and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies major, will expand on her work scanning The Marquis Literary Magazine as a Digital Scholarship Services (DSS) assistant by questioning the impact that gender had on what work was submitted, and producing a visual representation of a breakdown of accepted submissions, analyzing when contributors were more likely to be women, and how that may correlate with the changes in the gender ratios of contributors.
Ali Sultan Sikandar, Class of 2023, Computer Science major/Data Science minor, wants to create an interactive website using JavaScript and Python to collect, sort, analyze, and present data addressing the following research question: how do the witness accounts of the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition differ from the historical accounts in the textbooks of Indian and Pakistani higher education institutions?