A Cozy Welcome Back
Autumn leaves are beginning to fall, sweater weather is sneaking in, and the fall semester is flying by! Luckily, the BCaT lab is here to keep us warm with more activities, experiences, and interesting projects. This semester, we are excited to host BCaT Eats and BCaT Applies, alongside our other events for the fall semester. We are looking forward to seeing what another semester of innovative digital humanities work will bring.
First, the BCaT lab would like to formally introduce our newest team members, Felicity and Jamie! Felicity has joined the lab as a BCaT Graduate Fellow. Felicity works with Dr. Catherine Knight-Steele in the Communication Department! Her work in Ghanaian feminist thought and presence in the lab has enriched the academic work we do. Felicity has been integral in getting events set up for the lab this semester, and we are so grateful to have her join the team. We are also proud to congratulate Felicity on passing her comprehensive exams and becoming a Ph.D. candidate! Secondly, we would like to introduce our new website intern, Jamie! Jamie is working hard to keep our website updated and running smoothly. Jamie is an undergraduate in the College of Information, and is interested in working more on the Black Homeplaces CoLab. Jamie is currently working on a paper relating to the influence of black magazines on the design of the Black home. A frequent visitor of the lab, her interest and passion for the work the BCaT does regarding black digital humanities led her to join the team. She hopes to continue to assist the nurturing environment the lab cultivated. We are glad to have Jamie on the team!
Currently, we are in the midst of our Automating Black Joy and Black Homeplaces collaborative projects. In conjunction with the DISCO network, our CoLab participants are continuing to cultivate exciting projects with their research. These projects, led by Dr. Catherine Knight Steele and Dr. Rianna Walcott, will be valuable interventions in the digital humanities, expanding scholarship that attends to Black folk’s lived experiences across the lenses of AI and homemaking/worldmaking practices. Currently, the Automating Black Joy CoLab is receiving proposals for projects. Collaborative research teams can receive microgrants as high as $1,500 dollars for their work. For more information, go to the Automating Black Joy page here. During October, we held a Sandbox session for the Automating Black Joy Co-Lab through which participants had the opportunity to meet one another, share ideas, and discuss skillsets in the hope of finding likeminded collaborators. There will be more events like this, throughout the semester that will cover the application process, possibilities on what your project could look like, and more! Participants in the Black Homeplaces CoLab are hard at work developing their projects, and we are very excited about the progress folks have made! Teams are conducting interviews, doing fieldwork, and beginning to develop their digital projects. During December, there will be a meet-up for the Homeplaces Co-Lab to talk through their progress and look at the next-steps toward completing their projects! We look forward to seeing you there!
During September, we held BCaT eats, followed by our Graduate school application clinic. During the clinic, students had the opportunity to ask specific questions about the grad school application process, and see examples of what application materials might look like.In the future, we are looking forward to another BCaT Eats on the 29th of October, with a BCaT Learns & Applies session following soon after on Wednesday, November 5th.
We are excited to see what the rest of this semester will bring as leaves hit the ground! We hope you all can join us as these exciting threads come to fruition!
