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ISSN 1938-4122
Announcements
DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly
2025 19.1
The Politics and Ethics of Naming the Names of Enslaved People in Digital Humanities Projects
Editors: Walter Hawthorne, Richard Roberts, Fatoumata Seck, and Rebecca Wall
Front Matter
Introduction: The Politics and Ethics of Naming the Names of
Enslaved People in Digital Humanities Projects
Walter Hawthorne, Michigan State University; Richard Roberts, Stanford University; Fatoumata Seck, Stanford University; Rebecca Wall, Loyola Marymount University
Abstract
[en]
This introduction provides a broad overview to the context of digital humanities projects dealing
with enslaved people and frames the debate over the ethics and politics of using the names of
enslaved people. For some descendant communities, listing the names of enslaved people
contributes to searches for genealogical connections; for other communities where the stigma of
enslaved descent still prevails, such projects may do harm. This introduction explores these
issues in relationship to the articles included in this special collection.
Articles
Digitizing Guardianship Registers in Senegal (1895-1910): Naming as Evidence and
Ethical Concern
Kelly M. Duke Bryant, Rowan University
Abstract
[en]
Drawing from research on liberated minors, formerly enslaved children whom the colonial state in Senegal
entrusted to guardians following their emancipation, this article describes the process of building a database consisting
of identifying information about formerly enslaved children in early colonial Senegal based on data
originally collected in the early twentieth century, and it uses the database to ask both historical and ethical
questions about naming practices and aliases, experiences of unfreedom, and the agency of marginalized African children.
Of the 1,324 liberated minors who entered guardianship in Saint-Louis from 1895 to 1910, for example, at
least 114 of them took on another name at some point, a fact that raises interesting questions about naming, name
changes, and agency. I argue that names contain fragmentary evidence about their bearers' cultural or linguistic
background or geographic origin, and, more importantly, that aliases can offer insight into social networks or
self-fashioning. Yet reproducing names from colonial inventories in digital history projects could reinscribe oppression
and violence and, in some circumstances, could contribute to stigma and shame among descended communities. As such,
scholars should include them in databases and other digital history projects, but only if ethical concerns can be
addressed and resolved.
Reflections on the Ethics of
Research with the Registers of Liberated Africans in the Indian Ocean
Matthew S. Hopper, California Polytechnic State University
Abstract
[en]
This paper examines ethical issues related to the use of the registers of liberated
Africans in the Indian Ocean for historical research. The registers provide rich details
about the physical appearance (height, age, facial scarification, brands, tattoos) and origins
(language, ethnicity or “caste”, mother's name, father's name) of liberated Africans.
They also reveal aspects about their treatment at the hands of colonial officials, including
the individuals to whom the Africans were indentured, the work they performed, and the new names
that were assigned to them. Such details make these registers invaluable
sources for historians, but they also present ethical challenges. In the Indian Ocean world, some
descendants may take pride in their liberated African ancestors, and claims to liberated African
ancestors can have important implications for claims to land and status, yet others may prefer
that information be lost to what Pier Larson called “the countervailing forces
of historical amnesia” . Containing intimate personal information
that may permit investigation into both the origins and the descendants of enslaved Africans,
registers may also be considered sources of biometric data. As such, should they be subject to the
ethical standards applied to biometric data in the sciences? This paper explores a model for the
ethical use of historical biometric (DNA) data from Australia as an example of what
historians might consider emulating when making use of registers of liberated Africans in the
digital humanities.
The Pedagogical Innovations and Ethical Challenges of Integrating an Online Version of
the Registers of the Liberation of Senegal (1857-1903) into the Teaching of History in the Senegalese Middle Cycle Public
Schooling
Mamadou Yéro Baldé, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal; Djibrirou Daouda Ba, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal; Ismaïla Mbodji, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal
Abstract
[en]
This article analyzes the possibility of a pedagogical renewal in the teaching of the history of the slave trade and
slavery in middle cycle (four years of study that can begin at the age of twelve) public school classrooms in
Senegal. It does so by proposing that aspects of middle cycle curricula be built around an open-source,
online version of the Senegal Registers of Liberation (1857-1903) in order to achieve the National Education Orientation
Law of 1991 and the Consolidated History Program of 2006. In this article, we identify the current limits of teaching
about the slave trade and slavery and propose new approaches, taking into account innovative pedagogical perspectives
that are essential to the training of students congruent with the evolution of historical methodologies in the digital
humanities. Beyond this, the article shows the importance of addressing ethical questions around the public use of names
of enslaved people which appear in the Senegal Registers of Liberation. In sum, the article explores and proposes
revisions in the teaching of the slave trade and slavery in Senegal using digital resources.
Case Studies
The Unnamed Fugitive and the Unknown Maroon: Anonymity and the Limits of Repair
in Black Atlantic Historical Recovery
Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Duke University
Abstract
[en]
In this paper, I examine the ethics and pedagogical implications of unnaming for the political project of
historical recovery. Digital humanities projects on slavery often proffer the reparative promise of serving as
public-facing works that seek to recover enslaved people's lives from archival erasure. I contend that by entwining
the immaterial digital commemoration of The Unnamed Fugitive with the material monument to Le Marron Inconnu, my
students' interpretive choices illuminate the ways that deliberate unnaming can enact a shift away from anonymity
and erasure and, in turn, a move towards productive engagement with the limits of knowledge and recovery in
slavery's archive.
Descendants and Ethical Considerations when Documenting
the Names of Enslaved People in Datasets on the Internet
Walter Hawthorne, Michigan State University
Abstract
[en]
This paper examines the ethical implications of public, internet-based history projects that list enslaved people
by name. It does so by considering the appropriateness of the ethics statement written by the Principal
Investigators at Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade (or
Enslaved.org). Enslaved.org directly addresses the urgent call to
document the history of people of African descent more fully. Housed at Michigan State University, the
project centers the Black experience globally, with most projects to date focused on North America.
Contributors to Enslaved.org tell the stories of named enslaved individuals by extracting what is often fragmentary
information (names, ages, skills, injuries, African ethnicities, etc.) from a vast range of primary source
documentation and by assembling that data into datasets. The Enslaved.org team makes the datasets available,
searchable, and understandable on its open-source platform
(https://enslaved.org/) and through its peer-reviewed journal,
The Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation
(https://jsdp.enslaved.org/). The Principal Investigators are
committed to identifying by name as many enslaved people as possible and to representing individual and collective
experiences in an international, humane, and ethical frame and to working collaboratively with researchers and
descendant communities to continually develop and follow practices that respect the lives of enslaved people. The
paper considers the appropriateness of the Enslaved.org ethics statement for datasets focused on slavery in a
variety of places and concludes with a call for historians to work closely with descendant communities in compiling
and publishing data that names enslaved individuals.
Naming Names of Enslaved People in the Senegal Liberations Project
Richard Roberts, Stanford University; Rebecca Wall, Loyola Marymount University
Abstract
[en]
Enslavement is linked to enduring and systemic inequalities, hierarchies, and to the erasures of enslaved people's
histories, including their names. Such erasures meant and continue to mean different things to different populations
of formerly enslaved people. Descendants of enslaved people, especially in the diaspora, turned to well-established
means of genealogical research and new forms of DNA research to trace their ancestors. However, in West
Africa and in other parts of the world where obvious racialized markers do not automatically hint at an
enslaved ancestor, many former enslaved people “would rather forget” their enslaved past
or that of their ancestors, precisely because descent from enslaved ancestry remains stigmatized. Ethical
considerations of conducting digital historical research on slavery and emancipation have been hotly discussed for
a number of years, and given the public-facing character of many of these digital projects, the stakes of naming
versus anonymity are high. This article suggests a way forward for those people recorded in the Registers of
Liberation in colonial Senegal.
Naming Slavery in a Digital Public History Project in Mali
in the Context of Increased Violence Against Those Who Refuse to Be Called “Slaves”
Marie Rodet, SOAS, University of London; Mamadou Séne Cissé, Association Donkosira, Mali
Abstract
[en]
Digital public history has emerged as a powerful tool for addressing difficult pasts with concerned communities in an
ethical way. This paper focuses on the ethical issues at stake in co-producing digital historical knowledge about
resistance to slavery in a web documentary that involved identifying and naming marginalised populations in
Mali, increasingly at risk of violence. The web documentary aims to bridge the gap between endogenous
historical resistance to slavery and modern anti-slavery activism, while also addressing issues of funding,
authority tensions, and asymmetrical relations, in which the digital gap presented specific challenges. In the process,
we report on a case of dialogue among researchers, practitioners, and village participants, and we expose the ethical
implications of digital research and citizen intervention related to past and present slavery in
Africa.
Articles
Systematic bias in humanities datasets: ancient and
medieval coin finds in the FLAME project
Lee Mordechai, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Alan Stahl, Princeton University; Mark Pyzyk, Getty Research Institute; Ilia Curto Pelle, Princeton University
Abstract
[en]
FLAME is an online digital humanities project providing economic data for
investigations of the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (CE
325-750) in Western Eurasia and North Africa. While accumulating, entering, and
displaying the data, the project’s leadership has become increasingly aware of the
inherent distortions in these data. These deviations operate on various levels, from
the disparate events that provide the coin finds that serve as the basis of its data
to previously unexamined scholarly biases that underpin such a quantitative approach
to historical analysis. By systematically examining these phenomena, we hope to frame
a discussion of such inherent biases in other digital humanities undertakings.
Unjust Readings: Against the New New Criticism
Paul Barrett, University of Guelph
Abstract
[en]
Unjust Readings: Against the New New Criticism" offers a theoretical and methodological defence of the use of digital humanities methods for literary interpretation.
I argue that extant critiques of DH from Fish, Da, Eyers and others depend on an unexamined notion of the appropriate work of the humanities and, in particular,
of literary interpretation. Their claim, that critics should simply "just read" obscures the manner in which literary interpretation is never simply 'just reading.'
I argue that DH not only raises interpretive possibilities that would be impossible without digital tools but also foregrounds the methodological choices and theoretical
paradigms that so often are unstated, or implicit, in traditional humanities work. Inherent to the interpretive act that moves between the digital and the humanities is
a need to state how the critic works between the two, thereby making the interpretive frame explicit. I then demonstrate a number of examples, from my research and the work of others,
that demonstrate this productive capacity of DH in order to further refute that critics should simply 'just read' the texts.
Experiments in Distant Reading: Using Topic Modeling on Chinese Buddhist Texts from 500-800 CE
Marcus Bingenheimer, Temple University; Justin Brody, Franklin and Marshall College; Ryan Nichols, Califoria State University, Fullerton
Abstract
[en]
The article tries to answer whether the BERTopic topic modeling framework can be used to obtain topics that meaningfully distinguish two corpora of Buddhist Chinese texts from 500 to 800 CE.
The first corpus consists of translated “Indian-Chinese” Buddhist texts, the second of “Chinese-Chinese” texts, i.e. texts directly authored in Buddhist Chinese.
Does the application of topic modeling reveal aspects that are typical for these corpora and do these topics suggest avenues for
future research into the sinicization of Buddhism that took place during that time?
For our implementation of BERTopic, we used the customized GuwenBERT, a language model trained on classical Chinese.
To reduce the dimensionality of the embeddings we used the UMAP algorithm. Next, the HDBSCAN takes care of hierarchical clustering.
The most relevant words of each cluster are identified with c-tf-idf. As a last step, we score each cluster by its monochromaticity –
this is a measure of how likely the documents in the cluster are to be derived from either just the “Chinese-Chinese” or just the “Indian-Chinese” documents.
In order to communicate the topics we create virtual paragraphs that combine most of the top twenty terms that represent a sample of ten highly monochromatic topics.
Discussing these topics from a Buddhist Studies point of view, we find that our modified BERTopic workflow does indeed return topics that are characteristic of their
corpus and highlights facets that help to understand the process of how Buddhism became sinicized in the three centuries between 500 and 800 CE.
Thus distant reading of latent topics in the corpus is possible. While some topics are in themselves unsurprising, others highlight new promising areas for research.
Introducing Booksnake: A Scholarly App for
Transforming Existing Digitized Archival Materials into Life-Size Virtual Objects for
Embodied Interaction in Physical Space, using IIIF and Augmented
Reality
Sean Fraga, University of Southern California; Christy Ye, University of Southern California; Henry Huang, University of Southern California; Zack Sai, University of Southern California; Michael Hughes, University of Southern California; April Yao, University of Southern California; Samir Ghosh, University of California, Santa Cruz
Abstract
[en]
We introduce Booksnake, a new mobile app that makes it feel like digitized archival
items are physically present in a user’s real-world surroundings by using the
augmented reality (AR) technology in consumer smartphones and tablets. Unlike
humanities projects that use virtual reality (VR) or AR to publish custom content,
Booksnake is a general-purpose, content-agnostic tool compatible with existing online
collections that support the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF).
In this article, we critique existing flat-screen image viewers and discuss the
benefits of embodied interaction with archival materials. We contextualize Booksnake
within the broader landscape of immersive technologies for cultural heritage. We
detail the technical pipeline by which Booksnake transforms existing digitized
archival materials into custom life-size virtual objects for interaction in physical
space. We conclude with a brief discussion of the future of the immersive
humanities.
Case Studies
Can Open-Source Fix Predictive Policing? Anti-Racist Critical Code Studies Approach
to Contemporary AI Policing Software
Sarah Ciston, University of Southern California; Zach Mann, University of Southern California; Mark C. Marino, University of Southern California; Jeremy Douglass, University of California Santa Barbara
Abstract
[en]
Technology watchdogs and technoculture critics have discussed predictive policing software at an abstract level or have tried to reverse
engineer its blackboxed code. In this paper, we use the methods of Critical Code Studies, media archaeology, and software studies more
broadly to analyze CivicScape predictive policing software, published online, albeit partially. Working from an anti-racist approach, we
examine how the CivicScape code calculates which neighborhoods to recommend for heavy policing. Our reading demonstrates what code
analysis can add to the analysis of such software and makes a case for the public release of all legislative operational source code
for scrutiny under the principles of the Freedom of Information Act.
Reviews
A Review of Bridget Whearty's
Digital Codicology: Medieval Books and Modern
Labor (2022)
Loren Lee, University of Virginia
Abstract
[en]
Digital Codicology: Medieval Books and Modern Labor
(2022) by Bridget Whearty is a crucial work for scholars engaging
with digitized materials. Advocating for a digital codicology that treats digital
materials as objects worthy of study in their own right, Whearty
addresses the many concerns surrounding digital manuscripts and promotes a more
active, informed use of these resources. She highlights the often invisible
human labor behind digitization, providing a detailed history and
autoethnographic insights that challenge the perception of digital manuscripts
as mere stand-ins for physical texts. Through personal experiences and
institutional analysis, Whearty delves into the complexities of
interoperability and the labor-intensive processes behind digitization and
metadata curation. Her book emphasizes the emotional and intellectual engagement
digital manuscripts can provoke, advocating for broad digitization and
recognizing the dynamic nature of digital projects. Ultimately,
Digital Codicology calls for greater transparency,
collaboration, and a redefined understanding of digital manuscripts as integral
primary sources in modern scholarship.
Black Waves in Digital Humanities: Vaziri's (2023) Exploration of African
Enslavement in the Persian Gulf through Film
Zeinab Parishani, University of Missouri
Abstract
[en]
Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery: Iran's Cinematic Archive (2023) by
Parisa Vaziri offers an in-depth exploration of the intersection of Blackness and slavery within
Iranian historical and cinematic contexts. The book critically examines how Iranian cinema portrays African
enslavement and marginalized narratives, particularly through fīlmfārsī and Indigenous
theatrical traditions. Vaziri underscores the historiographical neglect of Indian Ocean slavery,
emphasizing the forgotten stories of the enslaved. By incorporating maps that trace African migrations and the
routes of the slave trade, she enriches the reader's understanding of global history.
Review of The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital
Humanities (2023)
Soni Wadhwa, SRM University, India
Abstract
[en]
James O’Sullivan’s edited volume is, to use his words, likely to attract three kinds
of readers: DH-experts, DH-curious, and naysayers. This review examines what the book
offers to each category of readers, as a way of approaching the Herculean task of
capturing a glimpse of 43 chapters that touch upon the domain in diverse ways. The
self-critical spirit consistently demonstrated across chapters will stimulate
dialogue regarding the gains made by DH when analysing culture textually.
Author Biographies
URL: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/preview/index.html
Comments: dhqinfo@digitalhumanities.org
Published by: The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations and The Association for Computers and the Humanities
Affiliated with: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
DHQ has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © 2005 -
Unless otherwise noted, the DHQ web site and all DHQ published content are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Individual articles may carry a more permissive license, as described in the footer for the individual article, and in the article’s metadata.
Comments: dhqinfo@digitalhumanities.org
Published by: The Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations and The Association for Computers and the Humanities
Affiliated with: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
DHQ has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © 2005 -
Unless otherwise noted, the DHQ web site and all DHQ published content are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Individual articles may carry a more permissive license, as described in the footer for the individual article, and in the article’s metadata.
