We conceptualized and proposed this issue shortly after the 2018 Intentionally Digital, Intentionally Black conference held by University of Maryland’s Center for African American History, Culture, and Digital Humanities (AADHum), co-organized by Catherine Knight Steele and Trevor Muñoz. One of the core challenges expressed by scholars was the limited legibility of their work in DH, a field that is predominantly white. Their work was often categorized as outside of DH, borrowing DH tools and applied them to other self-contained fields. Scholars noted how this impacted their ability to secure academic jobs, get published, or even be granted tenure. There are tangible and serious consequences to not recognizing the work of Black scholars as well as not validating methodologies and projects that center Black subjects in DH.

Over the past four years digital humanities scholars have committed to antiracism and feminism, calling for a more equitable field/ Black Digital Humanities has blossomed. Black DH scholars who have helped shape the field — such as Catherine Knight Steele, André Brock, and Moya Bailey — have published books with NYU, MIT, and other well-established presses. There has also been a rise in Black DH and media studies positions.

However, we must still work to center Black digital humanists and scholars; this work is ongoing and necessary, especially in the face of anti-Black violence in academia and digital spaces. We also recognize that there are inequities within Black DH projects, and limited funding also means limited opportunity. Even with a stream of new lines of hire, the academic job market remains unstable. Coupled with issues of retention and the abuses and exploitations faced by Black scholars, even those that can finally be put into productive positions find themselves pushed to the margins of academia. Precarity is rife, but each day we marvel at how these scholars resist and center themselves and their colleagues. We imagine this special issue as a hub of that resistance. In a fight against white-supremacy, sexism, and ableism, we stand with other scholars of Black DH and we work towards a more equitable world.

The past four years have changed beyond just the scope of Black DH. We knew that undertaking a project like this would be major — it is nearly four years in the making. Building a special issue takes time even in perfect conditions. We and the writers of this issue saw cataclysmic shifts — the Covid-19 pandemic, racial reckonings, volatile presidencies, and the Russian-Ukrainan war. Much has changed. It is no surprise that despite the pandemic's hinderings and the overall global conflicts and violence, Black people have been able to organize, work, and bond. Our authors wrote mostly before and in the midst of these events, and may not have been able to fully or directly attend to this in their work. We ask that you read these in good faith, and know that the omission was not intentional. Instead we ask that you read the articles and think about how they might help yourself and others better understand the contemporary moment. Reading the articles and metareflections published in this special issue at this time should urge you to think in new ways about how Black DH projects can be revelatory of larger issues. For example, Bryan M. Jenkin's and Taryn K. Myers’ work on Black Podcasts is helpful in explaining why centering Black voices and opinions is critical to understanding our current political climate. Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield’s work on Black women’s social networks exposes how they build community and support one another in the face of adversity– building a framework for how we might all work together to uplift each other.

The relative youth of Black DH as a field has allowed it to be born radical. While some fields have more conservative traditions that they must break free from, Black DH has been able to forage a more inclusive path.

When we first envisioned the make up of this issue we knew that we wanted to highlight our brilliant peers and that we wanted to give our readers a sense of what was to come in Black Digital Humanities. While highlighting the work of brilliant scholars such as Ravynn K. Stringfield, Romi Ron Morrison, and Brienne A. Adams among others, we also realized that their work rested on the scholarship of a previous generation of scholars that blazed the trials that they walked across. In order to acknowledge this we have enlisted several advanced scholars, including Moya Bailey, Kim Gallon, and Kaiama L. Glover to write metareflections. These short essays gave them the space to meditate and reflect on their own work and the larger DH field. They also allow for the scholars to imagine its future as well as the concerns and optimism they have for the future of Black Digital Humanities.

The digital humanities often evades containment to a single genre. Whether it be a web only project, digital dissertation, or the building of a digital archive or respiratory, it is nearly impossible to set a rigid guideline to how each project should be composed. We gave our writers free reign to write whatever they wanted, however they wanted to compose their work. Some of our articles take on a standard journal article frame, while others are insights into digital archives or podcasts, some are intended to be used as pedagogical tools, and others offer outline methodologies for others to take up in their work. The unique format of each article puts into practice the exact sort of thinking that the creator implores for its readers.

Although the genres are distinct, they coalesce together under shared themes — the importance of recovering, recording, and preserving historical data and objects; recognizing spaces for uplift and joy; and spotlighting the brilliance of Black folks and their extensive contributions to technology. These themes themselves are all interconnected. The collection of objects and data assure that Black people's contributions to technology (and beyond) are minted, and there is a certain level of joy and community that is built around that work — a great example of this are the scholars behind the Colored Conventions Project. As editors, we brought these pieces together in hopes that our readers would show the multitudes of Black DH scholarship, while also learning more about what brings them together, and what forms the tenets of the field.

This special issue emphasizes how Black scholars, Black content creators, and allies of Black scholars and content creators are always-already using digital technologies and tools in innovative, feminist, humanstic, and activist ways. As Catherine Knight Steele emphasizes in her introduction to her exciting 2022 book Digital Black Feminism:

Steele’s celebration of Black women is reflected throughout several of the contributors’ articles and reflections.

The article contributors to this issue demonstrate both their own innovative approaches to digital spaces. Franny Gaede, Ana-Maurine Lara, Alaí Reyes-Santos, and Kate Thornhill apply decolonial methodologies in creating a digital archive of Afro-Indigenous women healers in the Caribbean, centering cultural awareness in all aspects of the project. Similarly, Jazma Sutton and Kalani Craig incorporate “descendant archival practice” in the building and analysis of Remembering Freedom History Harvest, a digital archive that “relies...on the community archives and memory work that join together in descendant archival practice as a way to generate Black women’s histories”. Finally, Ravynn K Stringfield examines the labors of joy for Black women graduate students sharing their experiences online, which include her own labors on her blog Black Girl Does Grad School (BGDGS); she reminds us that there are communities and networks that will never fail us, even in the face of abject political adversity.

The contributors also analyze the approaches of Black people and communities in digital spaces in innovative ways. For instance, Brienne Adams analyzes intimacy in affirmative transformative fan practices in the the Awkward Black Girl and Insecure Black digital fandoms. Bryan Jenkins and Taryn Myers conduct a rich qualitative coding analysis of Black podcasts, centering their analysis on how these podcasts integrate and build community, resistance, and voice. Finally, Romi Ron Morrison’s “Voluptous Disintergration” helps us better understand Black life and its relationship to technology and revolutionary politics. Their theorization of Black Computational Thought highlights the “quotidian, social, opaque, woven, and fugitive practices of computation born from Black diasporic movement”, giving us further insight into how Black people have always already been on the cutting edge of both technology and culture.

We hope Black DH continues to evade definition. Practically, it calls in all types of folks who do all types of work, whether the emphasis lies in the digital or in the humanities. It also allows scholars to create an individual sense of the field to fit their own needs. More than thirty years into its earliest conceptions of the field, in 2014 the website “What is Digital Humanities” randomized more than 800 DH scholar’s running definitions of the field showing the wide breadth of definitions.

The focus of Black DH and this special issue is not to define Black DH, but rather spotlight the limitless, interdisciplinary nature of Black DH and Black scholarship. Both article and metareflection authors alike build upon lineages of Black studies, feminist, queer, and womanist scholars, forging new paths using their innovative methodologies as they examine, construct, and reimagine innovative communities and people. We hope this special issue contributes to the expanding field as well as Black DH scholars, DH scholars, and graduate students committed to Black studies and centering Black lives to take up this work.