Editors' note on the January/February 2023 issue of Reviews in Digital Humanities
Welcome to the January/February 2023 issue of Reviews in Digital Humanities!
Since we began planning for Reviews in 2019, we’ve been committed to being transparent and upfront about the realities of our academic and personal lives — particularly as we run a journal that requires weekly maintenance. The last couple of months have not been easy for our team. Many of us have had COVID, encountered family challenges, and at times have had to step away.
Above all, we strive to maintain a core value of the journal: a humane working environment. For the two of us, the ability to be honest with each other, knowing we can hand off journal work to each other and step away to take care of the rest of our lives, has been integral to this goal.
Since we began expanding our team late last year, we have aimed to cultivate the same culture with the rest of the team. As of January 2023, we are delighted to welcome Stacy Reardon, the Literatures and Digital Humanities Librarian at University of California, Berkeley to our team. Stacy is serving as Managing Editor (Special Issues). She joins Tieanna Graphenreed, Managing Editor (Open Submissions) and Miranda Hughes, Associate Editor (Production) on the Reviews team. We’re delighted to have Stacy on our team. Next month, we look forward to introducing you to our new topic editors. As we begin working with new topic editors next month, we will be building our values into the onboarding process.
All of this is to say that the January/February 2023 issue is a reflection of our commitment to a humane working environment — to knowing when to say we need to slow down in response to the team’s and our review community’s needs and to knowing when to push forward.
In this issue, we feature four projects that demonstrate how digital humanities can be a powerful tool for encouraging users to rethink what they think they know about scholarship and culture. We bring you:
Eileen Southern and The Music of Black Americans, a community-curated digital exhibition, directed by Katie Callam, Christina Linklater, and Carol J. Oja, reviewed by Bethany Gareis;
Dartmouth ‘66 Seminar Exhibit, a collection of materials related to the 1966 Anglo-American Seminar in the Teaching of English at Dartmouth College, curated by Annette Vee with contributions by Megan McIntyre and Lindsey Harding, reviewed by James E. Dobson;
The Retro Mobile Gaming Database, a collection of mobile games from 1975 to 2008, directed by Adriana de Souza e Silva, reviewed by Hannah Trammell; and
Dig: A History Podcast, a podcast that delves into unique historical themes, directed by Averill Earls, Sarah Handley-Cousins, Elizabeth Garner Masarik, and Marissa Rhodes, reviewed by Elizabeth Keohane-Burbridge.
Eileen Southern and The Music of Black Americans and Dartmouth ‘66 are notable in the ways they unearth and bring to light aspects of scholarly histories that have been overlooked, whether the rich body of work from Black musicologist Eileen Southern or the historical context of the Dartmouth seminar that influenced the study of writing. The Retro Mobile Gaming Database offers researchers and game enthusiasts access to information about early histories of mobile games that are otherwise inaccessible, while Dig introduces listeners to hidden histories. Collectively, these projects showcase the power of digital scholarship to reshape scholarly and public knowledge.
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