Editors' Note: May 2023

We don’t know about you, but we’re ready for June! Before the month ends, we’re delighted to bring you the May 2023 issue of Reviews in Digital Humanities.

We’ve promised to keep you posted on what’s going on behind-the-scenes, so here goes. It’s going to be a busy summer at Reviews! We’ll be onboarding the first five topic editor teams who’ll be getting to work: African and African diaspora studies, community-engaged digital humanities, endangered cultural heritage, Latinx studies, and social justice pedagogy. The others will be onboarded beginning in the fall. We divided the topic areas into these two cohorts (summer and fall) to best manage the labor demand of this new phase of Reviews. We’re grateful to our managing editors, Tieanna Graphenreed and Stacy Reardon, who have been working with us to develop and reimagine the workflows for onboarding.

This month, we’re pleased to share projects from our open submissions process. In this issue, we review:

• Age of Revolutions, a digital journal exploring the history of revolutions, directed by Bryan A. Banks and Cindy Ermus, and reviewed by Mackenzie Brooks;

• Keys to the Archive, an archival collection focusing on the works of Ernest J. Gaines, directed by David Squires, and reviewed by Adrian S. Wisnicki;

• Something Wicked, a video game based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by Elizabeth Hunter, and reviewed by William J. White; and

• Paisajes sonoros históricos / Historical Soundscapes, a website exploring historical urban soundscapes, directed by Juan Ruiz Jiménez and Ignacio Lizarán Rus, and reviewed by Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden.

These projects offer incredibly creative approaches to public humanities. Age of Revolutions is a unique take on an academic journal that leverages the model of online open-access publishing to foster communication not only about diverse academic communities but also with public audiences. Keys to the Archive complements and amplifies African American writer Ernest Gaines’s goal of sharing silenced histories of Black communities in Louisiana with students through its exhibits. The video game Something Wicked dramatizes a battle that appears off-stage in Macbeth, allowing players to not only imagine what the scene may have looked like but also grasp the gratuitous violence in the play that isn’t always emphasized in its staging. Finally, Paisajes sonoros históricos / Historical Soundscapes allows users to geolocate themselves with sound and even to contribute their own soundscapes. We hope you enjoy the innovative projects we have for you this month!

Do you want new issues of Reviews delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to our mailing list! Want to nominate a project for review or submit your own? Drop us a note at [email protected].