Caribbean Digital Scholarship Summer Institute Call for Applications
News and Announcements
Thursday, December 22, 2022 08:20 AM

The Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective invites applications for its inaugural week-long residential digital humanities institute, to be held at the University of Miami in June 2023. The Caribbean Digital Scholarship Summer Institute (CDSsi) is generously supported by a Mellon Foundation grant and will be held annually for three summers.

Key facts

  • Dates: 11-17 June 2023
  • Venue: University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
  • Application deadline: 31 January 2023
  • Acceptance notification: by 31 March 2023

 

Background

To secure a viable future for digital scholarship in Caribbean Studies, we need a more expansive pool of talent. Given this need, the CDSsi aims to train scholars interested in approaching Caribbean Studies and digital scholarship as organically integrated fields of inquiry and engagement. Other DH institutes have proven to be insufficiently accessible to our Caribbean communities for various reasons, including high cost, logistics of international travel, and a tendency to center Europe, Canada, and the US. The Caribbean Digital Scholarship summer institute will attend to these problems by providing training to scholars, at all levels, working at the intersections of Caribbean Studies and digital humanities. In this first year of the CDSsi, the course offerings will be:

  • Minimal Computing for Caribbean Scholars
    • With Alexander Gil, Yale University, and Andreina Soto, Barnard College
  • Critical Digital Pedagogy
    • With Halcyon M. Lawrence, Towson University
  • Building Caribbean Digital Archives
    • With Nicole N. Aljoe, Northeastern University, and Sonya Donaldson, Colby College

In order to nurture an inclusive and healthy Caribbean digital humanities scholarly and pedagogical community, we must grapple explicitly with the obstacles to cross-national collaboration. We have therefore situated our summer institute at the University of Miami, a site that facilitates travel and in-person participation from both those situated in the Caribbean and in the North American diaspora. Funding from the Mellon foundation allows for this model of networking and community-building that encourages an understanding of both the continental US and the wider Americas as generative sites of knowledge production. Several members of the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective have organized shorter variations of events based on similar community-building models, as with The Caribbean Digital (TCD) conference series and a number of THATCamps (The Humanities and Technology Camps) organized in the Caribbean.

 

Institute Particulars and Who Should Apply

For each year funded by the Mellon Foundation, the CDSsi will admit up to 30 fellows across 3 courses (10 fellows per course). The summer institute welcomes applications from all scholars and teachers working within Caribbean studies. This includes: full-and part-time college and university faculty, independent scholars, librarians, archivists, and graduate students. Applicants may be working in any academic discipline (or across disciplines) but should have some previous experience with digital humanities and digital pedagogy. A major consideration in the selection of fellows will be the applicant's plans for Caribbean digital work in the next two years. A select number of seats in each course will be reserved for applicants from the Caribbean region, therefore scholars residing in the Caribbean are especially encouraged to apply.

The tentative schedule for each course includes a three-hour morning session and a three-hour afternoon session with a lunch break between the two. Fellows will participate in a local field trip. At the end of the week, fellows will present their projects or project proposals as respective to each course. For this first year of the CDSsi, instruction for all three courses will be conducted in person and primarily in English.

 

Travel and accommodation

The Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective will cover travel and accommodations for each fellow selected. The CDSsi supports travel fees up to $1,000 (USD) for each fellow to attend the institute in-person. Additionally, a week of private housing and meals on the University of Miami campus will be provided for each fellow at no additional cost. There are no additional fees associated with attending the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Summer Institute.

 

Application Procedure

We invite applications from full- and part-time college and university faculty, independent scholars, librarians, archivists, and graduate students at all career stages. To apply, complete the form linked below, indicate which courses are of interest to you in the order of your preference, and attach a copy of your CV/resume (no more than 5 pages). Additionally, we ask interested applicants to submit a statement of intent (750-1,000 words) detailing why the CDSsi is of interest and how they envision it would further their scholarship and pedagogy. Should you have a particular project that one of our courses will be well suited for, please describe this project in your statement of intent.

Apply here: https://forms.gle/vezLxU1XQPRf1oqw5

Letters of recommendation are not required for application to the CDSsi and will not be accepted.

 

Information session

For more information about the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Summer Institute, attend our virtual open house session. We will hold an hour-long informational session on Tuesday, 17 January 2023 at 12pm EST, via Zoom. Click here to register: https://miami.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwvdOysqTIpGtM1BXEWTR1rperosNWgn43N

Questions about the Caribbean Digital Scholarship summer institute may be sent to:

En español: Colectivo para el Estudio del Caribe Digital - Convocatoria Instituto de Verano

En français: Institut d’été des études numériques des Caraïbe - Appel à candidatures