Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant Garde
Reviewed by: Patricia Belen
Review started: March 12, 2023
Review last updated: May 1, 2023
Site Link
Data and Sources
- The Mina Loy Papers, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Yale University Library.
- Mina Loy works found in Archive Grid and private collections.
- Original writings and works of art.
Processes
- Archival material, scholarly research and theoretical analysis are used to engage with Mina Loy through writings, exhibits and multimedia digital projects.
Presentation
- The website content is presented in sections: Read (scholarly writings, close readings, blog); Interact (student research projects, art exhibits, experiments); Time Travel (list of archives/collectors, bios, maps, timelines); About (overview, team, process of peer review, DH Toolbox).
Digital Tools Used
- Wordpress and custom templates
- StoryMap JS
- Timeline JS
- Twine
- YouTube
- Wappalyzer lists PHP (programming language), MySQL (database), Bootstrap (UI framework), Javascript (libraries) and LiteSpeed (web server)
Languages
- English
Review
Mina Loy (1882–1966) was an artist, poet, feminist, entrepreneur, inventor, and world traveler who was affiliated with nearly every avant-garde movement, including Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism through her writings, artworks, and networks. Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde is an open educational resource authored by students, staff, and faculty at Davidson College, Duquesne University, and the University of Georgia. It is the culmination of a five-year collaboration, supported by a Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. As a digital, interactive and curated multimedia scholarly book, the project includes peer-reviewed scholarly chapters, innovative student research projects, close readings of poems, art exhibits, timelines, maps, bios, links to archives, and theoretical experiments.
The homepage presents a visual overview of the website along with links to the main sections, examples of maps, artwork, scholarly prizes which the project has received, and links to social media. Given the fact that the team and contributors have worked on the project for several years, the content is exhaustive and deep so it’s helpful that there are sections to help navigate through the content.
“Mina Loy Baedeker” is a peer-reviewed, scholarly publication presented on the website written by Suzanne W. Churchill, Linda A. Kinnahan, and Susan Rosenbaum (the project architects and Professors of English at Davidson College, Duquesne University and University of Georgia, respectively). Not only does the publication provide expert analysis of Loy’s experimental art and writing, it also presents feminist theories (referred to as “en dehors garde”) that better account for the contributions of women and people of color to the avant-garde. Particularly interesting are connections drawn between Loy and digital scholarship, digital humanities and feminist design.
Graduate and undergraduate student projects (2017–2020) are featured in a section “New Frequencies”. The authors have made an effort to note that these projects may no longer be available and may not follow web accessibility standards but they are included because of their creative approaches to Loy’s work. Student projects include a 3D animation of Loy’s play “Collision” (1915), a Twine game of Loy’s “Feminist Manifesto” (1914), a StoryMap of Loy and F. T. Marinetti, and a digital remediation of Loy’s infamous poem “Songs to Joannes” (1917).
The public also contributed to this website in the form of an experimental “digital flash mob”. In 2018, a public invitation was distributed with a call to submit a digital post(card) design offering thoughts, visions, or speculations about the “en dehors garde” in order to account for women, people of color, queer artists, people with disabilities, and others who come from the outside and create art in the margins. 70 postcards were received which are now featured on the website.
The collaborative nature of this project - involving students, researchers, faculty, technologists, an advisory board of peers, the public - demonstrates digital humanities capacity to share labor fairly and justly in service of knowledge production. For example, all students earned course credit for their projects, received payment for work that was not directly related to course learning goals, and were given a choice to have their names listed as collaborators or to remain anonymous. Additionally, in keeping with principles of feminist design, this website makes Loy’s work accessible to a diverse readership by making a commitment to meeting standards for web accessibility. WebAIM’s web accessibility guidelines were used in the creation of the website.
Unlike other digital projects, Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde continues to be updated both through the website and social media networks. The project blog has posts as recent as 2022, there is a forthcoming book Travels with Mina Loy (2024, Lever Press), and a “Mapping Mina Loy Studies Symposium” in 2023.