Reviewer’s Positionality Statements

Dr. Aránzazu Borrachero, Professor
Patricia Belen
María F. Buitrago
R.C.
Julesa Grimes
Kristy Leonardatos
Theodore Daniel Manning
Kelsey Milian
Majel Peters

Dr. Aránzazu Borrachero, Professor

Women in my mother’s generation were deprived of their subjecthood by an ultra-catholic and ultra-masculinist fascist regime. I was only twelve when the dictator, Francisco Franco, died and, wanting to understand what the old order of things meant to my mother and aunts, I spent many hours listening to their consummate storytelling as I grew up.

At some point, I realized that those stories were too important for others to miss, and that is how I arrived at digital memory studies. As luck should have it, I found Alejandro Peña and Francisco Onielfa, expert developers specialized in digital humanities, who deemed my quest intriguing enough to give it digital life: Mujer y Memoria.

This trajectory may explain my main pedagogical objective behind these collections of reviews. I want the reviewers and editors --my students-- to hone an “ear” for stories that authoritarianism, in any of its manifestations, has tried to crush and bury, and to critically examine current efforts to tell those stories digitally. This is a deliberately political endeavor, and one for which the editors and reviewers need no explanation. They get it.

Patricia Belen

As the co-editor of Digital Memory Project Reviews, Volume III, I come to this work with experience as a graphic designer and design educator, helping students build their own projects using visual and digital means. As a practitioner of digital humanities, I have been involved in developing projects and using archives focused on visual histories and communications. These professional and academic intersections provide me with a unique point of view through which to review digital memory projects. Our focus on DH practices of feminist care for this volume has allowed me to look beyond typical design and UI/UX considerations and delve more into project creators’ intentions, strategies and outcomes for users. Black Archives appeals to my visual sensibility and illustrates how archives and historical research can be used in commercial spaces. As the project of an artist/activist, Memories of Palestine demonstrates a do-it-yourself attitude and reveals the power of storytelling through video, particularly for communities in exile. Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant Garde is an exemplary project which combines fair labor practices with various historical and contemporary multimedia to educate the public on a lesser-known figure of the avant garde. I hope my reviews can offer instances where there is more potential for feminist care practices.

María F. Buitrago

I’ve been thinking so much about positionality these days. Asking myself where’s my place? or rather, which are my positions, in this fragile and complex life entanglements that I am part of. The entanglements, like Donna Haraway puts it, make us who we are. But I want to call them enredos or marañas, which sounds much closer to me, speaking my maternal tonge. The marañas constitute the multiple factors, circumstances, actors and events that shape our beings and build our positionalities or political horizons. Because of the interrelated nature of our world our positionalities are also part of hierarchies and oppressive systems of power and control. The marañas are intertwined, inevitable, with precarity. The fact that I can have the privilege of writing these words comes with the cost that there are others that just simply can’t. They can’t afford the time or the space to do this. Using that privilege I selected three projects to review which dialogue with some of my identities as a Colombian woman, as a former student of anthropology and as a current DH student. But I’ve also selected them attracted by their pedagogical, interdisciplinary and decolonial ethos. I care about the questions the projects seem to ask us: how to decolonize the archive?, how can we de-center or widen our scholarly production and reception, by not just highlighting United States and European projects? How can a Truth Commission interpret the multiple truths behind Colombia’s armed conflict?. I especially deeply care about the last question. I’m very biased, I analyzed the projects through a feminist and decolonial mindset, and was very emotionally engaged and moved while reviewing the Truth Commisson’s work. It peeled my skin. And that’s my position, a question: how is it that I’m on this side of the screen while others are struggling to survive in the geographies of sacrifice we constantly create? But yet they flourish.

R.C.

My professional background in data science, visual art, and technology, combined with my interests in climate justice, feminism, and APPI, provides me with a unique perspective in the field of Digital Humanities as a first-year Digital Humanities master's student at CUNY. My experience as an Asian American and my professional background also influences my perspective, research and writing.

Through my project reviews, I aim to explore the intersections of these fields with digital humanities. With my experience in digital product development, I look forward to sharing critiques around user experience and digital tools of humanities projects. Additionally, my data visualization experience provides me with a critical lens for analyzing mapping and data visualization projects.

I am committed to amplifying marginalized voices and recognizing the importance of intersectionality in my research. Finally, I would also like to pay extra care to address my biases and assumptions throughout my reviews.

Julesa Grimes

As a Master’s student in the Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences program at CUNY, this has been my first experience with Digital Humanities but surely not my last. While working as a case manager for older adults, I have grown to understand the importance of not just listening to but recording the unique experiences held by each individual. This specific course interested me because it would allow me to engage with memory in a way that coincides with my interest in the digital world.

As a Black Woman enrolled in a Master’s Program, I am privy to how intersectionality plays a role in my understanding of the three projects that I have reviewed. Upon reviewing the following projects:

I considered my personal biases especially in terms of racial inequity which was present in all three projects but more so in The F.B. Eyes Digital Archive and Hurricane Digital Memory Bank. However, I did attempt to remain impartial as the main focus was to evaluate the projects not survey my partialities. I am hopeful that my reviews display an adequate examination into these projects as I am appreciative that I had the ability to explore them.

Kristy Leonardatos

As a former talent acquisition professional, I contributed to designing and implementing an early talent program in North America. In this capacity, I was responsible for managing employer branding, conducting employee engagement data analysis, overseeing program management, and planning events. However, after a 30-year hiatus, I decided to return to formal education as a digital humanities graduate student. As a second-semester student, I have gained a broader perspective and developed a critical mindset to analyze historical and current conditions. Additionally, my studies have equipped me with technical, evaluative, and analytical skills. Utilizing these skills I evaluated three diverse digital memories projects - Memories of Palestine, Around the DH in 80 Days, and A Deeper Sickness, Museum of America in the Pandemic Year, 2020. Throughout the evaluation process, I approached each project with an open mind and endured to stay neutral in my assessments. Through this experience, I was able to continue to expand my understanding of the field while further developing my critical thinking and analytical skills.

Theodore Daniel Manning

Without much fanfare, my professional background is in Computational Linguistics, focusing on corpus creation and stylometry, and I’m now pursuing an MA in Digital Humanities to give ethical frameworks and Digital Humanities lenses to my work. In particular, my primary project (Map Lemon) has garnered attention internationally in my field for its strides in Transgender Linguistics. With that said, my most relevant personal biases to these projects are that I’m a Queer Jew of Middle Eastern descent. The projects I’ve chosen to review have largely focused on issues I can speak to—those being the Suffrage Postcard Project and Let Them Speak—with the exception being The Roaring Twenties, which just seemed too cool to pass up, although I am becoming a New Yorker myself with every month longer that I live here. As clear as it is from my project choices, I have great interest in history and have experience working with the folks at the Internet Archive, so my reviews tend to focus less on projects with contemporary subjects.

Kelsey Milian

This is my first time interacting with Digital Humanities as most of my academic career has been involved with performing arts and education. One would think that we would interact with Digital Humanities more often, but I believe the bridges between both spaces are still built. I was interested in taking thai course for that very reason of trying to build a bridge and gain skills in digital tools that can help explain discourse within my disciplines. I am a multiethnic and multi-racial indigenous woman. I have Mexican, Japanese, and Guatemala, with connections to the K’iche Maya and Zapotec (Isthmusde Tehuantepec). I am also a first -generation daughter of immigrants. My positionality is diverse and intricate, but I consider various spaces in which I benefit from privileges on social class and being able bodied. I am a classically trained violinist and have skills in transcription, music composition, and recording within a Western Music theory lens. I am also an Ethnomusicologist. I study music in culture and culture in music. Essentially, this helps apply specific anthropological theories and ethnographic skills to most of the research I do. Specific skills included participant observation, transcription, and one on one interaction with communities and cultures different from my own. In any case, I have to consider my positionality and situated knowledge 24/7. The three projects I reviewed are:

I consider my biases within this review as Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations involves the perspectives of multi-ethnic and multi-racial stories. Participants within this oral history project speak on the macro and micro aggressions they dealt with while growing up. I can heavily relate and understand the lack of representation from these perspectives. I appreciated seeing a digital space that includes these stories. Torn Apart/Separados involves data collection on ICE Detention Centers. These centers negatively affect migrants coming to the United States. As a child of immigrants,I recognize my biases and dedication to sharing accurate information about the treatment of immigrants in these detention centers. I’m Still Surviving is an interesting project that highlights the voices of individuals with HIV/AIDS. I appreciate the project for its efforts in bridging a representation gap for HIV/AIDS individuals. Negative stereotypes and false information continue to spread about individuals with HIV/AIDS. These stories help humanize these individuals and work towards building strong solidarity among intersecting communities. I hope I can provide a unique perspective that often promotes the importance of representation in spaces in which there is none or little.

Majel Peters

As an Afro-Indigenous Mashpee Wampanoag, Digital Humanist, and communications specialist with over 20 years of experience, I am deeply aware of the shared burdens, joys and energies of the human experience. My work in design, strategy, and messaging with the intention of engaging a public audience has always been rooted in finding the commonalities that drive our choices and our personal expressions. The unique experiences of the communities and individuals featured in the projects I have reviewed for this collection speak to the many ways we, as humans, can experience our time on the planet. The stories and representations they offer hold deep suffering, creativity, curiosity, and resilience in the face of an historic flow of misunderstanding and malice rooted in a denial of our interconnectivity. When investigating these projects, I have looked for the care that the project creators brought to the stories they have chosen to carry into the public sphere via a digital setting—how are these stories being othered or nurtured? How are these stories creating threads between the user and the people at the heart of the knowledge displayed? How is the form the interactivity takes enhancing or hindering the ability for these stories to resonate? Recognizing care and the lack of it is an ongoing practice relevant to all interactions and experiences. As co-editor of Digital Memory Project Reviews, Volume III, I am grateful for the opportunity to engage and hone this skill in relation to digital work, which carries, in theory, the ability to bring us closer to recognizing our interconnectivity.

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