Collaborative Digital Initiatives Across the U.S.

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable will build on work discussed during the successful digital humanities stream at the 2016 ASEEES Convention. These five projects seek to connect scholars, students, and community members with undiscovered resources. Two websites based in Kansas and Virginia contribute to an overarching goal to inspire scholars in other U.S. states to create a nationwide network of Russian cultural resources. Another project aims to revive a defunct Slavic digital repository and convert it into a flexible, research- and teaching-friendly directory. The fourth project enables discovery of Soviet publications addressing educational initiatives, with the fifth highlighting the Prague Spring archive that is growing into a broader Cold War archive. We hypothesize that such digital initiatives transgress borders in three ways. First, the virtual crossing of physical borders allows scholars to form networks and connections where they may not have otherwise existed. Second, collaborative scholarship requires transgression of traditionally unspoken borders between faculty and staff, professors and librarians, and senior scholars and junior scholars, all of whom will participate on this roundtable. Third, the Internet allows and even promotes transgression not only of academic borders that would have certain resources remain hidden away, but also of current cultural borders dividing the U.S. from Russia in a somewhat fraught political climate. Since we will devote time to workshopping digital initiatives, from conception of a project’s goals through platform selection to design and launch of the finished product, the roundtable format is essential.

Sub Unit

• Digital Humanities

Chair

• Edith W. Clowes, U of Virginia

Roundtable Members

• Edith W. Clowes, U of Virginia

• Ian Goodale, U of Texas at Austin

• Christine Jacobson, Harvard U

• Megan Hilliard Luttrell, U of Kansas