Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Speculative Telephone: Oral Historians And Digital Librarians On How Libraries Could Be, Kae Kratcha

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

In the summer of 2023, librarian and oral historian Kae Bara Kratcha interviewed three oral historians about their relationships to libraries and their dreams for what digital libraries could be. Then they played portions of each oral historian interview for a digital librarian and asked the librarian to speculate about what their jobs and lives would be like if they implemented the oral historians' ideas about digital libraries. “Speculative Telephone: Oral Historians and Digital Librarians on How Libraries Could Be” is eleven edited audio tracks of wide-ranging conversation on topics like public space, online communities, library anxiety, relationships with library …

Let Us Fail: Speculative Futures And Digital Librarianship, Natalia Estrada, Kristina Bush, Stacy Snyder

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

Let Us Fail explores what digital librarianship work might look like if digital library workers were not tied to the technology, infrastructure, or work culture of academia that we currently experience. We explore what work could look like if we were given the agency to play and be creative, support to learn from failure, and freedom from traditional assessment metrics. This podcast dreams about a future in which digital library workers are self-directed, autonomous workers with the capacity to explore, experiment, and iterate.

To stream each episode of this podcast, navigate to JCDL volume 0, issue 2 and click on …

Desire Paths In The Information Landscape, Victoria Van Hyning, Mason A. Jones, Travis Wagner

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

Libraries and archives serve so many different users who come to information institutions with various perspectives, needs, experiences, and desires around accessing physical or digital collections. While our users may find what they are looking for immediately, many have to beat their own paths through complex systems and metadata that doesn’t align with their needs. Their search strategies may leave digital “desire paths”–alternative routes through the information landscape that can show us how to better meet their needs. This article covers three scenarios where users’ desire paths can be seen or where gaps around user experience can be better addressed. …

Editors' Introduction, Leah Powell Duncan, Janina Mueller, Rachel Starry, Sl Ziegler, Emily M. Zinger

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

Editors' Introduction. Special Issue, "Turning it Off and Back On Again: Speculative Digital Librarianship"

Conflict And Race In Literature & Law. The Case Of Americanah, Emanuela Ignatoiu Sora

Comparative Woman

In Americanah, the 2013 novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there is a scene when one of the characters, Laura, speaks of her Ugandan classmate who did not get along with an African-American colleague. Laura is surprised as, for her, all persons of color are similar, with no understanding for their differences in background, personal stories and experiences. The novel depicts and critiques this very categorization of race, which flattens differences, conflating groups and individuals who might share very little, if anything. For a long time, law (with its stipulations, precedents and rulings) has operated in a similar manner, disengaging …

Against Conflict, Against Occupation: Protest Songs In India And Kashmir, Mridula Sharma

Comparative Woman

The establishment of All India Progressive Writers’ Association in colonial India encouraged artists to articulate and examine social realities. Literary-cultural productions, particularly popular songs in Hindi films, in independent India continued to remain preoccupied with social conflicts such as religious bigotry and communalism. Sahir Ludhianvi’s “Yeh Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaye” (trans. “What can one gain, even if one gains this world?,” 1958 ) and “Yeh Kiska Lahu Hai, Kaun Mara” (trans. “Whose Blood Has Spilled? Who Died?,” 1961) are early examples of a lasting tide of pessimism owing to communal violence during the 1947 India-Pakistan …

Ladybugs, Gabrielle Bologna

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Women, Animals, Food: Planetary Perspectives On The Non-(Hu)Man, Samu/Elle Striewski

Comparative Woman

The paper comparatively reads Mahasweta Devi’s Pterodactyl, Pirtha, and Puran Sahay (1995) and Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood (2009) to trace the ways in which both novels show the complex intertwinement of the climate crisis with gender, class, race, subalternity, anthropocentrism, and veganism. Bringing together Gayatri C. Spivak’s notion of “planetarity” with ecofeminist philosophy and literary criticism, the article proposes a planetary ecogender reading of the two texts and their representation of the non-man, non-human, and non-subject. Building up further on Jacques Derrida’s critique of carno-phallogocentrism, the pedagogy of a relational ethics of “nurturing” is hence presented …

Feminist Phenomenology And First-Person Narrative: Understanding Gender And Social Conflict In Anna Burns’ Milkman, Sushree Routray, Rashmi Gaur Professor

Comparative Woman

In her magnum opus Milkman (2018), Anna Burns employs a subversive and artfully crafted first-person narrative, deftly exposing the arduous and tumultuous struggles encountered by individuals who dare to defy the confines of traditional gender roles. Through a relentless and unflinching narrative, the novel fearlessly confronts the harrowing manifestations of psychological torment, the insidious spectre of relentless stalking, and the manipulative machinations of gaslighting, all the while fervently interrogating the notion of a fixed and immutable gender identity. In a relentless odyssey toward self-realization, the protagonist's journey unfurls against a backdrop of traumatic events and the unyielding pressures imposed by …

"Too Immoral To Be Narrated By A Woman": Censoring Erotic Fiction Of Arab Women Writers In Girls Of Riyadh And Distant View Of A Minaret And Other Stories, Muhammed Salem

Comparative Woman

In the Arab world, bargaining with censorship has been an ongoing struggle for writers, particularly female authors. How could we explain that only male writers were allowed to discuss sexuality in the Arabic canon, insofar as female characters are portrayed as passive sexual objects? Are Arab women writers victims of double censorship? One is imposed on their fellow male writers, and another is tacit censorship which judges women’s morality based on their writing. Girls of Riyadh (2007) by Saudi novelist, Rajaa Abdullah Alsanea, and Distant View of the Minaret and Other Stories (1987) by Egyptian novelist, Alifa Rifaat, are two …

Interculturality, Creolization, And Globalization In "Ángeles Nómadas" By Minelys Sánchez, Cecily Bernard

Comparative Woman

No abstract provided.

Madness As Response To Inherent Cultural Conflicts In Anglophone Fiction From 1700 To 2020, Anna Klambauer

Comparative Woman

Madness in literature has a long and colourful history. While its representation varies significantly in different literary periods, madness is nonetheless a consistent theme responding to inherent conflicts of civilisation. Thus, in the eighteenth-century novel, madness is subdued and forced to express itself in the language of rationality, while in the nineteenth century the theme becomes increasingly subversive. In the form of the madwoman trope (Gilbert and Gubar 1979), madness is simultaneously a reaction to restrictive patriarchal norms, and a frame in which the gender conflicts of the time can be safely and effectively played out. In the twentieth century, …

“By That Daughter’S Most Devoted Affection”: Anxious And Avoidant Attachments In Opie’S Adeline Mowbray, Meghan E. Hodges

Comparative Woman

Attachment theory, or the theory that one’s personality and social development is informed greatly by the infant-parent bond, largely arises in the 1950s with the work of John Bowlby. Although the phenomenon was only then beginning to be scientifically evaluated, it has long been observed that the relationship one has with one’s parents is a determinant factor in one’s development. This work investigates the impact of the failure to heal the insecure attachment Amelie Opie’s Adeline Mowbray (1808). Adeline, having grown up in her distant mother’s intellectual shadow, develops a neurotic attachment to her mother which causes romantic maladjustment in …

Reverberations Of Boarding School Trauma In Upstate New York, Grace A. Miller

Comparative Woman

The legacy of boarding schools in Upstate New York is one that non-Natives seem to have forgotten. This historical amnesia compounds other acts of genocide, including cultural genocide, of the Haudenosaunee people throughout US history. Established in 1855 at the Cattaraugus Reservation (Seneca), the Thomas Indian School would serve as an institution of forced assimilation and displacement, much like the other Native American boarding schools. While the larger US population has grown to forget these schools' existence, the shadowed legacy of institutions, like the Thomas Indian School, Haskell, and Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the rippling effects of these schools’ practices …

Editors' Introduction, Sophia Ziegler, Leah Powell Duncan

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

Introduction to Journal of Critical Digital Librarian, Vol.2 Issue 1

From Mapping Place To Mapping Space In Library Gis Work, Lena Denis

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

At many academic libraries, library workers run the teaching, general reference consultations, technical troubleshooting, and software and licensing maintenance in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for their institutions. This is very much the case in the Data Services unit of Johns Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries, where staff receive requests for help with a wide variety of mapping projects every semester. Sometimes they are straightforward requests for technical assistance, but sometimes they underpin much deeper investigations into how to situate people and significant events through time and geographic settings. This article discusses these types of requests in the context of the philosophical …

Leveraging Critical Information Literacy To Develop Social Justice-Minded Data Literacy Competencies, Ben B. Chiewphasa, Matthew L. Sisk

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

Librarians who interact with data in different contexts can come together in a community of practice – leveraging each other's perspectives to collectively engage with critical librarianship and reimagine social justice-related learning outcomes for information and data literacy programming. Specifically, this paper explores the overlapping goals of different critical literacies (such as critical information literacy and QuantCrit), showcasing that synergies exist between social justice-oriented librarians with distinctive roles and responsibilities. By leveraging a community of practice as a vehicle for continuing education in inclusive pedagogy, librarians can empower their patrons, students, and colleagues to challenge and act upon surrounding data …

Toward Ethical And Inclusive Descriptive Practices, Shira Peltzman, Kelly Besser

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

This case study describes the context which galvanized our Collection Management unit at UCLA Library Special Collections to collectively craft a descriptive practices statement within a study group focused on an anti-oppressive approach to discovery and access. This paper discusses the planning and design of the study group, our direct engagement at meetings, collaborative iteration, and liberatory pedagogical strategies that enabled the statement’s publication, and its impact within our department, library, and beyond. This work speaks to radical descriptive change and provides a potential path for the development of ethical and inclusive descriptive practices at other institutions.

The Resisting Female Body In India, Nancy Boissel-Cormier

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Bodies And Expressions: Exploring The Aesthetics Of Disability Performance Art, Jaya Sarkar

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Disability As An Existential Challenge: Reading The Body In Sarah Ismail’S Poetry, Amrit Mishra

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Toward Empathetic Digital Repositories: An Interview With Diego Pino Navarro, Sophia Ziegler

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

Diego Pino Navarro is a systems architect and open source software developer from Chile. He is the Assistant Director for Digital Strategy at the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) where he manages the digital services team. Diego is also the Lead Architect of Archipelago Commons, an open source digital library software for cultural heritage materials.

In this interview from October 18, 2021, Sophia Ziegler talks to Diego Pino Navarro about his work with Archipelago, and specifically how he invokes the role of empathy in ongoing digital library software development. Diego talks about his efforts to build a digital library …

Using Digital Libraries To Engage The Whole Student: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, Trauma-Informed Classrooms, And Project-Based Learning, Alejandra Torres

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

Engaging students with an online library does not have to be limited to research purposes only. This essay includes lesson plan ideas that use the Louisiana Digital Library to engage middle and high school students in ways that help amplify their curiosity and explore their identities. To ensure the lesson plans engage the whole student, I ground them in three components (culturally sustaining pedagogies, trauma-informed classrooms, and project-based learning) and seven core values. These lessons could be used alone as writing workshops or can be used to introduce or make connections to other concepts. The activities are adaptable to fit …

Listening, Care, And Collections As Data, Jacqueline Wernimont

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

This paper takes the sonification (the translation into sound) of data from sterilization recommendations made under eugenic laws in the United States as a case study in navigating the terrain between a commitment to caring for and with impacted communities and the potential affordances and perils of using sensitive collections as data. The author discusses ways that feminist care ethics and collections as data research intersect in a digital humanities project.

Centering The Margins In Digital Project Planning, Dorothy Berry

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

This paper uses the example of the development of a digital collections program at Harvard University’s Houghton Library to provide an introduction to building programmatic and equitable collections online. Focusing on why, how, and what goes into programmatic digital collections through examples of ongoing project workflows and special projects workflows, the paper introduces methods for digital project planning that center diverse histories.

It Matters Who Does This Work: An Interview With Tonia Sutherland, Sophia Ziegler

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

Tonia Sutherland (she/her) is assistant professor in the Library and Information Science Program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She serves on the SAA Council, and is author of the forthcoming book Digital Remains: Race and the Digital Afterlife. Dr. Sutherland holds a Ph.D. and an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Computing and Information, as well as a BA in history, performance studies, and cultural studies from Hampshire College. Her work focuses on the interactions of technology and culture, and emphasizes critical work within the fields of archival studies, digital studies, and science and technology studies. …

Editors' Introduction, Sophia Ziegler, Leah Powell Duncan, Gina Costello

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

No abstract provided.