Update: New information after publication of this article indicates the Nov. 7 virtual lecture has been postponed. Continue to read YFile for further updates on this event.
The 2023 Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture, titled “The Promise of Postcolonial Digital Humanities,” will be given by Roopika Risam, an associate professor of film and media studies and comparative literature at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. The virtual lecture will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 1:30 p.m. via Zoom.
Despite the immense promise of digital humanities, the material circumstances of humanities knowledge production have delimited the scholarly interventions it makes possible. In this talk, Risam will offer her theoretical and methodological approach to more fully realizing the potential of digital humanities and will discuss projects she and her collaborators have designed to put the theories and methods of post-colonial digital humanities into practice.
During the event, the Ioan Davies Awards for outstanding scholarship will be presented by Diane Davies, wife of the late Ioan.
Risam’s research interests lie at the intersections of post-colonial and African diaspora studies, critical university studies and digital humanities. Her work in digital humanities has been supported by over $4.3 million in grants. Her first monograph, New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, was published by Northwestern University Press. She is the co-editor of multiple volumes, including Intersectionality in Digital Humanities (Arc Humanities Press, 2019) and South Asian Digital Humanities: Postcolonial Mediations Across Technology’s Cultural Canon (Routledge, 2020), and the recently published Anti-Racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices (Campus Compact/Stylus), which has been awarded the International Association of Service Learning and Community Engagement’s 2023 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award.
The Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture is an annual event at York University, sponsored by York’s Joint Graduate Program in Communication & Culture in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, that brings a major intellectual figure in the areas of critical and cultural studies to York for a public lecture. It was initiated in 2002 to honour the memory of the late Ioan Davies, a professor of sociology at York, with a lecture that engages the concerns of his very diverse scholarship. The event has been featured on TVO’s “Big Ideas” television series, and previous lecturers have included Ian Hacking, Terry Eagleton, Michael Hardt and Robin Kelley.
All are welcome to attend this virtual event. Registration is required.