Wednesday, March 24, 5:00-6:00 PM
ZOOM ( ID: 865 8198 3725 Password: 690873 )
Given the stunning amount of data about contemporary migration currently available through sources like the United Nations, migration has been the subject of numerous data visualizations. Rhetorical and technical choices made in data visualizations have positioned refugees and forced migrants as instigators of a “crisis.” These forms of data storytelling displace the geo-political, colonial, and neo-colonial causes of migration onto refugees themselves, positioning them as “problems.” In this talk, Risam explores the narrative dimensions of migrant data. What does it mean to tell migrant narratives through data? What kinds of migrant narratives do data-driven approaches facilitate and what narratives are obscured through data-driven approaches? And what kinds of data storytelling ethics foster the agency of migrants?
Roopika Risam is Associate Professor and Faculty Fellow of Digital Library Initiatives at Salem State University and author of New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (Northwestern University Press, 2018). Her research interests lie at the intersections of postcolonial and African diaspora studies, humanities knowledge infrastructures, and digital humanities. She co-directs Reanimate, an intersectional feminist publishing collective that recovers archival writing by women in media industries, and co-hosts Rocking the Academy, a podcast about new visions of higher education.
This talk is co-sponsored by 
