Jim McGrath, PhD

Tag: american studies

  • New Publication: “Precarious Labor in the Digital Humanities” (American Quarterly 70.3)

    I’m excited to share the news that “Precarious Labor in the Digital Humanities” is now available via the new issue of American Quarterly! It was a great experience co-writing this essay with an amazing team of authors: Christina Boyles, Anne Cong-Huyen, Carrie Johnston, and Amanda Phillips. Readers with institutional or subscriber access to the journal can read the essay here; I’ll update this post with a link when a more publicly-accessible version of the piece and the issue is available (I’m told that will be soon!). 

    Our piece is part of a special issue of American Quarterly on American Studies and the Digital Humanities. The Contributors list is full of names I admire in DH and AMST, and I greatly appreciate the work of the issue’s co-editors and their encouragement throughout the process of writing and revising.

    Our perspectives on precarious labor come from conversations and writing done as part of the American Studies Association’s DH Caucus. If you’re new to DH or AMST and you’re attending the annual ASA conference in November, I highly recommend checking out the DH Caucus meeting and sponsored session. It’s been a particularly precarious year for me, so I greatly appreciate having folks like the Caucus members in my professional life when I’ve needed guidance, advice, and support.

    I’m still not sure if I’ll be at ASA this year, but I’m happy to talk with folks about American Studies and DH via Twitter or email (james_mcgrath@brown.edu).

  • “Our City”: Images of Home in Our Marathon, The Boston Bombing Digital Archive

    Source: Our Marathon
    Source: Our Marathon

    Note: The following post is adapted from remarks I gave at the 2016 American Studies Association Conference on a panel titled “Home Screens: Digitizing Belonging and Place in American Studies.” Thanks to my fellow presenters and attendees for their participation, to Alicia Peaker and the rest of the Our Marathon project team, and to Carrie Johnston for organizing the panel.

    In his remarks at an interfaith prayer service in Boston on April 18th, 2013, three days after the Boston Marathon bombings, President Barack Obama noted more than once to his audience that “Boston may be your hometown, but we claim it, too.” In the hours, days, and weeks following the events of April 15th, 2013, many people used social media to document how “at home” they feel or once felt in Boston.

    I’m interested in ideas of home and digital spaces in the context of Our Marathon: The Boston Bombing Digital Archive. Our Marathon, a community project hosted by Northeastern University, is a crowdsourced digital archive of close to ten thousand stories, photos, and social media about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and their aftermath. I started working on it as a graduate student research assistant in May of 2013, became Project Co-Director (with Alicia Peaker, now at Bryn Mawr) in the fall of that year, and I continue to work on it as we preserve our digital assets and make them more accessible in the short and long-term via Northeastern’s Digital Repository Service.

    Slide by Jim McGrath
    Slide by Jim McGrath

    I’m particularly interested in discussing Our Marathon and what it might tell us about home and digital regionalism, home and digital archives, and home and digital public humanities.

    (more…)