Schedule & Assignments

Reminders:

  1. Use Canvas to submit journal assignments (see prompts for each class below) and to view corresponding grades.

  2. The password to access the readings is on the homepage of this course’s Canvas site.

  3. In addition to journals, your grade in this course is based upon 1) attendance and 2) completion of the Engagements Experience, and 3) participation.

  • No readings or assignments due.

  • Assigned reading: Jamelle Bouie, “We Still Can’t See Slavery for What It Was,” The New York Times, January 22, 2022.

    Journal prompts:

    1. Bouie says using data to represent history is "complicated." Why?

    2. Bouie refers to historical records as "tools of the trade." What kind of records is he talking about, and why do you think he calls them that?

  • Assigned reading: Jessica Marie Johnson; Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads. Social Text 1 December 2018; 36 (4 (137)): 57–79.

    Assigned data: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database

    Journal prompts:

    1. US Participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade: Using a calculator and the “Estimates” page of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (see above), calculate the percentage of the Transatlantic Slave Trade that came to the United States. Why do you think this was? (It’s okay to guess on this one; we will discuss the actual reasons in class.

    2. Captive Mortality of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: Note that on the “Estimates” page, there is a place to adjust which values the cells display. The default setting is “Embarked only.” Change it to “Embarked/Disembarked,” then calculate the overall mortality rate of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (as a whole, not for each individual component). Note you will have to scroll to the far right to see “totals” portion.

    3. In your own words, how would you explain Dr. Johnson’s concept of “null values”?

    4. Also in your own words, how would you explain Dr. Johnson’s concept of Black Digital Practice as “good mourning?”

  • Assigned reading: Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery, Chapter 3: “Slavery’s Scientific Management: Productivity Analysis in the Antebellum South.”

    Assigned data: The Evergreen Plantation Slavery Database & Ancestor Project

    Journal prompts:

    1. Read Julienne’s page within the Ancestor Project. Then, find her in the Evergreen Slavery Database. (The database is a little glitchy—there may be multiple entries for the same person.) How do the two representations of Julienne—the database’s and the Ancestor Project’s—compare? Which do you prefer and why?

    2. How, according to Rosenthal, did enslavers use data as a method of exploitation and control of enslaved people?

  • Assigned reading: Jennie K. Williams, “Finders Aren’t Keepers: Rethinking and Reconfiguring the Oceans of Kinfolk Database.” Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 4, no. 3 (2023): 44-61. AND Williams, “Open Letter to the Slave Voyages Project.”

    Assigned data: Oceans of Kinfolk (Slave Voyages edition) & Oceans of Kinfolk (Kinfolkology edition)

    Journal prompts:

    1. From the first reading: What are the author’s criticisms of the original Oceans of Kinfolk? Do you agree with those criticisms?

    2. Identify at least three differences between the two versions of Oceans of Kinfolk. (These differences can be in the actual datasets or in the larger projects of Slave Voyages and Kinfolkology.)

    3. From the second reading: For the author, what is the relationship between slavery’s data and descendant engagement? (Descendant in this case refers to descendants of enslaved persons.)

  • Assigned reading: Jennifer L. Morgan, Reckoning with Slavery, Chapter 4: “Accounting for the ‘Most Excruciating Torment.”

    Journal prompts:

    1. What is the relationship, according to Dr. Morgan, between slavery and kinship?

    2. What does Dr. Morgan refer to as "the most excruciating torment"? Why?

  • Assigned reading: Sutherland, Tonia. Chapter 1 of Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2023.

    Assigned data: Freedom on the Move

    Journal prompts:

    1. View five fugitive advertisements of your choice using the Freedom on the Move database. What variables would you use to capture the information in each? What information would be difficult to capture in a variable?

    2. What, for Dr. Sutherland, is the "Black digital afterlife?"

    3. What are Dr. Sutherland's critiques, explicit or implicit, of Freedom on the Move and projects like it? Do you agree with them? Why or why not?

  • Assigned reading: Simone Browne, “Digital Epidermalization: Race, Identity and Biometrics,” Critical Sociology 36, no. 1 (January 2010): 131–50.

    Journal prompts:

    1. What is digital epidermalization? Explain the concept in your own words please.

    2. Explain, also in your own words, the concept of "white prototypicality."

    3. How does biometric technology relate to records from slavery we've examined in this course?

  • Assigned reading: none.