This year’s kickoff event will focus collective attention and action on the relationship between individual digital humanists and NYCDH as a community of practice impacted by ongoing crises and traumas, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice, budget austerity, labor conditions, and pedagogical transition, that expose the inequitable conditions in which we do our work. In A Burst of Light, NYC-based poet Audre Lorde writes: \u201cCaring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.\u201d Foregrounding the unequal, varied, and fluid impacts of the past year\u2019s events on the NYC DH community as individuals and as a collective, our kickoff events and week-long focus groups will consider how \u201cradical care\u201d might mobilize communities toward positive social action while resisting its potential to reinforce systemic inequity. How might the NYC DH community come together through a shared understanding of radical care and \u201cshow up\u201d for one another, moving us toward hopeful change?<\/p>\n
In place of the traditional keynote lecture, this year\u2019s kickoff ceremony will feature a conversation between two members of our NYC DH community, Madiha Zahrah Choksi<\/a>, Research and Learning Technologies Librarian at Columbia University, and Lisa Rhody<\/a>, Deputy Director of Digital Initiatives at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Following the conversation, there will be opportunities for breakout room discussions and networking sessions.<\/p>\n