This course conspires to abscond. We will be working alongside the Black Code Studies Working Group at Duke University under the direction of Dr. Mark Anthony Neal:
#Black Code Studies Working Group: Black History + [Black Culture] + Digital Media
Spring 2017. Thursday @3:00
Location: TBA
Start Date: TBA
Black Code Studies: Black History + [Black Culture + Digital Media] is a Working Group at Duke University facilitated by the Center for Art + Digital Culture + Entrepreneurship (CADCE) under the direction of Professor Mark Anthony Neal and in collaboration with Professor Jessica Marie Johnson of the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
The working group explores the making of histories of people of African descent in an age of digital and social media. The focus will be on African-descended communities in the United States, but content will range across time space. Examples include: West African digital art communities; the use of slave trade databases to write Caribbean history; the sampling, re-imagining and marooning of Black sonic culture; the organizing and maintenance of analog, digital, and AnalogDigital archives, and the use of social media in social justice organizing from Paris to Baltimore.
Participants will explore questions of blackness, race, ethnicity, sex and sexuality, violence and justice while learning more about and creating digital content using platforms like WordPress, Omeka, Twitter, and Tumblr. Participants will contribute to the acquisition of African American and Afrx-Diasporic history; their knowledge of digital and social media platforms; and their ability to creatively and accurately relate the histories of blackness and black people to their representation and discussion online.