Ng'ang'a Wahu-Mũchiri

Using the ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant, we will plan for developing a large-scale digital humanities (DH) exhibition that illuminates the creation, history, and long-term consequences of land treaties in nineteenth-century eastern and southern Africa. Our plan pursues four objectives: Developing a prototype exhibition of digitized texts and objects plus critical materials, with sample results accessible to English-, Kiswahili-, and isiXhosa-speaking audiences; Writing a methodological reflection on project development and international collaboration; Strengthening the collaboration between the four stakeholders: and Drafting a grant application to support a large-scale digital humanities exhibition.

This project explores the material and allegorical aspects of water. The introduction revisits the water ecosystems of the author's upbringing to demonstrate both contemporary challenges and the unrealized promise for sustainable water ecosystems. The first chapter argues that there exists a custodial and spiritual aesthetics of water in the fables, praise songs, and proverbs of the Gĩkũyũ, the Kamba, the Swahili, and Luo communities of Kenya. The second section argues that colonial land treaties weaponized waterscapes while Indigenous relationships to water foregrounded water bodies as vital passages to the supernatural. The third chapter confronts the socio-political challenges that women authors foreground in fiction. In chapter four, the aesthetics of representing water in visual arts reflect deeper questions about water access and water rights. The concluding section proposes that Africana digital humanities leverage the vernacular aesthetics of folklore and empower a teaching-learning citizenry toward the sustainability of water-based ecosystems.