ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grants

Archive of Futures: Histories and Horizons in California teaches histofuturism and foresight to center Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color at Cal State University campuses. The project launches themed calls tied to hidden California histories, and students learn foresight methods in 75-minute workshops/classes and videos. Then, students submit speculative artifacts to a public, mapped counter-archive. Our inquiry pairs historical recovery with evidence-based speculation and liberation pedagogy, asking how past struggles, cultural production, and ancestral technologies inform preferred futures. Two exhibit cycles culminate in Omeka digital exhibits that visualize futures across the state. A companion site provides mini-lectures, lesson plans, and clear submission pathways.

This project proposes a bilingual digital archive of 21st-century transfeminism activist histories in Córdoba, Argentina. Trans organizers in Córdoba describe the precarity of their political work, how it is easily lost or taken without acknowledgment. Training activists in archival practices (including Mukurtu CMS) will build a sustainable infrastructure in which materials remain under the stewardship of the communities who produced them. A collaboration between U.S.-based feminist academics and a prominent Argentine trans-rights activist, this project models how digital humanities can function in solidarity with Global South movements: grounded in local histories, accountable to community-defined ethics, and guided by the principle that archiving can be a practice of collective care.

This project uses digital community archiving and oral history to protect and share neglected histories of medical harm and political struggle among Black and Latine communities in New Haven, Connecticut. With ACLS support, the Community Histories Lab (CHL) and its partners will build the People’s Health Archive of New Haven—an online, open-source, and searchable archive that will digitize unexplored records and oral histories from the major activist organization of unhoused New Haveners and the two largest clinics serving communities of color in our city today. CHL will host and record educational workshops on how to use the Archive at the Public Library. This Archive will serve as a critical resource for memorializing legacies of health activism and demanding justice for historical harm.

For more than a century, Deaf clubs have served as vital “third places” for the American Deaf community, fostering community beyond home and work. Once thriving nationwide, these clubs are now rapidly disappearing and remain largely understudied, with no comprehensive digital or scholarly resource documenting their impact or mapping their evolution. This project addresses this by creating an accessible website that houses Deaf club research and lays the groundwork for a national mapping initiative. By exploring deeper causes of closures and the intersectional factors shaping access to clubs, this research preserves the legacy of Deaf clubs as essential sites of community and cultural exchange.

“Community Cartographies: Mapping Memory and Heritage in Lynwood Park” is a participatory digital humanities pilot that co-creates a community-governed spatial archive of one of Dekalb County’s gentrified historically Black neighborhoods. Using ArcGIS narrative mapping, CONTENTdm, and spatially anchored oral histories, the project documents the lived experiences of school integration, displacement, and cultural change while returning narrative authority to former Lynwood Park residents. It develops a model of spatial, community-led archival practice that integrates place-based storytelling and digital justice practices. It uses a replicable framework other displaced or historically marginalized communities can adopt to visualize change, preserve memory, and advocate for policy reform.

This seed grant supports the creation of a prototype digital sonic archive of Black Durham. The project draws on sound and performance studies, public history, and digital humanities to interpret sound both as evidence and affect. lt uses Black orality and memory work to address the root shock and ongoing impact of urban renewal. Through oral history, group storytelling, and site-specific field recordings, youth and legacy residents will recover and document the history of displaced neighborhoods such as Brookstown and the Branch area of Hayti. Participants will work with project artists and scholars to create small-scale sonic vignettes that braid oral history with ambient sounds and speculative re-imaginings of the neighborhood’s future.

This project addresses the long-overlooked history of slavery in the Bronx by building a community-centered digital humanities platform that restores visibility to the lives of enslaved African-descended people. Grounded in Black digital humanities and ethical archival practice, it partners with Bronx residents, students, and educators as co-creators who guide interpretation and public storytelling. Through collaborative archival recovery, GIS mapping, and participatory digital design, the project counters historical erasure, centers descendant and local knowledge, and produces an open-access resource that reshapes how the Bronx’s past is documented, taught, and understood.

Homecoming Stories is a community-engaged digital humanities initiative that partners Western Michigan University with Detroit-based reentry organizations to document the leadership, experiences, and insights of formerly incarcerated citizens who have become community advocates. Through collaboratively produced oral histories, an open-access digital archive, and public educational materials, the project advances digital justice by supporting community stewardship of storytelling tools and expanding the visibility of reentry leaders. By combining digital humanities, participatory research, and ethical storytelling practice, Homecoming Stories strengthens community capacity, deepens public understanding of reentry, and models sustainable, equity-focused approaches to digital scholarship.