Digital Humanities (DH) Projects
The first time I attempted to learn how to create a virtual timeline, I packed a backpack full of snacks and relevant books, assuming it would take all day to master the technology. In 2019, I met up with Dr. Gabriela Baeza Ventura, the Co-Director of the US Latino Digital Humanities Center (USLDH) in Arte Público Press, located at the University of Houston. At the time, I was forty-four years old and a first-generation M.F.A. graduate who completed undergraduate studies a few years after the World Wide Web was introduced to the public . I date myself to encourage younger and older educators alike to explore technology and critical thinking beyond social media and artificial intelligence. To my surprise, it only took a couple of hours to learn TimelineJS , and I haven’t stopped using or teaching DH in my storytelling, counter narratives, or coursework since.
Below are a few DH projects I have conceptualized, curated and collaborated with others who brought their own skills to the project, including youth I have mentored in DH at my LibroMobile Arts Cooperative and Crear Studio Gallery & Digital Lab.
Virtual Timeline
I Am First-Generation Everything...
In 2022, I was invited to be a keynote speaker at the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers (ALER) conference in Denver, Colorado. I was asked to speak about my experience as a first-generation student and how it influenced my journey to becoming an award-winning Chicana author and mentor in my community. At first, I thought a virtual timeline would be the best way to trace my time in the American School System. As I wrote my speech, I wondered who else in the room would have a similar story to share. I decided to include the audience in the address as a way to illustrate the commonality of the experience. It evolved into a collaborative, multimedia, site-specific installation featuring a wall of photographic images assembled as a mural of first-generation people from diverse backgrounds and ages. Since that initial keynote address, I have been invited to several speaking engagements through word of mouth. Educators across the country continue to recommend my first-generation keynote address and virtual timeline for community college graduations, literacy conferences, and various presentations to undergraduate students.
Multimedia AR & Hybrid Book Project
The Modesta Avila Archives
#MAOD 1889 is defined as the Modesta Avila: Obstructing Development Since 1889 multimedia, digital storytelling project initiated in 2020 by Sarah Rafael García. #MAOD1889 builds movement culture by preserving and re-presenting history from the point of view of people of color (POC). Among academic documentation, #MAOD 1889 cites relevant photos, historical documents, media publications, and urban tales from the community. Currently, this is a "Work in Progress" (WIP) to be completed as an augmented reality (AR) hybrid book publication.
DH Website
Womxn of Color at the Frontlines in OC
This project illuminates the collective impact of cultural and gender erasure, sexual harassment, displacement, and criminalization of Women of Color, as well as their contributions to regional legacies and U.S. history, while offering community-based scholars an opportunity to publish their digital work about Orange County, California, through an open-access practices.
Open-access is a publishing model for scholarly communication that makes research information freely available to readers, in contrast to the traditional subscription model, where readers access scholarly information by paying a subscription fee or being affiliated with a university or college campus library.
StoryMap
Mapping Santa Ana
Mapping Santa Ana is a Crear Studio collaboration with local artists — Roger Eyes R. and myself, Sarah Rafael García.
Initiated in 2021 as a counter map to tourist marketing, Mapping Santa Ana is a graphic documentation of downtown Santa Ana that includes this living digital archive. One goal was to offer this collaborative project to the City of Santa Ana as an on-going digital map that can continue to include locations and history outside of the downtown area, however over the years they have instead coopted the concept and created different versions of it and even went as far as adding my project to the city's website without permission.
The downtown map has also been designed into a pocket-sized folding map that locals and guests can pick up at Crear Studio and LibroMobile to access the digital map through a QR code. Together with Roger, I hope to be able to show the public how much this city means to us, and how we see it as a vivid and historical place we are determined to preserve and proud to call home. Also, please take a moment to acknowledge our research contributors listed in the storymap, they are usually college interns and/or young scholars helping us along the way.
DH Community-Based Website & IG
Logan Barrio
Current and former Logan Barrio residents organize the annual Logan Barrio Reunion to honor the neighborhood’s resistance to industrialization efforts and celebrate communal unity. The Logan Barrio website and Instagram page serve as a repository of memorabilia, utilizing excerpts from oral histories, photographs, and videos to document the present and future history of Logan Barrio.
In solidarity with the 25th anniversary of the Logan Barrio Reunion, this virtual timeline (or living narrative) and the Historical Logan Barrio: A Tapestry of Culture and Community interpretive exhibition were curated for and by the Logan Barrio Reunion in collaboration with LibroMobile Arts Cooperative as an open-access public history resource. The project is ongoing and will include further preservation efforts.
3D Art & Interpretative Exhibitions
BIPOC Arts Spaces
LibroMobile Arts Cooperative (LMAC) is using 3D space capture. An all-in-one platform that transforms real-life spaces into immersive digital twin models. So much more than panoramic scans. Through this work, I hope to empower BIPOC artists, curators, and art venues by capturing and connecting art and rooms to create truly interactive 3D models of BIPOC arts, exhibitions, and spaces.
It has been my experience that white standards are applied to BIPOC art and, at times, force local artists to pander to those ideals or find support outside of the region for their work. Through this DH platform, I strive to empower local BIPOC artists and curators by creating national visibility instead of being left to their own platforms to gain recognition, which in some cases never happens in our hometowns or lifetimes.
Community-based Oral History & Digital Archives
DH For & By the Community
The LMAC Digital Archives focus on cultivating digital pasts, presents, and futures for-and-by the diverse community in Orange County, California.
Orange County is 60% people of color, yet all art spaces and preservation initiatives in the region are white-led. Additionally, Ethnic Studies and Critical Race Theory are still being challenged across the nation, leading to the further cultivation of a white supremacy model in the schools, arts, and civic leadership. Through this DH work, I aspire to cultivate a sense of belonging for all who have been here for generations, recent immigrants, and practice radical placemaking by including the histories of the residents and the archives they choose to prioritize.
I have been able to grow and maintain ongoing mentorship and DH projects through community-based partnerships with the City of Santa Ana's youth employment program, the Santa Ana College Library Technology certificate program, the CSUF Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium, and UCI Libraries Department of Special Collections & Archives
A Collaborative & Multimedia Archival Project
SanTana's Fairy Tales
The archival research for SanTana's Fairy Tales is a public history initiative created by Mariana Bruno to engage an audience with Santa Ana's history. This part of the project interpreted the six fairy tales in the collection and presented historical evidence to support the stories’ community-based narratives.
Behind the scenes, the digital archives were an afterthought to the entire project. Yet, they were also the catalyst to my development in the digital humanities. The idea initiated as a counter narrative to people stating that the stories I was writing were still fiction, rather than ethnographic research. So, I began to explore pairing truths with storytelling as "footnotes in art" to confront the disbelief in artists being scholars too. The digital archives were featured on tablets in the multimedia exhibition and the research and collaborative process were also documented in a project trailer with art by Carla Zárate Suárez and music composed and produced by Gloria Estrada and Ruby Castellanos.