K.J. Rawson, Professor of English and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Director of the Humanities Center, Northeastern University
K.J. Rawson works at the intersections of the Digital Humanities and Rhetoric, LGBTQ+, and Feminist Studies. Focusing on archives as key sites of cultural power, he studies the rhetorical work of queer and transgender archival collections in brick-and-mortar and digital spaces. Rawson is founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an award-winning collection of trans-related historical materials, and he chairs the editorial board of the Homosaurus, an LGBTQ+ linked data vocabulary.
T-Kay Sangwand, Librarian for Digital Collection Development at the UCLA Digital Library Program
T-Kay Sangwand is a Certified Archivist, librarian, and DJ who specializes in building preservation partnerships for human rights documentation and cultural heritage materials, particularly in Latin America and the US. In 2017, she was named a Fulbright Specialist in Library and Information Science and in 2018-2019, she was a Fulbright Scholar with Mexico’s Ministry of Culture. She is currently a resident DJ at the LA-based radio station dublab where she hosts her monthly program “The Archive of Feelings.”
Keynote Moderators
Our keynote conversation will be moderated by Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla (ella, she, her), Assistant Professor of Public and Digital Humanities, and Niloufar Esmaeili (she/her), Ph.D. Fellow, Department of English. Both are at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).
Sylvia Fernández is an Assistant Professor of Public and Digital Humanities in the Interdisciplinary School of Engagement, Affiliated to the Spanish as a Heritage and English Programs and co-founding director of the Community-Engaged Digital Scholarship Hub with the Libraries and Museums and the College of Liberal and Fine Arts at the University of Texas-San Antonio. She is a transfronteriza originally from El Paso-Cd. Juárez border region. Her research, teaching, and community engagement lie at the intersection of interdisciplinary studies focused on transborder cultural heritage, gender violence and migration representations through literature, archives, cross-border cultures and languages, and Latinx communities in the United States. She also explores transnational and transborder humanities stories with the use of digital technologies for analyzing, designing, and developing academic and creative digital and public works through ethical and inclusive practices. Over the past decade, she has been a producer and contributing member to numerous multilingual and transnational digital humanities scholarship projects addressing themes of feminist movements, immigration, border cultural heritage and memory.
Niloufar Esmaeili is a doctoral student in the department of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research focuses on digital media activism, transnational feminism and gender violence in Iran, with a global perspective that seeks to establish connections with other feminist movements, such as those in the borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico. Through her research, she aims to shed light on the experiences of those affected by gender violence in Iran, a population that often faces systemic discrimination and oppression. Her academic work seeks to bridge the gap between academia and the broader society. She is committed to making her research accessible to non-academic audiences. By disseminating knowledge and raising awareness about issues like gender violence and feminism, she hopes to inspire action and change in the wider community.
About the Keynote
Amid rapid societal and technological transformations and historic elections worldwide, ACH fosters dialogue, spaces, and solidarity on equity and justice across local, transborder, and global contexts. We envision this panel as a conversation and call-to-action about how we can use our individual and collective DH skills to build alternative justice-oriented infrastructures, spaces, and communities. We seek to explore our roles and responsibilities as members of the DH community in caring for ourselves, our students, our institutions, and each other.
Our program committee selected K.J. and T-Kay as two individuals who work in critical digital archival studies and praxis. Their work demonstrates the ways in which we can use our DH experience and expertise to document, preserve, and transform our world.
The ACH2024 Program Committee
Conference Co-Chairs: Pamella Lach (San Diego State University) and Sylvia Fernández (University of Texas at San Antonio)
Program Co-Chairs: Maira E. Álvarez (St. Mary’s University) and Rini Bhattacharya Mehta (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Technical Chair: Liz Grumbach (Arizona State University)
