Hosted Projects

The Humanities Center is the home of a suite of established, high-impact, grant-funded projects that exemplify collaborative, innovative, and publicly-engaged humanities research. The Center provides physical and digital infrastructure to support the work of signature research projects.

Signature Projects

Digital Archive of Indigenous Language Persistence (DAILP)

Led by: Ellen Cushman

The Digital Archive of Indigenous Language Persistence (DAILP) is a community-based digital archive created to support Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, interpretations, and representations of the past. DAILP’s pilot collection of Cherokee syllabary documents have been translated by our team of Cherokee community members, students, software engineers, partner archives, and linguists. DAILP’s goal is to expand its online collection through community-centered design for transparent language learning and the sustainment of Indigenous languages. All of DAILP’s code is available on its GitHub site. DAILP is supported by the Henry R. Luce Foundation, the National Archives National Historical Records & Publications Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. DAILP is committed to enabling indigenous communities to create and endure change through reading, writing, speaking, and listening in indigenous languages.
Digital Transgender Archive

Led by: K.J. Rawson

The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. The DTA is an international collaboration among dozens of colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections. By digitally localizing a wide range of trans-related materials, the DTA expands access to trans history for academics and independent researchers alike in order to foster education and dialog concerning trans history.
Early Black Boston Digital Almanac

Led by: Nicole N. Aljoe

The Early Black Boston Digital Almanac is a collection of digital exhibits, as well as exciting and edifying material about the vibrant Black communities of Boston during the 18th and 19th centuries. Inspired by Benjamin Banneker’s almanacs published between 1792-1796 and Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” published between 1732 and 1758, which contained stories, poems, sayings, and serialized stories, in addition to calendars, maps, and data about astronomy, astrology, and the weather, the EBBDA aspires to be similarly inclusive in terms of its material and exhibits. Unlike its inspiration, however, EBBDA is completely open-access. The exhibits and data it contains are created by scholars, students, and interested members of the public and submitted to an editorial collective before publication.
Early Caribbean Digital Archive

Led by: Nicole N. Aljoe and Elizabeth Maddock Dillon

is an open access collection of pre-twentieth-century Caribbean texts, maps, and images. Texts include travel narratives, novels, poetry, natural histories, and diaries that have not been brought together before as a single collection focused on the Caribbean. Plantation slavery and settler colonialism are defining aspects of the early Caribbean—both sit at the origin of the modern capitalist world. The texts and images collected here tell the story of European imperial domination, and of the enslaved African and Indigenous American people whose lives, labor, and land shaped the culture and development of the Atlantic world. The materials in the archive are primarily authored and published by Europeans, but the ECDA aims to use digital tools to “remix” the archive and foreground the centrality and creativity of enslaved and free African, Afro-creole, and Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean world.
Homosaurus

Led by: K.J. Rawson

The Homosaurus is an international linked data vocabulary of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) terms. This vocabulary is intended to function as a companion to broad subject term vocabularies, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions are encouraged to use the Homosaurus to support LGBTQ research by enhancing the discoverability of their LGBTQ resources.
Mapping Black London

Led by: Oliver Ayers and Nicole N. Aljoe

The Mapping Black London digital project recentres and recovers the presence of people of colour across the city’s long history. Although Britain’s multiracial heritage is often seen as a post-war phenomenon, its capital has attracted people of African descent since at least Roman times. Mapping Black London offers new insights into this rich past, producing interactive maps, dynamic digital exhibits, curriculum material, and other educational content that allows users to encounter and discover the varied contributions made by Black people to the development of London.
Reckonings

Led by: Kabria Baumgartner, Dan Cohen, Uta Poiger

A community-university collaboration dedicated to documenting, investigating, and archiving past and present injustices in housing and land ownership in Boston.

Hosted Projects

Signature Projects

Digital Archive of Indigenous Language Persistence (DAILP)

Led by: Ellen Cushman

Digital Transgender Archive

Led by: K.J. Rawson

Early Black Boston Digital Almanac

Led by: Nicole N. Aljoe

Early Caribbean Digital Archive

Led by: Nicole N. Aljoe and Elizabeth Maddock Dillon

Homosaurus

Led by: K.J. Rawson

Mapping Black London

Led by: Oliver Ayers and Nicole N. Aljoe

Reckonings

Led by: Kabria Baumgartner, Dan Cohen, Uta Poiger