Digital humanities isn’t just about counting keyword frequency in 16th century English literature – it’s about using digital techniques to encompass the vastness of history and open new possibilities for including materials that have been neglected. Scholars at the University of Houston envision it as a new hub for Latino (or Latinx or Hispanic) studies using digital humanities techniques, and a permanent home for it.
As part of this initiative (the Recovery program, Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage) the university has been gathering and digitally preserving thousands of pieces of material, from newspapers to cookbooks, to safeguard and make accessible in archives. The program is housed with Arte Público Press, “the nation’s largest publisher of contemporary and recovered literature by Hispanic authors from the United States” and the original publisher of works in U.S. Latino literature by authors including Sandra Cisneros, Victor Villaseñor and Helena María Viramontes.
Last year, a grant from the Mellon Foundation went to further this work, providing resources to build out “a first-of-its-kind U.S. Latino Digital Humanities Program.” This provides funds for the UH program to grant competitive scholarships for research projects over the next two years.
Some of the digital humanities projects coming out of the US Hispanic Literary Heritage program include:
- Digital collections from the Recovery program, offering an online sample of its archive.
- A visual bibliography of Hispanic periodicals in the U.S. with an interactive map.
