StoryMap(ping) Black Urban Experiences: Toward an Africana DH Subfield Through Research and Pedagogy

In thinking through the meaning of Black Digital Humanities and Africana Studies’ futurity among junior scholars and practitioners, this article presents a meditation on the intersections between Digital Humanities (DH), Africana Studies coursework, and Africana Studies pedagogy. It offers a case study wherein DH was employed in the instruction and assessment activities of an upper division hybrid (i.e., combining traditional face-to-face and online instruction) Africana Studies course at a public university in southern California during the fall semester of the 2018–2019 academic year. The purpose of this experiment was to determine how Africana Studies might go beyond a mere engagement with DH questions, theories, and tools to show how DH coursework that is distinctly “Africana” in nature may be developed more centrally as a subfield of Africana Studies itself. The overarching questions guiding this experiment include the following: What does it mean to engage DH in Africana Studies? How might we teach DH in Africana Studies within the framework of its pedagogical and methodological objectives? How does Africana DH shape both collaborative and creative learning in the classroom?