Call for Applications

The Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective invites applications for its inaugural week-long residential digital humanities institute, to be held at the University of Miami in June 2023. The Caribbean Digital Scholarship Summer Institute (CDSsi) is generously supported by a Mellon Foundation grant and will be held annually for three summers.

Key facts

• Dates: 11-17 June 2023
• Venue: University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
• Application deadline: 31 January 2023
• Acceptance notification: by 31 March 2023

Background

To secure a viable future for digital scholarship in Caribbean Studies, we need a more expansive pool of talent. Given this need, the CDSsi aims to train scholars interested in approaching Caribbean Studies and digital scholarship as organically integrated fields of inquiry and engagement. Other DH institutes have proven to be insufficiently accessible to our Caribbean communities for various reasons, including high cost, logistics of international travel, and a tendency to center Europe, Canada, and the US. The Caribbean Digital Scholarship summer institute will attend to these problems by providing training to scholars, at all levels, working at the intersections of Caribbean Studies and digital humanities. In this first year of the CDSsi, the course offerings will be:

• Minimal Computing for Caribbean Scholars
  With Alexander Gil, Yale University, and Andreina Soto, Barnard College

• Critical Digital Pedagogy
  With Halcyon M. Lawrence, Towson University

• Building Caribbean Digital Archives
  With Nicole N. Aljoe, Northeastern University, and Sonya Donaldson, Colby College

In order to nurture an inclusive and healthy Caribbean digital humanities scholarly and pedagogical community, we must grapple explicitly with the obstacles to cross-national collaboration. We have therefore situated our summer institute at the University of Miami, a site that facilitates travel and in-person participation from both those situated in the Caribbean and in the North American diaspora. Funding from the Mellon foundation allows for this model of networking and community-building that encourages an understanding of both the continental US and the wider Americas as generative sites of knowledge production. Several members of the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective have organized shorter variations of events based on similar community-building models, as with The Caribbean Digital (TCD) conference series and a number of THATCamps (The Humanities and Technology Camps) organized in the Caribbean.

Institute Particulars and Who Should Apply

For each year funded by the Mellon Foundation, the CDSsi will admit up to 30 fellows across 3 courses (10 fellows per course). The summer institute welcomes applications from all scholars and teachers working within Caribbean studies. This includes: full- and part-time college and university faculty, independent scholars, librarians, archivists, and graduate students. Applicants may be working in any academic discipline (or across disciplines) but should have some previous experience with digital humanities and digital pedagogy. A major consideration in the selection of fellows will be the applicant's plans for Caribbean digital work in the next two years. A select number of seats in each course will be reserved for applicants from the Caribbean region, therefore scholars residing in the Caribbean are especially encouraged to apply.

The tentative schedule for each course includes a three-hour morning session and a three-hour afternoon session with a lunch break between the two. Fellows will participate in a local field trip. At the end of the week, fellows will present their projects or project proposals as respective to each course. For this first year of the CDSsi, instruction for all three courses will be conducted in person and primarily in English.

Travel and accommodation

The Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective will cover travel and accommodations for each fellow selected. The CDSsi supports travel fees up to $1,000 (USD) for each fellow to attend the institute in-person. Additionally, a week of private housing and meals on the University of Miami campus will be provided for each fellow at no additional cost. There are no additional fees associated with attending the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Summer Institute.

Application Procedure

We invite applications from full- and part-time college and university faculty, independent scholars, librarians, archivists, and graduate students at all career stages. To apply, complete the form linked below, indicate which courses are of interest to you in the order of your preference, and attach a copy of your CV/resume (no more than 5 pages). Additionally, we ask interested applicants to submit a statement of intent (750-1,000 words) detailing why the CDSsi is of interest and how they envision it would further their scholarship and pedagogy. Should you have a particular project that one of our courses will be well suited for, please describe this project in your statement of intent.

Click to Open the Submission Form

Letters of recommendation are not required for application to the CDSsi and will not be accepted.

Informational tools

Watch the recording of the Jan 17, 2023 information session

Below are some questions from the session that may be helpful as you complete your application:

What constitutes an independent scholar?

Example: I am not a graduate student, but graduated from an undergrad institution and work in Caribbean Studies building an archive. Yes, you should apply. Once you have passed the undergraduate level, and are working in some form of Caribbean studies, we consider you an independent scholar (or, perhaps in the case of the above example, an archivist).

If a project is collaborative, can we both apply for the summer institute? Should I indicate that the project is collaborative and if the other collaborators are applying?

Yes. You can both apply and should indicate that your collaborator is also applying. The statement of intent should have some individual information, but may also repeat some information about the project.

What if I work in DH and my collaborator works in Caribbean studies?

We are focusing our resources at this time on scholars already steeped in Caribbean Studies.

What proportion of graduate students to working scholars are you anticipating accepting?

We do not have set ratios in place, because we wish to be open to the resulting distribution after the applications are submitted. When selecting fellows, we will be keeping in mind not only institutional status, but also applicants from the Caribbean region, both as part of the CDS Collective’s aims.

Should a statement of intent be targeted towards the course you are applying for?

Yes, it should be. If you wish to indicate a close second course preference, you can also include that.

For selecting a course in the application, can you clarify why we are ranking the courses we are interested in?

Because this is our inaugural summer institute, we wished to be as flexible as possible with applications and acceptances. Therefore, we asked for second and third course choices to help us best determine what might be a good fit for your work if the spots available in your first course were full but we could accept you for another course.

Is there a required level of computational knowledge for the Minimal Computing course? What are some topics/skills that will be covered in this section?

Advanced computational knowledge is not required for this course, but you should have some experience in thinking about the need for/existence of minimal computing in Caribbean studies.

To whom should I address the Statement of Intent in my application?

Your statement of intent does not need to be addressed to anyone in particular, but if it’s better for you to format it with an addressee, you can address your statement of intent to the CDSsi Director and/or the Selection Committee.

Additional questions about the Caribbean Digital Scholarship summer institute may be sent to:

• Kelly Baker Josephs, CDSsi Director (kbjosephs@miami.edu)
• Gabrielle Jean-Louis, CDSsi Graduate Assistant (gmj37@miami.edu)