News

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, in partnership with Lindenwood University, has received a Digital Humanities Advancement Grant totaling more than $49,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The grant covers the first phase of an effort to build a regional digital humanities network linking faculty, students and community members across the St. Louis region’s educational and cultural institutions.  

“This project targets the inherent inequities that hinder the growth of digital humanities as a field and that have real, tangible impacts on students and colleagues,” said Meg Smith, PhD, project co-director and SIUE research assistant professor of digital humanities in the Interdisciplinary Research and Informatics Scholarship (IRIS) Center. “St. Louis is home to many active digital humanities practitioners engaged in innovative research and pedagogy. However, institutions often serve as silos, and opportunities for digital humanities learning are unequally distributed among the region’s secondary and post-secondary institutions and across the region’s economic and racial divides.” 

Through a workshop slated for fall 2022, Smith and Project Director Geremy Carnes, PhD, associate professor of English at Lindenwood University, will work with higher education and secondary education faculty from across the region to identify the resources, processes and best practices needed in order to facilitate collaborative, inter-institutional programs and support digital humanities pedagogy across all regional institutions. 

“I'm thrilled the NEH is supporting this project, because infrastructure is not always the flashiest or the most fun dimension of digital humanities (or of any field), but it's imperative to build a strong foundation and to lay a pathway for responsible and equitable growth,” said Smith. “I'm also excited to collaborate with colleagues across the region who have a wealth of expertise and experience.” 

In addition to Smith and Carnes, the project will be supported by an advisory board of higher education and secondary education faculty: Lara Kelland, PhD, University of Missouri-St. Louis; John McEwan, PhD, Saint Louis University; Geoff Ward, PhD, Washington University in St. Louis; Donna Canan, Kirkwood High School; Christine Henske, Maplewood-Richmond Heights High School; and Bridget Nelson, SIUE East St. Louis Charter High School. 

“This project places digital humanities educators and researchers at SIUE in conversation with colleagues across the region about how we can work toward equity in our field and in our community,” added Smith. “As institutions located at either end of the St. Louis metropolitan region with teaching-focused missions and histories of educating and working with area K-12 instructors, SIUE and Lindenwood are ideal partners for initiating a network focused on improving education and access in the region.”