WWABD? Intersectional Futures in Digital History

• Published in: ABO : Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts 1640-1830
• Main Author: Tonya L. Howe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Aphra Behn Society 2017-10-01
• Subjects: digital humanities; intersectionality; intersectional futures; Aphra Behn; long eighteenth century
• Online Access: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol7/iss2/4/

WWABD: What would Aphra Behn—world traveler and spy, playwright and poet of scandal, innovator of novelistic forms—do, were she to imagine a future for digital humanities in period-specific scholarship? This essay outlines a vision for the DH section of Aphra Behn Online: An Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830. In particular, I see three important and interrelated places for development: theorizing the feminized labor of digital recovery, editing, and textual preparation; offering thoughtful and feminist approaches to digital pedagogy that are specific to the work we do in the period; and critically assessing the absences in existing digital projects. Our digital future needs to foster flexibility, experimentation, and intersectional thinking.