Operationalizing Surveillance Studies in the Digital Humanities

For critical digital humanists, surveillance is a site where issues surrounding race, gender, and sexuality intersect with our digital lives. Works such as Simone Browne’s Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness reveal a growing concern with surveillance, with groups such as SurvDH and the Digital Library Federation’s Technologies of Surveillance (ToS) working group providing outlets for digital humanists to explore these topics in more depth. Digital humanists are searching for a clear articulation of our field’s engagement with surveillance theory/studies. This panel brings together the founders of SurvDH to develop a praxis of (counter)surveillance in the digital humanities. In particular, we will discuss: Rising applications of surveillance technologies in digital scholarship, including algorithmic design, EdTech, and facial recognition software. Resisting techno-solutionism in both project development and theorizationOperationalizing surveillance studies methodologies in DH researchOur civic and ethical responsibility as digital humanists