DH and the American Literature Canon in Pedagogical Practice

Abstract

In this chapter, Amy Earhart shows how the connection between digital humanities and American literature is intimately linked to the historical development of activist DIY digital projects built by scholars to provide alternatives to a predominantly white, Eurocentric canon. Earhart’s students construct a digital archive that puts Texas’s 1868 Millican race “riot” in broader cultural context by using historical newspaper articles about lynchings and editorials about voter rights. As students curate materials related to the Millican “riot,” they help to revive a period in African American literature and history that is being recovered by scholars as a period of resistance. Earhart’s essay shows how structural hierarchies, in the biases of historical newspapers and in the technologies we employ today, can limit access to the literary voices that once animated the period.