We are excited to announce the candidates and voting period for the 2020 DHC-NC Executive Board elections!
You can cast your vote using the 2020 Elections Form found in the Special Update email from 6/15/2020. Voting will be open from Monday, June 15 to Wednesday, June 24 at 5:00 pm.
For full descriptions of the duties and responsibilities associated with each position, see section III of the DHC-NC constitution. Terms will run from July 1, 2020 to June 30th, 2021.
Here are brief statements about each of the candidates:
President-Elect Candidates
Brett Chambers, Lecturer in Mass Communication, Entrepreneurship, and Emerging Technologies, North Carolina Central University
Brett Erik Chambers is a parent, media literacy advocate, and ‘Catalyst for Change. He has spent most of his adult life researching and presenting positive images of people, especially people of color, on television, radio, film, and digital platforms. Chambers is presently an Instructor at NC Central University where he teaches mass communication. Chambers has served on the Lyceum Committee, Hip Hop Initiative Advisory Group, Jazz Research Institute Advisory board. He’s led a number of local chapters of National organizations including National Association of Black Journalists and National Black MBA Association. He presently serves as Institute Coordinator for DHCNC.
Treasurer Candidates
Donna Kain, Associate Professor of Technical Communication; Undergraduate Director, Department of English, East Carolina University
Donna Kain is Associate Professor of Technical Communication in the English Department, East Carolina University. She teaches technical communication, visual discourse, theory and practice of new media, editing, and project management. Her research interests include visual discourse, information technology applications for learning, and genre use in professional settings. Related positions have included Assistant Director, Center for Natural Hazards; editor-in-chief, Technical Communication Quarterly, (2013-2018); Director of Outreach for ECU Renci Engagement Center; and senior staff analyst for Compuware Corporation. Dr. Kain served as Secretary and Vice Chair of ECU faculty (2015 to 2018). She is Undergraduate Director in the English Department.
Communication Manager Candidates
Adrian C. Linden-High, Graduate Student, Classical Studies Department, Duke University
I’m a sixth-year Classical Studies PhD candidate at Duke University. My activities and interests in the DH sphere have been long-standing and broad. In addition to three years of work on my own digital research project visualizing and annotating the famous wall of slave manumission inscriptions at ancient Delphi, I have served as a Research Assistant for Digital Scholarship Services at Duke University Libraries (2017). As Research Assistant I collaborated with a team of faculty, librarians, and IT staff to implement an Omeka/Neatline component in a course on Roman monuments. I have published two blog posts (1 | 2) about DH topics. A recent transplant from Vienna, Austria, with dual US-Canadian citizenship, I am particularly attuned to cultural differences and am committed to creating inclusive, hate-free environments.
Chaitra Powell, Archivist, UNC Libraries
Chaitra Powell is the project director of UNC’s Community Driven Archives grant project, and the African American Collections and Outreach Archivist in the Southern Historical Collection. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona – she earned her BA in Sociology and MLS from the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. Her recent accomplishments include presenting on a panel: Imagining Archives without Borders for the International Gullah Geeche and African Diaspora Conference in Conway, SC and curating an exhibit in Wilson Special Collections Library, On the Move: Stories of African American Migration and Mobility.
Cindy Shirkey, Liaison Coordinator & Collection Strategist, East Carolina University
I’m a new comer to DH but have played various communication roles for several groups. Right now I run a LISTSERV list for ECU’s digital scholarship community that I set up a few years back. I also am in charge of marketing of library databases to the ECU campus community. I like being a librarian because it allows me to connect people with things they need, and I feel the Communications Manager position would enable me to do the same thing for this group.
Executive Board Member Candidates
Amanda Binder, Social Sciences and History Librarian, UNC Charlotte
Amanda Binder is the Social Sciences and History Librarian at UNC Charlotte Atkins Library. Amanda has collaborated with colleagues to create digital humanities events, resources, and discussions to support and promote the DH work of students and faculty on campus. She presented this work with her colleague at the ACRL Digital Scholarship Section’s Digital Humanities Discussion Group at ALA. Amanda currently serves on the Academic Librarians Committee of the History Section of ALA-RUSA and previously served the Literatures in English Section of ALA-ACRL. She is excited about the work of the DHC-NC and would be honored to contribute to it.
Anderson Hagler, Graduate student, Department of History, Duke University
I am a PhD Candidate in Latin American History, and I hold the Bass Digital Education Fellowship (2020) at Duke University. As a historian, I use the latest technologies to study the past. I work with Duke Learning Innovation to promote digital pedagogy as well as flexible and online teaching methodologies. I have raised awareness about the importance of digital humanities by publishing two articles—Virtual Pedagogy and The Pros and Cons of Teaching with Zoom. I will use my position on the Executive Board of the DHC-NC to champion the benefits of digital tools throughout North Carolina and beyond.
Barbara Williams Ellertson, Independent scholar, BASIRA Project (book history & art history), Durham, NC.
Long-time resident of Durham, NC, long-ago Duke grad. First career spent designing and producing books for university presses and regional publishers; founded & led BW&A Books, Inc. for 25 years. Now in my second career as an independent scholar, working at the intersection of book history and Renaissance art history. Our project is a digital database of images, tagged to facilitate complex searches. While launching the BASIRA Project, was lucky to be introduced to digital humanities in a DH proseminar at Duke University. Since 2017, have served as Partner Liaison for the board of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars.
Grant Glass, PhD Candidate in English and Comparative Literature, UNC Chapel Hill
I am a Ph.D. student in English and Comparative Literature, studying British literature and culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. My research traces contemporary notions of authorship and textuality back to the eighteenth century, arguing that emerging publication and remediation practices of fiction in fact modernized communities by abstracting notions of adaptation and intertextuality. I also work on bibliographic studies, the history of the book, computational literary studies, and digital humanities. I am also a Graduate Fellow of the Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative, a Graduate Fellow of the Migrations Lab at Duke University, the Assistant Project Manager of the William Blake Archive, Project Manager for the Bass Connections Project “Representing Migration Through Digital Humanities,”and the Assistant Director of the Digital Literacy and Communications Lab.
Jade Bruno, Second-year MSLS student, School of Information & Library Science, and Graduate Research & Instruction Assistant (UNC-CH Undergraduate Library), UNC Chapel Hill
I’m a second-year MSLS student at UNC-SILS focusing on academic libraries. Within this track, I’m invested in instruction and implementing equitable, inclusive pedagogy that integrates digital tools thoughtfully and intentionally. As a first-gen student taking an assets-based approach to my practice, I know we must assess the impact of digital tools and practices on the learning of all students, particularly those who have been traditionally underserved, underrepresented, and/or marginalized. I’ve recently worked on the DH project GWonline; the Community Equity, Data & Information Lab at SILS; and I currently serve as a research & instruction assistant at UNC’s Undergraduate Library.
Lucia Binotti, Professor of Romance Studies and Digital Humanities, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Lucia Binotti is the founder of Amirabilia, the world first platform for experiential education. She is Professor of Romance Studies and Digital Humanities at UNC-CH. She also drives two Honors summer programs abroad, Immersive Renaissance in Rome, and Sports Medicine and Future-Smart Culture in Barcelona. Lucia is a Philologist (believe me, this is important) turned into Experimental Humanist. From her foundational work on material and cultural history and on the mechanisms that construct linguistic and cultural identity, Binotti is imagining the new paradigms of immersive learning — Place, Presence and Perspective – for the Cyber-Humanities. Her latest research contributes to the ongoing reflection on the crucial role that collaborative methodologies and emerging technologies have on the design of smart educational ecosystems that enhance the dissemination and fruition of social and cultural knowledge among non-academic communities of practice.
Michelle Brenner, Instructor of Humanities, North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics
A member of the humanities faculty at the NC School of Science and Mathematics (a residential high school for gifted students in North Carolina) since 2006, Michelle Brenner has taught a variety of courses including American Studies and Western European Cultural Studies and developed courses such as Ecocriticism and (most recently) Digital Humanities. She serves as technology coordinator for the Humanities Department and is passionate about American history, literature and popular culture, interdisciplinary courses, instructional technology, and working with students to make the content of her courses meaningful to their lives. She teaches short term courses in Science in Popular Thought and Fungi in the Literary and Artistic Imagination. She has really appreciated the guidance and inspiration provided by the Digital Humanities Collaborative of North Carolina, enjoyed presenting at the NC State Digital Humanities Conference and would appreciate an opportunity to be more involved.
Scott Bailey, Data and Visualization Librarian, NC State University Libraries
Scott Bailey is a digital scholarship specialist and librarian who teaches digital research methods and tools, collaborates with faculty and students on data-driven research projects, and works to lower barriers to technically advanced and experimental scholarship and methods. He embraces lessons learned from working in the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia, and works to build nurturing community centered around shared commitments to compassion and curiousity. In his free time, he hangs out outdoors with his wife and dogs, experiments with new recipes, and tries out different computational techniques on philosophical and theological texts.
Again, you can cast your vote using the 2020 Elections Form found in the Special Update email from 6/15/20. Voting will be open from Monday, June 15th to Wednesday, June 24th at 5:00 pm. Thank you for participating in the election, and being a part of the DHC-NC community!