Dr. Indya Jackson, assistant professor of African-American literature, has been awarded a teaching fellowship by Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (DEFCon) to develop two digital humanities projects at Ramapo College. One project is for the English and literary studies senior seminar in the School of Humanities and Global Studies. The question guiding the seminar is, “How do marginalized communities use satire as a form of resistance?” Students will engage with texts such as Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, Mosin Hamid’s The Last White Man, and Chinelo Okparanta’s Harry Sylvester Bird. Jackson aims “to incorporate into the course the social annotation of assigned criticism” and anticipates that “students will meaningfully and critically engage with challenging academic texts in an interactive way.”

The second project focuses on the creation of an online exhibit showcasing audio and visual materials related to assigned readings. Exhibited materials will likely include audio recordings of authors reading from their work, video interviews with scholars, and/or original audio and visual art that relates to the course themes. Jackson expects that the exhibit “will provide a unique, yet critical means through which students can explore and connect with the course material.”