Making Ground on a Prospective Project in the Digital Humanities

A couple of months back I posted a blog entry in which I started to map out a prospective project in the digital humanities regarding issues of language, literacy, and culture and their intersections with Cuban digital practices and uneven access to technologies in Cuba. At the time I used Trevor Owens' blog on where to start on research questions in the digital humanities, particularly his emphasis on Joe Maxwell's ideas about the interactive components of research design. In this blog entry I will once again use the five distinct moves/stages/elements that Maxwell articulates in his approach, which includes:

1) goals, which clarifies the purpose for doing research;
2) conceptual framework, which refers to the specific literature(s), field(s), and experience(s) one is drawing on;
3) research questions, which clearly disseminates the statement(s) and question(s) one is working with in their project;
4) methods, which provides insight into the ways in which one will address and/or answer the aforementioned statement(s) and question(s); and
5) validity concerns, which address the limitations and biases that might inform one's approach to the project.

Below you will find my revised responses to Maxwell's five distinct moves/stages/elements, responses that are further informed by the readings I have engaged with regarding the digital humanities and my independent research on my specific topic. My hope is that my work in this blog entry reflects my willingness to adopt and practice Owens' iterative approach to bringing personalized projects in the digital humanities to fruition within the context of a sustained and thorough process.

1) Goals:

I still remain committed to carving out spaces in which to discuss Cuban digital practices, but I have also become very interested in how my project might provide unique opportunities to collaborate across Cuban populations, be they from Cuba, the United States, Puerto Rico, Spain, or otherwise. In considering BOTH end users as well as coders, programmers, and other collaborators I would very much like for my project to somehow represent not only Cuban digital practices in terms of citizens of and in Cuba but also those Cubans residing outside of Cuba. My hope is to illustrate the ways in which the major Cuban diasporas that took place in the wake of the Cuban Revolution have marked and had an impact on digital practices for ALL Cubans. In this sense, matters of identity, geopolitics, surveillance, paranoia, kinship, etc. will play a prominent role in the shape that my project will eventually take. Ultimately, though, this requires deeper consideration of what or who qualifies as a collaborator and what or who qualifies as the subject for content. Which is to say I have become more and more uncomfortable about directing the Western and "diasporic" gaze at the Cuban population in Cuba.

2) Conceptual Framework:

As you will see, I have expanded the scope of my research considerably. This will be a rather long list of prospective sources I might use to form the conceptual framework for my project and it will surely become even more robust as time goes on. That being said, I will do my best to rein myself in and be careful about the sources I decide to give precedence. What follows is the list of prospective sources that I am considering:

1) Banks, Adam J. Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground.

2) Coté, John. “Cubans Log On behind Castro’s Back.”

3) Edwards, Charlie. “The Digital Humanities and Its Users”

4) Hernandez-Reguant, Ariana. “Radio Taino and the Cuban Quest for Identi . . . que?”

5) Hoffman, Bert. The Politics of the Internet in Third World Development: Challenges in Contrasting Regimes, with Case Studies with Costa Rica and Cuba.

6) Junqueira, Eduardo S., and Marcelo E. K. Buzato. New Literacies, New Agencies?: A Brazilian Persepctive on Mindsets, Digital Practices and Tools for Social Action in and Out of School.

7) Liu, Alan. “Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?”

8) McPherson, Tara. “Why Are the Digital Humanities So White? or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation.”

9) Pedrazza, Silvia. Political Disaff ection in Cuba’s Revolution and Exodus.

10) Press, Larry. “Cuba, Communism, and Computing.”

11) Press, Larry and Joel Snyder. “A Look at Cuban Networks.”

12) Rubira, Rainer, and Gisela Gil-Egui. "Political Communication in the Cuban Blogosphere: A Case Study of Generation Y."

13) Valdés, Nelson P. and Mario A. Rivera, “The Political Economy of the Internet in Cuba.”

14) Vazquez, Naghim. “Cuba in the Window of the Internet.”

15) Venegas, Cristina. Digital Dilemmas The State, the Individual, and Digital Media in Cuba

16) Vicari, Stefania. Blogging politics in Cuba: the framing of political discourse in the Cuban blogosphere

17) Voeux, Claire, and Julien Pain. “Going Online in Cuba: Internet under Surveillance.”

3) Research Questions:

1) To what extent have various populations and demographics in Cuba had material access to digital technologies over past decade or so?

2) In what capacity are Cuban citizens introduced to and/or given free reign to use digital technologies?

3) How do those engaging with various interfaces and digital technologies in Cuba compare to other "Western" societies, whether "democratic," "communist," or otherwise?

4) How have the major Cuban diasporas that have taken place since the Cuban Revolution helped shape communicative, digital, and rhetorical practices for Cubans within and outside of Cuba?

5) How might Cubans within and outside of Cuba create safe and collaborative spaces in which the "gaze" and focus is better distributed, transforming collaborator into subject for content, and vice versa?

4) Methods:

This project will certainly require that quite a bit of qualitative research actually take place within and outside of Cuba. However, I would first like to review more of the literature on issues of access to technology and digital literacy as they pertain to all Cubans to get a better sense of the social and critical landscape I am working in. It would also be helpful to get more information about the sorts of projects that academics throughout the world might be conducting in and around Cuba as of now. The Cuban government does grant "educational" visas, so it will be important to see where my project might fall in the miasma of research being conducted in and around various Cuban populations. It will be imperative that I engage with sources that are in both English and Spanish, and that I cast a rather wide net in terms of collaboration across contexts and Cuban populations.

5) Validity Concerns:

As much of the substance of this project will likely emerge in the context of qualitative research, there is certainly potential for my findings to be both limited as well as biased. I am generally working off of the presumption that digital literacies and digital practices in Cuba are fundamentally different and unique, so it will be important for me to rein myself in and not project these notions onto my findings. In line with this idea that digital literacies and digital practices in Cuba are different and unique, I must also be cautious and suspicious about the terms, vocabularies, and assumptions that I use and make as I articulate my findings. I believe that expanding my project to include Cuban populations (in the plural) whether residing inside or outside of Cuba will certainly help to temper some of the limitations and biases of my project. Ultimately, I will have to think a bit more about what this will look like and how I will be able to collaborate with others to make the project work and be both fruitful and accessible for most if not all Cuban populations inside and outside of Cuba.