aha – Monica L. Mercado, Ph.D.

Sharing Our Work: Reflections on Digital History for the New Year

January 13, 2015January 26, 2015 Monica L. MercadoLeave a comment

Campus may be quiet but the Greenfield Center is open for business.

Last week, I returned to Bryn Mawr after nearly a week in New York for the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA). My meeting was a busy one — catching up with old friends and mentors, checking in with one of my other professional organizations (the Coordinating Council for Women in History), helping to organize THATCamp AHA, and chairing a panel on feminist work in digital history. It was an exhilarating and exhausting week. But despite the conference fatigue, I left New York feeling energized for the work I’ll be taking on for the Greenfield Center this semester: teaching my first course, Higher Education for Women: Bryn Mawr and Beyond; advising students doing archives fieldwork as part of Bryn Mawr’s Praxis program; continuing to work on the NEH-funded Seven Sisters digital project; and planning our May conference, Women’s History in the Digital World 2015.

Perhaps because our conference CFP is due later this week, I spent a lot of time at AHA thinking about how conferences bring us together, and about how we can support each other and build audiences for our work.

Can DH Answer Our Questions? Looking Ahead to AHA 2015

December 17, 2014December 20, 2014 Monica L. MercadoLeave a comment

* cross posted from Educating Women *

It’s finals week at Bryn Mawr, which means that campus is getting quieter by the day. But for historians, the December break also requires getting ready for the American Historical Association (AHA) annual meeting, held the first weekend of the new year. On Sunday, January 4, I’ll be chairing a fantastic session organized by Penn State graduate student Kathryn Falvo, featuring work at the intersection of women’s and gender history and the digital humanities. We’ll be joined by new University of Virginia Ph.D. Tamika Richeson, and Dr. Wendy E. Chmielewski, George Cooley Curator of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

Set your alarm clocks: we’re scheduled for a 9am start, discussing topics central to the Greenfield Digital Center’s mission:

AHA Session 159: Can DH Answer Our Questions? Using Digital Humanities to Address the Concerns of Feminist Historians …

Generations of Women’s History at AHA 2014

January 19, 2014January 8, 2015 Monica L. MercadoLeave a comment

The AHA has come and gone for another year, and as I recover from the inevitable post-holidays/post-travel/post-conference flu, I’ve been catching up on some of the sessions I missed. Over on Prof. Hacker, Jennifer Guiliano posted a great recap of digital history offerings at the conference, asking readers to think critically about the frequent slippage between digital history and public history. It’s worth a read. [link]

This year, for the first time, I was able to attend the Coordinating Council for Women in History Friday night reception as well as the Saturday awards luncheon, where Crystal N. Feimster blew us all away with her talk, “‘The (Civil) War on Women’: A Case for Women’s History.” I went home and renewed my CCWH membership right away; 2014 marks its 45th anniversary year:

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