New York City: 1980s Queer Bars

In the Fall of 2017, I created a digital map that identified a history of 1980s queer bars in New York City. The project featured flyers and advertisements housed in the Pyramid Club Archive of NYU’s Fales Library. The focus on ephemera in this project mirrored the short-lived existence of so many of the locations included on the map.  The map was created using ArcGIS StoryMaps.

Alyson Archives

In 2023, I began a digital archive project titled the Alyson Archives, which collects the publications of Alyson Books (formerly known as Alyson Publications) in one central and online location. The project provides new context and insight to the press as well as to the legacy that it’s left, recovering a literary history that—while brief—was nevertheless meaningful in its creation of new reading communities. By making this history accessible to a broader public, we aim to ensure that these works and those responsible for them continue to be credited for their valuable creations.

The first iteration of this project was completed during ILiADS 2023 by a team from Davidson College. The site will be further developed by a digital studies capstone course in Spring 2024.

DIY Databases

This project is in collaboration with Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz (Claremont Graduate University). From the DHSI course on “Queer Digital Humanities,” Hicks-Alcaraz and I began to explore “queer affordances” of popular digital storytelling platforms. For my part, I created a database using Twine in order to prepare for my general exams. In expanding on this work, I created a conference poster for the DHSI Virtual Conference 2020 and wrote about the project for Inside Higher Education‘s GradHacker blog in an article titled “Twine Storytelling as Study Aid.” While a full-length article (“Bandersnatch-ed Pedagogy: Narrative, Database, and Twine”) addressing these ideas will be appearing in the peer-reviewed journal Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities (IDEAH) in 2021, Hicks-Alcarez and I are also currently expanding this work in order to place Twine in conversation with Scalar.

A Map for Cyborgs

During the DHSI summer course, “Queer Digital Humanities,” I contributed to a list of Queer DH resources. My project, “A Map for Cyborgs” used the digital storytelling platform Twine to explore Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” from a queer studies approach.

I later expanded this prototype in order to create a pedagogical tool that I then assigned in a number of the courses that I’ve taught. A number of my colleagues at Stony Brook have also used the project in their own teaching practices.

Works of Electronic Literature

Electronic literature is a genre of literature encompassing hypertext fiction, codeworks, literary games, netprov, and more. Engaging with the e-lit works others, I have contributed to the Electronic Literature Directory,  providing an entry for Mark Sample’s generative poem, “Takei, George.”

As part of a summer workshop on electronic literature, I composed a number of my own digital texts as well, including “Men Love, Let All” (a permutation poem), “DHSI 2020 AD,” and “Tickling Goob.”

Another recent piece of codework is my “Remember Searching,” which documents my early experiences learning what Google had to say about sexuality. And, along similar lines, I created the “Sexuality Generator” in 2023, a BuzzFeed-style quiz that draws attention to the schematics of so many projects that attempt to categorize their users.

I’ve also explored the idea of writing “database essays” with my students. In addition to “A Map for Cyborgs” (mentioned above), I created an early meditation on the relationship between simulation and digital desire in a Twine story titled “Who’s It Gonna Be?“

Humanistic Data Activity

Influenced by the work of Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, I’ve created humanistic data visualizations inside and outside of the classroom. These activities began as part of an assignment I designed for an “Introduction to Digital Humanities” course at Stony Brook University, and I’ve created different iterations of the project for similar courses at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and Davidson College.

In 2022, I submitted two of my own analog visualizations to the Information is Beautiful Awards, where they were longlisted. You can access information about those projects (“Email Mobile” and “Coming Out Maps“) on the Awards showcase website. Another of my analog visualizations was featured in Nightingale‘s “Paper and NO Pencil” collection.

Male Pregnancy Map

As part of a larger study on representations of queer family-making, I created an interactive data visualization (“Male Pregnancy: A Cultural History of Queer Reproduction“) that outlines a lineage of male pregnancy narratives, identifying their appearances in works from ancient literature to contemporary video games. In exploring this visualization, a user can observe many of the offshoots and trends of this trope. By selecting individual works, users can access additional context and information about each publication and its depiction of queer family-making.

Distant Reading Fanfic

From 2018-2021, I undertook a study of the fandom surrounding the MTV series Teen Wolf, paying specific attention to the lesser known fan fiction trope called mpreg, which this fandom uses to a uniquely greater extent compared to other fandoms. As these fan works are incredibly abundant, proliferating at a rate that makes them difficult to number, this study takes advantage of data visualizations (and distant reading) in order to illustrate larger trends within these fan communities and the practices they cultivate, ultimately displaying how these practices break away from what one might expect regarding boundary maintenance practices.

SBU English Department / Internal Study

In the spring of 2021, I was requested by Stony Brook University’s English Department to create a series of data visualizations that would display the department’s primary research interests (as they had been identified in a survey sent out to the department’s faculty). Using a combination of Tableau Public and Cytoscape, I ultimately chose to portray the survey’s findings through visualizations that emphasized a network analysis approach.

Data Visualization Resources

Collaborating with the Stony Brook University Library during my digital humanities internship in the Spring of 2020, I created a number of data visualization resources. Here,  you can access four of the blogs I wrote on this subject for the library (which include several of my own data visualizations created for my dissertation).

Collaborative Discussion of Numbered Lives by Jacqueline Wernimont

In the Summer of 2019, I joined a number of other HASTAC Scholars from my cohort to create an extensive book discussion project around Jacqueline Wernimont’s recent publication Numbered Lives. My own contributions to this project are the kick off interview, conducted alongside Nehal El-Hadi, and a review of Wernimont’s introductory chapter.

Digital Edition of Oscar Wilde’s “The Young Prince”

This collaborative project, created in the fall of 2016, aimed to identify and reclaim a reading of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale “The Young Prince,” first published in the authors 1891 collection, titled A House of Pomegranates.

Queering the Tamagotchi

The Tamagotchi devices of the 1990s were the start of what came to be known as a “virtual pet craze.” In my work with these toys, I bring them into a framework of queer family-making, arguing that they have always operated as queer digital artifacts. While I’ve explored this idea in both academic and more public-facing works, this post displays a gallery of photographs I took using the Tamagotchi Pix in an exploration of how I might further push the queer narratives of these toys, using the newer model’s built-in camera to introduce my Tama to a wide range of queer (and marginally NSFW material).

Digital Tool Tutorials

Here, I’ve uploaded a number of tutorial videos that I’ve created as a means of introducing undergraduate students to different DH platforms.

In this Twine Tutorial, I explain how to get started using the digital storytelling platform. This serves as a useful entry point for anyone new to this online tool.

In a separate tutorial devoted to generative works, I illustrate how a beginner in the field of electronic literature can tinker with and build upon Nick Montfort’s well-known text “Taroko Gorge.”