Adeline M Koh
Stockton University, Literature, Faculty Member
- Postcolonial Digital Humanities, Digital Humanities, Film Theory, African Diaspora Studies, Educational Anthropology, Africa, and 26 moreEducation History, Women's Literature, African Literature, Media Education, Conrad, Joseph, Media Studies, Afro-Asian Connections, Somerset Maugham, Anthony Burgess, Graham Greene, Anthropology, Film Studies, Sociology of Education, Women's History, Postcolonial Studies, Postcolonial Feminism, Global Feminism, British Empire, Literature, Education, Gender, Women's Studies, Ethnicity, Publishing, Postcolonial Literature, and Race and Ethnicityedit
- Adeline Koh is Associate Professor of Postcolonial Literature at Stockton University. She works on the intersections ... moreAdeline Koh is Associate Professor of Postcolonial Literature at Stockton University. She works on the intersections of postcolonial studies, digital humanities, and literature. She is the Director of the Center for Digital Humanities at Stockton, and is the designer of Trading Races, a historical role-playing game designed to teach race consciousness.
She is also co-founder of Postcolonial Digital Humanities, a collaborative website producing a new orientation for postcolonial analysis in the digital age. She has held fellowships in the Duke University Humanities Writ Large program, the National University of Singapore and will be a Regional Faculty fellow under the Penn Humanities Fellowship Program in 2015-2016.
In addition to numerous journal articles, she is a core contributor to the ProfHacker column at the Chronicle for Higher Education. Her book Critical Histories of the Digital Humanities: Media, Science, Pedagogy is currently under contract with Northwestern University Press.edit
edited collection under contract with Punctum Books
Research Interests:
under contract with Northwestern University Press
Research Interests: History of Science and Technology, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Digital Humanities, Postcolonial Studies, and 12 moreDigital Media, Critical Pedagogy, Computer Networks, Critical Race Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Science and Technology, Databases, Digital Pedagogy, Software, Urban Education, Critical Theory/Pedagogy, Critical Literacies, Youth Culture, Hip Hop Culture, Curriculum & Development, Higher Education Feminist Studies of Science and Technology, and Science and Technology Studies
Singapore and Malaysia are rapidly modernising, globalising Asian states which, although being distinct nations since 1965, share common elements in the on-going struggle over the meaning of gender and sexuality in their societies. This... more
Singapore and Malaysia are rapidly modernising, globalising Asian states which, although being distinct nations since 1965, share common elements in the on-going struggle over the meaning of gender and sexuality in their societies. This is the first book to discuss a range of discourses around gender in these two countries.
Women and the Politics of Representation in Southeast Asia: Engendering Discourse in Singapore and Malaysia seeks to give an overview of how gender and representation come together in various configurations in the history and contemporary culture of both nations. It examines the discursive construction of gender, sexuality and representation in a variety of areas, including the politics of everyday life, education, popular culture, literature, film, theatre and photography. Chapters examine a range of tropes such as the Orientalist "Sarong Party Girl," the iconic "Singapore Girl" of Singapore Airlines, and the figure of pious Muslim femininity celebrated by Malaysian NGO IMAN, all of which play important roles in delineating limitations for gender roles. The collection also draws attention to resistance to these gender boundaries in theatre, film, blogs and social media, and pedagogy.
Bringing together research from a variety of humanistic and social science fields, such as film, material culture, semiotics, literature and pedagogy, the book is a comprehensive feminist survey that will be of use for students and scholars of Women’s Studies and Asian Studies, as well as on courses on gender, media and popular culture in Asia
Women and the Politics of Representation in Southeast Asia: Engendering Discourse in Singapore and Malaysia seeks to give an overview of how gender and representation come together in various configurations in the history and contemporary culture of both nations. It examines the discursive construction of gender, sexuality and representation in a variety of areas, including the politics of everyday life, education, popular culture, literature, film, theatre and photography. Chapters examine a range of tropes such as the Orientalist "Sarong Party Girl," the iconic "Singapore Girl" of Singapore Airlines, and the figure of pious Muslim femininity celebrated by Malaysian NGO IMAN, all of which play important roles in delineating limitations for gender roles. The collection also draws attention to resistance to these gender boundaries in theatre, film, blogs and social media, and pedagogy.
Bringing together research from a variety of humanistic and social science fields, such as film, material culture, semiotics, literature and pedagogy, the book is a comprehensive feminist survey that will be of use for students and scholars of Women’s Studies and Asian Studies, as well as on courses on gender, media and popular culture in Asia
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This book explores the phenomenon of “cosmopolitan whiteness”: the employment of metaphorical and material white elements in postcolonial literature from Southeast Asia, West and Southern Africa, and the Caribbean.... more
This book explores the phenomenon of “cosmopolitan whiteness”: the employment of metaphorical and material white elements in postcolonial literature from Southeast Asia, West and Southern Africa, and the Caribbean. “Cosmopolitan whiteness” denotes the use of whiteness as a type of cultural property, and a locus of invisible privilege. This form of whitnenes is manifest in practices of cultural sophistication, beauty rituals and femininity. This book draws on both historical methodologies and literary modes of close reading.
Research Interests: Postcolonial Studies, Literary Criticism, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, African American Literature, and 8 morePost-Colonialism, Whiteness Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Postcolonial Literature, Southeast Asian Cinema, Southeast Asian Literature, Anglophone Literature, and Literature of the Anglophone Caribbean
The three projects that are showcased in this issue—Digitizing Chinese Englishmen, the Re/Collecting Project, and 3-11—are part of a growing attempt to address these gaps by digitally recovering, collecting, and archiving the histories... more
The three projects that are showcased in this issue—Digitizing Chinese Englishmen, the Re/Collecting Project, and 3-11—are part of a growing attempt to address these gaps by digitally recovering, collecting, and archiving the histories and presents of Asian and Asian American communities. The notion of recovery is of primary importance to both my own Digitizing Chinese Englishmen and Grace Yeh’s Re/Collecting Project. Digitizing Chinese Englishmen is a digital archival project that focuses on the digitization and dissemination of an Anglophone magazine, the Straits Chinese Magazine, produced by Malayan Chinese writers in the late nineteenth century. The hybrid identities of many of the publication’s authors—negotiating being pulled between the Chinese and British empires, while on Malayan colonial soil—provide a complex yet clear picture of the construction of later postcolonial Anglophone identity. In conceiving of the structure of the project, I also consider what makes up a “postcolonial” digital archive.
Grace Yeh’s Re/Collecting Project, conversely, brings the importance of recovery to the mid- and late twentieth century, focusing on the narratives of voiceless Filipino workers in San Luis Obispo, on California’s Central Coast. Yeh’s project focused on turning objects that were not considered “collectible” by traditional archives into valuable historical memory—
finding items in individuals’ garages, attics, and closets about a people’s forgotten agricultural labor and the impact of this labor. Though the project was originally conceived as a physical exhibition titled Routes and Roots, Yeh, realizing the importance of continued public access to these community stories and materials, launched the Re/Collecting Project to continue the project in virtual form. Re/Collecting is conceived of as an
“ethnic studies memory project of California’s Central Coast.”
Eric Dinmore’s digital archive of 3-11 brings us into the twenty-first
century with documentation of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the associated tsunami and nuclear catastrophes of March 11, 2011.
Dinmore notes that the type of collecting he encountered in creating a digital archive from 3-11 diverged greatly from the physical archives that he, as a historian, had been more used to encountering. While the historian’s usual archive generally means an often difficult-to-access, proprietary archive, the 3-11 archive was conceived of as “an open forum for the global online community to analyze, remember, and reflect on Japan’s
envirotechnical tragedy.” This open forum included massive amounts of digital data, including social media posts from Twitter and Facebook, blog entries, discussion group postings, nongovernmental organization communications, and government websites. The sheer volume and rapid production of this material, Dinmore argues, demand that the twenty-first-century digital historian deeply reconsider the methodologies and impact of the archival process.
Grace Yeh’s Re/Collecting Project, conversely, brings the importance of recovery to the mid- and late twentieth century, focusing on the narratives of voiceless Filipino workers in San Luis Obispo, on California’s Central Coast. Yeh’s project focused on turning objects that were not considered “collectible” by traditional archives into valuable historical memory—
finding items in individuals’ garages, attics, and closets about a people’s forgotten agricultural labor and the impact of this labor. Though the project was originally conceived as a physical exhibition titled Routes and Roots, Yeh, realizing the importance of continued public access to these community stories and materials, launched the Re/Collecting Project to continue the project in virtual form. Re/Collecting is conceived of as an
“ethnic studies memory project of California’s Central Coast.”
Eric Dinmore’s digital archive of 3-11 brings us into the twenty-first
century with documentation of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the associated tsunami and nuclear catastrophes of March 11, 2011.
Dinmore notes that the type of collecting he encountered in creating a digital archive from 3-11 diverged greatly from the physical archives that he, as a historian, had been more used to encountering. While the historian’s usual archive generally means an often difficult-to-access, proprietary archive, the 3-11 archive was conceived of as “an open forum for the global online community to analyze, remember, and reflect on Japan’s
envirotechnical tragedy.” This open forum included massive amounts of digital data, including social media posts from Twitter and Facebook, blog entries, discussion group postings, nongovernmental organization communications, and government websites. The sheer volume and rapid production of this material, Dinmore argues, demand that the twenty-first-century digital historian deeply reconsider the methodologies and impact of the archival process.
Research Interests: Computing In Social Sciences, Arts And Humanities, Professions, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Southeast Asian Studies, Digital Humanities, Asian American Studies, and 5 moreJapanese History, Modern Japanese History, Filipino American Studies, Singapore Literature, and South and Southeast Asian Studies
Edited section on Asian/American digital humanities featuring "Asian/American and the Digital|Technological So Far" by Anne Cong Huyen and Konrad Ng, "What Race Does Online: 'Gangnam Style' and Asian/American Identity in the Digital Age'"... more
Edited section on Asian/American digital humanities featuring "Asian/American and the Digital|Technological So Far" by Anne Cong Huyen and Konrad Ng, "What Race Does Online: 'Gangnam Style' and Asian/American Identity in the Digital Age'" for Verge: Studies in Global Asias
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And thus the title was born for what became this project: 'Troubling Gender, Vexing Sexualities.' There are two connotations to the term 'troubling' that we want to evoke. On one level, the term 'troubling' connotes its counterpart... more
And thus the title was born for what became this project: 'Troubling Gender, Vexing Sexualities.' There are two connotations to the term 'troubling' that we want to evoke. On one level, the term 'troubling' connotes its counterpart 'troublesome', meaning something annoying, irritating and vexing. Difficult children are often referred to as 'troublesome': trying, exasperating, badly behaved. On another level, the term conjures up something deeper and spiritual: disturbing, problematic, taxing—a perspective mirrored in our second adjective, 'vexing'. We argue that gender and sexuality are simultaneously irksome, maddening and disquieting in the writing of Singapore and Malaysia studies.
While we had originally intended to study the ways women have been left out of Singapore and Malaysia studies, we have also paid heed to multiple theoretical shifts within the field of 'women's studies' that have shown that a narrow concentration on 'women' is limiting.[2] Thus we use the terms 'women' and 'gender' to denote interconnected yet distinct areas of study in our special issue of Intersections. Through our focus on 'gender,' our contributors also discuss men and masculinity in their essays, and through our use of 'sexuality,' we signal our intentions to include perspectives on queer, trans and intersex identities and analysis. Our focus on these three terms signifies our attention to the need to describe a variety of identities, and to provide analytical frameworks for studying a range of discursive, economic and geopolitical processes and social movements.
While we had originally intended to study the ways women have been left out of Singapore and Malaysia studies, we have also paid heed to multiple theoretical shifts within the field of 'women's studies' that have shown that a narrow concentration on 'women' is limiting.[2] Thus we use the terms 'women' and 'gender' to denote interconnected yet distinct areas of study in our special issue of Intersections. Through our focus on 'gender,' our contributors also discuss men and masculinity in their essays, and through our use of 'sexuality,' we signal our intentions to include perspectives on queer, trans and intersex identities and analysis. Our focus on these three terms signifies our attention to the need to describe a variety of identities, and to provide analytical frameworks for studying a range of discursive, economic and geopolitical processes and social movements.
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In this essay, simultaneously given as a keynote address for ILIADS.org 2015, I ask: why do we use more active types of pedagogy to teach our students, and more traditional forms (lectures) to teach each other? I argue that the new... more
In this essay, simultaneously given as a keynote address for ILIADS.org 2015, I ask: why do we use more active types of pedagogy to teach our students, and more traditional forms (lectures) to teach each other? I argue that the new digital landscape along with increasing the accessibility of our classrooms demands that we restructure the way that we teach, and give some examples of this type of restructuring. I also asked my audience to participate in redesigning a traditional literary classroom exercise with the Internet in mind. Live links to all the resources can be found in the original article here: http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/teaching-with-the-internet-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-google-in-my-classroom/
Research Interests: Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, E-learning, Disability Studies, Critical Disability Studies, and 9 moreDigital Media, Critical Pedagogy, Social Justice, Pedagogy, Social Justice in Education, Digital Pedagogy, Feminism and Social Justice, Hybrid Learning, and Blended and Hybrid Learning
"I am often asked about the digital humanities and how it can update, make relevant, and provide funding for many a beleaguered humanities department. Some faculty at underfunded institutions imagine DH is going to revitalize their... more
"I am often asked about the digital humanities and how it can update, make relevant, and provide funding for many a beleaguered humanities department. Some faculty at underfunded institutions imagine DH is going to revitalize their discipline — it’s going to magically interest undergraduates, give faculty research funding, and exponentially increase enrollment.
Well, the reality is this: what has until recently been commonly understood as real “Digital Humanities” is already belated and is not going to save humanities departments from ever bigger budget cuts and potential dissolution. If you want to save humanities departments, champion the new wave of digital humanities: one which has humanistic questions at its core."
Well, the reality is this: what has until recently been commonly understood as real “Digital Humanities” is already belated and is not going to save humanities departments from ever bigger budget cuts and potential dissolution. If you want to save humanities departments, champion the new wave of digital humanities: one which has humanistic questions at its core."
Research Interests: Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Humanities, Digital Humanities, and 10 moreHigher Education, Learning and Teaching, Computer Networks, Learning And Teaching In Higher Education, Databases, Digital Pedagogy, Digital Media Studies, Software, Arts and the Humanities, and Science and Technology Studies
This paper probes the politics of digitizing the literary nineteenth century. It focuses on three issues: (1) how the politics of the literary nineteenth century archive interact with and reflect issues within Victorian studies; (2)... more
This paper probes the politics of digitizing the literary nineteenth century. It focuses on three issues: (1) how the politics of the literary nineteenth century archive interact with and reflect issues within Victorian studies; (2) existing issues with interfaces of existing literary digital projects that limit their correlations with colonialism or the literary productions by the colonized; (3) the contrast between digital literary projects and broader historical digital archives, and the urgency of dealing with this gap.
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This article provides a brief overview of an assortment of digital humanities projects that can be implemented in primarily undergraduate-focused institutions. Readers should be able to decide on what level they would like to start at,... more
This article provides a brief overview of an assortment of digital humanities projects that can be implemented in primarily undergraduate-focused institutions. Readers should be able to decide on what level they would like to start at, and build some possible ideas to “scaffold” the project, or stages of development and release for the project. At the end of the overview I offer an activity that can be easily applied by instructors interested in conducting digital humanities workshops at their institutions and an annotated list of additional resources. My goal is to provide an easy introduction for instructors to think through possibilities for incorporating the digital humanities within an undergraduate curriculum with either free or inexpensive digital tools.
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While Claire de Duras’ 1823 novel Ourika is commonly considered one of the most penetrating portrayals of racism in the nineteenth century, this essay argues that a deeper examination of the novel’s marriage plot bears revisiting.... more
While Claire de Duras’ 1823 novel Ourika is commonly considered one of the most penetrating portrayals of racism in the nineteenth century, this essay argues that a deeper examination of the novel’s marriage plot bears revisiting. Specifically, it claims that a close reading of marriage, race and citizenship in the novel reveals an unexplored degree of colonial anxiety towards the potential equality of black and white women. The politically charged elements of race and citizenship in the main character’s potential marriage has been mostly neglected by the majority of critics, who mostly consider it a benign aspect of the form and function of the Romantic novel. The article contends that Duras breaks narrative coherence in her construction of the main character to prevent the possible representation of a black woman who could possess the rights, responsibilities and citizenship of adult white French women. It constructs its argument through an examination of the legal changes made to marriage after the French Revolution and its effects, a survey of the history of prohibitions against mixed-race marriage in the French Empire, and close readings of the marriage trope in Ourika. By rehistoricizing marriage, race and métissage in the novel, this essay contributes to a growing ambiguity on race relations within existing Duras criticism.
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This essay explores the “social contract” of the digital humanities community. I argue that the social contract of the digital humanities is composed of two rules: 1) the notion of niceness or civility; and 2) the possession of technical... more
This essay explores the “social contract” of the digital humanities community. I argue that the social contract of the digital humanities is composed of two rules: 1) the notion of niceness or civility; and 2) the possession of technical knowledge, defined as knowledge of coding or computer programming. These rules are repeatedly raised within the public sphere of the digital humanities and are simultaneously contested and criticized. I claim that these rules and the social contract come from humanities computing, a field commonly described as the digital humanities’ sole predecessor. Humanities computing has historically differentiated itself from media and cultural studies, defining itself as a field that uses computational methods to address humanities research questions rather than exploring the impact of computation on culture and the humanities. I call for a movement that would go beyond this social contract by creating multiple genealogies for the digital humanities; by arguing that current conceptualizations of the digital humanities have not only developed from humanities computing but also include additional fields such as new media studies, postcolonial science and technology studies, and digital research on race, gender, class, and disability and their impact on cultures around the world.
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Koh describes the launch and reactions to the DHThis experiment (DHThis.org), a platform that sources from users, rather than from a select group of editors.
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This article investigates racial melancholia as a comparative literary device in Claire de Duras’s Ourika (1823) and Hugh Clifford’s Saleh (1904). Racial melancholia refers to the process whereby racial self-knowledge becomes a site of... more
This article investigates racial melancholia as a comparative literary device in Claire de Duras’s Ourika (1823) and Hugh Clifford’s Saleh (1904). Racial melancholia refers to the process whereby racial self-knowledge becomes a site of psychological trauma for colonized subjects. In both novels, the European educations of Ourika, a West African girl, and Saleh, a Malay prince, lead to their development of racial melancholia and their eventual deaths. European education is blamed as the cause of this deadly melancholia. Yet both stories have different moral centres: one uses racial melancholia to argue for a universal humanism, while the other asserts that cultural difference is fixed and unchangeable. This article draws on psychoanalysis, race theory and postcolonial theory to analyse the charged symbols of racial melancholia and European education across the Francophone and Anglophone colonial empires.
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Since Chinua Achebe’s groundbreaking pronouncement that Conrad was “a bloody racist” in 1979, scholars have taken Heart of Darkness as the definitive starting point for discussing Conrad and race. In contrast, this article argues that a... more
Since Chinua Achebe’s groundbreaking pronouncement that Conrad was “a bloody racist” in 1979, scholars have taken Heart of Darkness as the definitive starting point for discussing Conrad and race. In contrast, this article argues that a geographically comparative approach challenges this critical paradigm, given that Conrad was Polish, French, and British in his lifetime, as well as both a colonized subject and a colonizer. These numerous identity shifts come together in Conrad’s first novel, Almayer’s Folly. While superficially set in Asia, Almayer’s Folly is also a simultaneous representation of Conrad’s relationships with Poland and the Congo. This essay examines the representation of these three regions in Almayer’s Folly, arguing that taking a comparative approach may reshape scholarship on Conrad and imperialism.
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In The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922/1965), Frederick Lugard, high commissioner of Northern Nigeria from 1809 to 1906, argued for a system in which the most important executive powers of a territory (military control,... more
In The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922/1965), Frederick Lugard, high commissioner of Northern Nigeria from 1809 to 1906, argued for a system in which the most important executive powers of a territory (military control, taxation, and certain executive powers of governance) would be controlled by the British, but all other less central aspects would be left to local precolonial aristocracies who would maintain the outward appearance of control. This system has come to be known as Lugard's policy of " indirect rule. " While the concept of indirect rule was developed through Lugard's experience in Africa, the largest application of indirect rule has been across British Asia, including the Indian subcontinent, Burma, and British territories in Southeast Asia. This essay explores the role that education, particularly colonial English education, played in indirect rule in British Malaya (now contemporary Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei). Malaya largely came under British indirect rule with the signing of the Pangkor Engagement Treaty of 1874, in which the sultans of various Malay states agreed to accommodate a British resident, who would " advise " the sultans on all matters outside of cultural issues. Malay gentry were the local aristocrats chosen to serve as middlemen under the umbrella of indirect rule, and they were educated in English. This contrasted with the situation for the majority of local populations, in Malaya and virtually everywhere else under British colonial rule, which were educated in vernacular language schools. By conducting close readings of a series of textbooks published in the 1930s to 1940s, this chapter makes the argument that the English education policy in Malaya was directed at creating a local Anglophone elite that would assist the British in maintaining control. It shows how these textbooks attempted to create a compliant elite through the juxtaposition of local elements, or a " nativized " curriculum, with English values. This juxtaposition was integral to simultaneously instilling a sense of cultural belonging in the local elite while ensuring identification with British ideals and political priorities. The chapter establishes this direction in education policy through an ideological reading of these textbooks, applying Louis Althusser's notions of " ideology and ideological state apparatuses " (1972/2001). Ultimately, it argues that the ideological effect of combining elements of " local color " with British values was a critical supportive element for indirect rule.
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Scholarly work on race and ethnicity in Singapore seldom discusses this inflection of racial privilege with gender, an extremely important intersection that nuances the structure of minority identity in the country. In this interview, I... more
Scholarly work on race and ethnicity in Singapore seldom discusses this inflection of racial privilege with gender, an extremely important intersection that nuances the structure of minority identity in the country. In this interview, I speak with Sangeetha Thanapal, an Indian Singaporean woman who first introduced the controversial concept of ‘Chinese privilege’ in Singapore. Thanapal holds that structural ethnic Singaporean Chinese’s racial privilege is in some ways analogous to White privilege in Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, despite the important differences in the historical, social, political, and geographic circumstances and developments of these two privileges. Thanapal’s provocative work and the virulent responses it engendered (mainly by Singaporean Chinese), inspired me to write a Medium essay titled ‘To My Dear Fellow Singapore Chinese: Shut Up When A Minority Is Talking About Race’ (which has since garnered over 105,000 page views and 56 recommends). We are now collaborating on a Medium Collection on Chinese Privilege, which seeks to bring to light the stories of minority voices in Singapore.
Research Interests: Southeast Asian Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Singapore, and 7 moreChinese Diaspora (Migration and Ethnicity), Indian Diaspora (Migration and Ethnicity), Postcolonial Theory, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, History of Race and Ethnicity, Critical Whiteness Studies, and Chinese Privilege
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Postcolonial digital humanities has taken shape recently as an emergent academic field. Its lineage reaches back to the 1990s, when scholars Deepika Bahri and George Landow first created websites such as “Postcolonial Studies at Emory”... more
Postcolonial digital humanities has taken shape recently as an emergent academic field. Its lineage reaches back to the 1990s, when scholars Deepika Bahri and George Landow first created websites such as “Postcolonial Studies at Emory” (original version) and “The Postcolonial Literature and Culture Web.” These scholars marshaled the text-based internet culture of Web 1.0 to establish sites of knowledge; identify key terms, theorists, and stakes for postcolonial studies; and to publicize the field. Since the publication of these projects, rapid digital and technological changes around the world have provided untapped rich opportunities for the application and analysis of postcolonial studies.
Our website addresses these opportunities by outlining the shape of the contemporary ‘postcolonial digital humanities’ through interrogating the ways postcolonial studies has evolved through different phases of internet culture. We study developments from the original Web 1.0 postcolonial websites, to what Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White have identified as the “transmedia” shift beginning in the mid-2000s, to the later move to Web 2.0 and the rise of social media cultures. The mid-2000s transmedia shift began changing digital practices by eliding boundaries between media producers and consumers. Such shifts have raised questions of possible epistemological differences in the articulation of identities in digital spaces. However, scholars including Alan Liu, Anna Everett, Jessie Daniels, and Nakamura herself, have observed that problematic racial and ethnic categories persist within digital cultures. Similarly, as Afrofuturists Alondra Nelson and Kali Tal have proposed, digital spaces remain susceptible to racial oppression and white supremacy. Taking these assessments of digital space as its basis, postcolonial digital humanities brings critiques of colonialism, imperialism, and globalization and their relationship to race, class, gender, sexuality and disability to bear on the digital humanities.
Our website addresses these opportunities by outlining the shape of the contemporary ‘postcolonial digital humanities’ through interrogating the ways postcolonial studies has evolved through different phases of internet culture. We study developments from the original Web 1.0 postcolonial websites, to what Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White have identified as the “transmedia” shift beginning in the mid-2000s, to the later move to Web 2.0 and the rise of social media cultures. The mid-2000s transmedia shift began changing digital practices by eliding boundaries between media producers and consumers. Such shifts have raised questions of possible epistemological differences in the articulation of identities in digital spaces. However, scholars including Alan Liu, Anna Everett, Jessie Daniels, and Nakamura herself, have observed that problematic racial and ethnic categories persist within digital cultures. Similarly, as Afrofuturists Alondra Nelson and Kali Tal have proposed, digital spaces remain susceptible to racial oppression and white supremacy. Taking these assessments of digital space as its basis, postcolonial digital humanities brings critiques of colonialism, imperialism, and globalization and their relationship to race, class, gender, sexuality and disability to bear on the digital humanities.
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"Digitizing ‘Chinese Englishmen’ is a project that involves both digitization and academic commentary on the Straits Chinese Magazine, a literary magazine published in colonial Singapore from 1897-1907 by a combination of Southeast... more
"Digitizing ‘Chinese Englishmen’ is a project that involves both digitization and academic commentary on the Straits Chinese Magazine, a literary magazine published in colonial Singapore from 1897-1907 by a combination of Southeast Asian-born Anglophone Chinese subjects, European colonial writers and mixed-race Eurasian writers.
Digitizing ‘Chinese Englishmen’ documents how British colonial culture created a group of “Asian Victorians” in Southeast Asia through the establishment of a colonial intermediary class within the diasporic Chinese group known as the “Straits Chinese.” While the Straits Chinese had established roots in Southeast Asia from the seventeenth century, under British rule they became an important comprador class serving as mediators between the British and the rest of the Empire. Digitizing ‘Chinese Englishmen’ is an attempt to give voice and representation to formerly colonized subjects, and to attempt to work against the “imperial meaning-making” of the archive by implementing new types of reading and commenting technologies that disrupt the idea of dominant and subjugated knowledges."
Digitizing ‘Chinese Englishmen’ documents how British colonial culture created a group of “Asian Victorians” in Southeast Asia through the establishment of a colonial intermediary class within the diasporic Chinese group known as the “Straits Chinese.” While the Straits Chinese had established roots in Southeast Asia from the seventeenth century, under British rule they became an important comprador class serving as mediators between the British and the rest of the Empire. Digitizing ‘Chinese Englishmen’ is an attempt to give voice and representation to formerly colonized subjects, and to attempt to work against the “imperial meaning-making” of the archive by implementing new types of reading and commenting technologies that disrupt the idea of dominant and subjugated knowledges."
Research Interests: Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Southeast Asian Studies, Digital Humanities, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, and 19 moreBritish Imperial & Commonwelath History - 19th & 20th century, Colonialism, Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Archives, Singapore, British Empire, 18th & 19th Centuries, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Digital Archives, British Imperialism, 19th Century (History), 19th Century British (Literature), Southeast Asian history, Critical Mixed Race Studies, Empire, 20th Century British Literature, and Imperialism
DHThis is the first entirely crowdsourced outlet for digital humanities (DH) news. DHThis originated in a set of conversations among the team about how knowledge is produced, distributed, and consumed within DH. While a few sites... more
DHThis is the first entirely crowdsourced outlet for digital humanities (DH) news. DHThis originated in a set of conversations among the team about how knowledge is produced, distributed, and consumed within DH. While a few sites aggregate DH content, they still run on an editorial model. DHThis flips that model, shifting control of new developments in DH to wider publics. Using a Slashdot-style system of user engagement, DHThis gives registered users the opportunity to upvote and downvote articles and gives karma points that reward active (and useful) participation in the community. DHThis is built on an ethos of open access and open engagement and provides an ongoing forum for defining DH in the moment.
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Trading Races is an elaborate role-playing game set at the University of Michigan of Ann Arbor campus in April 2003. It is designed to be a Reacting to the Past game, where players are transported to a time period in the past and play... more
Trading Races is an elaborate role-playing game set at the University of Michigan of Ann Arbor campus in April 2003. It is designed to be a Reacting to the Past game, where players are transported to a time period in the past and play historical characters. Through careful study of key texts and learning modes of argumentation, student players learn to engage with big ideas, and to empathize with points of view different from their own.
The game is is set two months before the Supreme Court landmark decisions on affirmative action in 2003. Players take on the roles of multi-ethnic and multi-national members of an imaginary Michigan Student Assembly, and present speeches on race related issues based upon their characters’ social and political orientation in gameplay. By asking players to assume the ideological worldview of people different from themselves, the game encourages players to “trade races” intellectually and emotionally.
Trading Races is designed to be used in both undergraduate courses on race and ethnicity, as well as in advanced high school curricula. It has been funded by the Duke Humanities Writ Large grant, a Mellon grant aimed at redesigning undergraduate education in the humanities, and by the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Plans for an electronic version of the game are also in the works. Please contact the game designer, Adeline Koh to playtest.
The game is is set two months before the Supreme Court landmark decisions on affirmative action in 2003. Players take on the roles of multi-ethnic and multi-national members of an imaginary Michigan Student Assembly, and present speeches on race related issues based upon their characters’ social and political orientation in gameplay. By asking players to assume the ideological worldview of people different from themselves, the game encourages players to “trade races” intellectually and emotionally.
Trading Races is designed to be used in both undergraduate courses on race and ethnicity, as well as in advanced high school curricula. It has been funded by the Duke Humanities Writ Large grant, a Mellon grant aimed at redesigning undergraduate education in the humanities, and by the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Plans for an electronic version of the game are also in the works. Please contact the game designer, Adeline Koh to playtest.
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The Stockton Postcolonial Studies Project is an ongoing digital research project that explores different theoretical arenas within postcolonial studies. “Postcolonial Studies” encapsulates a series of theories and methodologies that have... more
The Stockton Postcolonial Studies Project is an ongoing digital research project that explores different theoretical arenas within postcolonial studies. “Postcolonial Studies” encapsulates a series of theories and methodologies that have impacted disciplines as diverse as history, literature, anthropology, sociology and political economics. Its roots stem from an intellectual imperative to radically reinterpret the histories, cultures and representation of formerly colonized peoples, a call pioneered in the 1980s by critics such as Edward Said, V.Y. Mudimbe, and members of the Subaltern Studies group. The Project is an effort to document recent trends in the history of postcolonial studies across a variety of fields and disciplines. The Project is indexed in the Modern Language Association‘s database of scholarly websites. To learn more about our work, please visit the Project Guide on the website. You can follow our discussion of current projects on Twitter through our Twitter account @RSCpostcolonial, and by using the hashtag #stocktonpostcolonial. If you would like to contribute to this project please email the Project Director (Adeline Koh, Ph.D.) with your proposal.
Research Interests: Middle East Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Critical Pedagogy, Hybridity, Critical Race Theory, and 13 moreRace and Ethnicity, African American Literature, Domesticity, Singapore, Postcolonial Feminism, Postcolonial Theory, African American Studies, Postcolonial Literature, Alison Bechdel, Singapore Literature, Chimamanda Adichie, Marjane Satrapi, and Malaysia Literature
Review of Pranav S. Joshi's "Behind a Cultural Cage"
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This review discusses how "Cowboys in Paradise," a documentary about the growing male sex trade in Bali, Indonesia, can be successfully used to teach the politics of minority and international feminism in Women and Gender Studies courses.
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This dissertation focuses on late nineteenth and twentieth century Orientalized representations of British Malaya in the work of Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham and Anthony Burgess. It argues that racial logics reflected within this... more
This dissertation focuses on late nineteenth and twentieth century Orientalized representations of British Malaya in the work of Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham and Anthony Burgess. It argues that racial logics reflected within this Anglophone expatriate literature influenced colonial and postcolonial politics in Malaysia and Singapore.
Research Interests: British Literature, Southeast Asian Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Imperial History, Race and Ethnicity, and 25 moreColonialism, Southeast Asia, Conrad, Joseph, Malaysia, Anthony Burgess, Gertrude Stein, Singapore, Postmodernism, Desire, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Modernism, John Ashbery, Transatlantic Literature, J.H. Prynne, Language Poetry, Joseph Conrad, Englishness, Peter Riley, Denise Riley, George Oppen, Difficulty, Malaya, W. Somerset Maugham, Twentieth Century and Contemporary British and American Poetry and Poetics, and Heart of Darkness
Series of interviews with university presses and libraries on the changing face of academic publishing.
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This article discusses some of the major issues involved with presenting digital work for promotion and tenure and some useful strategies that scholars should keep in mind.
Research Interests: Publishing, Blogs, Electronic publishing, Open Access, Open Access Publishing, and 13 moreBlogs, Blogging, the Blogosphere, Social Media, Book Publishing, Promotion & tenure resources/outreach for teaching faculty, Digital Publishing, Scholars publishing practices and strategies, Promotion and Tenure Outreach, Online publishing, Online Academic Publishing, Academic Publishing, Digital Issues in Publishing, Electronic Publishing, digital library, and Academic Blogging
The article discusses the central tensions in new modes of digital publishing and the three major stakeholders: traditional scholarly publishers, library publishers, and academics.
Research Interests: New Media, Journalism, Digital Libraries, Publishing, Digital Humanities, and 13 moreElectronic publishing, Corporate Communication, Open Access, Open Access Publishing, Digital Media, Digital Media & Learning, New Media Art & Emerging Practices, Media, Online Journalism, Print media, Public Communication, Electronics Media, and The Likes
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In The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922/1965), Frederick Lugard, high commissioner of Northern Nigeria from 1809 to 1906, argued for a system in which the most important executive powers of a territory (military control,... more
In The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922/1965), Frederick Lugard, high commissioner of Northern Nigeria from 1809 to 1906, argued for a system in which the most important executive powers of a territory (military control, taxation, and certain executive powers of governance) would be controlled by the British, but all other less central aspects would be left to local precolonial aristocracies who would maintain the outward appearance of control.
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In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes that by examining the process of history we can “discover the differential exercise of power that makes some narratives possible and silences... more
In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes that by examining the process of history we can “discover the differential exercise of power that makes some narratives possible and silences others.” Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities examines the process of history in the narrative of the digital humanities and deconstructs its history as a straight line from the beginnings of humanities computing. By discussing alternatives histories of the digital humanities that address queer gaming, feminist game studies praxis, Cold War military-industrial complex computation, the creation of the environmental humanities, monolingual discontent in DH, the hidden history of DH in English studies, radical media praxis, cultural studies and DH, indigenous futurities, Pacific Rim postcolonial DH, the issue of scale and DH, the radical, indigenous, feminist histories of the digital database, and the possibilities for an antifascist DH, th...
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At every stage in the research cycle -- planning, researching, preserving, publishing, and distributing -- social media is being used by researchers and scholars to communicate, collaborate, promote their research, and debate. As scholars... more
At every stage in the research cycle -- planning, researching, preserving, publishing, and distributing -- social media is being used by researchers and scholars to communicate, collaborate, promote their research, and debate. As scholars increasingly move their work to the web, conversations that previously took place within campus walls are now open for the world to pitch in. The benefits of using social media in the academy have been cited, among myriad others, as democratization, widening participation, and engaging new audiences on a global level. But these rapid changes come with challenges: steep learning curves in new technologies for many, committing to public engagement, and embedding social media in everyday work flows. In this Research Without Borders event, hosted by Columbia University's Center for Digital Research and Scholarship's Scholarly Communication Program, panelists Adeline Koh, Roopika Risam, Joshua Drew, and Laura Czerniewicz discuss how social media is changing the way researchers and scholars communicate with each other, on their campuses, and with the public.
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In this essay, simultaneously given as a keynote address for ILIADS.org 2015, I ask: why do we use more active types of pedagogy to teach our students, and more traditional forms (lectures) to teach each other? I argue that the new... more
In this essay, simultaneously given as a keynote address for ILIADS.org 2015, I ask: why do we use more active types of pedagogy to teach our students, and more traditional forms (lectures) to teach each other? I argue that the new digital landscape along with increasing the accessibility of our classrooms demands that we restructure the way that we teach, and give some examples of this type of restructuring. I also asked my audience to participate in redesigning a traditional literary classroom exercise with the Internet in mind. Live links to all the resources can be found in the original article here: http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/teaching-with-the-internet-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-google-in-my-classroom/
Research Interests: Psychology, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, Disability Studies, Critical Disability Studies, and 12 moreDigital Media, Critical Pedagogy, Social Justice, Pedagogy, Social Justice in Education, Digital Pedagogy, The Internet, Feminism and Social Justice, Hybrid Learning, Hybrid Pedagogy, E Learning, and Blended and Hybrid Learning
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Koh describes the launch and reactions to the DHThis experiment (DHThis.org), a platform that sources from users, rather than from a select group of editors.
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Research Interests: History, Cultural Studies, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, Nineteenth Century Studies, and 9 moreColonialism, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, Anglophone Literature, Literary studies, Victorian culture, Historical Studies, Anglophone Studies, Post Colonialism, and Postcolonial Digital Humanities
Abstract Since Chinua Achebe's groundbreaking pronouncement that Conrad was 'a bloody racist'in 1979, scholars have taken Heart of Darkness as the definitive starting point for discussing... more
Abstract Since Chinua Achebe's groundbreaking pronouncement that Conrad was 'a bloody racist'in 1979, scholars have taken Heart of Darkness as the definitive starting point for discussing Conrad and race. In contrast, this article argues that a geographically comparative approach challenges this critical paradigm, given that Conrad was Polish, French and British in his lifetime, as well as both a colonised subject and a coloniser. These numerous identity shifts come together in Conrad's first novel, Almayer's Folly. While ...
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In 1968, Argentinean Filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino first articulated the theory of a" Third Cinema"-a revolutionary genre of cinema that would counter oppression on a global scale. Intended to be a"... more
In 1968, Argentinean Filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino first articulated the theory of a" Third Cinema"-a revolutionary genre of cinema that would counter oppression on a global scale. Intended to be a" guerilla cinema" geared at contesting the overwhelming dominance of Western cinema, Solana and Getino distinguished" Third Cinema" from other forms of cinema, classifying these other types as First Cinema (commercial cinema epitomized by Hollywood) and Second Cinema." Third Cinema" was supposed to be a ...
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This essay explores the “social contract” of the digital humanities community. I argue that the social contract of the digital humanities is composed of two rules: 1) the notion of niceness or civility; and 2) the possession of technical... more
This essay explores the “social contract” of the digital humanities community. I argue that the social contract of the digital humanities is composed of two rules: 1) the notion of niceness or civility; and 2) the possession of technical knowledge, defined as knowledge of coding or computer programming. These rules are repeatedly raised within the public sphere of the digital humanities and are simultaneously contested and criticized. I claim that these rules and the social contract come from humanities computing, a field commonly described as the digital humanities’ sole predecessor. Humanities computing has historically differentiated itself from media and cultural studies, defining itself as a field that uses computational methods to address humanities research questions rather than exploring the impact of computation on culture and the humanities. I call for a movement that would go beyond this social contract by creating multiple genealogies for the digital humanities; by arguing that current conceptualizations of the digital humanities have not only developed from humanities computing but also include additional fields such as new media studies, postcolonial science and technology studies, and digital research on race, gender, class, and disability and their impact on cultures around the world.
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UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest, Inventing Malayanness: Race, education and Englishness in colonial Malaya. by Koh,... more
UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest, Inventing Malayanness: Race, education and Englishness in colonial Malaya. by Koh, Adeline ...
Research Interests: British Literature, History, Imperial History, Colonialism, Malaysia, and 15 moreAnthony Burgess, Gertrude Stein, Desire, Modernism, John Ashbery, Language Poetry, British Imperial and Colonial History, Joseph Conrad, Englishness, Denise Riley, George Oppen, Difficulty, Malaya, Heart of Darkness, and J H Prynne
This article provides a brief overview of an assortment of digital humanities projects that can be implemented in primarily undergraduate-focused institutions. Readers should be able to decide on what level they would like to start at,... more
This article provides a brief overview of an assortment of digital humanities projects that can be implemented in primarily undergraduate-focused institutions. Readers should be able to decide on what level they would like to start at, and build some possible ideas to “scaffold” the project, or stages of development and release for the project. At the end of the overview I offer an activity that can be easily applied by instructors interested in conducting digital humanities workshops at their institutions and an annotated list of additional resources. My goal is to provide an easy introduction for instructors to think through possibilities for incorporating the digital humanities within an undergraduate curriculum with either free or inexpensive digital tools.
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This article investigates racial melancholia as a comparative literary device in Claire de Duras's Ourika (1823) and Hugh Clifford's Saleh (1904). Racial melancholia refers to the process whereby racial self-knowledge becomes a... more
This article investigates racial melancholia as a comparative literary device in Claire de Duras's Ourika (1823) and Hugh Clifford's Saleh (1904). Racial melancholia refers to the process whereby racial self-knowledge becomes a site of psychological trauma for colonized subjects. In both novels, the European educations of Ourika, a West African girl, and Saleh, a Malay prince, lead to their development of racial melancholia and their eventual deaths. European education is blamed as the cause of this deadly melancholia. ...
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"I am often asked about the digital humanities and how it can update, make relevant, and provide funding for many a beleaguered humanities department. Some faculty at underfunded institutions imagine DH is going to revitalize their... more
"I am often asked about the digital humanities and how it can update, make relevant, and provide funding for many a beleaguered humanities department. Some faculty at underfunded institutions imagine DH is going to revitalize their discipline — it’s going to magically interest undergraduates, give faculty research funding, and exponentially increase enrollment. Well, the reality is this: what has until recently been commonly understood as real “Digital Humanities” is already belated and is not going to save humanities departments from ever bigger budget cuts and potential dissolution. If you want to save humanities departments, champion the new wave of digital humanities: one which has humanistic questions at its core."
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This is the tenth interview in a series, Digital Challenges to Academic Publishing, by Adeline Koh. Each article in this series features an interview with an academic publisher, press or journal editor on how their organization is... more
This is the tenth interview in a series, Digital Challenges to Academic Publishing, by Adeline Koh. Each article in this series features an interview with an academic publisher, press or journal editor on how their organization is changing in response to the digital world. The series has featured interviews with Duke University Press, Anvil Academic, NYU Press, MIT Press and the Penn State University Press.