Reflections on the 2024 Fall Semester
As the 2025 spring semester ramps back up, we wanted to reflect on our last few months in the BCaT Lab.
In September 2024, Dr. Rianna Walcott held an info-session for the Black Homeplaces Disco CoLab. This collaborative research project concentrated on the Black Homeplace, exploring the Black worldmaking practice of cultivating “a space that provides a sanctuary supporting the wholeness and humanizing of those who collectively create and exist in said space” (hooks, 1990). During the fall, BCaT book club focused on films, texts, and other immersive media forms that center the Black Homeplace and Black placemaking practices across the diaspora. We watched films, including Small Axe - “Lovers Rock,” and “Tales from the Front Room,” that featured homemaking in Black British communities and some of the commonalities in Homeplaces across the diaspora. We studied texts that guided and expanded our communities' thinking on what it means to have a Homeplace in Black communities. I particularly enjoyed “Black Placemaking: Celebration, Play, and Poetry,” which explored how different spaces across Chicago serve as sites of support within Black communities. The BCaT Lab hosted a field trip to the National Museum of African American History, seeing the guided “Power of Place” exhibition. We also explored Obsidian, an extended reality rendering of what a home set in California, decorated with the work of Black creatives, could look like. My favorite part of the Black Homeplaces CoLab has been watching the Lab’s community bring in their experiences and areas of expertise. It was interesting to learn more about my own heritage as a person of Caribbean descent through discussing the Caribbean Homeplace. All of us are excited to see the different outputs in the future of this collaborative effort! As the project moves forward, during the spring the lab is coordinating workshops to support projects based on our research into Black placemaking.
We also held several exciting BCaT Applies events–of course, followed by BCaT Eats! In September, we invited Graduate students to participate in an Academic Job Market Clinic. We encouraged the community to bring their application materials and do some workshopping. In October, the Lab invited the community to our Alt-Academia Panel. Voices from the American Council of Learned Societies, afroCROWD, and the National Museum of African American history discuss their experiences as academics employed outside of academia. Those in attendance enjoyed reflecting on how disciplinary training can be valuable outside of the classroom. Our final BCaT Applies event was a Graduate School Applications Clinic geared towards helping undergraduates interested in Graduate School navigate the application process. We had some fascinating conversations surrounding graduate school and the differences between an academic job market and industry job markets. Following these events, we would hold BCaT Eats, a time to come together for relaxation, good times, and community building. We ate good food, got competitive in everything from Mario Kart to Exploding Kittens, and even set up some VR headsets to celebrate the end of the semester.
The Black Digital Migration collaborative research team has been working hard to complete some of their outputs for the project. Right now, we are revising a forthcoming article describing the team's experience researching Twitter as the space was undergoing database access changes. We are also exploring different digital humanities methods for expanding the project. Our undergraduate team members, Roshida and Arianna, have also been working on updating the BCaT website and keeping our social media presence consistent!
We are very excited for the next few months at the BCaT Lab! Members of the lab are thriving within their academic, professional, and personal endeavors, and we celebrate them in all of their accomplishments. BCaT Graduate Fellow Nisa Asafarali-Hoffman will work alongside Dr. Catherine Knight Steele during our newest Disco CoLAB, Automating Black Joy. Nisa is a PhD student in Information Studies at UMD, a member of the BCaT community, and a 2023-2024 Disco Graduate Fellow. Nisa is an interdisciplinary critical scholar whose research interests lie at the intersection of race, technology, art, and postcolonial theory. Automating Black Joy will reimagine the role of Black youth, culture, and history in shaping digital futures. By prioritizing Black cultural production and digital technology, the project seeks to integrate social justice into AI development, ensuring a more inclusive and equitable future.
Written by Andrew Lowe
