Slavic Digital Humanities: Philip Gleissner (Ohio State University)

Please join us for a talk entitled "Queer Digital Humanities for Precarious Times: The Project kvir_izdat" by Prof. Philip Gleissner (Ohio State University). This talk is hosted by the Slavic Digital Humanities (Collaborative Project), a Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Research Unit group.

Abstract:
In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, a significant number of gay and lesbian periodicals and book publishers emerged in Russia, many of which are forgotten today. Their publications were not collected consistently by research libraries; some can be found on the internet, others in personal collections. The goal of the project kvir_izdat, which this talk focuses on, is to document this formative chapter in post-Soviet LGBTQ+ history. This effort feels particularly urgent, as the current political regime in Russia is trying to censor and erase all queer cultural heritage.

What tactics for building digital archives and data collections are appropriate and necessary in such a moment? How should they be built to provide both longevity and security? What research interests and methods can they satisfy? And how do we reconcile the need for systems to structure and categorize data on the one hand and the intellectual resistance to such systems in queer studies on the other?