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The Early Caribbean Digital Archive
Partnered with the Digital Library of the Caribbean(DLOC) and housed in Northeastern University’s NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks (NULabTMN), the Early Caribbean Digital Archive (ECDA) is a highly interactive digital scholars lab for the collaborative research and study of pre-C20 Caribbean literature. The ECDA seeks to engage both scholars and students in a shared, critical study of the textual, material, and cultural histories of the Caribbean by providing them with innovative digital technologies and newly emerging discursive platforms for generating new knowledges of the Caribbean’s rich body of materials.
Read more here about the history behind our project and our vision for its continued development in a combined Scholars Commons and Digital Text Analytics Lab.
We invite you to contribute items, transcriptions, and analyses to the ECDA. To participate in the shared building of the ECDA and it's exhibits, become a member of the ECDA Digital Scholars Lab — all are welcome!
Please create a user account here to begin collaborating.
Featured Exhibits
The Early Caribbean Slave Narrative
Credits | Nicole Aljoe (Northeastern University)
The Early Caribbean Slave Narrative Exhibit aims to present the testimonies and life narratives produced in the Caribbean by and about “dictated and written testimonies of enslaved black human beings,” (Davis and Gates “The Language of Slavery” xii). Caribbeanist scholar Nicole N. Aljoe argues that "just as the institution [of slavery] itself was global, so too, was the genre" ("Caribbean Slave Narratives"). Like the US slave narratives, testimony by enslaved people of the Caribbean operated as part of a complex transatlantic/hemispheric print network. And while, like the US narratives, the Caribbean narratives are intended to communicate specific details about the nature and experiences of enslavement, they also push the boundaries of the genre itself in ways that are "quite distinct in form, theme, and content."
Enter the Early Caribbean Slave Narrative Exhibit
To participate in the shared building of this and other exhibits of the ECDA, become a member of the ECDA Digital Scholars Lab.
Foodways of the Caribbean
Credits | Elizabeth Hopwood (Northeastern University)
This exhibit has been curated to tell multiple stories of how food production and consumption is represented across the colonial West Indies. The choices made as to what is edible, what to eat, what to serve, who cooks and prepares meals, and with whom to share them has enabled cultural transactions between different groups of people, establishing systems of kinships and community while also drawing borders between groups of people. By collecting writings about food and food cultures, we might begin to see how the politics and culture of production and consumption structure and enable power relations. Food choices have a broader social and culture effect beyond the individual doing the eating; food as a language communicates ideas, values, and cultural practices, especially across the space of the Atlantic.
Enter the Foodways of the Caribbean Exhibit
To participate in the shared building of this and other exhibits of the ECDA, become a member of the ECDA Digital Scholars Lab.
Featured Item
Narrative of Joanna; An Emancipated Slave, of Surinam.
Narrative of Joanna; An Emancipated Slave, of Surinam, from John Gabriel Stedman's "A Narrative of a Five Year's Expedition Against the Revolted…
ECDA News
Elizabeth Maddock Dillon Presents ECDA as "Radical Archive" at CUNY's Advanced Research Collaborative | September 4, 2014
On September 4, 2014, Co-Director of the ECDA, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, met with faculty and students at CUNY’s Advanced Research Collaborative to present and discuss the role of the ECDA in modeling “radical archive” building and practice. In “Radical Archival Practices and the Digital Humanities: The Early Caribbean Digital Archive,” the title of Dillon’s talk, she makes the case for the ECDA’s making good on the promise of digital archives — "the democratization of knowledge” — by facilitating the presentation and preservation of otherwise silenced literary and cultural histories through collaborative knowledge making and digital "remix and curation” practices. We invite you to read more on Dillon’s presentation from a response post written by Jeffrey Binder of CUNY’s Advanced Research Collaborative.ECDA Presents at ALA | May 23, 2013
Elizabeth Hopwood and Benjamin J. Doyle present the ECDA at the American Literature Association conference (May 23-26, 2013 — "Interpretation, Interface, Archive, Classroom"). The title of their talk is, “Building the Early Caribbean Digital Archive.”ECDA Acquires Critical Partnership with the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
Visit the dLOC's online database here.ECDA's Nicole Aljoe Presents at Caribbean Studies Association's | June 3-7, 2013, Grenada
Nicole Aljoe along with Brooke Wooldridge (Digital Library of the Caribbean Program Director) presents "The Emergence of the Digital Humanities as a Comprehensive Approach to the Caribbean.”ECDA's Elizabeth Maddock Dillon presents at the "Beyond Sweetness" Conference at Brown University | OCTOBER 24-27, 2013
Elizabeth Maddock Dillon will present, “The Cost of Sugar: Narratives of Loss of Life and Limb,” Saturday, October 26, 2013.Elizabeth Hopwood composes a conference review of "Beyond Sweetness." Read more on this review here.
ECDA Receives dLOC Award | 2013
The Early Caribbean Digital Archive received recognition from the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) Partner Meeting at the 2013 ACURIL conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the category of "Digital Humanities." Read dLOC's 2012-2013 newsletter here.The ECDA Goes to Martinique | December 11, 2013
Two members of the ECDA's Design and Development team, Elizabeth Hopwood (Lead TEI Developer) and Benjamin J. Doyle (Lead Omeka Site Developer) — along with Project Manager Nicole Aljoe, who will be presenting a paper — will be presenting a soft launch of the ECDA for attendees in Martinique at the PUF conference: Seeing Disciplines, Their Histories, and Our Futures Through The Caribbean.Follow our live tweets of the event — @EcdaNULab #PUF2013.
Please look forward to our writeup of the event on our News page.
ECDA's Benjamin J. Doyle will present at Digital Humanities roundtable at MLA 2014
Benjamin J. Doyle and his colleagues will present their collaborative building of Alex Gil's "Around DH in 80 Days" on January 11, 2014 at the MLA conference in Chicago.Recently Added Items
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Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam
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Sibell's Narrative (recording by Marcia Burrows Coveutra)
A voice recorded reading of Sibell's narrative by Marcia Burrows Coveutra
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Carte Des Isles Antilles ou du Vent, Avec La Partie Orientale Des Isles Sous Les Vent : par M. Bonne, Ingenieur-Hydrograph e de la Marine. (on upper margin) Liv. XI. XII. XIII. et IVX. : No. 36. (and) 37. (to accompany) Histoire Philosophique et Politique Des Establissements et Du Commerce Des Europeens Dans Les Deux Indes.
