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Transmedia Historical and Architectural Reconstructions: Forensic Traces of Apartheid-Era Human Rights Violations in Soweto

Time: Nov. 5, 2019, 5:15 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.

Location: Slocum Auditorium

Sponsored in part by the CNY Humanities Corridor

Sponsored by the CNY Humanities Corridor

Angel David Nieves (San Diego State Unversity)

Over the past two decades, scholars and community leaders have experimented with the use of new digital technologies to tell the complex histories of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Technologies now at our disposal allow us to layer victim testimony using online platforms and multiple tools for mapping, text mining, and 3D visualizations. Architectural reconstructions of sites where apartheid-era crimes occurred can now be used to document more complex histories of the liberation movement. As a field, digital humanities (DH) can also help analyze new forms of documentation so as to reconstruct and recover an alternative historical narrative in the face of conventional wisdom or officializing histories for the foreign tourist market. Nieves' lecture looks at the ways scholars and community leaders in South Africa have used new digital technologies to tell the complex histories of the anti-apartheid movement.

This event is organized by the HS3 “Urban Humanities” working group of the CNY Humanities Corridor, from an award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Lawrence Chua, Architecture