Link to digital archive: https://coloredconventions.org/

The Colored Convention Project (CCP) is an online archive that highlights early black mobilization and organizing, in particular the understudied aspect of the 19th-century reform movement that is black conventions. These were meetings held by African-American men and women between the 1830s and 1890s in the United States and Canada to discuss their civil rights. The online project was founded by a graduate class at the University of Delaware and is supported by grants from National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation. Its digital archive houses a collection of the minutes, letters, transcripts, proceedings and newspaper articles of the conventions. The website offers a usable interface and full access to primary sources. It is very easy to navigate the site as it is structured into five major parts that feature information about the people behind the project, a general information about the history of the conventions, a digital records site, digital exhibits of scholarship research that use these records, teaching materials for educators, and an overview of the project’s news. 

The massive digital collection of the project can be found on the Digital Records site. Its start page provides historical information about the conventions, with links to other digital editions and resources, enriching research possibilities. The user can either explore the project’s huge database by searching the conventions by year, or by looking through the national as well as state conventions. It is possible to either browse the records or conduct a specific search through an advanced search option. In the browse option, the site is interposing informational text with images of the related documents, resembling a map of the files, which makes it very easy to navigate through, and is inviting users who have no prior knowledge of the history and want to learn about it to ‘take a look’ through the collection. The latter provides users with specific research needs and projects with a great number of search options. The database is fully searchable through all its digital documents. For example, users can search for persons, buildings, etc. When a convention is selected, the user is redirected to a new page that presents the record and all the information about the event. All documents are provided in high-resolution in a document viewer as well as being offered as a PDF-download. They have not been edited, and in a lot of cases are provided with a transcribed section on the site. Researchers have added metadata, as for example the creator, publisher, date, source, type of the convention, the region etc. In addition, they provided a hyperlink of the specific collection the document belongs to. The project’s endeavor of digitizing the collection and making it accessible to the public while preserving its original intent exemplifies the process of remediation. 

One major interdisciplinary accomplishment of the project is its digital and interactive exhibits section. These exhibits of scholarly research are created by professors and their undergraduate or graduate students, using primary documents of the CCP’s collection to draw attention to a specific aspect of the Colored Convention movement. For instance, the graduate student Samantha de Vera built one exhibit to highlight Black women’s contributions to these conventions, which was made possible through the CCP’s effort of digitizing and transcribing not only the minutes that explicitly mention the male delegates, but newspaper articles, proceedings and other materials that document the conventions. Here, the Colored Convention Project specifically aims to include researchers and students to become a part of the scholarly conversation and to produce narratives from its archival records that have been invisible in the academic and public discourse. In addition, these exhibits utilize several different forms of media to visualize and achieve a greater understanding of the provided information. 

In its teaching section, the project offers classroom teaching modules that include  research-based teaching materials, sample writing assignments, research guides and educational resources which were curated by CCP scholars and librarians. The site provides links to additional information on instructions as well as an online tutorial on how ro build a CCP exhibit from the research that was conducted in the classroom. Additionally, they have designed the Seeking Records Classroom Module that invites participating faculty and students to join the project in conducting archival research and locating historical documents that are related to the Colored Conventions. Here, the project’s purpose is to establish collaborations with teaching partners throughout the country.

On its website the CCP underlines its mission as a “scholarly and community research project dedicated to bringing the seven decades-long history of nineteenth century Black organizing to digital life.” Not only is the archive intended to provide information about the movement that remained invisible in popular history that highlights black agency and black leadership, it also creates a dialogue between the past and present of black organizational activism. Many of the issues that are of topics in the primary sources speak to ongoing issues like state violence and police brutality that current movements such as Black Lives Matter are focused upon. Thus, the site very capably puts the project in the context of the sociopolitical discourse of today. Aiming to bring interdisciplinary scholars, students, teachers, researchers and the public together, the Colored Convention Project presents a valuable and creative research platform. 

As described in Abbott & Williams, an editor needs to decide whether he or she makes use of documentary (noncritical) editing or critical editing. With documentary editing, the editor can present a text through a diplomatic reprint, which preserves only the text such as the wording, punctuation, spelling, etc. but also may present notes. If the editor chooses to produce documentary editions, he or she can present the text in facsimile, which maintains the physical detail of the document, or use genetic or synoptic transcription, which refer to editions that offer numerous documentary texts of a work. Additional formats of documentary editions are literal transcription on facing pages, transcription of various states in parallel columns, and presenting various formats of documentary editions electronically in databases and digital archives. Critical editing in contrast gives the editor the choice to incorporate other readings from documentary texts or editorial emendations. In addition, an editor has to determine the authorial intention of a reading and whether or not the author’s intentions might have changed over time, so that editors may have to reconstruct multiple texts. Critical editors can construct a text based on the intentions of more than the author (copyeditors, proofreaders, etc.), and have to decide to what extent their concept of authorship can be broaden, taking into consideration the nonauthorial. 

Increasingly using electronic editing is shaping future knowledge in a field in that it will open up processes of editing to more groups of people. With more digital editions and projects in scholarly publishing, collaborative processes will allow classrooms to participate in the edition process, and enables sharing their knowledge. In one of my American studies classes last semester, we annotated a digital edition of The Negro and the Nation on the Manifold platform. By bringing our voices into the text, we were able to create a community dialogue and bring interdisciplinary perspectives into the field of American studies.

In the thesis “From Mass Incarceration to Mass Education: Fostering Collaborations Between State Prisons and State Universities” the author backs up her text analysis with data from different surveys as well as academic sources, helping her to provide a well-researched overview of the history of carceral education, and to shed light on institutional and systemic racism in schools and the criminal justice system. By providing data on economic and workforce needs, the author outlines the benefits of correctional education, which are reduced rates of recidivism and successful employment post-release. The main argument of the thesis is that public universities such as CUNY and SUNY have a responsibility to provide education for incarcerated people, thus helping to dismantle structural racism in general.

Throughout the paper, the author uses charts that reflect numbers in funding resources and give an overview of the correctional systems that offer credential degrees. Since she makes use of many numbers in the text, I thought she applied these tables well to support the most important aspects of her argument. However, I thought she could have used diagrams and graphic representations to highlight these numbers more effectively. In the final chapter, the thesis introduces a model for a NY-statewide program of partnerships between state prisons and public as well as state universities that provide fully developed college degree programs in every state prison, which is crucial to her argument. Using a Google map that shows the locations of state prisons and CUNY/SUNY campuses, the author emphasizes and visualizes the geographical feasibility of these partnerships, which supports her model. Finally, for the program model, she makes use of a graphic representation of the main components that underline the needed collaboration of the state prison and the state’s public university systems as well as emphasize the valuable outcomes for incarcerated people and the system overall. By combining text with images and icons, the figure gives a simple and easy to understand overview of how this program would and should work, and effectively visualizes her whole argument. Thus, I think the format of this thesis makes its content very accessible to the audiences it serves.

Reading the excerpt from Track Changes about how the composition process changed from using a typewriter to using a word processor, and how computers changed literary writing in particular, I thought it was interesting that most of the authors cited by Kirschbaum emphasized that these new technologies were not only tremendously time-saving but were also considered “an extension of the mind”. Reflecting on how technologies of writing impact my composition process, I realize how natural as well as beneficial all aspects of digital writing are for me. A foundational part of my composition process is writing down and shifting my thoughts around. The ability to change the structure of my text and highlight certain parts that need revision or additional content helps me to move forward with my thinking process as well as to construct an argument. Also, I have never given much thought to it before but being able to see the virtual page of my document makes it easier to organize my writing. In the final stage of my composition process I often share my work with friends for additional revision. With writing platforms such as Google Docs (which I have been favoring since the beginning of my graduate program and wished I could have used already in my undergraduate years) I can instantly share my research papers, and they can comment on my work and give me immediate feedback. This collaborative process is an important aspect of how I develop my writing. Moreover, as an international student, writing technology tools such as grammar- and spell-checking help my writing process to be more efficient, reducing the amount of time I have to spend reviewing my language. Although it would help me to become more proficient in English to write out the words instead of having them immediately replaced by the program’s editing function, I find it to be a more effective way of writing.

What particularly struck me in the readings and the documentary were the discussions of how the printing press is considered to be an agent of change. Following Gutenberg’s invention, the creation and dispersion of the printing press led to the beginning of mass communication and changed the structure of society. The mass production of books led to a democratization of knowledge, and the flood of printed materials established an ever expanding reading public as well as changed the way that people read. In the current digital age, this democratization has expanded exponentially. As a reader, I often find the sheer amount of available content overwhelming. This mass quantity has an effect on how closely we read texts. I personally tend to skim many texts because I feel pressured to read as much as possible. When looking for material on any particular subject, it can make it difficult to determine where to focus your search. Too much choice can be paralyzing. 

Another aspect discussed in the texts and which I have not given much thought to was the author’s role in the process of publishing. As mentioned by Abbott & Williams, in both the handpress as well as machine-press period textual variations were common and in many cases out of the authors’ control. New technologies offer authors control over the way their work is produced, how it appears and who sees it. For example, a freelance journalist could submit an article to a newspaper, have it rejected, and then choose to publish it in a blog, as a twitter post or through other forms of social media. Additionally, these various formats shape the way we find and consume texts. That same article might find audiences in these alternative formats which might not have read it in the original source in which the author intended it to be published.