I am not sure that these particular projects had the explicit intent to expound ‘class, gender, race’, at least not seen through a blustery politics-in-the-wild lens. But still, apart from their significant scholarly contributions, they do put to rest the accusation that computing in the humanities is at odds with those scholars who can only engage with these subjects through the singular authority of the academic monologue (and thus claim to have a monopoly over the interpretation of ”class, gender, race”)
1) Old Bailey Online 1674-1913. ”The largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.”
2) The Book of King (Firdausis Shahnama), ”Completed in eastern Iran around A.D. 1010, is a work of mythology, history, literature and propaganda: a living epic poem that pervades and expresses many aspects of Persian culture. Thousands of manuscript copies of the text, the earliest dating from 1217, exist in libraries worldwide. Hundreds of these are illustrated with miniature paintings, some among the most magnificent masterpieces of Persian art.”
3) Women’s Writers Project. “The Brown University Women Writers Project is a long-term research and publication project focusing on early women’s writing in English. We have been working since 1988 on building an electronic collection of rare and less familiar texts and researching the complex issues involved in representing early printed texts in digital form.”
4) PARADISEC, ”The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures, offers a facility for digital conservation and access to endangered materials worldwide.”
5) Founders and Survives ”Is a partnership between historians, genealogists, demographers and population health researchers. It seeks to record and study the founding population of 73,000 men, women, and children transported to Tasmania. Many survived their convict experience and went on to help build a new society.”
6) Profile of a Doomed Elite: “The Structure of English Landed Society in 1066 (in progress)Â “Profile of a Doomed Elite uses innovative methods for interpreting the Domesday Book to survey the whole of English landed society on the eve of the Norman Conquest in 1066, identifying landowners at all levels of society from the king and earls down to the parish gentry and even some prosperous peasants”.
7) European Holocaust Research Infrastructure “The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) project aims to create a sustainable world-class Holocaust Research Infrastructure of European dimensions that will bring together virtual resources from dispersed archives. EHRI is a 7 m EU-funded project to provide open access to Holocaust material such as documents, objects, photos, film and art. It involves 20 partner organisations in 13 countries, making it the most important European research project about the Holocaust to date.”
8) Digital Harlem, Everyday Life, 1915-1930.”The Digital Harlem website presents information, drawn from legal records, newspapers and other archival and published sources, about everyday life in New York City’s Harlem neighbourhood in the years 1915-1930.”
9) Collected Biographies of Women, ”Rediscover thousands of women of all kinds and eras. Retrieve books rich in varied names, portraits, and stories, from the famous to the obscure.”
10) The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre, ”The New Zealand Electronic Text Collection, comprises significant New Zealand and Pacific Island texts and materials held by the Victoria University of Wellington Library. NZETC texts can be downloaded in four different formats. Epub, PDF, TEI-XML and DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) audiobooks”
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