Introducing the Lady’s Museum Project (LMP)

• We thank Canadian Society for Eighteenth Century Studies (CSECS) for awarding us the 2021-22 D.W. Smith Eighteenth-Century Research Fellowship which has allowed us to build the Lady’s Museum Project
• The fellowship funded 15 years for site domain and hosting fees, ensuring the longevity of the site for scholars, professors and non-specialists’ use
• The project is currently available in phase 1 of its development on Ladysmuseum.com

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“Project | Process | Product: Feminist Digital Subjectivity in a Shifting Scholarly Field

“Lou Burnard has observed that markup systems reflect the priorities and research agendas of their creators and users, and identifies one of the most critical functions of markup as its ability to map ‘a (human) interpretation of the text into a set of codes on which computer processing can be performed’”—Losh, chapter 22

Kelly Plante & Karenza Sutton-Bennett

https://kellyplante.wordpress.com/

https://inpursuitofacademia.wordpress.com/

Intersectional Theory

•  3 intersectional project types
• group-centered: increase representation of multiply marginalized persons
• process-centered: analyze behaviors of oppressive regimes
• system-centered: seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system, spotlight multiple complex and co-determining processes

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Care and Maintenance Over Innovation

• What we are NOT doing: participating in “Big Dick Data”:
• “big data projects that are characterized by masculinist, totalizing fantasies of world domination as enacted through data capture and analysis. Big Dick Data projects ignore context, fetishize size, and inflate their technical and scientific capabilities.”

Care and Maintenance Over Innovation

• “Data feminism begins by examining how power operates in the world today. This consists of asking who questions about data science: Who does the work (and who is pushed out)? Who benefits (and who is neglected or harmed)? Whose priorities get turned into products (and whose are overlooked)? These questions are relevant at the level of individuals and organizations, and are absolutely essential at the level of society. The current answer to most of these questions is “people from dominant groups,” which has resulted in a privilege hazard so acute that it explains the near-daily revelations about another sexist or racist data product or algorithm. The matrix of domination helps us to understand how the privilege hazard—the result of unequal distributions of power—plays out in different domains. Ultimately, the goal of examining power is not only to understand it, but also to be able to challenge and change it” (emphasis ours)

Choose Your Own Adventure

Relevant & Responsible DH Theory

“INTERSECTIONALITY IN TRANSNATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY RESEARCH” —SARAH ROBERT & MIN YU

• (1) the “group-centered” approach, or representation of multiply marginalized persons
• (2) “process-centered or capturing analytic interactions of oppressive regimes”
• (3) “system-centered or institutional complexity” (Robert & Yu 97)

“WWABD? INTERSECTIONAL FUTURES IN DIGITAL HISTORY” —TONYA HOWE

• (1) “theorizing the feminized labor of digital recovery, editing, and textual preparation,”
• (2) “offering thoughtful and feminist approaches to digital pedagogy that are specific to the work we do in the period,”
• (3) critically assessing the absences in existing digital projects.” 

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Lady’s Museum Project Intersectionality Theory

• (1) mindful of the feminized labor of digital recovery, use ethical means by which to represent multiply marginalized persons,
• (2) provide a tool to assist with digital pedagogy that captures the historical, oppressive structures in which these warrior women appeared from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries through today
• (3) through democratically decided, sortable categories and keywords, spotlight system-centered complexity as exhibited in these ballads. 

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Curriculum Spotlights Content with Focus on British Imperialism

Open-Access Digital Editions

• The Warrior Women Project: https://s.wayne.edu/warriorwomen/

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• Literature in Context: https://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/index.html

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• The Pulter Project: https://pulterproject.northwestern.edu/

Oxford University’s Text Creation Partnership (TCP) transposing of the periodical’s text from the Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO) editions

Site Functionality

• We have built the website to be user friendly, giving users several entry points into the periodical.
• From the homepage users can view the articles by either series or sections.
• Users can read the periodical in order of printing through the “Enter the Lady’s Museum” tab.
• The site has a “Teach with this Edition” that lays out curriculum options, course reader, and suggestive assignments and activities.
• https://ladysmuseum.com/

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Future Plans & Goals

• Add more pedagogical content
• Add critical introductions
• Create an audio version of the periodical through Librivox
• Leading a workshop in the theory of building a community-driven DH site at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (April 2022)
• Teaching the site and glossing articles in undergraduate classes
• Have the site peer-reviewed through ABO
• Have the site aggregated into Eighteenth-Connect.org by the end of 2022.

Teaching with this Edition

• We are currently looking for beta-testers who are interested teaching with LMP
• We can guest-lecture in your classroom
• Instructors can use the pre-set curriculums options or build their own
• Interactive assignments & activities for students
• Publication opportunities
• For more information please email: ladysmuseum@gmail.com

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Works Cited

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Burnard, Lou. “Project | Process | Product: Feminist Digital Subjectivity in a Shifting Scholarly Field,” in Bodies of Information, University of Minnesota Press, 2018. https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/projects/bodies-of-information 

Choo, Hae Yeon and Myra Marx Ferree. “Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions, and Institutions in the Study of Inequalities.” Sociological Theory, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 129-149. https://www.asanet.org/practicing-intersectionality-sociological-research-critical-analysis-inclusions-interactions-and  

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D’Ignazio, Catherine and Lauren Klein. “The Numbers Don’t Speak for Themselves. Principle #6 of Data Feminism is to Consider Context. Data feminism asserts that data are not neutral or objective. They are the products of unequal social relations, and this context is essential for conducting accurate, ethical analysis,” in Data Feminism, MIT Press, 16 March 2020. https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/czq9dfs5/release/1 

—--. “The Power Chapter. Principle #1 of Data Feminism is to Examine Power. Data feminism begins by analyzing how power operates in the world,” in Data Feminism, MIT Press, 16 March 2020. https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/vi8obxh7/release/4?readingCollection=0cd867ef 

Howe, Tonya. “WWABD? Intersectional Futures in Digital History.” ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830, vol. 7, no. 2, 2017, scholarcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol7/iss2/4. Accessed 10 September 2019. 

Losh, Elizabeth, and Jacqueline Wernimont, editors. Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities (Debates in the Digital Humanities). University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Kindle file. 

Robert, Sarah, and Min Yu. “Intersectionality in Transnational Education Policy Research.” Review of Research in Education, vol. 42, 2018, pp. 93-121. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0091732X18759305?journalCode=rrea

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Affiliated sites

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“The Mad Exploit She Had Undertaken”: A Digital Critical Edition of Eliza Haywood’s The Female Spectator, Book 14, Letter 1 – “The story of the so-called “Aliena” appearing in the third of Eliza Haywood’s four-volume The Female Spectator—largely considered the first periodical by a woman, for women— is the story of a woman who dresses in military garb to pass as a sailor to remain in close proximity to the lover who jilted her. In this letter to the editor complete with editorial commentary, Haywood blends narrative techniques of fiction with the seductive allure of the “true story” using the warrior woman trope. Printed as a four-volume set of (not articles but) “books,” The Female Spectator occupied a “higher” literary status than the cheaply printed broadside ballads in the long 18th century.

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“An Undisputed Right to this Offering”: A Digital Critical Edition of Eliza Haywood’s Dedicatory Epistle of The Female Spectator to Juliana Colyear, Duchess of Leeds – This free edition is part of Kelly’s project to make portions of–and eventually the whole of–Haywood’s historically, critically important and acclaimed periodical glossed and edited, and available to a wider audience that includes scholars, graduate and undergraduate students.

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The Warrior Women Project – “A collaboration between The English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA) and a team in the English Department at Wayne State University, the WWP is a collaborative experiment in creating a digital home for the 113 “Warrior Women” ballads originally catalogued by Professor Dianne Dugaw for the index of her 1982 dissertation, The Female Warrior Heroine in Anglo-American Balladry.“

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The Poetry of Gertrude More: Piety and Politics in a Benedictine Convent – “In 1623, a seventeen-year-old girl named Helen More set out from England to help found a Benedictine convent in France. Too high spirited for convent life, Dame Gertrude (as she became known) struggled to adapt until she encountered the mystic teachings of Augustine Baker. Yet More’s new found peace was not to last. As controversy swirled around Baker’s ideas and led to his expulsion from the convent, More wrote poems defending herself and him. This edition presents the first full-scale critical edition of More’s poetry, with versions aimed at scholarly and non-scholarly audiences. �