Schedule Mockup

This study will present the ideation of the ongoing project “Herbal Marginalia Diaspora” to archive and honor a Boston-based community garden. The garden is a local and diasporic place where plants are grown and spread from other climates and cultures worldwide. The project explores the role of digital humanities and mapping to sustain kinships among humans - plants - languages – and other places in the garden. It addresses anxieties of climatic extremes and the dislocation of communities forming diasporas. The project uses the model of a herbal as a facilitator. It is structured as a digital and physical herbal that brings together 3d scans of growing vegetables, as well as documentation of food recipes and medicinal remedies. The data is collected from the garden through interviews and research. The presentation will screen a short film and the outcomes of stage one. It will discuss the roles of digital humanities and mapping cosmopolitan ethics, inclusion, and care as a form of environmental justice.

Gökçen Erkılıç is a trans-disciplinary artist, researcher, and educator with a background in architecture. Her practice uses mapping and critical cartography as a base to explore a range of disciplines, from urban geography to art -technology studies and digital humanities. She is currently teaching at Northeastern University College of Art Media and Design in Art+Design. gokcenerkilic.com/

“The Battle of the Bogside in Three Parts: A Spatial Analysis of the Start of the Troubles” is an online learning tool centered around the 1969 clash between Derry, Northern Ireland residents and law enforcement. The project addresses a high school audience and encourages students to consider the relationship between space, identity, and power during times of state-sanctioned violence. Through a combination of maps, media, and storytelling depicting the event, users can explore the spatial dimensions of power and control.

The project is structured around three maps, all of which were created using Google MyMaps, a free and widely used mapping resource. The first, ‘Before the Battle,’ provides students with the context in which the Battle of the Bogside took place. It allows users to explore gerrymandering, major sites of unrest, and the beginnings of Derry’s civil rights movement. The second map, ‘Battle of the Bogside,’ displays locations of major clashes between the Bogside residents, Loyalists, and law enforcement over the course of the two days. This map introduces students to the concept of the inversion of space with law enforcement’s invasion of the homes of the residents. The third and final map, ‘After the Battle,’ allows students to explore the makeshift barricades (and other forms of boundary/border creation) that the Bogside residents used to create ‘Free Derry’ - a self-governed zone. This section encourages students to consider the anti-colonial characteristics of the reclamation of public space by marginalized citizens.

The website also includes a number of contextual resources (‘Significant Dates,’ ‘Significant People and Groups,’ and ‘Documents’) that provide background information for users. By including these resources, the website functions as a database of information for students to access to supplement their knowledge on the historical context of the Battle of the Bogside. In this way, the resources function as a more dynamic form of a textbook. The website also includes a number of learning materials for students and teachers to use. These function as an educational guide through the material. The first is a series of discussion questions that encourage students to consider the broader implications of the narrative and spatial information they encounter. The second is a primary source analysis exercise that asks students to annotate the Campaign for Social Justice in Northern Ireland’s The Plain Truth pamphlet. This exercise is designed to demonstrate the significance of primary source analysis in understanding historical phenomena. The third is a mapping project that asks students to create a Google MyMaps of an area that is significant to their community/identity. This project asks students to use the skills they’ve learned through their exploration of the website to analyze the interactions between space, power, and identity in their own lives.