IRIS’s welcome wall, featuring a quilted rainbow banner, a quilted public library sign, an appliqur namer that reads i-r-i-s, and two letterpress prints. One print reads “HTML is the letterpress of the digital world,” and the other features an image of a Luddite throwing something (presumably a clog), with the text “Maybe it’s just vaporware. luddites pointing out the (tech) emperor has no clothes since (well before) 1811. Luddites didn’t “fear technology.” They broke the machines that allowed the rich to enshittify livelihoods. Who’s your tech for? No tech’s adoption is inevitable (lol blockchain). Glitch their cistems.”

An image of a letterpress print titled “This is a printing office.” Text: THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE Like all technology: human choice, if evil or good This place is not a place of honor but it could be a place of hope Refuge of arts, craft, community, learning, a megaphone for justice, fearless truth slipping bit rot & digital censorship; or playing at a whitewashed past; to pretend away present fascism The center of danger is here; the center of hope is here The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours (the possibility, too From this place you may send words of justice, liberation, reparation, collective care; or serving capital, stoking hate A press is but its printers Friend vou stand on ground Myou make sacred-or not THIS is a PRINTING-OFFICE Remixed text (in italics) from Beatrice Warde & Sandia National Laks; & new text by Amanda Wyatt Visconti, VA Ctr for the Book FINFUSE

More art for IRIS, courtesy of @literaturegeek.bsky.social’s @wolfproofpress.com! Critical tech, care ethics, and creative scholarship are all essential to IRIS’s ethos, and it’s so cool to see that inscribed on the space like this. #DigitalHumanities

English chair publishes book on endangered language, earns distinguished research professor recognition Kristine Hildebrandt, chair of the Department of English, published a book detailing an endangered language in September and was awarded status as a distinguished research professor in December.

Look who's gracing the pages of the Alestle this week - our very own Dr. Kristine Hildebrandt! Featuring a nice shoutout to IRIS and the need for #DigitalHumanities infrastructure

www.alestlelive.com/news/article...

A group of seven people stand outside in front of a garden. From left to right: Dr. Jacquie Shea, Colin Strasser, Mauri Johnson, Rayna Sims, Dr. Meg Smith, Kezia Miller, and Dan Schreiber

Kezia Miller gestures at a slide while presenting her digital edition. The edition shows her markup schema, an example of marks up text, and two images of handwritten text demonstrating an emendation and a misspelling

Rayna Sims presents her digital timeline of the ecology of St. Stanislaus Conservation Area

Mauro Johnson looks up at a slide while presenting his video essay on Saint Stanislaus Conservation Area. The slide offers a few images of the park and connects them to broader issues of historical interpretation

Congrats to our SIUE presenters at the STL #DigitalHumanities Showcase!
💿 Kezia Miller, “Beautiful Dreams of the Past: Preserving Family Histories through Textual Recovery”
💿 Mauri Johnson, Rayna Sims, & Colin Strasser, “Digital Storytelling on the Hiking Trail at Saint Stanislaus Conservation Area”

Hey library folks! Southern Illinois University Edwardsville's Lovejoy Library is hiring a tenure track digital archivist. I'm on the search committee and happy to answer questions or direct them to the search chair! Apply at apply.interfolio.com/184021.

#DigitalHumanities #LibraryJobs #ArchiveJobs

Kristine Hildebrandt poses wearing a VERY large medal awarded for her Distinguished Research Professor rank. She is smiling in front of a lovely background of green trees.

Another big congratulations to Dr. Kristine Hildebrandt! Yesterday, she received her Distinguished Research Professor award and was recognized for her tremendous accomplishments in endangered language documentation, digital and public humanities, and innovative pedagogy. We are lucky to have her!

Quilt art on a wall: a rainbow banner made of log cabin blocks, some bunting that reads “iris” on it, and a public library symbol (a person reading a book)

Quilt art on a wall: a steaming mug of tea on top of a stack of books. On the desk in front of the wall is a tea kettle and some tea bags

The @siueiris.bsky.social glowup continues! New additions include the public library symbol for our welcome wall and some cozy tea and books for our tea corner. #DHMakes

IRIS Center Morning Bytes Introducing Manifold Manifold is a web platform for publishing rich, interactive texts, ideal for OERs, open access research, and student projects. It facilitates engaged reading through social annotation and reading communities. Come learn about this new IRIS-supported resource! Friday, March 20, 10:00 AM CFDI (Lovejoy, 2nd floor)

IRIS now supports Manifold! Create of rich, interactive texts and facilitate reader engagement through social annotation and reading communities. It’s a great choice for OER, student projects, and public scholarship. Learn more Friday at our March Morning Bytes!

Some very cool conversations unfolded across these pieces. They are all well worth the read! #DigitalHumanities

Another contribution to @siueiris.bsky.social’s crafty makeover, courtesy of my mom! #DHMakes

Spoiler: I think the answer is yes!

#MedievalSky #skystorians #IrishHistory #DigitalHumanities

A strip of homemade fabric bunting in greens and blues with the letters i-r-i-s appliquéd on the flags

Step 1 of @siueiris.bsky.social’s glow-up! More #DHMakes to come, including data quilts, literary craft, subversive cross stitch, and whatever else strikes our collective fancies.

Have you checked out the @blacklitnetwork.bsky.social yet? It's got a wealth of creative tools for engaging with Black literature! Head over and check out the Literary Navigator Device to find your next read. (Give them a follow on your social media platforms while you're at it!) #DigitalHumanities

Since I made this for freshmen, it’s light on early modern content. But here’s my guide to finding usable media for our digital humanities students. (Copied from a Wordpress site, so excuse any formatting weirdness.)

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

An appliqué block featuring two trains crossing the Eads Bridge in opposite directions. The Arch is visible out to the left side. Flowers grow along the tracks, including one clover and one bee - a reference to Emily Dickinson’s poem “To make a prairie.”

Emily Dickinson 1830 - 1886 To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee. And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Another Dickinson-inspired appliqué! This one’s from her poem “To make a prairie” about intentional placemaking. It evokes ecological care, but I wanted something that blends that with human infrastructures that also manifest care. So here’s an ode to public transit! #DHMakes #PublicTransit

A flyer for a workshop series in the IRIS Center at SIUE: Interactive Storytelling with the Scrolly Story Generator Meg Smith and Dan Schreiber (IRIS Center) Jan. 23, 10:00-11:00, Center for Faculty Development and Innovation (Lovejoy Library, 3rd floor) Teaching with Leaflet Storymaps Laura Fowler (History) Feb. 13, 10:00-11:00, Center for Faculty Development and Innovation Digital Publishing with Manifold Meg Smith and Dan Schreiber (IRIS Center) Mar. 20, 10:00-11:00, Center for Faculty Development and Innovation “Beautiful Dreams of the Past”: Building a Digital Edition Kezia Miller (English) Apr. 17, 10:00-11:00, Center for Faculty Development and Innovation

Join us for a series of workshops on teaching and researching with digital tools! The IRIS Center Morning Bytes series offers hands-on tutorials, activities and lesson plans, and spotlights on ongoing digital humanities projects. #DigitalHumanities

A framed print that reads “Infrastructure is something we owe to one another. - Meg Smith” Made by Amanda Wyatt Visconti! It’s printed in a beautiful pink-blue gradient.

🤩 Thanks again to @literaturegeek.bsky.social for immortalizing this line from the NEH wake session at ACH. If I have a scholarly motto, this is it — infrastructure is mutual obligation and mutual benefit. #DigitalHumanities #DHMakes

Congratulations to Prof. Maurina Aranda on receiving the Paul Simon Outstanding Teacher-Scholar Award! Maurina is an integral member of the CODES team and developed the Community-Engaged Science course. We’re grateful for her creative pedagogy, wide knowledge, and thoughtful collaboration!

ICYMI: Check out this @jitp.bsky.social article for assignments and activities that use small data sets to engage students with critical data literacies and place-based research. These are quick bloom-and-fade activities that are easy to build into a syllabus! #DigitalHumanities

Already watched Knives Out and jonesing for more murder, hellfire and brimstone, and possible revenants? Well! 125 years ago today, William Le Queux published "The Mystery of Montmartre" in @stltoday.com. I threw together a little edition for the Christmas ghost story crowd.

#DigitalHumanities

Small Data for Maximal Effect: Integrating Digital Humanities, Digital Ethics, and Pedagogy across a College Curriculum | Small Data for Maximal Effect: Integrating Digital Humanities, Digital Ethics,... by Margaret K. Smith and Laura Milsk Fowler

It’s publication day! Check out this new piece from @megsmith.bsky.social and Laura Milsk Fowler on #DigitalHumanities pedagogy. Meg and Laura offer bite-sized but powerful classroom activities that teach humanistic approaches to data and build tech skills and confidence to tackle larger projects.

🎉🎉 Huge congrats to IRIS co-founder Dr. Kristine Hildebrandt on being named Distinguished Research Professor of English!

The award recognizes her significant achievements in the field of linguistics & her many contritions to research, mentorship, and DH infrastructure at SIUE and beyond.

What is #DigitalHumanities? A little bit of this, a little bit of that

IRIS web developer Dan Schreiber and CODES community coordinator Andrea Barajas prep plush guinea pigs as a graduation gift for our CODES seniors. Dan is combing the guinea pigs to refluff them from their vacuum-sealed packaging, and Andrea is gluing CODES ribbons around their necks like graduation stoles.

💫 Andrea Barajas
💫 Jessica DeSpain
💫 Kristine Hildebrandt
💫 Kezia Miller
💫 Dan Schreiber
💫 Jacqueline Shea
💫 Margaret Smith

Pictured: IRIS web developer Dan Schreiber and CODES community coordinator Andrea Barajas prep plush guinea pigs as a graduation gift for our CODES seniors

IRIS is a small team, and all these accomplishments are a testament to each team member's creativity, collaborative spirit, and willingness to pitch in wherever there's a need. So this is a big thank you to the whole IRIS extended family for taking "other duties as assigned" to a whole new level!

💻 We've developed new tools for digital storytelling, public digital humanities, and student work. (Watch this space in the coming months as we share those tools!)

📖 IRIS faculty have attended conferences, published articles, and created new DH research projects.

📈 And so much more!

🎉 With support from Mellon, we welcomed our first cohort of 100 CODE Scholars, quadrupling our impact on students and community partners alike.

🎓 Our oldest CODES cohort is flying the nest! One graduates early this weekend, and the others will walk the stage in the spring. We are so proud of them!

It has been an incredible whirlwind of a semester! Over the last four months:

✏️ We conducted over 50 class visits to teach digital humanities skills. (More than a whole course's worth of classroom time!)

📒 And oh yeah, we also ran a new course this semester on digital curation and storytelling!
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Call for Papers 13th Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies 8-10 June 2026 Saint Louis University Representing the Past: Material and Digital Surrogates in the Practice of History Organizers: Thomas Morin, Saint Louis University, and Margaret Smith, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Increasing reliance on surrogates has transformed historians' avenues for inquiry and methodologies for interpreting information. The creation of digital surrogates has increased access to historical materials, but also raises questions about representation, conservation, and democratization. Parallel to these developments, the production of physical replicas of historical objects has also expanded immensely in the last several decades, bringing with it new teaching tools and research aids. But the production of these material surrogates has also heightened the tensions between access and authenticity. These replicas, both in the physical and digital spheres, have opened new paths and discussions about how scholars engage with history both academically and pedagogically, and in public spaces.   These sessions invite papers that explore the creation, use, and interpretation of surrogates in historical practice. How do digital and material surrogates mediate the relationship between researchers, objects, and audiences? How do they complement or challenge one another as forms of preservation and interpretation? We welcome contributions that address the processes of surrogate creation, the theoretical and ethical dimensions of representation, and the role of surrogates in pedagogy, public history, and digital humanities.   By bringing together scholars working across media, these panels seek to create dialogue on how historical knowledge is shaped through acts of reproduction, translation, and substitution. Prospective presenters should email their 100-200 word proposals to either thomas.morin@slu.edu or margars@siue.edu by 15 December 2025.

CFP alert! If you're working on digitization, replicas and reproductions, living history practices, or other forms of surrogate sources, we'd love to see a proposal for organized sessions at the 2026 Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies. #DigitalHumanities #LivingHistory #CFP #MedievalSky

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville - SIUE Connect

It's #GivingTuesday! Every dollar that comes into IRIS goes back out into community-engaged research, digital pedagogy, and #DigitalHumanities infrastructure. Throughout the day, we'll share some of the ways that your giving helps us support our communities. You can give to IRIS through fund 4332.

IRIS Center Morning Bytes Jill Anderson, Ph.D. Department of English Friday, Nov. 14 10:00-11:00 AM IRIS Center (Peck 2226) Grappling with Contexts for an Archive of 19th-Century Letters In this Morning Bytes, Dr. Jill Anderson (English) will present her Spring 2025 sabbatical project, a series of contributions to the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Online Letters project contained within the Primary Source Cooperative at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The presentation will include a brief introduction to this influential early American writer and a discussion of Anderson's process in producing a biographical chronology connecting Sedgwick's early letters with 19th-century historical and personal contexts.

This Friday! Join us for our next Morning Bytes, where Dr. Jill Anderson (English) will present on her work producing a biographical chronology for the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Online Letters project.

#DigitalHumanities @mhs1791.bsky.social