Amanda

What are your personal aspirations?

making more zines, learning more letterpress and other making skills, getting past the beginning of my trans text analysis project, spending more time with colleagues and friends, turning some of my blogging into a (book?).

What aspirations do you have for working with us?

Learning from yall! From your existing expertise you’re bringing here, and also learning alongside you. (Even things I already know well, I often get new thoughts out of—e.g. I think about my latest research project when listening to Ronda teach project management, and see ways to improve it.). I am pretty shy, but would enjoy chatting more with yall, so feel free to come up to me even if I look like I'm introverting. I'm also not at all shy/introverted in writing, so always happy to chat via Slack or on Bluesky at length!

What does collaboration mean to you?

The whole point of knowledge work, to me, is what people collectively know and what that lets them do; so it makes sense to me that learning+research are activities that mostly don’t take place in isolation, and are always improved by involving others. Collaboration is like brainstorming made easy—that thing where if you actually write down or speak your first few ideas, you get better ones is so much easier when doing it with smart and kind folks who will help you throw the ball of an idea back and forth, instead of needing to juggle it all yourself.

What do you spend time on?

at work: directing (leading, suggesting, making sure good things happen, planning and facilitating conversations and meetings, long-term planning, codesigning spaces/events/programs, documentation, representing the lab…). Research areas include: zine collecting, research, preservation, amplification; digital editions; textual scholarship; queer, trans, feminist, intersectional book arts and book history; scholarly project web development and design; invited speaking, external advising; letterpress, book arts, printmaking; data physicalization; other making/crafting; (re)learning text analysis with a trans text project; helping run the international, U.S.-based DH scholarly org; running the international Digital Humanities Slack; SLab website and Bluesky social media point person (outreach about our work, projects) / …outside work/more generally: I love blogging and tweeting (Bluesky now, RIP Twitter) and have a great international community of folks I interact with that way, including the #DHmakes community. I spend time with my dog, scholars’ lab-hound mix Maple Mae; play D&D (Jeremy is a fantastic GM!), play Geoguessr (I call it Mapquest, though), read, weed and garden (a very recent development; though I hated it up until 2 months ago), do crafting/making things unrelated to work (e.g. resin casting). I’m interested in abolition (prison, police; transformational justice), unions and collective efforts like mutual aid. Baking breads. Lifting heavy weights! Yoga, jogging very very slowly. Cryptic crosswords.

If I were a song, I would be…

"Say Yes” by Elliott Smith

(also considered: Turn Down for What, Johnny B. Goode, Dogs Days Are Over). I identify as an (introvert) enthusiast!