About
Claudia Berger is the inaugural Virtual Artist-in-Residence 2025-2025, crafting a scholarly data quilt project, “Footpath for the People?”, with an accompanying annotation zine and public event.
Berger describes their planned project: “This quilt will explore the Appalachian Trail and who this “public” resource was actually designed for. It will look at the history of the trail and through-hikers like Emma Gatewood, who popularized the trail, as well as how it was created and how it is used today. In particular the project will explore how the trail intersects with histories of race, gender, and Indigenous rights of both the trail as a whole and in the specific states is passes through. The quilt will be paired with a zine that will connect viewers to more information and resources about the trail.”
To read about related past work, please see Berger’s and collaborator Gabriella Evergreen’s recent data embodiment project “Pockets of Information”.
Claudia Berger is the Digital Humanities Librarian at Sarah Lawrence College and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute’s School of Information. Their research centers on digital environmental humanities and how we can use digital methods to tell stories about the environment, as well as data physicalization.