IRIS Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences

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

Poster for a lecture co-sponsored by African American Literary Studies, the IRIS Center, and the Black Lit Network Dr. Howard Rambsy "The Literary Navigator: Curation and Discovery on the Black Literature Network" Wednesday, October 29, 11:00 AM Redmond Center classroom, Lovejoy Library 2nd floor

This Wednesday! @hrambsy.bsky.social will share his work on the Black Lit Network, a #DigitalHumanities project that brings scholarship on African American literary studies to public audiences and provides innovative discovery tools that link people to books based on their interests.

We’ll happily take donations from non-SIUE folks too, and although I can’t promise a university pennant, I do have some snazzy stickers I’d be happy to mail!

2025-2026 SIUE Faculty/Staff Campaign - SIUE Connect

Find more info on how to donate (and receive a bonus university pennant!) at the Cougars Give Back campaign page.
connect.siue.edu/g/faculty-st...

IRIS (fund 4332) fosters collaborations among students, faculty, and community members that use digital tools to explore the intersections of technology and culture. Donations support tech upgrades, equipment for check-out, and student workers and GAs who support the Center’s teaching and research.

CODES (fund 4251) provides students the opportunity to work in small research teams with a faculty member and a community org to consider how the world's vital issues impact communities near SIUE. Donations fund student research supplies, graduation stoles, student mentors, internships, and more.

A banner for an SIUE Foundation campaign targeting faculty and staff with the slogan “It’s a Cougar Thing, We Give Back”

📣Calling all SIUE faculty and staff📣

Join the SIUE Faculty and Staff Fundraising Campaign and make a direct impact on the programs and projects that inspire you most. If that inspiration includes digital humanities, experiential learning, and community-engaged pedagogy, keep reading!

A student looks toward the camera smiling, wearing leather and metal armor on his arm and hand. Behind him, the screen displays two manuscripts with references to 14th century Genoese coyracies (or cuirasses).

What’s medieval armor doing in a #DigitalHumanities class? Opening up questions about the role of surrogate sources! We often talk about the affordances of digital surrogates: gains like access and linked data, as well as limits like the inability to convey material, multisensory knowledge.

How book recommendations at a barbershop led to an online network to find Black literature : St. Louis on the Air Inspired by barbershop chats and a brotherly contest over hip-hop facts, the Black Lit Network is a digital resource designed to make African American literature more widely accessible. Southern Illin...

Take a listen to @hrambsy.bsky.social’s interview about the Black Lit Network on @stlpublicradio.bsky.social! From the barbershop to the classroom, it’s a project deeply rooted in a genuinely public humanities. When you’re done, visit www.blacklitnetwork.org and try it out! #DigitalHumanities

Check out these ideas for critical approaches to AI in humanities classrooms! #DigitalHumanities

A screenshot from an email. It reads: "Hey Meg, This is ready for you to break:"

Just a day in the life of a digital humanities center
#DigitalHumanities #DHBreaks

A flyer for an IRIS donation drive. Text: THANKS, IT HAS POCKETS IRIS CENTER DONATION DRIVE: ADD POCKETS TO YOUR REGALIA Learn to DIY Inseam Pockets IRIS Center (Peck 2226) August 11, 1:30-3:00 Get Pockets Added for You Drop off: IRIS, Aug 6-12 Pickup: IRIS, Aug 13-15 SUGGESTED DONATION: $25 SIGN UP AT HTTPS:/ /IRIS.SIUE.EDU/POCKETS

You know what regalia needs? Pockets. IRIS can help, and in return, you can help IRIS!

Learn to add them yourself or have us do it for you for a suggested donation of $25.

Sign up at iris.siue.edu/pockets. Space is limited!

#DHMakes

SIUE Awarded $1.6M Grant from Mellon Foundation to Support Public Knowledge Digital Project on African American Literary Studies, Jointly Headed by SIUE’s Dr. Howard Rambsy

Congratulations to @hrambsy.bsky.social and his collaborators on the award of a new grant to support the Black Lit Network! The Black Lit Network uses data viz and digital storytelling to provide new entry points into the study of African American literature. bit.ly/bln-mellon #DigitalHumanities