1. MIGRATION, MOBILITY, & SUSTAINABILITY:
Good morning,
We’re two of the project co-directors for: Migration, Mobility, and Sustainability: Caribbean Studies Digital Humanities Institute.
I’m Laurie Taylor, Chair of the Digital Partnerships and Strategies Department at UF and Digital Scholarship Director for the Digital Library of the Caribbean, or dLOC.
I’m Hélène Huet, European Studies Librarian and member of the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate Board at UF, and co-Chair of the Florida DH Consortium.
Our photo here is of two of our collaborators and institute faculty, Dr. Mirerza Gonzalez and Dr. Nadjah Rios, from the University of Puerto Rico, sitting at the eastern-most point of the US.
MIGRATION, MOBILITY, & SUSTAINABILITY:
CARIBBEAN STUDIES DIGITAL HUMANITIES INSTITUTE
Laurie Taylor
Hélène Huet

2. Our project is based at UF in partnership with the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC),
For this project we are:
hosting a week-long, in-person workshop and five additional monthly virtual workshops on collaborative DH and Caribbean Studies. Participants will gain DH teaching experience and in-depth knowledge of how to utilize digital collections in teaching. The Institute will provide training in tools, processes, and resources for developing lessons, modules, and courses. Twenty-six participants will achieve: 1) acquisition of concrete digital skills and DH approaches for teaching and research utilizing Open Access digital collections; 2) participation in an enhanced community of practice for DH; and, 3) creation of Open Access course and teaching materials that blend DH and Caribbean Studies.
This institute gives us the needed space to get to know one another, learn how to work together.

3. “Advocating the mere tolerance of difference […] is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.”
Many people from the generous and generative fields connected with Caribbean Studies were the impetus for this project. In fact, this project grew out of our shared work in developing digital libraries and courses together. All of this was done within the spirit of mutual aid which is defined by:
voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. Mutual aid, as opposed to charity, does not connote moral superiority of the giver over the receiver.
Or, shine theory: if you don’t shine, I can’t shine and we can’t shine.
We know that this institute will be the first of many. For our 26 spaces, we had 93 fantastic applications. We could not choose wrong with so many great people applying.
We look forward to the transformative work during, from, and following the institute.
Cite:
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” pages
Quote from page 111. Also, see Poetry is Not a Luxury on quality of light.