The Symposium – May 14 & 15, 2026
Location: Bates College, Lewiston, ME
The programs in Africana and Digital and Computational Studies at Bates College are proud to announce a symposium honoring the relationships between Black studies, the data-driven technological world, and our joint search for justice. We invite you to join us in an intellectual exploration of data, activism, community-partnership, knowledge production, artificial intelligence, research, and storytelling.
Why this symposium? We come together in solidarity – solidarity in opposition to the hegemonies that seek to singularly wield the power of data and solidarity in the joy of our resistance. We are living in a critical moment in which objectivity and neutrality of data have been deployed to suppress histories, presents, and futures that matter to so many different cultures on the planet. We believe in the right to create knowledges. We demand the right to be heard. We boldly celebrate our cultural, intellectual, and creative communities. We challenge our intellectual endeavors to have real impact.
The symposium is named AfroAlgorhythms to call attention to Afrodiasporic scientific knowledge. This requires a decentering of the West as the only source of knowledge. We celebrate 9th-century Uzbek-Iranian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, from whom the algorithm takes its name, who introduced the Hindu-Arabic numeral system to Europeans, still unaware of the concept of zero (from the Arabic word ṣifr (صفر), meaning empty).
Featured Speakers
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, PhD: Professor Emerita of African-American Studies and Sociology, Colby College
Kenton Rambsy, PhD: Associate Professor of African American Literature, Howard University
Talk Title: “Mapping Black Literature: Data, Storytelling, and the Black Lit Network”
Talk Description:
This talk introduces the Black Lit Network, a collaborative digital humanities initiative that brings together scholars, technologists, and students to build datasets, visualizations, and digital resources focused on Black writers and Black artistic culture. As a co PI on the project, Dr. Kenton Rambsy discusses how the network uses the concept of literary data work to curate and analyze large collections of texts in order to reveal patterns in Black literature that are difficult to identify through traditional approaches alone.
The presentation focuses especially on ongoing efforts to assemble datasets from hundreds of short stories by Black writers. By organizing information about characters, dialogue, and geographic settings, these projects demonstrate how structured literary data can illuminate recurring narrative patterns across generations of Black fiction while also creating new opportunities for visualization, interpretation, and public engagement with Black literary history.
Black Lit Network: https://blacklitnetwork.isg.siue.edu/
Africana
Digital and Computational Studies
Schedule
Thursday, May 14
5:30 – 6:00 Check-in
6:00 – 8:00 Dinner in honor of the late Professor Sue E. Houchins
Speaker: Dr. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Professor Emerita, Colby College
Friday, May 15
8:00 – 8:30 Check-in and Networking
8:30 – 9:00 Welcome
9:00 – 10:00 Opening Plenary
10:00 – 10:30 Networking break
10:30 – 11:50 Contributed talks
12:00 – 1:00 Buffet Lunch
1:00 – 2:15 Panel
2:15 – 2:40 Networking break
2:40 – 4:00 Contributed talks
4:30 – 5:30 Poster session
6:00 – 8:00 Dinner/Keynote/Closing