[hackerspaces] Applications open for HASTAC Scholars 2016-2018

[Kalle Westerling]

Hello Hackerspace:ers,

I hope the new academic year is off to a wonderful start!

As some of you may know, I am one of the two co-directors of HASTAC Scholars, together with Allison Guess. I have added our bios below for those of you who I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet.

With the new year under way, I wanted to let you know that we’d love for you to encourage students in your programs to apply for HASTAC Scholars. The application period is now open, and closes on October 15. Please share this link with your students: bit.ly/apply-to-hastac-scholars.

For those of you who don’t know about the Scholars program, it is a student-centered network of Ph.D. and Master’s students who are interested in engaging the intersections of technology and learning. HASTAC Scholars apply this interest in varied ways, both in-person and online: by writing about their own work—their research questions; by amplifying amazing things happening on their respective campuses and regions; and by helping to develop forums, hosting local events, and representing HASTAC at other events. Scholars organize Twitter chats and host webinars to share tools, expertise, and resources. Taken together, these activities provide opportunities not only to share knowledge with others, but also to learn from peers about various technologies and tools, all while gaining expertise in particular skill sets, such as in conducting interviews, writing reviews, and participating in other intellectual, artistic, or community-based conversations.

This year, we have extended the program to a new two-year structure so new prospective Scholars can apply now to be considered for a two-year term, from Fall 2016 to Spring 2018. We think that this extended timeline will go a long way toward building peer mentorship structures and keeping consistent activity and energy in the network year-round.

As this year's HASTAC Scholars co-directors, we're excited for all we have in store this year! Here are a few things we're working on:

  *   Continuation of the University Worth Fighting For series. On September 20, we will start with an event on Racism, Xenophobia, and Populism<http://bit.ly/2cqGU19> on September 20 with speakers Jessie Daniels, Mary Phillips, Linda Sarsour.
  *   Twitter chats to coincide with the University Worth Fighting For events. The first one will be on September 20, at 2pm EDT. More information to follow — see the link above!
  *   Interviews with past and present leaders and innovators in the HASTAC Network. We have a number of them online already<http://bit.ly/hastac-interviews>, and more are in the works, including an in-depth interview with founder Cathy Davidson.
  *   Local projects at Scholars’ institutions.
  *   Webinars, skillshares, and special projects according to Scholars' interests.

We are especially encouraging groups of students who are part of the same program to apply, as we find that this greatly increases the vitality of the network. Remember that HASTAC Scholars are required to have a mentor who also sponsors a $300 fellowship for them; thank you in advance for sharing your time and expertise with these students, and for helping find a way for them to receive monetary or in-kind support. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about how to make this work in your particular institutional context.

Finally, in case you haven't had a chance to meet us, here is a bit of information about the two of us. If you’re interested, let us know and we’ll make sure to be in touch with you from time to time with news and updates about HASTAC Scholars. And of course, please feel free to reach out to us with any questions. You might also take a moment to like our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/HASTACScholars.

Allison Guess is a PhD student in the program of Earth and Environmental Sciences (Geography), a Graduate Fellow at the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center at CUNY and Co-Director of HASTAC Scholars. Her research is a contextual historiography of deliberate Black land constructions, throughout what became the western hemisphere, and Black people's relationships in, and to, those places/lands. Allison is looking at how such Black Land relationships connect with contemporary (voluntary reverse) migrations of Black millennials moving southward (South of U.S., Latin America and Caribbean) and eastward (West Coast of Africa) in the midst of the ongoingness of settler colonialism, racist capitalist development and anti-Black racism. Concerned with (Black) collective liberation, Allison is continuing to sync an epistemology of Black geographic abundance (Guess, 2016). Identifying herself a truth-telling messenger, Allison is a geotheorist of Black relationships to land (Tuck, Smith, Guess et al, 2014), and a longtime member of an organization called The Black/Land Project. Additionally, she is also the NYC Network Leader of a national Black-led organization called Outdoor Afro, which is steadfast in reconnecting Black people to the great outdoors. Allison serves as a student representative on the board of IRADAC at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her published academic work appears in Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society and she has co-authored an essay that appears in American Quarterly. You can follow Allison on Twitter at @AllisonGuess1<http://www.twitter.com/AllisonGuess1>.

Kalle Westerling is a doctoral student in Performance and Theatre and a Futures Initiative Graduate Fellow at the Graduate Center, and Co-Director of HASTAC Scholars since 2014. His research concerns male-identified bodies in contemporary and historical American burlesque. An experienced designer, Kalle has created visualizations and graphics for the Futures Initiative since 2014. At the HASTAC 2016 conference, he was organizer and presenter in a roundtable on Digital Humanities in Theatre and Performance, and helped plan the HASTAC Scholars Unconference in 2016 and 2015. He also participated in the 2016 Digital Humanities Summer Institute. Additionally, Kalle is the Chair of Programming on the Board of Directors for CLAGS, and is a Board Member of OpenCUNY, an open-access, student-led publishing platform. You can follow Kalle on Twitter at @kallewesterling<http://www.twitter.com/kallewesterling>.

Thank you for encouraging your students to apply! Please feel free to contact us at scholars at hastac.org<mailto:scholars at hastac.org> with any questions.

Our Very Best,

Kalle Westerling (and on behalf of Allison Guess)
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