CSUF Digital

In Digital Histofutures: Patterning the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network I discuss digital humanities pedagogy in ethnic studies classrooms and doing public humanities scholarship. I will talk about my work as an interdisciplinary scholar engaged in archiving the future. Founded in 2011, Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network is a global and virtual community with members from many walks of life and in many professions. Part public humanities, part affinity community, the network was built outside of any single institution and has become a sustaining digital project which extends beyond the confines of genre and discipline. Butler called herself a Histofuturist, “an historian who extrapolates from the Human past and present as well as the technological past + present” and here I am asking us to think about Ethnic Studies Digital Humanities as a kind of collective histofuture, a social science fictional inquiry with the experiences of marginalized people centered. Butler’s life and work offer some lessons on how to inhabit and participate in these shared futures.