Black Scholars and Disciplinary Gatekeeping

Christy Hyman is a digital humanist, environmental advocate, and PhD student in the program of Geography at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Her dissertation research focuses on African-American efforts toward cultural and political assertion in the Great Dismal Swamp region during the antebellum era as well as the attendant social and environmental costs of human/landscape resource exploitation. Hyman uses Geographic Information Systems to observe to what extent digital cartography can inform us of the human experience while acknowledging phenomena deriving from oppressive systems in society threatening sustainable futures. Hyman has been invited to share her work at a range of humanities centers including the Dave Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University, the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities Digital Dialogues series to name a few.