Events
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Upcoming Events
BDHC Digital Archive Exhibits: Projects in Progress
March 26, 2026, 3:00-4:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
Humanities Collaborative Interns, Mabel Caraveo, Isabella Sanchez, and Daniella Felix share their work in progress and solicit audience contributions on further shaping their digital archive projects on the 1976 school discrimination case Alvarado et al v. EPISD, Abelardo "Lalo" Delgado, and the MEChA chapter at UTEP.
Workshop: Multispectral Imagining in Cultural Heritage Research
April 1, 2026, 10:00am-12:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
This session introduces established MSI systems used to recover hidden textual and visual information in manuscripts and maps. Participants will learn the principles behind spectral imaging, lighting strategies, and computational enhancement used in major cultural heritage imaging projects. We will also explore how MSI datasets are transformed into readable images through image processing techniques. The session will also discuss how these processing methods support scholarly interpretation.
Workshop: Affordable and Accessible MSI Approaches
April 1, 2026, 1:00-3:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
This session focuses on emerging low-cost and adaptable MSI methods developed by Helen Davies in collaboration with Oishani Sengupta. Participants will be introduced to lower-cost hardware configurations, adaptable imaging rigs, and open-source processing workflows that make MSI possible outside affluent research libraries and large laboratory environments. The session will highlight how these approaches can support research, teaching, and community-based cultural heritage work.
April 2, 2026, 6:00-7:30pm, Location TWHC 207
Medieval world maps were not designed to guide travelers from one place to another. Instead, they visualized how the world was understood—linking geography with history, literature, religion, and learning. One of the few surviving examples of these large medieval maps, the Vercelli Mappa Mundi (13th century CE), offers a rare window in the medieval world. However, in its current state it is largely illegible. In this talk, Dr. Helen Davies introduces us to the digital imaging technologies that have aided her in recovering the map’s secrets. By combining technological analysis with humanistic interpretation, she examines the dense network of textual references, images, and cultural knowledge embedded in the map. She demonstrates how the intersecting approaches of the digital and the humanities come together to weave a new portrait of the world, which would not be possible without interdisciplinary scholarship. RSVP through Forms.
April 9, 2026, 4:30-6:00pm, IDRB 2.204
This talk introduces the work of Arte Público Press and its national Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Program, an initiative dedicated to locating, preserving, and making accessible the long-overlooked literary contributions of Hispanic writers in the United States from the colonial period through the twentieth century. It will explore how local histories, community archives, and regional cultural networks are essential to recovering literary traditions that have often been excluded from dominant narratives of American literature. Grounded in the history of the borderlands, the presentation will also reflect on questions of belonging, place, and cultural memory, highlighting El Paso as a crucial site for understanding the development of Mexican American and U.S. Latino literary history and the broader contours of American literary.
Digital Humanities Reading Group
April 13, 2026, 2:00-3:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
Students and faculty interested in learning more about the digital humanities, are welcome to join us for a discussion of short articles/chapters led by Dr. Elise Takehana. To access the group annotation, please use this link: https://hypothes.is/groups/aNqAien8/bdhc-utep
Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019: Chapter 24: New Data? The Role of Statistics in HD and Data Feminism: Introduction
Digital Pedagogy Sandbox: Tableau Training
April 22, 2026, 2:00-3:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
Tableau Public is a free platform for creating interactive charts, graphs, and maps for data storytelling. Bring you laptop for a playful and collaborative exploration of this tool.
Mapping Borderlands Archives Workshop
August 10-12, 2026, 8:30am-4:15pm, BDHC in Library 201
Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston and Director of Arte Público Press and the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, and native El Pasoen, Dr. Gabriela Baeza Ventura, will speak on her work and the significance of preservation and local contexts and histories.
Past Events
Digital Pedagogy Sandbox: Twine Training
January 28, 2026, 2:00-3:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
Twine is an free interactive, nonlinear storytelling tool to create branching narratives. Bring your laptop for a playful and collaborative session of exploring this tool.
Digital Pedagogy Sandbox: Audacity Training
February 11, 2026, 1:00-2:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
Audacity is an free, open-access audio editing and recording software. Bring your laptop for a playful and collaborative session of exploring this tool.
Histories of Documentalities in El Paso
February 16, 2026, 6:00-8:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
Honora Spicer’s work brings together archival research, borderlands history, and documentary poetry. Her research and creative practice focus on infrastructure, place-based education, translation, and language justice, with particular attention to the U.S.–Mexico border region. She will be presenting from her project, Histories of Documentalities in El Paso, which explores documentary poetics through archival research, and will lead a presentation and a generative workshop for participants. This event is for graduate students, please RSVP with Lex Valdez at avaldez26@miners.utep.edu.
Digital Humanities Reading Group
March 23, 2026, 2:00-3:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
Students and faculty interested in learning more about the digital humanities, are welcome to join us for a discussion of short articles/chapters led by Dr. Saniya Ghanoui, To access the group annotation, please use this link: https://hypothes.is/groups/aNqAien8/bdhc-utep
Debates in the Digital Humanities 2023: Introduction and Chapter 10: DH in the Deepfake Era
Research Panel: Digital and Data-Informed Projects at the Borderlands
October 2, 2025, 4:00-5:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
An interdisciplinary panel of local scholars, writers, and artists including Vicente Delgado (Visual Art), José Flores (Rhetoric), Corinne Bourdeaux (Communication), and Adrián Aragones (Chicano Studies) will share their digital projects rooted in the geographies, politics, and culture of the El Paso – Cuidad Juárez region.
October 23, 2025, 4:00-5:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
This social event will celebrate the opening of the Borderland Digital Humanities Center's physical location in Library 201 with updates on the Center's work, opportunities to get engaged with the Center, space to collaboratively build a data sculpture for our backwall, and time to socialize and connect with all attendees.
November 5, 2025, 12:00-1:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
We will explore together the Voyant suite of digital reading and analysis tools and ideate class activities, projects, assignments, or research potential of that tool set. Bring your laptop with you to play along. If you've never used or heard of Voyant, come learn more. If you've used it before, come share your experiences and applications of the tool in your teaching or research.
Projects-in-Process Critique - Elsie McElroy Slater Collection
November 12, 2025, 6:00-7:30pm, BDHC in Library 201
Students in ENGL 5320 have been ideating project ideas for the Elsie McElroy Slater collection of field notes, newspaper articles, drawings, and biological specimens as they learn about how to translate DH theories into practice. They are eager to hear feedback on their ideas from artists, scientistist, writers, designers, and beyond.
BDHC Graduate Student Open House
November 20, 2025, 4:30-6:00pm, BDHC in Library 201
This informal and social information session will provide graduate students with resources and opportunities that the Center can offer to support their work and provide an opportunity for you to meet with other grad students outside of your department.
Latinx Museum Professionals: Museums and Digital Humanities at the El Paso Museum of History
January 24, 2025, 9:30-3:30
https://www.utep.edu/rubin/program-outreach/carolina-villaroel.html
Research Talk: "Nosotras No Somos Ayotzinapa: Feminist Transfigurations of Truth and the Contested Curation of State Violence in Digital Mexico"
February 14, 2025, 11:00-12:00, EDUC 112
This talk examines historical truth-making in contemporary Mexico amidst the rise of mass feminism. Through case studies of writer Dahlia de la Cerda, actress Kate del Castillo and journalists Lydia Cacho and Regina Martínez, I conceptualize personal-historical events in their trajectories as poetic moments of political transfiguration. This work builds on dialogues in media aesthetics, literary criticism, and digital humanities, by focusing on the situatedness and embodiment of truth-telling around gender violence. Using a museum metaphor to capture the transmodal flux between urban and digital space, I analyze what I call the contested curation of state violence in digital Mexico.
Research Talk: “Reimagining Pedagogy and Research: Local and Transborder Approaches to Digital Humanities for Social Justice”
February 17, 2025, 11:00-12:00, EDUC 305
Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla (she, her, ella) is a proud transfronteriza from El Paso-Cd. Juárez border region. Her research, teaching and community work leverages theory of the flesh, interdisciplinary transborder studies and digital technologies to analyze, design and develop scholarly and creative digital and public work through ethical and inclusive practices. Fernández collaborates with faculty, students, library professionals, artists and community members leveraging digital technologies and tools with humanities research, pedagogy and knowledge production. She is among the creators and principal coordinators of warmly received public and digital transnational, interdisciplinary and multilingual projects that bring about social justice change in the digital and analog record through consciousness-raising. Currently, she is the PI of the Transborder Digital Humanities Center-Consortium supported by the Mellon Foundation and oversees three community-engaged digital projects, Fuerza Feminista: Intimate Recovery of Memory and Archives and GeoTestimonios Transfronerizos that focus on border women stories through literary texts, oral histories, digital archives and digital maps, and Concientizando Comunidades Colectiva that works with community organizers to engaged in the create of local community, familial and personal digital archives.
Digital Collections Workshop Session 1: Metadata Fundamentals & Standards
March 7, 2025, 12-2pm, LIB 131
Every first Friday, 12-2pm, the BDHC Hosts a hands-on ideation workshop series on planning digital archive collections perfect for faculty and graduate students working on digital collection, thinking of including one in a class, or curious about planning a DH digital archive collection. In this session, learn about key metadata concepts and explore culturally responsive metadata practices that empower community-driven archiving.
Global DH Viewing Party
April 2, 2025, 2:30-5:45, IDRB 2.206
The BDHC hosts a local viewing party of the first day of the Global DH Virtual Conference. The schedule of the day (in EST) is available at https://msuglobaldh.org/schedule/#Wednesday.
Session 2: Project Planning & Workflow Development
April 4, 2025, 12-2pm, location TBA
Every first Friday, 12-2pm, the BDHC Hosts a hands-on ideation workshop series on planning digital archive collections perfect for faculty and graduate students working on digital collection, thinking of including one in a class, or curious about planning a DH digital archive collection. In this session, participate in planning a digital archive that prioritizes community involvement, cultural preservation, and sustainability.
"Predatory Data" An Invited Lecture with Dr. Anita Chan
May 2, 2025, 10-11am, Location TBA
The insidious legacy of eugenics lives on in the algorithmic authoritarianism, and data-driven discrimination of Big Tech. Illuminating the throughline between the 19th century's anti-immigration and eugenics movements and our sprawling systems of techno-surveillance and algorithmic apartheid, this talk explains how it happened and how we can draw from a legacy of commitments to data pluralism to fight back.
Session 3: Ethics, Access, and Sustainability
May 2, 2025, 12-2pm, LIB 131
Every first Friday, 12-2pm, the BDHC Hosts a hands-on ideation workshop series on planning digital archive collections perfect for faculty and graduate students working on digital collection, thinking of including one in a class, or curious about planning a DH digital archive collection. In this session explore ethical challenges in digital archiving and ways to create culturally responsible, accessible, and sustainable archives.
Textual Analysis Workshop
May 29, 9am-3:30pm, location TBA
In collaboration with LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, the BDHC and Library Special Collections will host their traveling exhibition and contribute to the accompanying digital exhibition. We will offer series of workshops on textual analysis techniques.
