Why did you apply to HASTAC?
I applied to HASTAC for the opportunity to meet and work with other graduate students with similar research interests in these disciplines. I was also impressed and inspired after attending the HASTAC conference in June 2023 on “Critical Making and Social Justice” where I met so many researchers working at the intersections of digital humanities, research-creation, and other social science disciplines. I was exceptionally inspired by scholars, such as Caitlin Fisher, Michaela Pňačeková, and Stephanie Vasko who are working with emerging technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality. My own graduate research asks how immersive digital storytelling using Augmented Reality (AR) might remediate the historical and ongoing erasure of queer voices in public spaces.
What has been your favorite course so far as an instructor or student? Why?
One of my favourite courses in my graduate program was the Digital Humanities Methods course. The culmination of the readings and the thoughtful discussions with my peers inspired me tremendously. Our main project for the semester was to build a prototype using one of the digital methods that we had explored in the course. This prototype was intended to become part of our doctoral work. My topic of focus was on author and salon hostess Natalie Clifford Barney. Barney was a prominent figure situated at the centre of queer culture in early-twentieth century France and one of the primary figures relevant to my historical research. Located at her home at 20 rue Jacob is the Temple of Friendship, a small doric temple, which remains physically intact yet is completely inaccessible to the public. Using a queer, critical feminist approach to public histories and immersive technologies, and a methodological framing of research-creation, I constructed a 3D representation of The Temple of Friendship using SketchUp that sheds light on the historical and public erasure of Barney. This work also became part of my art installation at HASTAC 2023, where I exhibited my work as part of the Creative Futures program.
What do you want to do after you graduate?
I am actually a full-time academic librarian as well as a graduate student. As an open education librarian, I work closely with instructors to find, use, adapt, and create open educational resources (OER). OER are freely available teaching and learning materials that are made openly available with an open copyright license. I also support multiple subject areas including digital humanities, media studies, theatre, and film studies. As a librarian and researcher, I am dedicated to making my research outputs open and accessible. One public facing project that I would like to highlight is Okanagan QueerStory, a podcast about the queer history of the Okanagan, the southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. In collaboration with community members, we produced six episodes where we interviewed 2SLGBTQIA+ who live or have lived in the Okanagan. In the future, these episodes will be archived and made available under an open copyright license in cIRcle, UBC’s institutional repository. After I graduate, I would like to continue working closely with researchers on their projects while pursuing my own research interests. I am also dedicated to making my research outputs as open access as possible.
What’s something that people would be surprised to know about you?
I have a diploma in Film Production from Capilano University (Vancouver, British Columbia). While I decided not to pursue a career in film, my filmmaking education provided me with the technical experience to work with audio and visual formats and an appreciation of storytelling in all mediums. Surprisingly, the lessons that I learned in filmmaking school often come up in my academic work such as how to communicate to wider audiences and how to create a comprehensive project plan. These lessons have been invaluable as both a librarian and a graduate student!
What are some things that you wish you had known before you got into graduate school?
I have been an academic librarian for four years and continue to work full-time while completing my PhD. In some ways, my graduate studies have been challenging trying to balance the heavy workload of my studies with my library work schedule. I wish I had not underestimated how the program is designed in a way to take up so much of your time. In other ways, I feel privileged to have the experience that comes from working in academia. Despite the heavy workload, I manage my time by blocking out activities in my calendar that are important to my health and wellbeing such as daily walks, exercise, and vacations. I also give myself breaks every week to rest and spend time with family and friends. Working as a librarian has also prepared me to do extensive research in multiple disciplines, keeping track of my notes and citations by using Zotero, and introduced me to many artistic and creative scholarly outputs such as podcasting and zine making.
How do you envision HASTAC and higher education in 10 years? Where do you fit in?
I hope HASTAC and higher education will continue to push the boundaries of what constitutes scholarship and for research to encompass multimodal and non-traditional ways of learning, knowing, and sharing information. This year I was the successful recipient of the Public Scholars Initiative (PSI) at UBCO. The PSI supports doctoral students who are doing non-traditional research outputs as part of their dissertation work. This award provides me with an opportunity to fund the creative work that I will undertake for my dissertation and to strengthen my skills in public communication and writing for a diverse audience. The funding will also allow me to visit Paris, France to do walking ethnography, as well as historical and archival research. My experiences with PSI and HASTAC have provided me with the confidence, skills, and experience to undertake a digital and creative project as a core part of my dissertation. I hope that more graduate students will continue to imagine their research outputs beyond the traditional dissertation and embrace more research-creation methodologies.
How does digital scholarship fit into your research or teaching?
My interdisciplinary doctoral project combines research-creation with ethnography and digital humanities methods. I’m interested in the ways digital tools and technologies, such as augmented-reality and locative media, can be used to remediate the erasure of marginalized histories. For part of my dissertation, I will create an AR walking tour application that applies digital storytelling and locative media that focuses on the history of queer women who lived in Paris during the Interwar years (1918-1939), such as Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) and Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972). This application will create a place-specific narrative of the queer histories of Paris during the Interwar years. To complete this project, I am learning how to create AR applications using Unity and 3D models using SketchUp.
What do you hope to accomplish with your research or teaching?
I hope my doctoral research will contribute to the knowledge of immersive technologies and their role in queer public histories. The relationships in my project emerge from my collaboration with Heidi Evans, the founder of Women of Paris, “the first Paris walking tours devoted entirely to women’s history and influence”. With Evans, I will be able to develop this collaboration further, resulting in public-facing benefits such as increased access to public queer histories.
What are you currently reading, watching, or listening to?
I’m currently in the middle of preparing for my comprehensive exams so I am reading a lot on emerging technologies such as AR and locative media. In my spare time, I’ve been rewatching The Durrells (2016-2019), a television show about a British family who moves to the island of Corfu in the 1930s. It’s heartwarming!
You can reach Donna at donna.langille@ubc.ca.