Panels

 Davide Tanasi, Lisa Shorts, Sarah Hassam, Aiden Eylward, Madeline Kraft, Angela Costello, Madison Fidler, Claudia Lamanna

As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, a pressing question confronts historians, archivists, and digital humanists alike: how do we ensure that the material record of the American experience, especially its most fragile, contested, and underrepresented chapters, survives for generations to come? This panel addresses that question through four case studies from the University of South Florida’s Institute for Digital Exploration (IDEx), each demonstrating how advanced digital tools for preservation and conservation can simultaneously serve as instruments of community engagement, public accessibility, and ethical scholarship. Spanning sites from a World War II Japanese American incarceration camp in Colorado to Holocaust museum collections, from colonial-era cemeteries in Florida and Massachusetts to over a century of law enforcement records in Hillsborough County, these projects embody the local, national, and international connections at the heart of this conference. Together they illustrate a consistent methodology, terrestrial laser scanning, structured light 3D scanning, digital photogrammetry, and database-driven archival workflows, applied across vastly different heritage contexts, and they offer a replicable model for how a Florida-based research institute can contribute to the national conversation on digital preservation while maintaining deep roots in community-centered data practices.

The first case study (Preservation of Fading Memories: The 3D Digitization of the Amache Japanese American Incarceration Camp in Granada, Colorado) reports on IDEx’s 2022 remote sensing campaign at the Amache National Historic Site, one of ten camps established under Executive Order 9066 during World War II. With the site largely dismantled after the war—leaving only cement foundations, dirt roads, and scattered landscape features, the project undertook the first systematic, high-resolution 3D digitization of any Japanese American confinement site. The team employed terrestrial LiDAR, structured light scanning, and digital photogrammetry to document residential blocks, surviving structures, garden features, and museum artifacts, including personal belongings of former internees. Working in partnership with the Amache Museum and the University of Denver’s archaeological field school, the project produced scientifically rigorous spatial data and publicly accessible 3D visualizations designed to support digital storytelling, immersive education, and continued research. This paper addresses the methodological gap left by earlier digital projects on Japanese American incarceration, most of which have operated exclusively in two-dimensional archival or oral-history registers, and it speaks directly to the conference’s interest in virtual and immersive education as well as accessibility and equity in digital humanities design.

The second case study (Memory, Commemoration, and Remembrance: The Holocaust in the Digital Age) surveys the evolving digital landscape of Holocaust memory and presents IDEx’s contributions to two museum collections in Florida and Virginia. As the generation of living witnesses diminishes, digital platforms have become essential vehicles for sustaining awareness and combating denial, a challenge that underscores the ethical dimensions of digital storytelling and visualization. This paper examines how museums worldwide have adopted virtual exhibitions, online archives, and interactive 3D models to maintain the relevance of Holocaust memory, a process accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. It then focuses on IDEx’s application of structured light scanning and photogrammetry to Holocaust-related objects and exhibition spaces, demonstrating how these technologies extend museum reach beyond physical walls to global audiences. The paper’s international scope, connecting Florida-based digital production to European memorial sites and collections, exemplifies the kind of cross-border collaboration that the conference seeks to foreground.

The third case study (Best Practices for Historical Cemetery Digitization: The Tolomato and Burial Hill Cemetery Projects) proposes standardized best practices for the emerging field of Digital Public Mortuary Archaeology (DPMA), grounded in two IDEx case studies: Tolomato Cemetery in St. Augustine, Florida, and Burial Hill Cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Both sites contain gravemarkers and tombs of considerable historical value that face ongoing deterioration from environmental exposure and storm damage. Using terrestrial laser scanning and digital photogrammetry, the IDEx team created comprehensive 3D records of individual memorials and full cemetery landscapes. The resulting digital collections, publicly accessible through the IDEx website, serve as models for crowdsourced data enrichment and participatory humanities, inviting community members to contribute identifications, genealogical data, and historical context. This paper addresses the ethical dimensions of digitizing mortuary spaces, including questions of decolonization, inclusivity, and the representation of absence in colonial-era burial grounds. The Tolomato project, situated in the nation’s oldest city, connects Florida’s local heritage directly to the broader American narrative that the 250th anniversary commemorates.

The fourth case study (Digitizing a Century of Law Enforcement History: The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office Archive Project) describes IDEx’s six-month collaboration with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) to digitize, categorize, and archive more than 80,000 historical items dating from the 1890s to the present. The collection includes jail intake ledgers, mugshots, crime scene photographs, detective notebooks, newspaper clippings, and personnel records, many of which were in an advanced state of physical deterioration. In addition to high-resolution photographic digitization and the construction of a keyword-searchable database, the team applied structured light 3D scanning to 78 historical artifacts, vintage uniforms, badges, equipment, and communication devices, and produced a virtual tour of the HCSO History Center in Ybor City. This project demonstrates how innovations in audience development and community engagement can extend digital curation techniques beyond traditional cultural heritage institutions to large civic archives. The collection revealed untold community stories, from the case files of Tampa’s organized crime era to the professional accomplishments of officers whose contributions had been obscured by time, offering a distinctly local window into broader currents of American social history.

Across these four presentations, the panel argues that digital preservation is not merely a technical exercise but an act of civic responsibility, what IDEx terms “digital insurance” against the physical loss of irreplaceable heritage. Each project foregrounds community partnership, public accessibility, and ethical transparency as co-equal priorities alongside scientific accuracy. The panel invites discussion on the reproducibility of methods across site types, the scalability of workflows from single artifacts to collections of tens of thousands, and the role that Florida-based digital humanities research can play in national and international heritage preservation as the country reflects on its first 250 years.

 Clarissa Carr, Hélène Huet, Marcelino Hudgson Steele

This panel presents the University of Florida (UF) as a case study in the long-term development, interruption, and revitalization of Digital Humanities (DH) within a large public research university. Bringing together perspectives from librarians, digital scholarship specialists, and humanities scholars, the panel examines how Digital Humanities at UF evolved from a decentralized, grassroots activity into a centrally supported laboratory designed to produce and share knowledge in ways that meaningfully engage the public sphere.

Digital Humanities initiatives at UF began in 2011 with the formation of an interdisciplinary DH Working Group (DHWG) that included faculty, librarians, staff, and graduate students. This early phase emphasized experimentation and collaboration across units rather than formalized infrastructure. Shortly thereafter, UF launched a Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate to formalize DH pedagogy and foster interdisciplinary training. While interest was strong, DH activity continued to function as a “slow simmer”: energetic and widely distributed, but without a dedicated space, sustained staffing, or long-term investment.

Around 2020, the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate was placed on pause. In the following years, due to staff turnover, the DHWG stopped meeting. What remained constant, however, was substantial faculty demand for digital tools, training, and consultation. Across the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), faculty submitted repeated requests for support with data visualization, preservation strategies, digital platforms, and computational methods for humanities research. These requests made visible a growing gap between the ambitions of humanities scholars and the institutional capacity necessary to support public-facing, technically sophisticated projects.

Supported by seed funding from the President’s Office, CLAS launched a new Digital Humanities Laboratory housed in the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, which officially opened in January 2026. The Lab represents a strategic investment in the future of humanities research and teaching at UF, grounded in the belief that the humanities must evolve alongside emerging technologies in order to remain relevant, resilient, and publicly engaged. The first portion of the panel situates the Lab within a decade-long institutional history, reflecting on how DH matured organically at UF before receiving structural support. This historical framing emphasizes continuity rather than rupture: the Lab is not a replacement for past DH activity, but an amplification of longstanding work finally given institutional form.

The second portion of the panel focuses on the DH Lab as an operational and pedagogical hub. It examines how the Lab functions as a home for coursework, experiential learning, and professional development opportunities for students and faculty across campus. The Lab supports humanities curriculum transformation by integrating digital literacy and computational methods into undergraduate and graduate education, preparing students to compete in a technologically advanced labor market while advancing the core interpretive questions of the humanities.

Central initiatives include faculty and student consultation services, hands-on workshops, open drop-in hours, and the development of an asynchronous survey mapping DH-related coursework at UF. This provides the foundation for relaunching the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate, ensuring that it reflects contemporary methodologies, ethical frameworks, and emerging technologies while remaining accessible to students across disciplines. The Lab positions DH as a connective practice that fosters multidisciplinary collaboration and prepares students for diverse career pathways in academia, cultural institutions, industry, and the nonprofit sector.

The Lab also aims to emphasize public-facing scholarship. Through partnerships with local and regional cultural organizations, students and faculty will collaborate on digitally sophisticated projects that disseminate knowledge about Florida communities beyond the university. These experiential learning partnerships will enable students to apply DH methods such as digital mapping, archival digitization, and interactive storytelling in real-world contexts, producing content that reaches broad and diverse Floridian publics.

Together, these perspectives highlight the importance of professional DH labor in sustaining institutional change. By supporting grant development, project administration, and curriculum coordination, these roles ensure that DH initiatives generate student credit hours, attract external funding, and create experiential opportunities for students.

The panel concludes by addressing common barriers to DH adoption, including faculty hesitation stemming from technical uncertainty or lack of incentives. UF’s response includes targeted training programs tied to concrete outcomes such as grant submissions, course enhancement grants that foster faculty–student research collaborations, and project teams led by DH-fluent instructors working alongside non-specialist faculty. These strategies help steer the humanities into the future by accelerating innovation while remaining grounded in humanistic inquiry.

By foregrounding Florida-based collaborations, ethical technology use, and public engagement, the panel contributes to broader conversations about the role of Digital Humanities in shaping the future of humanities scholarship during the America 250 moment and beyond.

 Susanna Alles-Torrent, J. Michael Francis, Rachel Sanderson

This panel connects with the America 250 theme of the 2026 FLDH conference by examining digital projects focused on the colonial period in Florida. J. Michael Francis and Rachel Sanderson of the University of South Florida consider two initiatives of Sin Barcos, Inc.: Lost Voices and Lá Fhéile Pádraig: The Irish Diaspora in East Florida. Susanna Alles Torrent of the University of Miami discusses From Menorca to Florida: A Digital Archive of Diaspora and Memory in Saint Augustine, and Clayton McCarl of the University of North Florida reflects on the Florida Series of coloniaLab. In each case, the presenters analyze ways that digital tools and methodologies help us to recover the colonial past and allow diverse publics to engage with that history in new ways.

Presentation 1:

From Archives to Immersion: Reconstructing Colonial Landscapes and Lost Voices

J. Michael Francis, University of South Florida

Rachel Sanderson, University of South Florida

Digital humanities programs often begin with the monumental task of recovering and digitizing fragmented histories. This session reflects on Sin Barcos, Inc.’s journey through two major initiatives—the Lost Voices project and the exhibition, Lá Fhéile Pádraig: The Irish Diaspora in East Florida. It focuses on their completion and the persistent challenges of maintaining, updating, and translating complex data for the public.

Lost Voices represents a multi-year collaborative effort to make the oldest surviving parish archive in the United States broadly accessible and create a custom prosopographic database to house over 75,000 profiles. This session considers the practical hurdles, including the limitations of custom-built databases, the difficulty of predicting user intuition, and the fiscal strain of sustaining essential updates in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Recognizing that static databases can remain inaccessible to diverse audiences, we sought to bridge the gap through immersive environments. This presentation elaborates upon the Lá Fhéile Pádraig exhibition development and its accompanying archival environment that reimagines the traditional research room as a dynamic, navigable public space. By integrating rigorous archival research with high-end 3D modeling and visualization, Sin Barcos, Inc. created a "plug-and-play" experiential model that bypasses the traditional limitations of physical museum space.

Offering a candid look at the DH lifecycle, this discussion highlights how, despite the imperfections of early-stage platforms, digital tools allow us to reconstruct the diasporic narratives of Florida’s multi-ethnic society in ways that are deeply meaningful, engaging, and perpetually evolving.

Presentation 2:

From Menorca to Florida: Building a Collaborative Digital Archive of the Minorcan Experience in Colonial Florida

Susanna Alles Torrent, University of Miami

This presentation offers an update on From Menorca to Florida: A Digital Archive of Diaspora and Memory in Saint Augustine, a digital humanities project dedicated to documenting the migration, settlement, and historical legacy of the first Minorcans who arrived in Florida in 1768. Recruited by Andrew Turnbull for his New Smyrna colony, together with nearly 1,400 Mediterranean migrants, they endured severe hardship under the indenture system before abandoning the colony in 1777 and resettling in St. Augustine, where they established a lasting community whose cultural presence continues today. Situated within broader conversations on colonial Florida and related scholarly initiatives, the project examines the Minorcan experience as part of the multicultural history of the region, linking Mediterranean migration, British colonial ambitions, Spanish Florida, and the formation of local identities in St. Augustine.

Since its initial conception, From Menorca to Florida has developed from an exploratory prototype into a growing open-access digital archive that gathers dispersed records related to this transatlantic history. Built through minimal computing principles and the CollectionBuilder framework, the platform aims to integrate manuscript collections, family papers, maps, visual materials, institutional records, and bibliographic resources from archives and libraries in Florida and beyond. This presentation will highlight recent developments in the project, including the expansion of the digital collection, new metadata taxonomies, the integration of bibliographic resources through Zotero, and the use of maps and visual materials to contextualize the Minorcan presence in colonial Florida. It will also invite future collaborations with scholars, archivists, librarians, students, and community organizations in both Florida and Menorca, envisioning the project as a shared platform for preserving and reinterpreting this understudied Atlantic historical chapter.

Presentation 3:

Publishing Documents from Spanish Florida in Collaboration with Students at UNF

Clayton McCarl, University of North Florida

The Florida Series of the digital editing project coloniaLab features documents from Spanish Florida, with an emphasis on materials from the Second Spanish Period (1784-1821) that form part of the East Florida Papers, held at the Library of Congress. Since 2020, over 100 students at the University of North Florida have contributed to the transcription and TEI-XML markup of documents pertaining to two groups: legal cases resulting from the Real Pragmática de Casamientos (1776) and dispatches between the governors in St. Augustine and their military commanders in outposts on Amelia Island, the St. Johns River, and the Matanzas Inlet. These documents reveal the demographic complexity of Florida in the years prior to annexation by the United States and the tensions that characterized the colony’s relationship with its northern neighbor.

This presentation examines opportunities and challenges in publishing textual material from Spanish Florida in collaboration with students. I reflect on how the documents allow participants to expand their understanding of the area’s past, reconsider popular narratives about the colonial period, and experience differently the physical spaces they inhabit. I consider approaches to carrying out this work with students who have varying levels of competency in Spanish, and examine ways we have sought to make the results of our work accessible to the general public.

 Christa L. Arnold, Margaret C. Steward, F. Dan Richard, Berrin A. Beasley, Brant Marcus

Misinformation, disinformation, and deception in communication challenges the fabric of social trust and democracy. Social media has created an environment in which deceptive messages and misleading statements can spread rapidly, often faster than human evaluators can assess content credibility. Traditional approaches to digital deception detection have frequently depended on either human judgment or broad linguistic indicators, however no standard method of online deception detection currently exists. Our research team is introducing and exploring a digital deception detection method called Mediated Statement Analysis (MSA), which includes 9 categories that focus on deception or suspicious message indicators. Within this MSA investigation our project focuses on 9 MSA-related categories: Word Count, Level of Detail and Description, Exaggerated claims, Numeric Reference, Emotional Language, Positive/Negative Paradigm, Excessive Formatting and Punctuation, Absolutes/Hedges/Qualifiers and combinations of these categories (Combos). MSA evolved from law enforcement’s Statement Analysis (SA) while MSA is modified and adapted for digital online communication SA is primarily applied to longer statements such as criminal testimony and interview narratives and MSA is geared for short-form communication such as social media.

This panel presents an interdisciplinary project that combines psychological theory, investigative statement analysis, human coding, and machine learning (ML) to examine whether MSA concepts can be operationalized for large-scale mediated data sets for deception detection. Our project investigates truthful and untruthful social media messages by coding MSA both with human coders and developing unsupervised and supervised machine learning models to identify MSA-related concepts in text and then use those concepts to predict which statement in a pair of our participants’ social media posts is truthful and which is deceptive.

The survey data used in this project consists of paired true and false statements designed as a proxy for short-form social media communication. Within this framework, our research focuses on 9 MSA-related const to capture both content-based and stylistic dimensions of language that MSA uses to help distinguish truthful statements from deceptive statements. For example, level of detail and description and numeric reference reflect the extent to which a statement contains concrete and potentially verifiable information, while emotional language, excessive formatting and punctuation, and the use of absolutes, qualifiers or hedges may reflect strategies used to create distance, interest, convincing, or sympathy. MSA may provide a basis for both human judgment and computational modeling for digital communication venues.

Our panel presentation will demonstrate and discuss that the successful use of machine learning in digital deception research depends on strong conceptual and methodological grounding. Three of our panelists, Dr. Arnold, Dr. Stewart and Dr. Beasley, focus on the human coding and investigative foundations which help develop the computational approach to online deception detection. Dr.’s Arnold and Stewart are certified through law enforcement training of Statement Analysis and have included several original SA categories and added new and modified MSA categories suited for current social media posts and other mediated communication such as social media posts, online reviews, dating profiles, news sites, and so forth. Social media language often differs substantially from the kinds of narratives or interviews that traditional statement analysis was designed to assess. Posts are shorter, more stylized, and more likely to rely on informal grammar, exaggerated formatting, or compressed references. Dr.’s Arnold, Stewart and Beasley will discuss the role of human coding constructs and examine linguistic markers and deviations from baseline truthful messages. They developed a detailed MSA codebook for the training of coders. Human coding establishes results that the machine learning team can use to perform supervised learning, which enables them to generate a computational model that can predict the presence of each individual MSA construct. The MSA codebook serves not only as a tool for rater training and reliability, but also as the conceptual bridge between investigative analysis and machine learning. Without a defensible coding framework, any supervised model would be limited by weak or inconsistent labels.

Dr. Richard and Brant Marcus are developing the machine learning models and will discuss the development of the computational pipeline, feature engineering, and the design of models capable of detecting both MSA indicators and social media post veracity. Their portion of the panel addresses how unsupervised methods are used to discover rhetorical patterns that can be used alongside MSA constructs to aid the detection of deception, and how supervised methods are used to evaluate predictors and model accuracy. Unsupervised methods such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF), and Structural Topic Modeling (STM) are used to uncover clusters of co-occurring words and latent themes associated with MSA constructs and statement veracity. These methods make it possible to identify meaningful language patterns before imposing rigid predefined categories, thereby clarifying how deception-related cues may naturally emerge in social media text. Supervised machine learning models are then used to predict both the presence of MSA-informed categories and the veracity of the statements themselves. By combining latent textual features with theory-informed coding categories, the computational portion of the project seeks to produce models that are not only predictive, but also more interpretable than approaches based solely on surface-level lexical signals.

Together, our five faculty and graduate student panelists have a multidisciplinary perspective of computational deception detection, beginning with developing the MSA exclusively for digital communication, how its categories were adapted for human coding, and the final development using machine learning for deception prediction and analysis. By adapting our MSA framework to digital communication, this project contributes to the growing literature on computational deception detection while also refining how MSA concepts may be applied outside of traditional law enforcement contexts. If successful, this framework may offer a practical and theoretically grounded detection tool for flagging potentially deceptive social media content, improving the interpretability of machine learning models, and strengthening collaboration between psychological science, theories of communication, and computational research.

 Olivia Barnard, Ernest Benvenuto, Chloe Pfeiffer, Jackson White, Vivian Olivera

This panel explores the use of ArcGIS StoryMaps to research the American revolutionary era. On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, undergraduate students enrolled in AMH 4130 “The American Revolutionary Era, 1760-1789” during spring 2026 at the University of Florida explored the colonial rebellion that produced the first republic in the Americas.

Inspired by the Teaching Research with StoryMaps guide developed at Johns Hopkins University by scholars Casey Lurtz and Ellie Palazollo, this course culminated in public-facing and student-curated exhibits about the American Revolution designed using ArcGIS StoryMaps. In addition to foundational texts in the study of the American Revolution, course material investigated the intersections of the digital humanities and the history of early America. Students analyzed Serena Zabin’s video game Witness to the Revolution alongside her book The Boston Massacre: A Family History and investigated DH projects in consultation with book chapters from American Revolutions in the Digital Age. Class discussions aimed to help students situate their StoryMaps in larger conversations about the intersections of the Digital Humanities and the history of the American Revolution.

Over the course of the semester as students developed their exhibits, they analyzed primary and secondary sources, put them in dialogue with one another, and built arguments through curation, content, and text. Comprised of four undergraduate students who took the course and their professor, this panel offers both a student and faculty perspective on doing research digitally. Panelists describe the experience of researching, writing, and creating their StoryMaps exhibits; the successes and struggles of digital research; how digital methods offer new ways of thinking about the American past; and how this experience shaped pedagogical practices in the classroom. Organized nonhierarchically, this panel models the collaboration fostered in the classroom and the collaboration crucial to successful digital projects.

Student StoryMaps Titles and Brief Descriptions:

1. Chloe Pfeiffer (undergraduate, University of Florida): “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land: How and Why the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Creeks, and the Seminoles Joined the American Revolution”

Mention of the American Revolution today typically conjures up images of white American settlers fighting against white British soldiers over ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, this whitewashed narrative obscures the complicated relationship that developed amongst American settlers, the British government, and Native communities at the time. Most popular accounts of the American Revolution make no space for Native people during the war despite the variety of entanglements that tied white settlers, the British, and Native communities together. This exhibit explores this entanglement through a comparative study of the experiences of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Creek Nation, and the Seminoles during the American Revolution.

2. Jackson White (undergraduate, University of Florida): “Music of the Revolution: A Propaganda Tool”

Music remains a central part of American culture. During the American Revolution, patriots wrote, created, and circulated music throughout the colonies. Like paintings, engravings, and newspapers, music became an important vehicle for spreading revolutionary ideas throughout the nation. While some songs, such as “Yankee Doodle,” that originate in the revolutionary era are immortalized within popular understandings of the revolution today, the majority are overlooked in the history of the American Revolution. This exhibit explores the use and employment of contrafact music by both the British and the Americans as a tool for propaganda during and after the revolution.

3. Vivian Olivera (undergraduate, University of Florida): “A French Perspective on the American Revolution”

France played a significant role in the American Revolution’s warfare and diplomacy. Today, historians speculate that without French assistance, the colonies would not have succeeded. Despite this acceptance of France’s impact on the outcome of the Revolution, popular histories of the war still overlook French perspectives of the conflict. Instead, French contributions emerge through an American lens. This exhibit incorporates French voices into the study of the American Revolution to gain a better understanding of the global interactions that shaped the Age of Revolutions.

4. Ernest Benevenuto (undergraduate, University of Florida): “Who Were the Minutemen: The Story of the Massachusetts Militia”

The beginning of the Battles of Lexington and Concord proved to be “the shot heard round the world.” Igniting the American Revolution, these conflicts became enshrined in national memory as catalysts for the founding of our nation. Yet for such an important event, little is known about the people who fought in these conflicts themselves. Popular histories imagine the men who fought for the American cause during these initial battles as “minutemen,” a group of selfless farmers who nobly left their homes to fight for the nation’s independence. While a comforting story to hear, it is quite reductive. This exhibit reexamines the minutemen, situating them in their militias in their respective Massachusetts towns. By analyzing them within the cultures and societies in which they lived, this exhibit investigates the real reasons men joined the militia and urges us to reconsider the umbrella term “minutemen” in revolutionary history.

 Julie R Enszer, Michael David Franklin, Lorna Bracewell, Jeannette Vigliotti King, Jolene Dubray

This panel highlights three digital humanities projects based in Florida that explore LGBTQ+ histories in the state and how queer people made—and make—local, national, and international connections through their work.

At Florida State University, Michael David Franklin initiated the LGBT Oral History Project of North Florida, a volunteer-based public history collaboration between FSU honors undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty members, FSU Libraries, and participants from the north Florida LGBT community. The purpose of the project is to gather and preserve the life stories of LGBT people who have lived or are living in the north Florida region, and to make their stories available to the public and to scholars and researchers worldwide. Early in the project, participants recognized the importance of documenting and preserving the work of Naiad Press, one of the largest publishers of lesbian literature, based in Tallahassee. Naiad Press, which operated from 1973 until 2003, was one of the first American publishers dedicated to lesbian literature. Naiad published 550 titles during its thirty years of operation, including fiction, reference works, and videos. Founded in 1973 by Barbara Grier, Donna McBride, Anyda Marchant and Muriel Crawford, Naiad moved to Tallahassee, Florida, from Missouri in 1980. Grier and McBride sold their stock in Naiad to Bella Books in 2003. The Oral History Project interviews including transcripts are housed at Florida State University. In 2022, an exhibition, “It’s a Lot Like Falling in Love: Legacies of Naiad Press and the Tallahassee Lesbian Community” highlighted the work of Naiad Press through books and ephemera held by the FSU Library.

At Flagler College, a group of faculty and students conducted oral history interviews as a part of the Flagler College LGBTQ+ Oral History Project. Initiated during the fall 2024 semester by students in Bracewell’s upper division LGBTQ Politics class, the Flagler College LGBTQ+ Oral History Project documents the rich and complex history of LGBTQIA+ life at Flagler College over the decades and help students make connections between the personal narratives shared by interviewees and the larger events and themes in LGBTQ politics and history. Identifying participants through personal networks and the Office of Alumni Relations, to date project members have interviewed about 25 LGBTQ+ Flagler College alumni spanning almost the entire fifty-five-year history of the college. Researchers will share highlights from the main narratives and themes that have surfaced through the interviews.

At Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal, now based in Dover, Florida, Julie R Enszer in conjunction with volunteers from around the United States and the world have been conducting a digital humanities project working with Feminist Bookstore News (FBN), the trade publication of the feminist bookstore movement. The first phase of this project involved digitizing all issues of the periodical and some ephemera secured from the founder of FBN. The second phase involved volunteers in the creation of a database of article titles in every issue of the periodical. In the current phase, volunteers are documenting every book mentioned in FBN. This wide-ranging digital humanities project makes visible the significance of feminist bookstores and the bookstore movement that thrived in the United States from 1976 through 2000.

During this panel, presenters will discuss each project making explicit connections to how it is informed by the state of Florida and how the project fosters local, national, and international connections.

 Joanne Britland, Jennifer Ansah, Maria Monserrat de la Cruz Mora, Maria Fernanda Colon

This panel showcases StoryMap projects from a graduate-level course on Crisis in the Contemporary Hispanic World at the University of Florida. It focuses on digital storytelling and mapping as methods for analyzing cultural production and socio-political contexts across the Hispanic world. The students created individual projects using ArcGIS StoryMaps. The projects demonstrate how digital platforms can be used to analyze and communicate complex narratives of crisis. The topics vary across topic, region, and time period. They include issues such as migration, narcocorridos, and an analysis of past figures in the Hispanic world, such as Hernán Cortés.

The panel seeks to describe how digital storytelling and mapping help us better understand crisis in the contemporary Hispanic world. Using ArcGIS StoryMaps, students integrate maps, images, written analysis, and multimedia elements into cohesive digital narratives. Mapping functions not only as a visual aid but also as a critical framework for analysis. In this way, digital storytelling becomes a mechanism to structure arguments, trace movement, and visualize relationships that may be less visible in conventional formats.

Finally, the panel underscores the pedagogical and public-facing value of this work. These StoryMap projects were part of a course activity during Spring 2026. The students in the class presented their work at a final symposium for the university. The group seeks to expand and develop as a Spanish Digital Humanities Lab at the University of Florida. This panel is also part of this initiative, as well as the broader conversation of creating public-facing work. By bringing together graduate student work that integrates digital storytelling and mapping, this panel demonstrates how digital humanities approaches can deepen both research and teaching while supporting publicly engaged scholarship.