program calendar

We are developing programming plans for the 2022-2023 academic year, and welcome your inquiries or suggestions for programs, speakers, and exhibits. Please email us at gr-dswp@wpi.edu.

In addition to the information below about programs in 2021-2022, our report to be shared in July 2022 will provide more detailed planning, findings, templates, and other resources about these programs.

Just before you enter the Shuster Lab, be sure to check out the surrounding exhibit hanging in the Multimedia Lab and the digital "counterhegemonic exhibit," which applies contexts of settler colonialism and racism to the legacy of Fredrich Law Olmsted, including examples of how digital scholarship can address issues of racial, social, and environmental justice.

About Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscapes for the Public Good

The Oak Spring Garden Foundation, in partnership with the National Association for Olmsted Parks and Olmsted 200, is proud to celebrate Olmsted’s birth with this exhibition, which focuses on Olmsted’s life story, his major landscape commissions, and their relevance for contemporary society. Also highlighted is Olmsted’s trailblazing philosophy about the natural world and how to shape it for public benefit.

About Good for Whom? Olmsted, Parks, and Public Good

The purpose of this informal digital companion is to provide counterhegemonic context to the exhibit "Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscapes for the Public Good." This guide examines the roles of systemic racism and settler-colonialism in the creation of parks through land dispossession and forced removal of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities with special attention to Central Park and Yosemite National Park.

Drop by the Shuster Lab (Gordon Library, 1st floor) and make or browse zines! Zines ("zeens") are non professional, non commercial, self distributed magazine-like creations. They can be digital or paper, often combine words and images, and have rich social justice histories and potential. Come get creative, find community, and explore the digital & print worlds of zines! No prior experience or art expertise needed. Supplies provided. All are welcome! Learn more.

Zines exist at a precarious convergence of print and digital formats. Zinesters (or zine makers) may elect to create digital zines, digitize print zines, and/or distribute zines digitally. Archivists and librarians looking at zines of the past face ethical dilemmas when it comes to digitizing or not, as zines quite frequently contain intimate forms of self expression by marginalized people that was never intended to be widely accessible online.

This recurring program co-led by Lori Ostapowicz-Critz of the DS/WP and Gordon Library teams meets the last Tuesday of the month in the Shuster Lab to create, edit, and translate Wikipedia pages for people from underrepresented and marginalized identities. Everyone is welcome! There will be a short tutorial for new editors, so no previous editing experience is needed. Learn more about the Wikipedia Editing Community and upcoming events here.

This program series will feature WPI students, faculty, staff and external speakers. Register for our first event here.

Thursday, February 24, 4:00PM EST on Zoom: Explore the Ethics, Possibilities, & Limits of Digital Scholarship about Japanese American Internment Camps and the Holocaust

Students in Prof. Althea Danielski's course, Loaded Language: Discourse and Power in International English, will work with digital scholarship tools, including mapping and timelines, to analyze linguistic trends and origins. Digital Scholarship Lab & Outreach Coordinator Allie Fry will offer introductory workshops on the tools in class and one-on-one advisement throughout the term.

Students in Prof. Lindsay Davis' Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies will conduct zine making in the Shuster Lab as a part of their final projects.