Black Digital Studies

CTL-E-6345 · Practice · other · contemporary

PROVISIONAL evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07531 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6345.

Black digital studies is a burgeoning field at the intersection of Black studies and digital inquiry. A University of Washington course description says it "bridges and intersects two interdisciplinary fields—black studies and digital humanities," examining how African Americans and others have shared, disseminated and preserved their stories, and interrogating power, memory and resistance in storytelling. At the University of Maryland, the field is described as scholarship at "the intersection of race and technology." Catherine Knight Steele's focus there "encompasses the ways that technology—both its possibilities and impediments it can create—impacts African Americans." Maryland's Black Communication and Technology Lab, part of the multi-institutional DISCO network, builds research hubs, courses and a mentoring pipeline in the field. Steele's related framing, digital Black feminism, "insists we centralize Black women in our definition of and history of digital technology."

Notes

STAGING: temp id EB-01; head assigns CTL-E id at merge. TYPING FLAG: proposed type Topic has NO entry in schema.json entity_types and no relationship type touches Topic; typed Practice/other per the live precedent for abstract phenomena (CTL-E-0758 Physical Deterioration, CTL-E-0759 Institutional Closure, CTL-E-0760 Building Demolition, all Practice/other) — for the classification sitting. GRADE BASIS: Provisional — institutional use is multiply verified, but no single canonical definition exists across sources (UW, UMD and New School frame it differently), and coinage of the field term is NOT attributed to Steele on this evidence (her framing is digital Black feminism). STATISTIC: $4.8 million Mellon Foundation grant (Maryland Today, 16 April 2021) for the BCaT Lab / DISCO network, carried in the Maryland source citation. CURATOR'S JUDGMENT (DRAFT): The field is the packet's connective tissue: half the records in EB-A are its people, books, or infrastructure. Filed as a concept record so the graph can hold the field itself, not only its members.

Relationships

• Catherine Knight Steele — related to
  Steele's research focus is Black digital studies and she directs Maryland's Black Communication and Technology Lab in the field, per Maryland Today and her UMD profiles.
• Kim Gallon — related to
  Gallon's 'Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities' (2016) is a field-defining statement of Black digital humanities/studies, per Brown DSI and the Tulane speaker listing.
• Safiya Noble — related to
  Noble's scholarship on race and digital systems (Algorithms of Oppression; UCLA Center on Race & Digital Justice) is core Black digital studies work, per her UCLA profiles.

Referenced by

• Black Twitter — related to → this record
• Technology of recovery — related to → this record

Sources

• University of Washington, AFRAM 498B course flyer (accessed 2026-10-29): 'Black digital studies is a burgeoning and dynamic field. It bridges and intersects two interdisciplinary fields—black studies and digital humanities.' (build store)
• Maryland Today, University of Maryland (accessed 2026-10-29): 'will fund a new lab at the University of Maryland to facilitate research and scholarship at the intersection of race and technology'; 'Steele's focus, Black digital studies, encompasses the ways that technology—both its possibilities and impediments it can create—impacts African Americans.' Grant statistic: 'A $4.8 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will fund a new lab at the University of Maryland' (reported 16 April 2021). (primary source · build store)
• Steele, Digital Black Feminism, Introduction (accessed 2026-10-29): 'Digital Black feminism insists we centralize Black women in our definition of and history of digital technology.' (primary source · build store)
• The New School course catalog (accessed 2026-10-29): 'In Digital Black Studies, students will look specifically at the place where questions of race, Blackness, and coloniality intersect with the problems of digital and virtual life.' (primary source · build store)

More practice records

• 47th Street shopping and strolling — Bronzeville's Black consumer corridor
• Archival silence
• Barbershop as Black public sphere — debate, news circulation, political talk
• Beauty shop as Black women's political and economic space
• Bid whist and spades — card-game culture at gatherings
• Black Code Studies

Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-6345 · Combined Graph record U-07531 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 5 mapped relationships.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

Cite this record

Citation guidance for teachers, journalists, and funders: How to Cite Us.

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.