AADHum = Black Digital and Experimental Humanities at UMD

09/17/2025

Repost from
•
Claim your seat today! We’re excited that Dr. Ruha Benjamin will speak at the Riggs Alumni Center on September 25 at 2 p.m. She is the voice we need to hear right now! Inspired by her book Imaginations: A Manifesto, where she asks us to engage in collective dreaming—an act that meets the moment we are in right now.

Dr. Benjamin is a transdisciplinary scholar, writer and educator, currently Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Founding Director of the Ida B. Wells JUST Data Lab, and author of four books, Imagination: A Manifesto (2024), Viral Justice (2022), Race After Technology (2019), and People’s Science (2013), and editor of Captivating Technology (2019). She is just all around: ALL THE THINGS, and we are honored that she will join us this fall for keynote address and a fireside chat.

This event will also include a workshop for youth activists/organizers to think collectively about their archive and the legacy they want to leave behind, what their stories will say to the next generation. Sign up for the Ghosts in the Archives workshop with special guest facilitators!

We would like to extend a huge thank you to the Mellon Foundation, The African American Digital and Experimental Humanities (AADHum) at UMD, MICA at UMD, UMD Libraries, and US Latino Studies for their generous support.

And a special shout-out to Shift Collective for serving as our fiscal sponsor, which has allowed us the space to move differently—and engage in such significant work right NOW.

Visit standarchives.com for more info!

09/11/2025

It's fall and we are back online!

AADHum and its affiliated labs, NarraSpaceXR and the Soft Souls Foundry, is hosting a series of events for this year's Next / Now festival at UMD. You can find us at NarraSpace (housed at MITH), AADHum in Taliaferro, and SSF at the Sandbox, on the 2nd floor of Iribe! Andrew W. Smith will also be pre...

04/13/2025

What would happen if Black Twitter had control over its own algorithms? Come find out - the creator of Blacksky Rudy Fraser joins AADHum on Tues, Apr. 22nd + Wed, Apr. 23rd! Swipe thru for details + RSVP at link in bio ⇢

TUES. 4/22
💻 From 2:30-4pm, will leads wkshp on content moderation. We will meet at MITH - 0301 Hornbake
🌌 From 5:30pm-7pm, Fraser will offer a talk on black social media, moderation, + digital infrastructure. We will meet at MITH - 0301 Hornbake

WED. 4/23
🧑🏽‍💻 At 5:30pm, Fraser will lead a workshop on creating and managing custom feeds — no coding skills necessary! We will meet at AADHum - 1104 Taliaferro

04/02/2025

Join us April 3, 4-5:30pm in MITH to learn about AADHum faculty Andrew W. Smith’s latest work! In this talk, Smith investigates the affordances of quantum computing as a method for creative writing. Drawing from the practice of utilizing Markov Chains in computational poetry, Smith’s research reimagines poetic structures through the lens of quantum mechanics, leveraging principles such as superposition, interference, and entanglement to produce dynamic, probabilistic language.

We can’t wait to hear more… see you there!

03/14/2025

We are thrilled to share that on Thurs, Mar. 27th, transdisciplinary artist, designer, & educator Curry J. Hackett will visit AADHum! link in bio →

💻 From 1-2:30pm, will offer an image + video generation workshop. This workshop will use free AI tools, so bring a laptop or tablet! We will be meeting at MITH (Hornbake 0301)

🌱 At 5pm, Hackett will join UMD’s Dr. Jayson Porter to talk about artificial intelligence, eco-poetics, and Black life at Busboys and Poets Hyattsville.

> A trained architect, Hackett focuses on Black vernacular architecture— how communities use their own cultural and material resources to create and keep a sense of place.

Currently, he is also experimenting with using AI and speculative design to visualize new pasts and futures, for example hair salons in botanical gardens and Black women from Alabama building a skyscraper with quilted façade.

Hackett is also known for several public art pieces around the DMV, for instance the DC High Water Mark Project at the Wharf and the Howard Theatre Walk of Fame!

03/13/2025

🛰️ On Feb 25, AADHum hosted an immersive book talk w. & —bringing ’s visionary anthology Black Metal to life. Black Metal reimagines space travel as a new protocol for understanding both the external world and the inner self.
🔮 The journey didn’t stop there! The next day, Melenciano & Hartley led AADHum in the Black Metal Starship Program Design Hackathon, challenging participants to create the missing elements of an interstellar voyage.
📸 Swipe for highlights from both events! pc: Jehnae Linkins & Katelin Ten

03/13/2025

🛰️ On Feb 25, AADHum hosted an immersive book talk w. & —bringing ’s visionary anthology Black Metal to life. Black Metal reimagines space travel as a new protocol for understanding both the external world and the inner self.
🔮 The journey didn’t stop there! The next day, Melenciano & Hartley led AADHum in the Black Metal Starship Program Design Hackathon, challenging participants to create the missing elements of an interstellar voyage.
📸 Swipe for highlights from both events! pc: Jehnae Linkins & Katelin Ten

02/10/2025

*UPDATE: this event has a new date! Due to inclement weather, we’ve rescheduled, but we can’t wait to see you on February 25th :)

🚀 You are officially invited to the Black Metal Starship Program! On Tuesday, February 25th from 5-7PM, artist and creative technologist Ari Melenciano will join AADHum at Hyattsville for a public book talk and film presentation.

🛸 Founder of the social institution Afrotectopia, works at the nexus of art, design, technology, and culture. She will join us with artist and co-author to discuss Black Metal, a special limited edition anthology and art book. It uses Afrofuturist speculative design to push the boundaries of space travel, science fiction, Black culture, art, technology, and spirituality.

🔭 We welcome you to join us, to travel inside yourself, and to make space for futures here on earth, in the body, and beyond. Come find out who you are without constraints!

06/14/2024

In many ways our open labs are at the heart of AADHum, and nothing’s better than taking our show on the road! 🤸🏾‍♀️

Microprocessors, some coding, some painting— We can’t wait to tell you all about workshopping with high schoolers at the Hyattsville public library this week!

In the meantime check out this week’s team. We come prepared 👾💅🏾

06/03/2024

Applications Open ⇢ Social Media Corps fellowship! Due June 14, 2024 -

Applications are open for the 2024 AADHum Social Media Corps short-term fellowship program!

04/22/2024

We are so so SO looking forward to welcoming these folk to MITH & AADHum this week.

Join Jessica Marie Johnson and the Keywords for Black Louisiana team for a meeting of big minds n' big hearts, doing the scholarship our souls need today more than ever.

In person on Tues. 4/23 @ 5:15pm | Hornbake 0301 (MITH)

01/04/2024

Welcome [unhurried] {witness}!

Seren Sensei's project creates a "a digital exploration and a visual representation of analog games such as card games, dice, dominoes, paper crafts, and rhyming hand games/hand motions, as healing cultural process among Black Americans."

✨ Come play!

seren sensei's {unhurried} [witness] is a digital exploration and visual representation of analog games such as card games, dice, dominoes, paper crafts, and rhyming hand games/hand motions, as healing cultural process among Black Americans. This digital experience explores how the observation, even...