
Digital Literary Redlining
African American Anthologies, Digital Humanities, and the Canon
Amy E. Earhart(Author)
Stanford University Press
Published on 24. June 2025
Book
Hardback
226 pages
978-1-5036-3534-0 (ISBN)
Description
Though canon concerns seem to be a relic of 1990s academia, we are, once again, at a historical moment when there is resistance to teaching texts by writers of color and texts that deal with race, ethnicity and gender. At the same time, algorithmic bias scholars are locating systemic bias encoded into systems from policing software to housing software. Bringing these divergent areas together, Amy E. Earhart examines how technological and institutional infrastructures construct and deconstruct race, ethnicity and gender identities.
Focusing on two central infrastructures, the database, a commonly used technological infrastructure in the digital humanities, and the anthology, a scholarly and pedagogical infrastructure, Earhart considers how such seemingly naturalized infrastructures impact the representation and modeling of identity. The book draws upon the building and use of DALA, a collection of almost 100 years of generalist American and African American literature anthologies, constructed to investigate questions of identity and representation in literary anthologies and, by extension, the larger literary canon. The resulting examination, and its rigorous discussion of how identities are created and recreated within Black literary histories, has important implications for contemporary cultural and political debates about canon formation, literary scholarship, and the bias embedded in technological infrastructures.
Focusing on two central infrastructures, the database, a commonly used technological infrastructure in the digital humanities, and the anthology, a scholarly and pedagogical infrastructure, Earhart considers how such seemingly naturalized infrastructures impact the representation and modeling of identity. The book draws upon the building and use of DALA, a collection of almost 100 years of generalist American and African American literature anthologies, constructed to investigate questions of identity and representation in literary anthologies and, by extension, the larger literary canon. The resulting examination, and its rigorous discussion of how identities are created and recreated within Black literary histories, has important implications for contemporary cultural and political debates about canon formation, literary scholarship, and the bias embedded in technological infrastructures.
Reviews / Votes
"In Digital Literary Redlining, Earhart fuses African American literary studies and the digital humanities, highlighting how data-driven approaches can reshape our understanding of literary history. Earhart uncovers fresh perspectives on the processes that have influenced canon formation."-Howard Rambsy II, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
More details
Series
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Palo Alto
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Cloth
Illustrations
5 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
488 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5036-3534-0 (9781503635340)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Amy E. Earhart
Digital Literary Redlining
African American Anthologies, Digital Humanities, and the Canon
E-Book
06/2025
Stanford University Press
€142.99
Available for download
Person
Amy E. Earhart is Associate Professor, Department of English, Texas A&M University and author of Traces of the Old, Uses of the New: The Emergence of the Digital Literary Studies
Content
Acknowledgments
1. The Canon Wars Are Not Dead:Infrastructures of Digital Literary Studies
2. Can a Computer Be Racist? Digital Literary Redlining and the Database
3. Coding the Canon: Authorship, Identity, and Gender in the Database Column
4. Are the Results Useful? Exploring Black Literary History with DALA
5. Conclusion: Carework and Black Digital Literary Studies
Appendix 1: Further Digital Resources
Appendix 2: Anthologies Included in The Database of African American and Predominantly White American Literature Anthologies (DALA
Notes
Bibliography
Index
1. The Canon Wars Are Not Dead:Infrastructures of Digital Literary Studies
2. Can a Computer Be Racist? Digital Literary Redlining and the Database
3. Coding the Canon: Authorship, Identity, and Gender in the Database Column
4. Are the Results Useful? Exploring Black Literary History with DALA
5. Conclusion: Carework and Black Digital Literary Studies
Appendix 1: Further Digital Resources
Appendix 2: Anthologies Included in The Database of African American and Predominantly White American Literature Anthologies (DALA
Notes
Bibliography
Index