CFP: Association for Computers and the Humanities

The second annual Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) conference will take place virtually on July 22-23, 2021. (ACH plans to host an in-person conference with a virtual component in 2022 in Houston, Texas.)

Conference Description

ACH is the United States-based constituent organization in the Alliance for Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). The ACH 2021 conference, in partnership with the University of Houston’s US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH) program and University Libraries, Texas Southern University, Rice University, Texas A&M College Station, Texas A&M Prairie View, UH Clear Lake, UH Downtown, and Houston Community College,  provides a forum for conversations on an expansive definition of digital humanities in a broad array of subject areas, methods, and communities of practice.

ACH recognizes that this work is inherently and inextricably sociopolitical, and thus especially welcomes proposals that emphasize social justice in the context of

anti-racist work, Black studies, Latinx studies, Indigenous studies, cultural and critical ethnic studies, intersectional feminism, postcolonial and decolonial studies, and queer interventions in digital studies.

Areas of engagement include but are not limited to:

• Social justice
• Digital surveillance
• Environmental humanities & climate justice
• Computational and digital approaches to humanistic research and pedagogy
• Digital pedagogy, research, and activism during COVID-19
• Digital media, art, literature, history, music, film, and games
• Digital librarianship
• Digital humanities tools and infrastructures
• Humanistic research on digital objects and cultures
• Knowledge infrastructures
• Physical computing
• Resource creation, curation, and engagement
• Use of digital technologies to write, publish, and review scholarship

As an organization committed to cross-disciplinary engagement, we welcome interdisciplinary proposals. We also are especially interested in receiving proposals from participants with a range of expertise and from a variety of roles, including alt-ac positions, employment outside of higher education, and graduate students. We further invite proposals from participants who are newcomers to digital humanities.

Conference Proposals

Proposals will be submitted using ConfTool. Please create a new account to submit your proposal.

Given that ACH2021 is a virtual conference, we especially encourage those proposing sessions to consider formats beyond the traditional 20-minute paper panels, such as roundtables, multi-speaker panels, digital posters, lightning talks, installations, and performances. When proposing a session, we ask that you describe your session type and indicate a preferred time length for the session. Suggestions are below, but we encourage proposers to move beyond them and to think creatively about other possibilities. Finally, in an effort to maximize a diverse set of participants, we will limit presenters to two events (panels/roundtables/workshops).

Proposals should include:

• Abstract: 250-word abstract for individual submissions and 500-word proposals for multi-speaker submissions.
• Requested time length
• List of participants
• Audience
• Format for the session
• 3-5 keywords

While proposals should be clearly linked to existing scholarly debates, formal citations are not required except for direct quotation. Submissions will be evaluated using fully anonymous peer review, so please omit identifying information, including author name and affiliation, in the narrative of the proposal when you upload to ConfTool.

While our CFP has been released in English, Spanish, and French, we welcome proposals for contributions in other languages. Proposals will be reviewed in the language of submission. Regardless of the language of your proposal, please ensure that your five keywords are in English to facilitate program scheduling.

Please note that for the purposes of scheduling, we may suggest an alternative length or collaboration between related proposals. While there is no limit on the number of submissions, the committee will not normally schedule more than two presentations from one primary author.

Suggested Proposal Types and Duration

The proposal types and durations below are suggestions. We eagerly welcome alternatives.

Workshops (3 hours to full-day to take place the day before first conference day): In-depth hands-on sessions led by presenters with expertise, technical or otherwise, in an emerging topic or methodology of broad interest to the ACH community.

Panels (1 hour): Engaging sessions that facilitate dialogue between presentations that are largely independent, highlighting connections between projects, methods, or themes.

Papers (10-15 minutes): Dynamic presentations that share experiments, works in progress, or sustained reflections and outcomes of more complete projects while engaging a range of participants and fostering connections and dialogue.

Roundtables (1 hour): Sessions for which speakers provide brief interventions or framing on a cohesive set of issues, keywords, methods, and/or themes, followed by open discussion among speakers and the audience.

Lightning Talks (5 minutes): Highly-focused presentations that succinctly introduce a topic, method, tool, project, or work-in-progress to catalyze ideas and foster follow-up discussion.

Posters (poster session): Poster proposals present work on any relevant topic or offer project tool, and software demonstrations in any stage of development.

Installations and Performances (prerecorded): Art work, creative data visualizations, performances, demonstrations, and other critical interventions that engage conference issues, methods and themes.

Proposal Review and Notification

ACH 2021 submissions will undergo double-blind peer review. Please remove all identifying information from your proposal submission including author name and affiliation.