Roopika Risam
Biographic Data
| ID | 275232 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Roopika Risam |
| GIVEN NAMES | Roopika |
| FAMILY NAME | Risam |
| SIGNATURE | RISAM R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Salem State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0742-7352 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 39 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Race, Data, and the Digital Humanities
Digital humanities have tremendous potential for diversifying the digital cultural record, especially for the nineteenth century. This essay examines areas for growth, including representation, tools and methodologies, and data curation. Risam draws on her own scholarly contributions to demonstrate avenues for increased attention to race, data, and representation in Victorian Studies
The Forking Paths of Digital Humanities in Asian Studies
This article responds to the “Digital Humanities in/and Asian Studies” forum, situating it within broader genealogies of Asian digital humanities and arguing for a multilayered approach to understanding its histories, networks, and organizations. We offer two complementary trajectories: first, tracing the historical intersections of Asian studies and computing—from early initiatives such as the Munkwa Project and the China Biographical Database t…
Introduction
Blogs, tweets, and Insta
Exploring the work of Hanif Kureishi, Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Teju Cole, and nayyirah waheed, this essay examines digital parataxis in the work of South Asian and Black diaspora writers. These writers create content on social media to engage audiences in complex ways, not exclusively motivated by marketing and literary celebrity. The social media content they produce are best understood as digital paratexts that become new, essent…
Indigenizing Decolonial Media Theory
This essay examines how “decolonization” has become a buzzword, arguing that its trajectory follows that of “intersectionality,” another term popularized in media spaces and embraced by white leftist activists both in and outside of the academy. I propose that discursive activism online can be understood through two modes: extractive currency and redistributive currency. Exposing extractive media practices, this essay considers how “decolonizatio…
Introduction
Our Time Is Now (It’s Always Been Our Time)
In this reflection, I discuss my path into digital humanities scholarship through Black studies. I share how I became involved in digital humanities in the 2000s as a graduate student who found that it offered answers to methodological problems I was encountering in my research. Then, I examine how early career colleagues and I banded together to create a space for Black studies and other ethnic studies fields within digital humanities in the ear…
Borders of Affect
This article discusses how aesthetic representations of immigrant detention generate affects and empathy in U.S. college students. It describes a qualitative study that suggests that aesthetic representations provoke affective responses and, to some degree, empathy for migrants, in turn contributing to these students’ civic engagement. These responses speak to the presence of what I term “border affects,” a dimension of affective cartography that…
Our Paratextual Presents, Our Computational Literary Futures
How will we contend with born-digital texts, in archives and beyond, as artifacts of literary history in the future? Looking from the present forward, this essay considers the significance and challenges of born-digital texts for computational literary studies. Briefly exploring the new media paratexts that postcolonial writers are now creating, Risam asks what it would take to ensure that our capacity for computational analysis in the future ref…
Abolitionist Pedagogies, Pedagogical Labor
Discussion| October 01 2022 Abolitionist Pedagogies, Pedagogical Labor: Calls for a Critical Dialogue in Ethnic Studies Review Steven Gotzler, Steven Gotzler University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Vineeta Singh, Vineeta Singh Virginia Commonwealth University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Roopika Risam Roopika Risam Dartmouth …
Reframing Grading, Rethinking Rigor
The author describes and presents her model of contract grading, a teaching strategy and practice that shifts student learning and pedagogy away from carceral and colonialist learning methods. The article provides a brief explanation of the value of this technique for teachers and students, and offers concrete assessment tools
Micro-disclosures for Macro-erasures
This essay explores how we might account for the influence of #MeToo in the academy and the extent to which we can understand the power of these utterances as a form of narrative agency expressed through digital life writing. Drawing on a blend of quantitative and qualitative analysis of #MeToo-related tweets about academia, the essay first examines how narrative agency over sexual harassment and violence in higher education is expressed through …
The Digital Black Atlantic
This timely collection of essays about the relationship between digital humanities and Black Atlantic studies offers critical insights into race, migration, media, and scholarly knowledge production. It spans the African diasporaâ s rangeâ from Africa to North America, Europe, and the Caribbeanâ while its essayists span academic fieldsâ from history and literary studies to musicology, game studies, and library and information studies
The Future of Land-Grab Universities
The Future of Land-Grab Universities Meredith McCoy (bio), Roopika Risam (bio), and Jennifer Guiliano (bio) the land-grab universities (lgu) project compellingly conveys how nearly eleven million acres of land were stolen from almost 250 tribes, bands, and communities to establish land-grant universities.1 In their work identifying nearly all tracts covered under the Morrill Land Grant Acts, the LGU team connected Indigenous nations with their tr…
South Asian Digital Humanities
South Asian Digital Humanities
South Asian Digital Humanities Then and Now
The introduction to this special issue of South Asian Review assesses the history and present of South Asian studies and digital humanities. The essay begins by examining the South Asian Literary Association’s early support for this scholarship, both through conferences panels and publications. It further details the emergence of initiatives such as the Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) that have contributed to research at the nexus of …
Beyond the Migrant “Problem
An area that has received comparatively little attention, in both postcolonial digital humanities and its overlap with studies of media and migration, is how geo-spatial data visualizations contribute to the othering of the migrant and how they can be used, in turn, to challenge the instantiation of the migrant as a “problem.” Positioning data visualizations of migration as a narrative genre, this article considers how data visualizations of migr…
New Digital Worlds
Diversity work and digital carework in higher education
This essay considers digital carework as a frame for the labor required by diversity initiatives in higher education. It situates diversity work in relation to affective labor and uses digital humanities as a case to explore how the emergence of information and communication technologies magnifies the labor demand. Finally, it considers how this hidden labor has important consequences for scholars who undertake diversity work
Introduction
The following introduction locates the special issue within digital labor studies, Internet studies, and gender and sexualities studies, as well as contextualizing the project in relation to current events and popular debates
Now you see them
Images of Syrian refugees taking selfies have circulated throughout the news media, yielding a range of responses, from dismay to disgust. An exploration of postcolonial digital humanities methods, this article brings together quantitative textual analysis of news media articles from the United States and United Kingdom, postcolonial theory, and selfie scholarship to explore the representation of Syrian refugees in the news media and their self-r…
New Digital Worlds
Toxic femininity 4.0
This paper examines constructions of toxic femininity within fourth-wave feminism. Taking hashtag feminism as its focus, this article contends that charges of toxicity lobbed online reproduce divisive dynamics that have shaped earlier trends within feminist movements in the United States. It further suggests that Twitter, as a platform, amplifies deep discomfort with theories of intersectional feminism while shaping how normative gender is reprod…
South Asian Digital Humanities
While digital humanities is relatively new within South Asian studies, it offers methods and tools that can supplement scholarship on South Asia. This article identifies the stakes and challenges of digital humanities for South Asians. It considers projects in literary scholarship and cultural heritage that have engaged digital methods, emphasizing how digital representation negotiates the challenges of decentralized archives, unheard and subalte…
Now you see them
Images of Syrian refugees taking selfies have circulated throughout the news media, yielding a range of responses, from dismay to disgust. An exploration of postcolonial digital humanities methods, this article brings together quantitative textual analysis of news media articles from the United States and United Kingdom, postcolonial theory, and selfie scholarship to explore the representation of Syrian refugees in the news media and their self-r…
Beyond the Migrant “Problem
An area that has received comparatively little attention, in both postcolonial digital humanities and its overlap with studies of media and migration, is how geo-spatial data visualizations contribute to the othering of the migrant and how they can be used, in turn, to challenge the instantiation of the migrant as a “problem.” Positioning data visualizations of migration as a narrative genre, this article considers how data visualizations of migr…
South Asian Digital Humanities
While digital humanities is relatively new within South Asian studies, it offers methods and tools that can supplement scholarship on South Asia. This article identifies the stakes and challenges of digital humanities for South Asians. It considers projects in literary scholarship and cultural heritage that have engaged digital methods, emphasizing how digital representation negotiates the challenges of decentralized archives, unheard and subalte…
Abolitionist Pedagogies, Pedagogical Labor
Discussion| October 01 2022 Abolitionist Pedagogies, Pedagogical Labor: Calls for a Critical Dialogue in Ethnic Studies Review Steven Gotzler, Steven Gotzler University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Vineeta Singh, Vineeta Singh Virginia Commonwealth University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Roopika Risam Roopika Risam Dartmouth …
Borders of Affect
This article discusses how aesthetic representations of immigrant detention generate affects and empathy in U.S. college students. It describes a qualitative study that suggests that aesthetic representations provoke affective responses and, to some degree, empathy for migrants, in turn contributing to these students’ civic engagement. These responses speak to the presence of what I term “border affects,” a dimension of affective cartography that…
Reframing Grading, Rethinking Rigor
The author describes and presents her model of contract grading, a teaching strategy and practice that shifts student learning and pedagogy away from carceral and colonialist learning methods. The article provides a brief explanation of the value of this technique for teachers and students, and offers concrete assessment tools
Micro-disclosures for Macro-erasures
This essay explores how we might account for the influence of #MeToo in the academy and the extent to which we can understand the power of these utterances as a form of narrative agency expressed through digital life writing. Drawing on a blend of quantitative and qualitative analysis of #MeToo-related tweets about academia, the essay first examines how narrative agency over sexual harassment and violence in higher education is expressed through …
Revising History and Re-authouring the Left in the Postcolonial Digital Archive
Left History features articles from a variety of theoretical approaches; these include feminist, marxist, and postmodernist deliberations on topics such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, culture, the state, labour, the environment, theory, and method
Toxic femininity 4.0
This paper examines constructions of toxic femininity within fourth-wave feminism. Taking hashtag feminism as its focus, this article contends that charges of toxicity lobbed online reproduce divisive dynamics that have shaped earlier trends within feminist movements in the United States. It further suggests that Twitter, as a platform, amplifies deep discomfort with theories of intersectional feminism while shaping how normative gender is reprod…
South Asian Digital Humanities
While digital humanities is relatively new within South Asian studies, it offers methods and tools that can supplement scholarship on South Asia. This article identifies the stakes and challenges of digital humanities for South Asians. It considers projects in literary scholarship and cultural heritage that have engaged digital methods, emphasizing how digital representation negotiates the challenges of decentralized archives, unheard and subalte…
New Digital Worlds
Diversity work and digital carework in higher education
This essay considers digital carework as a frame for the labor required by diversity initiatives in higher education. It situates diversity work in relation to affective labor and uses digital humanities as a case to explore how the emergence of information and communication technologies magnifies the labor demand. Finally, it considers how this hidden labor has important consequences for scholars who undertake diversity work
Introduction
The following introduction locates the special issue within digital labor studies, Internet studies, and gender and sexualities studies, as well as contextualizing the project in relation to current events and popular debates
Now you see them
Images of Syrian refugees taking selfies have circulated throughout the news media, yielding a range of responses, from dismay to disgust. An exploration of postcolonial digital humanities methods, this article brings together quantitative textual analysis of news media articles from the United States and United Kingdom, postcolonial theory, and selfie scholarship to explore the representation of Syrian refugees in the news media and their self-r…
New Digital Worlds
South Asian Digital Humanities Then and Now
The introduction to this special issue of South Asian Review assesses the history and present of South Asian studies and digital humanities. The essay begins by examining the South Asian Literary Association’s early support for this scholarship, both through conferences panels and publications. It further details the emergence of initiatives such as the Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) that have contributed to research at the nexus of …
Beyond the Migrant “Problem
An area that has received comparatively little attention, in both postcolonial digital humanities and its overlap with studies of media and migration, is how geo-spatial data visualizations contribute to the othering of the migrant and how they can be used, in turn, to challenge the instantiation of the migrant as a “problem.” Positioning data visualizations of migration as a narrative genre, this article considers how data visualizations of migr…
South Asian Digital Humanities
South Asian Digital Humanities
The Digital Black Atlantic
This timely collection of essays about the relationship between digital humanities and Black Atlantic studies offers critical insights into race, migration, media, and scholarly knowledge production. It spans the African diasporaâ s rangeâ from Africa to North America, Europe, and the Caribbeanâ while its essayists span academic fieldsâ from history and literary studies to musicology, game studies, and library and information studies
The Future of Land-Grab Universities
The Future of Land-Grab Universities Meredith McCoy (bio), Roopika Risam (bio), and Jennifer Guiliano (bio) the land-grab universities (lgu) project compellingly conveys how nearly eleven million acres of land were stolen from almost 250 tribes, bands, and communities to establish land-grant universities.1 In their work identifying nearly all tracts covered under the Morrill Land Grant Acts, the LGU team connected Indigenous nations with their tr…
Indigenizing Decolonial Media Theory
This essay examines how “decolonization” has become a buzzword, arguing that its trajectory follows that of “intersectionality,” another term popularized in media spaces and embraced by white leftist activists both in and outside of the academy. I propose that discursive activism online can be understood through two modes: extractive currency and redistributive currency. Exposing extractive media practices, this essay considers how “decolonizatio…
Introduction
Our Time Is Now (It’s Always Been Our Time)
In this reflection, I discuss my path into digital humanities scholarship through Black studies. I share how I became involved in digital humanities in the 2000s as a graduate student who found that it offered answers to methodological problems I was encountering in my research. Then, I examine how early career colleagues and I banded together to create a space for Black studies and other ethnic studies fields within digital humanities in the ear…
Borders of Affect
This article discusses how aesthetic representations of immigrant detention generate affects and empathy in U.S. college students. It describes a qualitative study that suggests that aesthetic representations provoke affective responses and, to some degree, empathy for migrants, in turn contributing to these students’ civic engagement. These responses speak to the presence of what I term “border affects,” a dimension of affective cartography that…
Our Paratextual Presents, Our Computational Literary Futures
How will we contend with born-digital texts, in archives and beyond, as artifacts of literary history in the future? Looking from the present forward, this essay considers the significance and challenges of born-digital texts for computational literary studies. Briefly exploring the new media paratexts that postcolonial writers are now creating, Risam asks what it would take to ensure that our capacity for computational analysis in the future ref…
Abolitionist Pedagogies, Pedagogical Labor
Discussion| October 01 2022 Abolitionist Pedagogies, Pedagogical Labor: Calls for a Critical Dialogue in Ethnic Studies Review Steven Gotzler, Steven Gotzler University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Vineeta Singh, Vineeta Singh Virginia Commonwealth University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Roopika Risam Roopika Risam Dartmouth …
Reframing Grading, Rethinking Rigor
The author describes and presents her model of contract grading, a teaching strategy and practice that shifts student learning and pedagogy away from carceral and colonialist learning methods. The article provides a brief explanation of the value of this technique for teachers and students, and offers concrete assessment tools
Micro-disclosures for Macro-erasures
This essay explores how we might account for the influence of #MeToo in the academy and the extent to which we can understand the power of these utterances as a form of narrative agency expressed through digital life writing. Drawing on a blend of quantitative and qualitative analysis of #MeToo-related tweets about academia, the essay first examines how narrative agency over sexual harassment and violence in higher education is expressed through …
Blogs, tweets, and Insta
Exploring the work of Hanif Kureishi, Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Teju Cole, and nayyirah waheed, this essay examines digital parataxis in the work of South Asian and Black diaspora writers. These writers create content on social media to engage audiences in complex ways, not exclusively motivated by marketing and literary celebrity. The social media content they produce are best understood as digital paratexts that become new, essent…
Introduction
Race, Data, and the Digital Humanities
Digital humanities have tremendous potential for diversifying the digital cultural record, especially for the nineteenth century. This essay examines areas for growth, including representation, tools and methodologies, and data curation. Risam draws on her own scholarly contributions to demonstrate avenues for increased attention to race, data, and representation in Victorian Studies
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (13 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Art (8 works) · Media studies (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Digital humanities (6 works) · Digital Humanities and Scholarship (6 works) · Engineering (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works)