Thursday, October 3 2019, 12am Friday, October 4 2019, 12am Willson Center Digital Humanities Lab, 300 Main Library (3rd floor) On Thursday and Friday, October 3-4, over a dozen scholars from the United States, Canada, and Europe will meet in the University of Georgia’s DigiLab (Main Library, 3rd floor) to discuss the technical, archival, and historical dimensions of a proposed database and website of American prison records. Inspired in part by the relatively recent American phenomenon of “mass incarceration,” in part by the successful creation in the United Kingdom of The Digital Panopticon (www.digitalpanopticon.org), a searchable database of the records of over 90,000 men and women convicted of crimes between 1780 and 1925, the participants in this meeting will share their knowledge of American prison records, address the practical challenge of obtaining and processing large sets of prison data, and discuss the educational as well as political and ethical issues raised by the creation of a public database and website containing massive quantities of individual prison records. There will be two sessions – one each day – dedicated to brief individual presentations; most of the other sessions will feature open, informal conversations aimed at laying the groundwork for the realization of a database and website, tentatively entitled, Historical Profiles of American Incarceration. Meeting Agenda for October 3-4. This collaboration and meeting is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, and the Department of History. Please join us! Contact: Steve Soper ssoper@uga.edu #UGAWillson Center
