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Hannah Jacobs

Prof Library Staff
Duke University Libraries
90193, 411 Chapel Drive, Durham, NC 27708
411 Chapel Drive, Box 90193, Durham, NC 27701

Selected Presentations & Appearances


Critical Refusal, Slowness, and Openness: Possibilities and Challenges in Community-Oriented Digital Archival Initiatives - Digital Humanities 2025 · July 15, 2025 - July 18, 2025 International Meeting or Conference Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, NOVA FCSH, Lisbon, Portugal

In digital humanities, openness has become a default, bringing with it both possibilities for empowerment through knowledge distribution and challenges of replicating power imbalances and social oppression and repression. Two case studies demonstrate how critical refusal and slow scholarship, alongside indigenous data sovereignty, offer a shift in open approaches.

How to Teach with 3D Technologies - UVA Scholars' Lab DH Speaker Series · November 14, 2024 Invited Talk University of Virginia Libraries Scholars' Lab, Charlottesville, VA

3D visualization technologies are engaged across the digital humanities to document, imagine, and interpret historic sites, past events, cultural heritage objects, fictional spaces and narratives, and more. How can it be used to engage students’ learning? Where do we begin when teaching humanities with 3D technologies? This workshop will address these questions drawing on not only participants’ experiences but also a decade of pedagogical practice in Duke University’s Digital Art History & Visual Culture Research Lab. We’ll discuss how pedagogy and ethics can inform our approach to 3D platforms and methods in the classroom, and we’ll get hands-on experience with assignment design through an introductory 3D modeling tutorial using SketchUp for Web.

Digital Humanities Projects in Process; or Making Collaborative [Digital] Humanities Happen · March 2, 2023 Invited Talk National Humanities Center, Raleigh, NC
The Dictionary of Art Historians: Studying Art History at Scale - Mass Data Methodologies Workshop · December 9, 2022 Invited Talk Paul Mellon Centre, Virtual
On the Books: Jim Crow & Algorithms of Resistance - Special Libraries Association Annual Conference · July 31, 2022 - August 2, 2022 Invited Talk Special Libraries Association, Charlotte, NC
Digital Humanities & Project Management - Illinois Wesleyan DH Summer Camp · July 14, 2022 Instructional Course, Workshop, or Symposium Illinois Wesleyan University, Virtual
Network Visualizations as Research Environments: Intellectual & Personal Networks in the Dictionary of Art Historians - Digital Humanities Institute 2022: Digital Humanities and the Environment · April 21, 2022 Instructional Course, Workshop, or Symposium North Carolina Digital Humanities Collaborative, Virtual
Making Digital Art History Happen: Resources & Methods - Art Libraries Society of North America Annual Conference · April 5, 2022 - April 9, 2022 International Meeting or Conference Art Libraries Society of North America
A Gentle Introduction to Optical Character Recognition with PyTesseract - Text Analysis Pedagogy Institute · June 14, 2021 - June 18, 2021 Instructional Course, Workshop, or Symposium JSTOR Labs, Virtual
Roundtable: Setting Up a Digital Humanities Curriculum or Certificate - Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference · March 19, 2019 Invited Talk Renaissance Society of America, Toronto, CA

Outreach & Engaged Scholarship


Bass Connections Faculty Team Member - World Building at Duke in an Emerging Durham, 1924-32 · 2023 - 2025 Research
Bass Connections Contributor - Rosetta Reitz's Musical Archive of Care · 2023 - 2025 Research
Story+ Project Leader - Story+ · 2019 Projects & Field Work
Bass Connections Faculty Team Member - Building Duke: The Architectural History of Duke Campus from 1924 to the Present · 2018 - 2019 Projects & Field Work

Primary Theme: Information, Society & Culture

Building Duke is a new three-year initiative that will be implemented in three phases: data collection and organizing (first year); data analysis and interpretation (second year); data output (third year). It will explore the conception, design and construction of the Duke University campus as well as its changes and expansions. Principal aims are to offer an historical narrative of the physical environment that the Duke community inhabits and to explore the desires and visions that have materialized in the making of the campus. This project is especially relevant at a cultural and political moment when physical space and its historical connotations are at the center of a heated public debate. The three-year initiative will culminate in a relational database of textual and visual archival material on the architectural history of Duke campus; an interactive digital 3D model of campus developments since the 1920s; a series of multimedia thematic narratives on history of the campus; and a series of augmented reality tours.