History
HASTAC is a voluntary consortium of leading researchers from over a dozen institutions who, together, have been co-developing software, hardware, and cyberinfrastructure systems since early 2003. It was founded by Cathy N. Davidson, former Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies and co-founder of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University, and by David Theo Goldberg, Director of the University of California's state-wide Humanities Research Institute. At a meeting of humanities leaders held by the Mellon Foundation in 2002, it was clear that Davidson and Goldberg had been working on a variety of projects with leading scientists and engineers dedicated to expanding the innovative uses of technology and to thinking together about social, ethical, and access issues of cyberinfrastructure in parallel with the process of creating it. Each of them also knew of leaders at other institutions who shared that vision and, within a few months, the HASTAC consortium was born.
More detail is available in the HASTAC Vision Paper.
Members have been meeting twice a year--writing grants, holding forums, and developing new research initiatives, both at their individual institutions and across them. These disparate projects often eventually culminate in a full network series of events.
Important Projects and Events
For the AY 2006-2007 InFormation Year, HASTAC coordinated a distributed series of seminars, partnerships, technological innovations, courses, lectures, and public demonstration projects across the full network. Each project required the partnership and communication between differing institutions (ranging from universities to community centers, libraries, public and private museums, supercomputing centers, and beyond.) These partnerships were also orchestrated across the disciplinary divides separating the computation, natural, and biological sciences from the social sciences, humanistic theory, history, and media and cultural studies. In many cases, these networked collaborations involved aesthetic productions, such as mediated arts, music, and dance. Finally, this year of events was co-produced through collaboration between typically top-ranking universities and second- and third- tier universities, colleges, community colleges, and minority serving institutions. This voluntary consortium spanning disciplines and dramatically different institutions was so rare that it inspired the studies of the late Professor Gerardine de Sanctis, an organizational management expert at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
HASTAC co-founders
CATHY N. DAVIDSON served as Duke University's (and the nation's) first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies from 1998 to June 2006. In this capacity, she had administrative responsibility for over sixty research programs that operate between and among Duke's nine academic and professional schools, and continues to lecture and consult widely on interdisciplinarity, collaboration, and innovative learning-applications of new technologies. She is currently the Interim Director and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English. She is past President of the American Studies Association and past editor of the journal American Literature. She is also a co-founder of HASTAC ("haystack"), Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, an international consortium of leading humanities organizations and science and technology institutes. HASTAC is an international network of educators and digital visionaries committed to the creative use and critical understanding of new technologies in life, learning, and society. Davidson is the author or editor of eighteen books. Among the most recent is Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (a collaboration with documentary photographer Bill Bamberger), recipient of the Mayflower Cup Award for Non-Fiction. The photographs from Closing traveled to museums around the U.S. for four years, including to the Smithsonian Museum of American History where the exhibit was viewed by over three million visitors. With Ada Norris, she edited American Indian Stories, Legends and Other Writings by Zitkala-Sa, the first Penguin Classic devoted to a Native American author. In 2004, she published an Expanded Edition of Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (originally published by OUP in 1986), including a monograph-length Introduction analyzing developments in literary and cultural studies over the last two decades. On the Board of Advisors for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's new initiative on Digital Media and Learning, she has recently begun work on a social history of the scientific and educational categories of "learning disabled" and "gifted." She recently published a new (and updated) edition of her classic work of travel writing, Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan and, along with David Theo Goldberg, has recently posted a first-draft of "The Future of Learning in the Digital Age" on the collaborative experimental website of the Institute for the Future of the book. Davidson and Goldberg will synthesize this into a multimedia web publication as well as into a traditional book publication sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. Davidson is also at work on a book on the Olaudah Equiano, an eighteenth-century former slave, writer, and abolitionist. Her "Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself," is forthcoming in Novel.
DAVID THEO GOLDBERG, PhD directs the system-wide University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). He also holds faculty appointments as Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and is a Fellow of the UCI Critical Theory Institute. Goldberg is a leading scholar of critical race theory and has delivered invited lectures on this subject at universities across the world (hear a KPFA interview). His work is the subject of "On the State of Race Theory: A Conversation with David Theo Goldberg" (Susan Searles Giroux, JAC 26:1-2, 2006, pp 11-66). Goldberg's research ranges over issues of political theory, race and racism, ethics, law and society, critical theory, cultural studies and, increasingly, digital humanities. He initiated the University of California (UC) Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Technology Council, a system-wide committee reporting to the UC Office of the President. He also serves on the UC-wide committee overseeing stewardship of research information and data (including libraries and digital libraries) for the university system.
Together with Cathy Davidson of Duke University, Goldberg founded the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC; www.hastac.org) to advance partnerships between the human sciences, arts, social sciences and technology and supercomputing interests for advancing research, teaching and public outreach. Together, Davidson and Goldberg have published essays promoting the creative and dynamic use of digital technologies to advance research, teaching and learning in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Goldberg has authored a number of books, including The Racial State (2002); Racial Subjects: Writing on Race in America (1997); Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (1993); and Ethical Theory and Social Issues: Historical Texts and Contemporary Readings (1989/1995); and has edited or co-edited several collections. Before coming to UCHRI, he served as Director of the School for Social Justice Studies at Arizona State University. Earlier in his career, Goldberg produced independent films and music videos (some of which aired on MTV), and with Michael Oblowitz co-directed an award-winning short film on South Africa, The Island.
