Inverting the Wunderkammer: Rethinking the Digital Humanities through Botanic Histories and Archives

FAIN: HAA-284880-22

New York University (New York, NY 10012-1019)
Tega Brain (Project Director: June 2021 to present)
Elaine Ayers (Co Project Director: December 2021 to present)
Ahmed Ansari (Co Project Director: December 2021 to present)

Convening of a series of participatory design workshops to enhance discovery and use of the Mitten Collection of moss for humanities research.  

This submission to the NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant requests support for a Level I project titled Inverting the Wunderkammer: Rethinking the Digital Humanities through Botanic Histories and Archives, to be hosted by New York University (NYU) in partnership with the New York Botanical Gardens (NYBG). Building and expanding on histories of botany and responding to the ongoing violences of colonial collecting, preservation, and display at work in western cultural institutions, our project tackles the digital representation of a perhaps surprising plant that travels the globe in unusual ways at multiple scales: moss. Moss, in all of its miniscule, microscopic mundanity, might initially seem an odd choice of subject for a humanities-based project, especially after an arduous year of existential, ecological, and political challenges.