For my project, we’ve assessed the prototypes of the StoryMaps do not accurately reflect how we would prefer to display our information online. Clara and I have been talking about moving to a website, especially for long-term use. To have greater control over how the website will look and function, Tierney and Libby suggested I look into Elementor Pro, a paid plug-in on WordPress, that will allow me more creative freedom to design the website. I thought this was a good option for the next step in the project.

I am particularly curious in how I can use a website to make it feel like there is interpretation and interaction to be done. I’m currently writing an article written in Digital Humanities Quarterly, recommended to me by my project lead, about the importance of humanistic inquiry in these digital humanities projects. It’s easy to want to digitize something to reasons of keeping up with our modern world, but the author makes a good point that humanistic inquiry is interpretative & a digital humanities project should not obstruct but give way to that. Modern-day conceptions about data and its distance from human fallibility can make a digital humanities project feel more solidly factual than interpretative. I’m wondering how I can make this website feel open to interpretation and analysis.

There is a balance one needs to strike between the personal and the academic. Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies is a discipline that invites the personal. I wanted to find a way to use Elementor Pro to make this website invite the personal without making it feel like it’s lacking academic rigor and academic without making it feel like it’s spouting simple, direct truths. I was considering “engulfing” the pages with borders of feministic cartographies in history as an homage to this labor but also for aesthetic reasons. I’m still figuring out formatting and information present, but Elementor Pro will definitely make it easy for me to experiment with and apply some of my ideas.