Acknowledgments

The editors are greatly appreciative of the work and generosity of the contributors. The initial call for contributions began with an ambitious timeline in 2019. No one anticipated the emergence of a global pandemic or the short- and long-term impact of the fear, loss, and hope that ensued. We are grateful to the contributors for continuing with this project, providing feedback through a peer-to-peer review process, revising, and then incorporating feedback from external peer reviewers over the past four years. Along with working to make sure the chapters resonate with each other and the debate, we heeded the advice of Sarah Ahmed, who encouraged the use of citations as a means of acknowledgment and as a navigation aid. Thank you to the authors for doing the extra work of engaging with a range of scholarship that traversed disciplinary, geographical, and methodological boundaries to enrich and expand the debates. The volume is richer and more intellectually vibrant because of your engagement.

Our personal lives and embodied experiences also shape our scholarship. Along the way, collaborators experienced pain from the loss of a loved one, along with incredible joy with the birth of children. Timelines and deadlines came and went. This was our decision as editors. No chapter is more important than the health and wellness of each other. Thank you to everyone for your patience and understanding. We thank series editors Matt Gold and Lauren Klein, whose constant support and enthusiasm for the volume helped us navigate these past four years when the uncertainty of 2020 and 2021 seemed indefinite. Thank you as well to Anne Carter, Leah Pennywark, and the University of Minnesota Press for their support, particularly working to get the book to press under a tight timeline.

Our work as editors was possible because of the support of our institutions, families, and friends. Jessica Marie Johnson is grateful to the community of researchers, artists, and community members who make up LifexCode: DH against Enclosure, including cofounder Dr. Christina Thomas. Thank you to the Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Historic Publications and Records Commissions for supporting the kind of work that makes it possible to envision and revise computational humanities and debate the digital humanities, including projects like the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, Black beyond Data, and Keywords for Black Louisiana. Jessica’s work on this volume is dedicated to Mary Nuñez née Matos, who found her way home over the course of the making of this volume, and the teachers and youth scholars of the New Generations Scholars and African Diaspora Alliance of Baltimore, who teach us all what it means to break and abolish all enclosures. David Mimno is grateful to Cornell Information Science for proving that computational science and humanities scholarship are not only compatible but exciting. Jennifer Mimno has been the best partner for this journey. The broader digital humanities community has provided endless opportunities to learn, to be challenged, and to make a difference. The University of Richmond School of Arts and Sciences and Lauren Tilton’s department, Rhetoric and Communication Studies, have from day one been supportive of digital humanities and open to a range of scholarly forms that animates computational humanities. There is no way to fully describe what it means to work among an interdisciplinary, liberal arts community that seeks to support and amplify new forms and avenues of scholarship; it lends a kind of experimental and creative freedom that models the radical futures that are possible within higher education. Lauren Tilton is deeply appreciative of her family, including her intellectual and life partner Taylor Arnold, whose support was critical during several health struggles, and the sweetness and silliness of our four-legged furballs, Roux and Sarge.