A Commemoration of Rebecca Munson

On August 13, 2021, the digital humanities community lost Rebecca Munson, a beloved colleague, scholar, mentor, and friend. Rebecca lived her entire life surrounded by books, and her passion for literature—and storytelling of all kinds—sustained her intellectual curiosity and inspired her professional path. Rebecca attended Columbia University, where she majored in English literature, and she studied Shakespeare and early modern drama for her master’s (Oxford) and PhD (University of California, Berkeley). Rebecca held several postdocs before moving to Princeton in 2016, where she started out as the digital humanities project manager at the Center for Digital Humanities (CDH). In early 2021, she was promoted to CDH assistant director of interdisciplinary education.

Working with graduate students was Rebecca’s favorite part of her job. She designed and led the CDH’s grants, fellowships, and training programs that gave graduate students a chance to explore new scholarly avenues. She taught classes, gave talks, and published essays on topics ranging from marginalia in early printed books, to data models, to feminist theory, to the ethics of project management. She organized lunches, dinners, and parties for students and thrived on connecting people and creating community. She was a proud and committed mentor who cherished opportunities to guide students through the difficult terrain of graduate school.

In early 2019, when she was 34 years old, Rebecca was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of metastatic breast cancer. The honesty, vulnerability, and determination she showed while juggling work, research, advocacy, and cancer treatments—all during a global pandemic—made an indelible mark on all who knew her. Rebecca’s generosity, kindness, integrity, and empathy live on in the writing she left behind, from her many tweets, to the personal reflections she published on her blog, and to her scholarly essays, such as the one included in this volume.