Unnatural Disasters: Healing Epistemic Invisibility Through Digital Archiving

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dc.contributor.committeeMemberOstherr, Kirstenen_US
dc.contributor.committeeMemberMichie, Helenaen_US
dc.contributor.committeeMemberHowe, Cymeneen_US
dc.creatorGraham, Lindsay Dianeen_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-30T18:42:35Zen_US
dc.date.created2024-08en_US
dc.date.issued2024-08-06en_US
dc.date.submittedAugust 2024en_US
dc.date.updated2024-08-30T18:42:35Zen_US
dc.descriptionEMBARGO NOTE: This item is embargoed until 2030-08-01en_US
dc.description.abstractUnnatural Disasters: Healing Epistemic Invisibility Through Digital Archiving identifies the emerging genre of the digital disaster archive and argues that this genre exposes the concept of disaster as deeply entangled with and produced by epistemological erasure. Invested in the concept of “disaster” as unnatural and unequivocally social, political, and temporal, I connect a growing awareness of environmental precarity to this new kind of digital memory practice to examine how the archive’s methodology and infrastructure engender a vital politics of accountability. I argue that the digital archive is uniquely suited to address epistemologically produced invisibility by challenging the historical processes and systems that lead to disaster; in so doing, the archive proffers an expanded understanding of health, healing, and care from the margins. This project considers collections from disparate geographies, cultures, and languages that respond to the 2010 Haitian earthquake, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (digitized in 2010), Japan’s triple disaster (2011), and the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (2020) to explore how the digital archive is both an open encounter and an exchange of knowledge and power. To specifically reflect on the healing affordances of this increasingly popular form of cultural production, I critically approach the archive through the concepts of digital witnessing, archival methodology as recovery, healing nostalgia, digital self-help, and digitality as care, while grappling with the ways that digital tools can exacerbate or expose the unevenness of vulnerability. By delineating the socio-political processes that lead to disaster and by demonstrating how the digital archive is a potential site of activism that de-naturalizes and thus re-politicizes disaster, Unnatural Disasters charts new paths for critical disaster studies and global digital humanities and ultimately argues for a translational digital humanities approach to global disaster response and humanitarian aid.en_US
dc.embargo.lift2030-08-01en_US
dc.embargo.terms2030-08-01en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.citationGraham, Lindsay Diane. Unnatural Disasters: Healing Epistemic Invisibility Through Digital Archiving. (2024). PhD diss., Rice University. https://hdl.handle.net/1911/117844en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/117844en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectdisastersen_US
dc.subjectdigital archiveen_US
dc.titleUnnatural Disasters: Healing Epistemic Invisibility Through Digital Archivingen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentEnglishen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanitiesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
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