Dear members of NUDHL,

I have a very good reason for writing so late: yesterday I was watching the presidential debate, live-twitting, live fact-checking online and today I was doing… the same thing, but for the local elections in Rio de Janeiro. The time I most enjoy using all this web tools is when elections come . For some reason, I sense that the voters enjoy having the digital tools to engage as citizens. Well, I was a journalist before coming back to academia, that might also mean I’m an election/ debate addict.

I just came from Brazil to start the PhD in the Spanish and Portuguese Department here at NU. I’m part of the first class of this new PhD Program, which makes everything very exciting. My major interest is memory and memory studies in the literary field. But I will be working mainly with contemporary authors and how this genre, this kind of discourse is shaped today. If literature was at some point the space that shaped discourses, reactions, even documented eras, where is it now? Still in the literature? Is it somewhere else? Finally, how does the Internet influence all that?

Also, when we talk about this eternal archiving the web provides I can’t help to think about the traditional archives. How did the “big data” change the way we store raw-material for our own memories? And how do we perceive other’s memories? I have more questions than answers now.

Part of thinking about Digital Humanities and thinking through it, for me, is how the digital is invading every sphere of life and thinking, many times without getting the needed attention.

P.S: Sarah, I’m also a bookie, always guilty for spending so much time on the internet and not on my beloved paper-made objects.

Can’t wait to meet you all!

Juliana