Dr. Joanne Gabbin Spoke as the Keynote of the Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (DEFCon)'s Annual Meeting

Dr. Joanne Gabbin, Furious Flower Executive Director, served as the keynote speaker at the Virtual Annual Meeting (VAM) of The Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (DEFCon). DEFCon, led by Roopika Risam (Salem State University, Sonya Donaldson (New Jersey City University), Jamila Moore Pewu (California State University, Fullerton), Toneisha Taylor (Texas State University), and Keja Valens (Salem State University), is a national consortium of digital ethnic studies practitioners. DEFCon helps support the work of faculty, librarians, and students working within the intersections of digital humanities and ethnic studies through events, networking opportunities, professional development, and a regranting program. 

Gabbin shared about the history and conception of the Furious Flower Archive as well as the Poetry Center, followed by a lively discussion of the joys and challenges of building programs that support Black studies with Dr. Sonya Donaldson. Gabbin focused on the process of growing and sustaining the Archive, an effort made possible by a $2 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

"We want to preserve material that others may use in the future, materials that we think are important that are worthy of preserving and describing, and we are at this point because of the Mellon grant. [...] That grant [will] help us tend to the infrastructure that we will need to make our archive at Furious Flower accessible and global."

-Dr. Joanne Gabbin

You can watch the entirety of Dr. Joanne Gabbin's keynote conversation on DEFCon's YouTube channel and in the video below.