About Us
Contact: douglassdayorg@gmail.com
Douglass Day is a collective action for Black history. Each year, we feature a different collection of Black history. We invite you to learn about the Douglass Day principles and the longer history of Douglass Day.
Douglass Day is made possible by a large number of past and present partners and supporters. They include: The Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State, the Colored Conventions Project, the Anna Julia Cooper Digital Project, the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, the Princeton University Center for Digital Humanities, the PSU Libraries, the PSU Center for Humanities and Information, and the PSU College of Liberal Arts, the American Studies Association for a Community Partnership Grant, Zooniverse, and By The People at the Library of Congress.
Douglass Day 2024 Team
Co-Founders and Directors
Jim Casey is Douglass Day’s founding director. He is currently an assistant professor of African American Studies, History, and English at Penn State, where he serves as associate director of the Center for Black Digital Research. (DD2017) (DD2018) (DD2020) (DD2021) (DD2022) (DD2023) (DD2024)
Denise Burgher is an English Ph.D. student at the University of Delaware, chair of the Historic Churches and Community Engagement Committee and co-chair or the Curriculum Committee for the Colored Conventions Project. Denise was part of the founding team and served as chair for Douglass Day 2019. (DD2017) (DD2018) (DD2019) (DD2020) (DD2021) (DD2022) (DD2023) (DD2024)
Team Leaders & Members
Summer Hamilton is an assistant research professor of digital scholarship and Digital Projects Designer at Penn State. Her research areas include Black citizenship, housing, discourse analysis, and digital humanities. She co-leads the Zooniverse team for Douglass Day 2023. (DD2023) (DD2024)
Pheolyn Hayes is a graduate student in English at Penn State Univesrity, where they have been a #DigBlk Scholar and 2021-2022 Bunton-Waller Fellow. They are the lead for the Douglass Day 2023 broadcast. (DD2023) (DD2024)
Jennifer Isasi is an Assistant Research Professor of Digital Scholarship in the College of Liberal Arts, and Director of the Digital Liberal Arts Research Initiative at Penn State. (DD2023) (DD2024)
Eden Mekonen is a graduate student in Geography and African Studies at Penn State. (DD2024)
Courtney Murray is a PhD student in English and African American Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. Currently, her research interests involve 19th c. African American Diasporic archives and literature and how those texts engage with Black feminisms, space/time, fugitivity, and liberation. She is the Douglass Day Communications Committee Chair. (DD2020) (DD2021) (DD2022) (DD2023) (DD2024)
Gabrielle Sutherland is the Administrative Support Assistant for the Center for Black Digital Research. Gabrielle joined the team in August 2021, and provides comprehensive administrative support, assisting with Center administrative duties and implementing the activities of the office, along with project management contributions on the Douglass Day team. (DD2022) (DD2023) (DD2024)
Past Collaborators
Racine Amos is the Engagement and Equity Librarian at the rank of Assistant Professor at Penn State University (University Park, PA, USA). Racine served as on-site event coordinator for Penn State University Libraries during Douglass Day 2020. (DD2020)
Marc Blanc is a Ph.D. candidate in American literature at Washington University in St. Louis. He is currently writing a dissertation on independent Black publishers in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Midwest. He is working on website development for Douglass Day 2022. (DD2022)
D’Angelo Bridges is a Ph.D. student in the English and African American Studies Departments at Pennsylvania State University. He studies African American rhetoric, literature, culture, and identity. He was a part of the Zooniverse Development Team for Douglass Day 2020. (DD2020)
datejie cheko green is the Co-Chair of DigBlk Studios. Since 2018 datejie has been an ongoing director of Douglass Day live broadcasts celebrating Frederick Douglass’s birthday on February 14, and facilitating interviews and the crowd-sourced transcription of primary documents from 19th and 20th C African diasporic activist public intellectuals. In 2019 datejie co-created the short film, “Frederick Douglass, ‘Why Hold a Colored Convention?’” with members of the CCP community, extending the spirit of the CCM and Douglass from the print archive to 21st century screen culture. (DD2018) (DD2019) (DD2020) (DD2021)
Richard Daily is a PhD Candidate in History and African American Studies at Penn State. His research areas are in US and African American history, gender and sexuality, carceral studies, and Critical Race Theory. He served as social media chair for Douglass Day 2021. (DD2021)
Nneka D. Dennie is a Black feminist scholar with specializations in nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American history. She is also a JT Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Black Black Research at Penn State. Dr. Dennie is also editing a primary source collection titled Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Black Radical Feminist. (DD2023)
Sabrina Evans earned her PhD in English Literature and African American Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on nineteenth-century African American literature, specifically engaging with African American print culture and the Black Digital Humanities. She was the Project Manager for Douglass Day 2020 at Penn State. (DD2020)
Rachel Fernandes is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English at Queen’s University. Her research focuses on the experiences of mixed race people in contemporary North American literature and her dissertation explores expressions of mixed race identity in different literary forms such as memoir, poetry, and the novel. (DD2023)
Heather Froehlich is the Literary Informatics Librarian at the rank of Assistant Professor at Penn State University (University Park, PA, USA). She has expertise in the afterlives of transcription data, including in corpus analysis, stylistics, and quantitative text analysis more generally. (DD2020)
Julia Grummitt is a Ph.D. candidate in the History department at Princeton University, where her research focuses on histories of slavery and settler-colonialism. She is a University Administrative Fellow in Princeton’s Center for Digital Humanities, and part of the Douglass Day team responsible for project management, programming, outreach and communications. (DD2020)
Adrena Ifill is CEO of Ifill/DoubleBack Global Group, a firm that specializes in cultural heritage management. With over 25 years of experience in event production, strategic planning and documentary video, Ms. Ifill has worked with many corporations, nonprofits and government entities. An award-winning filmmaker, she has written and directed several historical films that have shown internationally. A graduate of Williams College, Howard University and George Washington University, Ms. Ifill will join the incoming cohort of AADHum Scholars at the University of Maryland for 2019-2020. (DD2020)
Wendyliz Martinez is a second- year MA student in the English department at The Pennsylvania State University. Her current research interests are in black community formation on social media, afro-futurism and its iterations on digital spaces, and Caribbean literature. She is on the Social Media team for Douglass Day 2020. (DD2020)
Dr. Lopez Matthews is the Manager of the Digital Production Center and Digital Production Librarian for the Howard University Libraries and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. He led the team at the Moorland-Spingarn in creating the Anna Julia Cooper Digital Collection. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Coppin State University where he teaches courses covering United States, African American, African and World History. (DD2020)
Elena M’Bouroukounda is a student in the Master’s in Architecture program at Princeton University. She is a University Administrative Fellow in Princeton’s Center for Digital Humanities, and part of the Douglass Day team responsible for project management, programming, outreach, and communications. (DD2020) (DD2021)
Shirley Moody-Turner is an associate professor of English and African American Studies at Penn State University where her current work focuses on how digital methods can support efforts to reconstruct black women’s literary, organizing, and intellectual histories. She is co-director of the Center for Black Digital Research, founder the Anna Julia Cooper Digital Project and co-organizer of Douglass Day 2020. (DD2020) (DD2021)
Kristin Moriah is an Assistant Professor of African American Literary Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Dr. Moriah is a Colored Conventions Project Teaching Fellow and Center for Black Digital Research Satellite Partner. (DD2023)
Justin Smith earned his PhD in English Literature and African American Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, with a focus is on political identity and solidarity in early twentieth-century African American literature. He was the Zooniverse team project leader for Douglass Day 2020-2022. (DD2020) (DD2021) (DD2022)
Eunice Toh is a second-year M.A. student in the English department at Penn State. Her research focuses on late nineteenth-century American literature, with specific interests in material culture, black geographies, and critical race theory. She is the Outreach, Community, and Academic Partnerships co-chair with Racine Amos for Douglass Day 2020. (DD2020)
Christopher D.E. Willoughby (PhD, History, Tulane University) is a Junior Visiting Fellow in the Center for Humanities and Information at Penn State University. His work examines the coevolution of Atlantic slavery, white supremacy, and the medical profession in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (DD2020) (DD2021)
Kevin Winstead is a 2019-2020 CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow and joined the Colored Conventions Project team in 2019. Kevin became the director of communications for the Center for Black Digital Research when it launched at Penn State. He holds a PhD in American Studies from University of Maryland where he served as the Project Manager for African American History Culture and Digital Humanities. His research areas include Social Movements, New Media, Digital Humanities, Critical Race Theory. (DD2020) (DD2021)