Archives, Libraries, Collections, and Databases: A First Look at Digital Literary Studies in Mexico

This article is the first wide-ranging exploration of the emerging field of Digital Literary Studies and Digital Humanities in Mexican academia and cultural institutions. Divided into three sections, it first surveys matters regarding the digital archive in general, examining the impact of the media on the institutional and cultural significance of archives, their scope and accessibility, the complexities of their preservation and, crucially, the scholarship produced in and around them. The second section explores how digital archives of both digitized materials and borndigital ones have intersected with the origin and consolidation of the Digital Humanities in the US, underscoring the way these intersections have fostered the development of suitable methodologies and vocabularies to examine digitized and born-digital cultural products. The third section explores a handful of Mexican projects developed in the last few years, and proposes that Mexican digital literary scholarship is unique in its emphasis on decolonial perspectives, community building and recovery, education and training, and new creative expressions.

This article is the first wide-ranging exploration of the emerging field of Digital Literary Studies and Digital Humanities in Mexican academia and cultural institutions. Divided into three sections, it first surveys matters regarding the digital archive in general, examining the impact of the media on the institutional and cultural significance of archives, their scope and accessibility, the complexities of their preservation and, crucially, the scholarship produced in and around them. The second section explores how digital archives of both digitized materials and born-digital ones have intersected with the origin and consolidation of the Digital Humanities in the US, underscoring the way these intersections have fostered the development of suitable methodologies and vocabularies to examine digitized and born-digital cultural products. The third section explores a handful of Mexican projects developed in the last few years, and proposes that Mexican digital literary scholarship is unique in its emphasis on decolonial perspectives, community building and recovery, education and training, and new creative expressions.