In view of the increasing production and use of data in the course of digitalization, the goal of feminist film historians to increase the visibility of women’s work has taken on a new urgency. Through the production, processing, and dissemination of data, blind spots in a research field such as feminist film history can be maintained or amplified, but also minimized. Access to data as well as the critical reflection on that data is therefore one of the greatest challenges for humanistic scholars today. Against this backdrop, this article discusses how digital data visualization can enhance and transform research on women in early cinema. Presenting a case study on the Women Film Pioneers Explorer, I argue that data visualizations can help us reflect on our own (feminist) film historiographical approaches, epistemological premises, and representative conventions and thus on the “situatedness of knowledges.”
The Women Film Pioneers Explorer: What Data Visualizations Can Tell Us about Women in Film History
Sarah-Mai Dang is Principal Investigator of the BMBF research group Aesthetics of Access: Visualizing Research Data on Women in Film History (DAVIF) (2021–2025) at the Institute of Media Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg. She also founded the DFG research network New Directions in Film Historiography (2019–2022). In addition, she initiated the Open Media Studies blog and the publishing project oa books. She received a doctoral degree in Film Studies from Freie Universität Berlin and a Master of Arts from the University of Michigan and has published widely on the effects of digitization in the humanities. (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1960-247X, @SarahMaiDang@fedihum.org,)
Sarah-Mai Dang; The Women Film Pioneers Explorer: What Data Visualizations Can Tell Us about Women in Film History. Feminist Media Histories 1 April 2023; 9 (2): 76–86. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2023.9.2.76
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