eLabs Events
- This event has passed.
The Stories Behind Editing & Recovery Work (Storyteller Series, Part 1)
April 22, 2025 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time
Have you ever wondered how you get into editing and recovery work? Or maybe you’ve wondered what’s the most interesting thing a practitioner has seen? Through our Storyteller Series, we aim to gather editors and recovery practitioners to share personal stories and reflect on the meaning of their work.
In this first installment of the series, originally recording on April 22, 2025, eLabs Advisory Board Member Diane Matsuda and eLabs Managing Director Katie Blizzard talked to Cathy Moran Hajo, Diana Marsh, Ken Price, Jennifer Stertzer, Gabriela Baeza Ventura, and Carolina Villarroel about the paths that led them to their work in editing and recovery. Over the course of the conversation, we learn about the common motivations that inspire their work and encounter some of the specific documents and collections that excite them.
As we all enter into this work through different means, we hope you find this conversation an opportunity to reflect positively on that journey and the passions we share in common.
About the Facilitators
Katie Blizzard is the Managing Director of eLaboratories, an online learning community hosted by the Center for Digital Editing (CDE) at the University of Virginia. Blizzard is also a Senior Research Editor at the CDE, where she contributes or has contributed to such projects as the Papers of Martin Van Buren and The Washington Papers. She holds a master’s in public administration, and she has served for the Association for Documentary Editing as secretary (2021–2023) and as a contributor the organization’s e-newsletter (2020-present).
Diane Matsuda is the Coordinator of the Japanese American History Archives (JAHA), a community-based archive owned and managed by the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California in San Francisco, CA. JAHA’s central focus is sharing information through digital stories, documents, artifacts, oral histories and other ephemera about the life, challenges and successes of the first Japanese immigrant communities established on the mainland US. It is the only community archive dedicated to the life of Japanese settlers from the late 1800’s until the start of World War II.
About the Speakers
Dr. Cathy Moran Hajo is the Editor and Director of the Jane Addams Papers Project at Ramapo College of New Jersey, which is publishing a freely-accessible digital edition and a multi-volume print edition of the Selected Papers of Jane Addams. She previously served as Associate Editor of the Margaret Sanger Papers.
Dr. Diana Marsh is an Assistant Professor of Archives and Digital Curation at the University of Maryland’s College of Information (iSchool) and current appointee to the Society of American Archivists’ Archival Repatriation Committee. Her current research focuses on improving access to colonially-held archives for Native American and Indigenous nations. She is PI on a Mellon Foundation grant to Indigenize SNAC (Social Networks and Archival Context) and Indigenous search, and an NSF grant to utilize linked data for analog archival collections.
Dr. Kenneth M. Price is Hillegass University Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His digital work includes co-directing The Walt Whitman Archive, Civil War Washington, and The Charles W. Chesnutt Archive. He was also co-PI of an ACLS Digital Extension grant supporting “New Storytellers: The Research Institute in Digital Ethnic Studies.” This 2021 summer research institute brought a diverse group of scholars together to share, learn, and create intensively with the goal of empowering scholars from underrepresented groups through Digital Humanities approaches to diverse cultural heritages. Price is also a founding co-director of the University of Nebraska’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities.
Jennifer Stertzer is the Director of the Center for Digital Editing (CDE) and the Washington Papers at the University of Virginia. With the Papers of George Washington since 2000, Stertzer has served as project manager of the Papers of George Washington Digital Edition, overseeing the conversion of legacy print volumes into a digital edition, developed Word-to-XML workflows, and is editor of the Papers of George Washington Financial Papers project. At the CDE, Stertzer consults on project conceptualization, technical solutions, workflow, editorial methodologies, and engagement strategies. She also serves as the Principal Investigator of eLaboratories. She teaches Conceptualising and Creating Digital Editions at the University of Victoria’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute, served on the faculty of the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents, and is past president of the Association for Documentary Editing.
Dr. Gabriela Baeza Ventura is associate professor of Spanish with a specialization on US Latinx literature in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. She is executive editor at Arte Público Press, the premier US Latino publishing house, and co-founder of the US Latino Digital Humanities center. Baeza Ventura has published on various aspects of US Latino literature and digital humanities including women, immigration, recovery works, language and YA and children’s literary production. Baeza Ventura was selected to participate in the committee of Next-Generation Historical and Scholarly Digital Editions by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and the National Endowment for the Humanities; to advise on US Latinx archives and data collecting to NHPRC and was recently appointed to the Mellon-ACLS funded Commission on Fostering and Sustaining Diverse Digital Scholarship.
Carolina A. Villarroel holds a PhD in Spanish literature with a specialization in US Latino Literature and Women’s Studies from the University of Houston. She is the former archivist in charge of the Mexican American and African American Collections at the Houston Metropolitan Research Center at the Houston Public Library and in 2011. Her expertise in US Latino culture and literature has been fundamental to her positions at the University of Houston (UH), where she is the Brown Foundation Director of Research of the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage, a national program whose goal is to identify, preserve, study and make accessible the written production of Latinos/as in the United States from the colonial period until 1980. She has served as an advisor and grant evaluator for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the NHPRC on US Latinx archives and data collecting. She is the co-founder of the US Latino Digital Humanities Center, the first of its kind in the nation.
