Dr. Angel David Nieves is Professor of History & Digital Humanities in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Letters (CAL) at San Diego State University whose scholarship focuses on the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and technology in the U.S. and South Africa. He is the author and co-editor of two historical monographs, including “An Architecture of Education: African American Women Design the New South” (U Rochester, 2018) and “’We Shall Independent Be:’ African American Place Making and the Struggle to Claim Space in the U.S.” (w/Alexander) (UPColorado, 2008), plus a range of cutting-edge digital history publications and experimental online platforms. Among these are “Soweto’76 3D,” comprising digital archive and virtual reality research into politically fraught sites such as the Nelson Mandela House in Soweto, Johannesburg. Nieves has received support for his work from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and while Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Initiative (2009-2017) at Hamilton College he helped raise over $2.7 million dollars in research support for digital scholarship. He was Presidential Visiting Associate Professor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and the DHLab at Yale University (2017-2018).
Today, Dr. Nieves is an award-winning teacher and mentor who leads courses in digital history, spatial humanities, urban history and the histories of race, gender, sexuality and space in the U.S. and the global South, including South Africa. He recently served as an editor on a special issue of American Quarterly (The Journal of the American Studies Association, Fall 2018) entitled, “Towards a Critically Engaged Digital Practice: American Studies and the Digital Humanities” and is co-editor (w/Senier & McGrail) of a forthcoming volume in the Debates in the Digital Humanities Series (UMinnesota Press), Institutions, Infrastructures at the Interstices (expected 2020). His present work comprises a series of digital collaborations as well as a digital book project entitled, Apartheid Heritages: A Spatial History of South Africa’s Townships.
