About the Talk:

Visiting scholar Lauren Klein (Emory University) will give a public talk titled "A Counterhistory of Data Visualization" as part of the UT Humanities Center’s 2023-2024 Distinguished Lecture Series.

In the world today, when we encounter a line graph or a pie chart, we tend to think of the role of visualization—if we think of it at all—as simply revealing the meaning of the data underneath. The reality, however, is that the act of visualizing data generates meaning in and of itself. This talk will return to the origins of modern data visualization in order excavate this meaning, showing how data visualization always carries a set of implicit assumptions—and, at times, explicit arguments—about how knowledge is produced, and who is authorized to produce it.

The lecture is free and open to the public and is held in Hodges Library’s auditorium on the UT Knoxville campus. Public parking is available in the Volunteer Hall parking garage for our off-campus visitors. Everyone is welcome!

About the Speaker:

Lauren Klein is Winship Distinguished Research Professor and Associate Professor in the departments of Quantitative Theory & Methods and English at Emory University, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab. She works at the intersection of data, AI, and the humanities, with an emphasis on questions of gender and race. Klein is coauthor (with Catherine D’Ignazio) of the award-winning Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020), and coeditor (with Matthew K. Gold) of Debates in the Digital Humanities (Univ. of Minnesota Press), among other volumes. She is currently completing Data by Design: An Interactive History of Data Visualization, forthcoming from the MIT Press, and envisioning the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network, which will launch in Fall 2023.

About the Series:

The UT Humanities Center's Distinguished Lecture Series brings acclaimed humanities scholars and renowned artists to the Knoxville campus for research-based conversations with UT faculty and graduate students and to give a public talk on a topic of the speaker's choosing. Speakers are nominated and hosted by faculty from our nine affiliated arts and humanities departments. Because only speakers with exceptional records of publication and research activity are eligible to receive a nomination as a visiting scholar, the program brings to campus some of the most cutting-edge and prolific intellectuals in the humanities today. Details on this season's program are available on our website.

Where:

Lindsay Young Auditorium (rm. 101)
John C. Hodges Library (1015 Volunteer Blvd. Knoxville TN)

OR

via livestream at tiny.utk.edu/DLS-Klein