My name is Kenia Rodriguez and I’m a fourth-year MA/Ph.D. student in English. Through my research in Latina/o Young Adult (YA) literature and Digital Humanities (DH), I aim to produce multimodal literary scholarship that is both sustainable and accessible to the communities I write for. Ultimately, one of my key research goals is to utilize DH machine learning tools and methods to analyze large bodies of understudied Latina/o YA literature. However, I have a lot to learn about machine learning and modeling literary data before I can undertake such a project.

Therefore, my time at Greenhouse Studios is extremely valuable for establishing research practices that forefront sustainability, accessibility, and user experience. Working with their web design team has helped me build upon the skills necessary to create a website component to pair with my dissertation. Like current Greenhouse Studios project websites, I hope my dissertation website fulfills goals related to community outreach, interactivity, and multimodal scholarship.

This year, I am preparing for my Ph.D. exams and narrowing down my dissertation to address family and gender-related issues in contemporary Latina/o YA literature. I continue to delve into the world of DH literary scholarship in hopes that I can build a digital dissertation component that reflects upon my experience building digital projects with Greenhouse Studios. Although I cannot code tools or projects on my own (yet), I have seen firsthand how much someone with little to no technical skills can excel in the realm of DH projects.

I aim to really build upon these technical skills during my last year at Greenhouse Studios to inspire my future English undergraduate students to think outside the box and to never underestimate their potential.