About

Spencer D. C. Keralis is a scholar of the past, present, and future of the book.

Dr. Keralis is the Founder and Executive Director of Digital Frontiers, a conference and community that brings together the makers and users of digital resources for humanities research, teaching, and learning. Founded in 2012, DF celebrates it’s 10th anniversary in 2022 with the conference DH+BH: Digital Humanities and Book History.

Dr Keralis is currently Assistant Professor and Digital Humanities Librarian with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University Library. Dr. Keralis previously served as Research Associate Professor and Head of the Digital Humanities and Collaborative Programs Unit with the Public Services Division of the University of North Texas Libraries. He also served a lecturer in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas, as an adjunct instructor in the UNT Department of English, and has taught in the UNT i-School. He holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from New York University.

His research has appeared in Book History, a special issue American Periodicals on children’s periodicals, and in the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) reports The Problem of Data (2012) and Research Data Management: Principles, Practices, and Prospects (2013). Dr. Keralis’s work on labor ethics in digital humanities appears in Disrupting the Digital Humanities, the Modern Language Association publication Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments, and is forthcoming in Debates in Digital Humanities 2022.

Dr. Keralis has held a Mellon Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia, a Legacy Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society, a Summer Residency at the Queer Zine Archive Project, and served as a CLIR Fellow in Academic Libraries with the University of North Texas Libraries. In 2017, he was honored with the Innovative Outreach Award for Digital Frontiers by the Texas Digital Library.

Education

New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Ph.D. in English and American Literature, 2016; Dissertation: “Children of Wrath: Allegory, Violence, and the Mediation of Childhood in Antebellum America.” Professor Patricia Crain, Director; Committee Members: Bryan Waterman, Tom Augst, Catherine Robson, & Jennifer Baker


M.A. in English and American Literature, 2006; Thesis: “Transgressing Subjectivity: Postmodern Feminist Self-Fashioning in Galás and Acker.” Professor Phillip Brian Harper, and Marvin Taylor, Director of the Fales Library & Special Collections, Supervisors


University of Minnesota, College of Arts and Sciences


B.A. in English, December 2003; Thesis: “A Small Vial of Tears: Public Grief and the Puritan Press.” Jani Scandura, Supervisor

Other Publications




“Labor.” Commissioned curated entry in Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments. Rebecca Frost Davis, Katherine Harris, and Jentery Sayers, editors. Forthcoming 2016, Modern Language Association.


“Disrupting Labor in Digital Humanities; or The Classroom is Not Your Crowd.” Commissioned book chapter for Disrupting the Digital Humanities, Jesse Stommel and Dorothy Kim, editors. Forthcoming 2016, Punctum Books.


“The origin and evolution of cat memes from the 18th century to lolcats; or, how cats have basically changed the Internet and the world furever.” S. Keralis & Jeanette Claire Sewell. Forthcoming in Buzzademia: Scholarship in the Internet Vernacular.


“Research Data Management in Policy and Practice: The DataRes Project.” S. Keralis, Martin Halbert, William Moen & Shannon Stark. Research Data Management: Principles, Practice, and Prospects. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library & Information Resources, November 2013


Research Data Management: Principles, Practice, and Prospects. Editor. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library & Information Resources, November 2013


“The Value of Open Access to Undergraduate Research.” Laura Waugh & S. Keralis. The Eagle Feather 10, 2013 doi:10.12794/tef.10.2013.287


“Children’s Aid Society.” The Social History of the American Family. Sage Publications, 2014


 “Pets.” The Social History of the American Family. Sage Publications, 2014


 “The Denton Declaration: An Open Data Manifesto.” Open Access @ UNT. September 2012
Reprinted in Research Data Management: Principles, Practice, and Prospects. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library & Information Resources, November 2013


“Feeling Animal: Pet-Making and Mastery in The Slave’s Friend,” American Periodicals, 2012, pp. 121-138, Special Issue on Children’s Periodicals


 “Data Curation Education: A Snapshot.” The Problem of Data. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library & Information Resources, 2012, 32-41


“Pictures of Charlotte: The Illustrated Charlotte Temple and Her Readers,” Book History, Vol. 13, 2010


Breaking Glass on the Small Screen,” Texte und Töne, Vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 2008

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