Compass is a site for community building that keeps stories rooted deeply in place while also allowing for cross-pollination and connection among the institutions and communities who launch their own Community-Oriented Digital Engagement Scholars (CODES) programs. Stories have the power to create change. Compass explores how community engagement initiatives can work toward what Edward Soja calls “spatial justice.” When communities lack access to basic services, bear the brunt of environmental pollutants, or become defined by surrounding inequities, spatial injustice occurs. CODES cohorts have engaged in this work by humanizing data, building reparative justice maps, and using their digital creations to articulate how St. Louis’s issues are situated in a global context. As CODES expands, we will curate thematic content so contributors and audiences in, for example, Fairbanks, Alaska, can see how conversations about repatriation and reparations in St. Louis’s African American communities compare with issues facing Alaskan Natives.
CODES Institutions
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) is home to the flagship CODES program. SIUE is located in St. Louis’s Metro East, a nexus of racial, ethnic, regional, and socioeconomic diversity. The university serves a diverse population of over 12,000 students, and with campuses in Alton, Belleville, and East St. Louis, the university has deep roots and connections across the St. Louis metro area. The St. Louis region itself has an active and growing community of DH practitioners who are doing innovative work at the intersection of teaching, community engagement, and humanities research. Moreover, the region’s tech community is booming. However, the region is also rife with inequity, rooted in historic and contemporary manifestations of injustice — spatial, racial, environmental, and more. CODES was developed in response to these local contingencies as a means of empowering historically underrepresented students to identify, understand, and respond to wicked problems in their own communities and in the world at large.