The Periodic Table of Human Elements is something I came up with in the Spring of 2008 while copywriting text for a brochure re-write for the Learning Communities Programs run by the UW-Madison, at what was then the Office for Equity & Diversity, now the Division of Diversity, Equity and Educational Achievement(DDEEA).
It is intended to expand the conversation of identity (race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, class, age, ability, and culture) to both address the impact of marginalization and underrepresentation and examine the experiences of privileged identities to help us see where we intersect and come to better understand oppression as part of the pattern of violence in the culture at large.
It is my strong belief that The PToHE is a concept that belongs to everyone, and whose strength in helping to bring social change is dependent upon its widespread use; the more widespread, the better.
Therefore, I'm releasing the table under Creative Commons license.
This means that you are free to share the image, concepts, and ideas for non-commerical use; any changes or ammendents to the table should be sent to Montyland Productions so that they can be added to the master table here and shared with the world-wide community.
The image at RIGHT is a PNG version of the PTOHE as of 12/28/2013. Click to view a larger version (might take a moment or two to load). The actual working table will be uploaded in HTML at some point in the future (when I can find time to learn the programming I need, or hire an able programmer to take this site to the next level; know anyone? send them my way!).
This table is incomplete. The original incarnation was for a small print brochure, and so there were limitations on size. As has happened throughout history, the editor (in this case, me) made a judgement call as to what/who was included and what was not.
As I move toward creating a web-based incarnation of the table, the intent is to make it as fully inclusive as possible. You can assist by sending email regarding items (racial, ethnic, ability, or belief identities that are missing from the table) to help expand it.
Also, I would love to have a code-driven, database-backed table that would allow visitors to add "tiles" to the table (something along the lines of a pop-up form that would ask for name of marker, identity type, and preferred element short-cut, and then would cross-check that short-cut against existing tiles to avoid conflicts, and add the tile in the right part of the table with the appropriate coloring automatically). Additionally, it would be cool to have a mouse-over triggered pop-up window that could display statistical information, or the automated highlighting of all "elements" belonging to one identity marker (race, ability, age, etc.). If you or anyone you know if capable of such scripting, and would like to donate time to this project, please have them get in touch with me. Some examples of what I have in mind can be found on other existing sites for the original Periodic Table of Elements, such as this or this...
Contact me to get involved, suggest amendments, or with general comments: montyland@gmail.com
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