Group items tagged

In this brief blog post, Dan Cohen highlights an interesting issue raised by Cliff Lynch at one of the 2007 CNI task force meetings. According to Cohen, Lynch raised the issue of museums holding on to controversial materials and how the digitization of those materials can allow them to be repatriated, either by undermining the arguments museums make or by addressing their concerns. By creating a digital replica, there is no longer a need to withhold artifacts from their originating cultures.

Marche's article criticizes digital humanists for a perceived failure to adequately address the human and interpretive nature of literature by treating it as data. Two core issues identified by Marche is that literature, unlike statistics, is terminally incomplete - that parts frequently are missing or shifting - and that data mining efforts fail to account for context in literature. Marche argues that current data mining efforts are flawed because "algorithms are inherently fascistic" and that "meaning is mushy." Marche does not oppose digitization efforts and in fact welcomes the translation of texts into digital formats, rather Marche argues that literary meaning cannot be as readily quantified as numbers - that "insight remains handmade."

Dan Cohen's transcript of his anonymous speech at Harvard on March 1, 2011 provides insight into the demands scholars have digitization efforts and digital archives. Cohen identifies five major demands on the part of scholars: reliable metadata, the ability to experience serendipity, an interface to handle differing modes of research, a representation of the physical book, and open APIs to accommodate the demands digital libraries cannot anticipate. Dan Cohen's goal is to borrow the best aspects of a physical library - the ability to stumble upon new material readily as well as some measure of its tactile feel - with the ease of use of a well designed digital archive.

This article by Elexis Lothian is partly a response to another article, "Does DH Really Need to be Transformed?" by Roger Whitson. The article argues that although people in the field may have had good experiences with regards to acceptance, that there is still room for growth in areas such as queer studies, critical race studies, feminist studies, etc. The article also illuminates a little on the process behind choosing the tag #transformDH as well as some of the groups, such as HASTAC, which have collaborated to support the project.

This article by Roger Whitson is a response to calls from groups such as #transformDH to work harder to incorporate marginalized groups. The core of the argument being made is that the Digital Humanities are, by their nature, collaborative and that this will be the means by which the digital humanities is opened fully to marginalized groups. The argument is not that it doesn't need to happen, but that the systems are already in place which will bring it about.

In this 2011 article, Moya Z. Bailey analyzes the racial and gender makeup of the digital humanities, the navigation of marginalized groups within society, and their interactions with academia. Problems, such as the use of ableist language and the assumption that a few token minorities will eradicate marginalization, are addressed within the article. Bailey also highlights some of the ways in which Digital Humanities are being used to transform the humanities, such as Crunk Feminist Collective communicating with groups that the collective "felt accountable to outside academia."

This article represents the popularization of the #transformDH movement following ASA 2011. The article highlights the launching of the #transformDH Tumblr, as well as containing a section at the end with a collection of articles written by digital humanists related to the concerns of the #transformDH movement. The remainder of the article discusses the sessions the article writer personally participated in, as well as the people met related to the #transformDH movement.

Although not always on topic, the #transformDH tumblr contains a large archive of numerous works within the field of digital humanities related to race and gender. Projects highlighted by the Tumblr include "Swag Diplomacy," a mapping project tracking "200 African American autobiographers who wrote international travel memoirs," and "BlackGirlsCode," a project working "to meet the needs of young women of color who are underrepresented in the... field of technology." The archive also occasionally reblogs and communicates with other tumblrs.

This short article for the 2012 American Studies Association Annual Meeting represents a call for digital humanists to collaborate and propose ways in which American Studies and Digital Humanities can be transformed to be better address concerns such a marginalization. Provided proof that this is possible, the article highlights such "digital collectives and social movements" such as Crunk Feminist Collective, "shit [people] say" and artists offering a "productive [exploration] of digital productions and methods." The article also highlights in particular the #transformDH movement, and provides links to some of the articles and websites utilized by the group.

This brief presentation on the Fifth Annual Graduate Student Conference on World History gives an example of some of the things the field of History is looking to track and how the field is expecting to change. The conference is requesting papers on the topics of cultural mobility, political movements, and networks utilized for the transmission of ideas. More of interest to digital humanists though is the category of Mapping Movements, with an explicit focus on the new technologies and digital humanist methods being developed that can be utilized to assist this process.

In this article, William Pannapacker discusses his personal "come to DH moment," his interactions with the field, his concerns about Digital Humanities, and some of the projects appearing that are interesting and address his concerns. One major project highlighted by Pannapacker is the DH Commons project, described "as the match.com for digital humanists." The article ends with a call for uninvolved scholars at institutions, particularly those that do not have DH centers, to utilize these various projects to collaborate and join the digital humanities.

This article highlights three large uncertainties of the Micha Cardenas about the digital humanities: is queer new media rare or is analysis of it rare, if there is something "conservative, even sellable" that is present in the digital humanities, and can queer theory, new media, or the digital humanities "disturb hegemonic systems." Although the article does not answer any of these questions, it discusses the history of Queer Theory as "hip, trendy," and its potential reflection in the digital humanities. These questions also arise out of a concern that discussions in digital humanities, particularly CCS, "can run down a road that is very conservative."

This 2010 article provides some insight into the grant proposal process for the Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants, provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. George Williams describes the process of grant proposals as "lightning rounds" in which the project director is allowed only two minutes and three slides for their presentation. 46 projects were presented, and Williams provides a rough categorization for the projects, such as mapping or publishing projects, and provides a list of examples for each category.

According to the article, DH Answers represents a chance for digital humanists to communicate with fellow digital humanists through a free and community driven Q&A board. Anyone may post and answer freely, and community members are encouraged to tag their posts so as to facilitate the creation of new categories. Questions range from improving the site itself to introducing undergraduate students to the digital humanities. Forums users may also make requests for information, such as "a list of all graduate programs that study DH."

Bethany Nowviskie's article proposes an overhaul of modern graduate studies by replacing aging practices and methods of education with more modern and technology appropriate forms of education. One of Nowviskie's key points of criticism it that many of these more traditional forms of graduate education are producing humanities PhDs who do not fully understand how modern universities work and are impacted by the outside world. Nowviskie's main proposal for beginning to replace these aging methods is through the cooperation of funding agencies and respected humanities organizations, ones with a good history of inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration, to utilize grants to reshape graduate studies.

This article seeks to address the problem of digital humanities being code heavy by nature, but being populated a field not traditionally associated with programming. It introduces two tutorials intended to help new people break into the field of programming: Hackety Hack and "The Rubyist Historian." Hackety Hack is a free program containing a series of interactive lessons for learning to code in the Ruby language, and "The Rubyist Historian" is a blog by graduate student Jason Heppler intended to be an "accessible introduction to Ruby."

Although alt-ac is not exclusive digital humanities, or even exclusively humanities, the report on the #alt-ac panel for the Digital Humanities 2011 highlights some of the issues and questions relevant to the DH field. Some of the problems are personal in nature, such as the professional differences between#alt-ac and tenure, and others are more institutional, such as the issues with "credential creep." Although the article does not necessarily provide answers, it highlights many of the concerns alt-ac professionals have in pursuing their career.

The Digital Humanities Summer Institute represents an opportunity for various people involved in the digital humanities to take week long courses covering various kinds of topics, broken into three rough categories: introductory, intermediate, advanced. Referred to as a "grown up nerd camp," the DHSI represents an opportunity for scholars to expand their toolset and learn more about the Digital Humanities. When the article was posted, DHSI has been running for ten years, and continues to run today.

The core purpose of this article is the promotion of the digital humanities in academia by informing digital humanists how they might be able to better communicate the value of digital humanities. The four main points are: educate the general audience about the subject matter, the need for reviewers to understand the diverse nature of the field, documentating ones role in collaborative projects for the sake of promotion, and explaining the changing nature of peer review in the field. It also briefly addresses the need for institutions to accept new forms of media.

This brief article highlights a major change in the Digital Humanities that occurred in 2012, an MLA release containing standardized guidelines for evaluating work in the Digital Humanities. Those who stand the most to gain from this release are the DH professors themselves, as the guidelines lay some basic ground rules for evaluating this material for the purposes of promotion or gaining tenure. Although the guidelines are non-enforceable, being that they are from the MLA they are likely to be given some weight.