Overtime: Academics must Walk the Talk
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 It is difficult for me to think of an approach to anything that is clearly related to politics [as in structures of power, but also in the governmental/administration sense] without including advocacy as a means of change. Whether or not advocacy is 100% effective is a different conversation. I make call to action for many academics, especially those who are studying people and policy rather than documents and traditional texts. Queer Theorist should use their knowledge of institutional oppression and idiosyncratic situations to advocate for the marginalized. Political Scientists should be… politically involved [once they have tenure, I suppose]. I get impatient with Feminist Scholars who are all talk, but no walk [but seriously, volunteer and walk as an escort at your local women’s clinic.]
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 1 That may seem a little off topic, but I hope it stands to serve as an example of the philosophy I hold for academics when we venture into these waters. I return to that philosophy when we’re looking at DH in this way. By now we can tell the issue is not how DH conducts scholarship, but the means by which it can conduct its scholarship. If we acknowledge ties between the neoliberal structure of Universities and DH’s success, then people in position to critique the academy must make that critique.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 Funding seems to be the most useful way to approach the problem. DH projects dry up with the grant runs out, research in one subfield becomes less popular when the departments move on, tenure lines open and close. It’s all about money in the university.
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 The academy is a sinking ship—if it is—because it sinks our students into debt, and this debt, generated by this optimistic belief that a university degree automatically guarantees a job, is what both sustains and kills us. This residual belief/hope stems from another time when most of us could not go to university—another time when young adults with degrees received good jobs, not necessarily because of what they learned, but because of the society in which they lived. [Chun]
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 1 Is DH on the ship or is it standing on the dock waving a hanky? DH touts a certain level of job preparation. It tries to walk two lines, the technical and the humanistic. If we are in a society that creates jobs that want less specialization and more “skills” then DH is the path and it is supported by the university structure.
¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Back to my call to action. Academics who are able should call out practices that cater only to business models and not goals of education. They should challenge the notion that their classes should only “prepare” students for jobs but not also for being students. I want to make sure it’s known that when I say “academics who are able” I am not only talking about physical ability, but I am talking about their job security. It means more for a full professor to speak criticially, publically, than it does for them to only air grievances at the department coffee stand.
¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 I already fall into part of the trap of the neoliberal structure, calling on already worn out humanists to take political risks for their students and colleagues. Academic work weeks already stretch well beyond that of the average full time employee, political advocacy not included. It’s all really just words, words, words. The things we say [and frankly, throw a fit about] have an effect on how the university functions, including funding.
¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 [It] is largely due to the apparently instrumental or utilitarian value of the digital humanities that university administrators, foundation officers, and government agencies are so eager to fund DH projects, create DH undergraduate and graduate programs, and hire DH faculty. And because there is no sign that these funding streams are going to dry up any time soon, and no sign on the horizon of an increase in funding for the “crisis humanities,” there is great potential for increased tension between the “haves” of digital humanities and the “have-nots” of mainstream humanities. [introduction excerpt]
¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 If we believe the humanities have a specific purpose, we need to advocate for that. And I’ll be real: That sounds shitty. We should not have to justify our own fields of study, but apparently we do. “The humanities are sinking—if they are—not because of their earlier embrace of theory or multiculturalism, but because they have capitulated to a bureaucratic technocratic logic” [Chun]. We need not to fall into that “bureaucratic technocratic logic” but to stick to our guns. Our research is important for real people. Humanists study humans.
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¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 There is a teach in on Dec. 2 in the Loading Dock. Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1029907150488359/
¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 About the Event:
¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 Teach-ins are ways of having timely conversations with a focus that is practical, participatory, and action-oriented. This teach-in is about diversity and racism on college campuses, and was created as a way to improve inclusion and understanding on our campus.
¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 This teach-in is for all members of our campus community, and is designed to actively involve students in critical conversations about free speech, racism on college campuses, and ways of creating an inclusive and supportive campus environments. You can pop in for any part of the day to listen, learn, and share your voice. A detailed schedule will be posted to this event page.
¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 This free event is organized, facilitated, and hosted by a grassroots interdisciplinary group of faculty and students on campus with a goal of expanding healthy dialogue beyond the classroom. Please contact faculty members Rebecca Weaver-Hightower or Melanie Sage with questions.
¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 This is just one example of what I’m talking about. But things don’t need to be like this all the time. The biggest take away should be that academics need to remain active even after they receive they. Write to the paper. Write a letter to the Office of the President. For God’s sake all we do is write. This may not seem concrete, or even directly related to DH, but DH can only “change for the better” if the University system asks it to.
Critics of our most recent authors might say that DHers do the walking that other humanists don’t. Maybe because DH is more hands on and not as concerned about position in the ivory tower. That should be countered immediately with the argument Golumbia and others have made that cite DH for being complicit to harmful practices of the neoliberal University. Humanists want more than vocational skills, don’t we?