Golumbia Response
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 1 Digital Humanities seemingly uses the word ‘digital’ in the sense that it implies that humanities is taken from a means of moving traditional scholarship to being housed within a digital interface. The use of the word digital appears to posit that DH is an entirely separate field of scholarship; when in reality there’s no solid definition as to what DH actually means or is comprised of specifically. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the word digital in DH is ‘inappropriate’ but rather ‘misguided’.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 2 The differences I see between DH and traditional scholarship is that traditional scholarship seems to already have its solid definitions and seems more insular and have a finite number of people that are able to work with certain components. DH allows for a much greater amount of participation from a variety of mediums. In the fields of DH, digital humanists are writing essays in Tweets for example – whether this makes it less ‘valid’ in some opinions, is another story, the fact remains that they are making their arguments, using evidence, and involving scholars like traditional scholarship does. “DH says that teaching must change, both in terms of subject matter and teaching method” (Golumbia 161). The concept that we are even talking about and arguing over whether it counts as part of the realm of and/or is connected to traditional scholarship appears to posit that the field is changing like Golumbia says. In fact, Golumbia takes this argument a step further: “It would make no sense to talk of digital linguistics in any thoroughgoing way because there is almost no linguistics that is not digital today; digital tools are required everywhere in the field, sometimes highlighted, sometimes not” (Golumbia 163). So I say that ‘digital’ is ‘misguided’ because of the idea that the field has a “comme ci, comme ça” attitude towards highlighting the usage of digital means – we are inevitably using digital tools throughout the humanities and digital scholarship – how those are manifested is where the subsets branch off, whether that is in the form of Tweets, blogging, or just researching online databases for helpful facts and argument points.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 As Golumbia shares, “I think, literary scholars would not ask what computational literary studies is had DH chosen for itself this far more descriptive but less ideologically effective name” (Golumbia 163).
Whoa. That’s a rather complicated first sentence. Slow down and say what you mean.