Digital Humanities

You do a nice job, Janessa, in highlighting the inconsistencies that appear built into Brittany’s response. It would be interesting to see Brittany address those inconsistencies more directly here.

McPherson’s arguments in this essay are multifaceted and very, very complex (as we discussed in class …) So it’s important that we, in interpreting them, take the time to meaningfully engage with the text. For example, I can’t help but notice that you do not refer directly to McPherson’s writing in this blog response, and I’d like to see you doing that. It’s important to identify and wrestle with an author’s claims before you attempt to formulate a response to them.

Racism is such a taboo topic, or maybe underground-ly hushed is a better phrase. It’s something, as a culture, we have shunned and have become ashamed of, for the most part as a country. How then, did she get the clout to try to make this comparison and essay, AND do it with so much missing? The writing technique and content is just lacking, in my opinion, and when it comes to racism in the 1960’s, you can’t lack.

I just think that they need to get a collectively agreed upon definition of what DH is, then they can jump to combatting racism,etc. I disagree with the inclusion of racism because I think it is too early to be focusing on that when they can’t even get a clear definition and steady funding. Focusing on judicial (Thanks Sheila!) issues when they have bigger, more basic and foundational fish to fry seems a little too fast- paced because when you’re in survival mode, you don’t have the opportunity to ruminate for hours, you’re too busy fighting the elements to worry about what is wrong in the world in which you reside…

I, too, think that she made quite the leap between dealing with the all-race-inclusive-noone-really-questions-it DH, with the racial issues in the 1960’s. I say no one really questions it because, well, until we see the title of her essay, claiming that DH is so white, why on Earth would we question if people of color are allowed to “study” it? We would, as much as we would say that math is only for Asians (bad example, we do actually hear this) but it’s just odd how she came to the comparison–though I do understand, and, if her argument was stronger, agree.

“It is not so much that I disagree with McPherson as much as it is I think DH as a whole is making a classic mistake”–I didn’t know you thought this! In class, you are so vocal and enthusiastic about shedding light on the different outlooks on DH, and you have so many opinions of your own. I’d like to hear more about why you think that digital humanists are making a huge mistake in their field, and you say it’s because “they are taking on too much at once”, but how would you suggest doing it? The way I see it, the road to achieving what DH is now has been a road of both fast and slow speeds, which I think it needed to be. Sometimes there are tons of breakthroughs through digital arts, like the ever-going loading of literary documents to PDFs, or Dr. Liming’s work with the EWL, or GoogleBooks uploads–these are big big things, and are these what you think DH is doing too much and too fast? On a personal point, I do think that DH is going fast, at least it seems that way, because we’re all left standing here wondering, wait, what is digital humanities and who cares? I think DH developed too much behind a big curtain and now normal citizens and normal humanists are trying to catch up.