Golumbia Response
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 1 Golumbia likes to say that DH has no real place in the humanities. That it is a foreign group invading a group already settled in their ways. Golumbia says, “That literary scholars need not defer to DHers when deciding what work qualifies as part of our discipline and meets our own disciplinary standards.” Literary study is the core in humanities. Digital humanities is just a thin outer shell. Digital humanities does not have the final say in what is considered either digital humanities or traditional humanities. They are the newest addition into a complex system. Just because DH does use many of the same methods as traditional literary studies, does not mean that they know what is and what isn’t.
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Because most of what DH does comes from traditional literary studies, the use of ‘digital’ in front of humanities can be off putting and possibly insulting to those in the humanities discipline. It is already a well developed discipline with traditions in study that go back decades, and haven’t changed. I think digital humanities is trying to change the humanities is a good way. They are trying to branch out and create something new. But by having ‘digital’ in front of humanities presents the problem of taking over the humanities discipline. The digital humanities in its own right is a discipline, but because they go off of traditional study, it can be seen as an invasion into the humanities discipline.
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 1 Create. It is essentially what digital humanists do. They create and build things for others to use and not so much to use other technology. It is said that anybody who uses technology is to be considered a digital humanist, but I disagree. Being a digital humanist requires a person to use technology that they wouldn’t use on a daily basis, such as emails, apps on a phone, or word. Those are all very basic technology tools that everybody uses and therefore should be eliminated from the pool in what you can use to call yourself a digital humanist. There needs to be a more specific definition for who and what is considered a digital humanist. With no clear definition, the digital humanities has been allowed to leak into the humanities. The digital humanities, when involved with the humanities discipline, is a sub category. The humanities is the core. The digital aspect is a new way to shed light on the humanities.
I’d like to see you work with and interpret the quotations that you take from Golumbia here. What is he saying when he claims that “literary scholars need not defer to DH” — how and in what ways have they been forced to do so? And where have we seen evidence of that in the work that we have studied this semester?