Digital Humanities

No, indeed, “it doesn’t stand to make a lot of money” — it stands to cost folks lost of money. If DH is making humanities disciplines look and act more like STEM fields, it’s also making humanities disciplines cost and spend money like STEM fields. STEM education requires specialized equipment, labs, facilities, software, etc. whereas, for generations, humanities departments have gotten by only on books — books that students were required to purchase themselves.

So one “fundamental change” that we might associate with DH has to do with changes wrought to funding expectations and infrastructure in humanities departments, too …

Second.

I’m eager to here your thoughts on Jason’s question, by the way, because it’s something that I think about all the time. Half the fun — hell, 80% of the fun — of the work that I’ve done on the Wharton archive comes from interacting with the physical archive itself. I don’t imagine that, for any researcher, the digital database will be enough to supplant those feelings of interaction.

Once again: a title with verve

Maybe what you’re saying here that it is not DH that changes us, but the fact the field is changing in the first place?  If we were historians of the literary field, I’m sure it would be no challenge for us to prove that there is indeed anxiety every time something changes, methodology, subject of study, whatever.  We can look back and see it as recently as the 90s for cultural criticisms, post-mod and post-structuralism, etc.

I don’t know if we can just say “DH is not recognized by the bureaucracy at large”.  I know what you’re getting at here, but I’m going to pick on the quipy little sentence to snip out complications.

I would argue the “bureaucracy” (which I’m taking for, the traditional collegiate administration? the typical academic structure?) loves DH.  They’ve been told enough it’s the hot new thing, why not give it a try?  But the problem lies that the man just doesn’t fund or understand the humanities, so how can they build upon a non existent foundation?  If we’re already starving, who can we point to for taking our food supply?  I don’t think DHers blame “traditional humanists”, they adjusted their diets long ago.

Even though I say “they” love DH, they love the idea of DH.  But we know that it doesn’t stand to make a lot of money, right?  Open source tools, the back end work of a digital archive, nothing that says $$$?  Yeah then the “bureaucracy” doesn’t care about it.  Sheila has told us anecdotal evidence (which we decided, is evidence for a humanist) of DHers getting jobs, finding zero support, and jumping ship.  I think that is the sort of thing we’re talking about here.

And I mean, that’s enough to make anyone jaded.

While not having to be physically present is a boon to researchers who would otherwise be unable to personally interact with items in archives,  do you think anything is lost by not actually being there and being able interact with those items personally?

Loved the Monsanto analogy.  Do you think this anxiety would still exist if DH had the same career progression prospects as the traditional humanities?

When you say, “[DH] represents [change] for both scholar and scholarship” you begin to answer Cody’s question.  And I’m certain the phrase “Point of No Return” has been used by others as well as us in this class.  That certainly implies change, doesn’t it?  It makes a clear marker between what is and what was.  The phrase then invites us to think of what comes next, which incites the desire to define the field so that we can try to take hold in the future of the field.