{"id":398,"date":"2016-09-13T01:07:30","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T01:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/?p=398"},"modified":"2016-09-13T01:07:30","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T01:07:30","slug":"mcgann-response-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/uncategorized\/mcgann-response-4\/","title":{"rendered":"McGann Response"},"content":{"rendered":"

McGann certainly has a more enthusiastic approach to the tools of digital humanities than other self-described \u201ctraditional\u201d scholars.\u00a0 That stance coming from that of mastery <\/em>rather than participation.\u00a0 McGann is sure to say, \u201cOf people and of life events we are and always will be participants and students, never masters\u201d (62).\u00a0 But of things, <\/em>like tools, methods, and objects, we can master.\u00a0 McGann believes that professional humanists are particularly good at this, so we can see why the Swinburne line is appealing to him.<\/p>\n

McGann sets up this argument for mastery (or at least a wholehearted effort) of new tools and methods by briefly outlining history of literature studies.\u00a0 This outline of the past specifically includes a take on the troubled position of university publishing (pg. 54 is the place to go for that).\u00a0 McGann diagnoses other issues with scholastic publishing, in journals for instance.\u00a0 At the top of 56 the first part of the essay hits its turning point.\u00a0 \u201cFor traditional paper-based work, it is \u2018the crisis in humanities\u2019.\u00a0 For humanists who work with information technology, it is another form of that crisis.\u201d\u00a0 That last line refers to the large amounts of work done in information technology that goes unrecognized by institutions, even the MLA.<\/p>\n

There seems to be no upsides for the humanist, but many like McGann agree that we need to adapt our fields to this new digital approach.\u00a0 In this essay, what it really comes down to is this:\u00a0 if the archival material and texts we practice our skills of literary and cultural analysis is in a digital realm, <\/em>we need to also be trained in that digital realm.\u00a0 At certain moments McGann reads like a crotchety old man, lamenting the loss of traditional bibliography skills.\u00a0 Although to be sure he does not want to see a death to the humanities (or us mocked on CNN, or wherever).\u00a0 It seems though, overall, McGann wants to see us move forward while also utilizing the skills of the past.\u00a0 \u201cRestoring intimate relations between literarians and librarians\u201d (58) is one step, working with the systems engineers responsible for maintaining our library systems, another.\u00a0 Publishing is troubled, that is for sure.\u00a0 McGann cites that for many of us, it is hard to separate the publishing from the scholarship from the field itself.\u00a0 He seems hopeful that with enthusiasm funneled into the digital humanities, we might not be doomed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McGann certainly has a more enthusiastic approach to the tools of digital humanities than other self-described \u201ctraditional\u201d scholars.\u00a0 That stance coming from that of mastery rather than participation.\u00a0 McGann is sure to say, \u201cOf people and of life events we are and always will be participants and students, never masters\u201d (62).\u00a0 But of things, like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}