Definitions are important because they provide a frame of reference. They also dictate inclusivity, and that seems to be a fundamental issue with DH studies. There seems to be some amount of anxiety about whether or not people are \u201cdoing it\u201d and whether or not that changes\/challenges their identity as humanities scholars. Based on the definitions presented in chapter 20, it seems that some people don\u2019t suffer from this anxiety. They see DH as the natural progression of the humanities\u2014humanities plus computers. Philip Burns takes this approach in his definition when he writes, \u201cWe don\u2019t distinguish digital sociology or digital astronomy, so why digital humanities? Just because computers are involved doesn\u2019t mean the basic nature of the subject area is any different than it has been traditionally\u201d (295).<\/p>\n
However, others seem to take for granted the software and programming skills that they bring to DH. They assume that it\u2019s merely something that makes their lives easier, but they forget perhaps take for granted the anxiety that others may have for not possessing these skills. Tara Andrews, for example, writes that \u201cMost of my programming and scripting is less about consciously defining new digital paradigms for humanities research and much more about \u2018eradicating the boring and repetitive research tasks, making my life easier thereby\u2019\u201d (282). Note that Andrews has programming experience and for her there does not seem to be any anxiety about inclusion\/exclusion. She possesses some of the skills prized by many in the DH community so when she \u201cdoes it\u201d it\u2019s something that comes naturally to her. Simon Mahoney echoes this skills-taken-for-granted-position when he writes that DH is defined simply as \u201cwhat \u2018we\u2019 do\u201d (285). Who is \u201cwe\u201d?<\/p>\n
Gibb\u2019s post categorizes and analyzes types of definitions (a very DH thing to do, in my opinion) and he found that digitization and studying the digital fell to the bottom in terms of frequency whereas \u201cthe application of technology to humanities work\u201d far outstretched the rest (290). This means that most people are seeing DH as Humanities plus computers rather than the study of the human in the digital context or the study of digital tools themselves.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s clearly a divide that needs to be further discussed. What\u2019s the difference between Humanities evolved to the 21st century by using digital tools and the study and creation of those digital tools coupled with the study of how humans interact with those tools?<\/p>\n
I think that general resistance to DH might occur because there are those who do not want to learn new software or technologies in order to do what they\u2019ve always done: work with texts. They are resisting the definitions that dictate that they must \u201cmake something\u201d in order to keep up. The definitions that say that merely embracing and using emerging digital tools (built by others) is participation in the \u201cnew\u201d humanities i.e. digital humanities, are more inclusive to those who are unwilling to change much about their current practice.<\/p>\n
Circling back to the the issue of definition in general, I think it\u2019s important to consider the ways in which certain definitions cause anxiety for those who identify as humanists and perhaps feel edged out by a new definition that doesn\u2019t seem to include them. This may mean that two (or more) fields are emerging and all the\u00a0squabbling over definitions is\u00a0merely growing pains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Definitions are important because they provide a frame of reference. They also dictate inclusivity, and that seems to be a fundamental issue with DH studies. There seems to be some amount of anxiety about whether or not people are \u201cdoing it\u201d and whether or not that changes\/challenges their identity as humanities scholars. Based on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","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\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}