How does DH change people fundamentally?<\/p>\n
Answering this question feels a bit like defining DH, because it\u2019s an attempt to define the people. I will make an attempt at this, even though I would prefer not to give a definition,\u00a0just as\u00a0the scholars in these examples expressed:<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t, I just do it. \u2013Nick Mirzoeff\u201d (Selected Definitions 286)<\/p>\n
\u201cWith extreme reluctance. (Lou Bernard, UK)\u201d (Definitions by Type 294)<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate this question, and I don\u2019t have an answer for it. Neither, it seems, does a large portion of the people who might be called Digital Humanists. I\u2019ll leave it at that. (Justin Tonra, University of Virginia, USA)\u201d (Definitions by Type 294)<\/p>\n
The interesting phenomenon here, especially shown by Mirzoeff\u2019s definition, is that many people involved in Digital Humanities are \u201cattracted\u201d to the field, but \u201crepelled\u201d by defining it. In fact, Fred Gibbs notes in his essay \u201cDigital Humanities Definitions by Type\u201d that 12 of the 170 definitions he analyzed about DH fell under the category of \u201crefusals to define the term\u201d (290). Another 15 definitions were said to \u201cminimize the difference between the DH and humanities\u201d (290), which is similar to not giving a definition because it suggests that you do not need a definition for DH. Perhaps the fundamental change occurring for many people involved in the DH is that they want to do<\/em> their DH work and not waste time with petty definitions and discussions about it.<\/p>\n What does the risk of such a fundamental change mean as we attempt to define DH? If people do not want to define the DH, a clear danger is that there will be no consistency in the field, and \u201coutsiders\u201d (such as\u00a0administrators or those allocating grant money) will not take the field seriously. This might suggest that we need<\/em> a clear definition and a line to judge who is \u201cin\u201d or \u201cout\u201d, but there is another perspective to consider. As Haley suggested in class today, the true problem here might be that \u201cwe are defining what we cannot define\u201d, with the example of the field of philosophy. Is it possible for us to accept that we cannot define the DH, especially for the scholars that are eager to define it? Would this impact the field negatively because people cannot take it seriously or do not know what they should be doing in the field? Or in contrast, would this benefit the field because the people who are invested in it would stop wasting their time trying to define it and instead get to work? Let\u2019s stop trying to be dictionaries and start trying to be DH-ers, whatever that is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How does DH change people fundamentally? Answering this question feels a bit like defining DH, because it\u2019s an attempt to define the people. I will make an attempt at this, even though I would prefer not to give a definition,\u00a0just as\u00a0the scholars in these examples expressed: \u201cI don\u2019t, I just do it. \u2013Nick Mirzoeff\u201d (Selected […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":617,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheilaliming.com\/428DH\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}