the astroid has struck. the dust is in the air. it's time to leave the dinosaurs to their fate and...
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The digital humanities are not some flashy new theory that might go out of fashion. At this point, the digital humanities are The Thing. There’s no Next about it. And it won’t be long until the digital humanities are, quite simply, “the humanities” (Pannapacker 2011). It is a truism to note that the definition and scope of the Digital Humanities has been the object of considerable discussion in recent years. Who’s in? Who’s out? Do you have to code? Must you read from a distance? Is DH under theorised? Overly popular with funders? A threat or an opportunity to renew the “old” humanities? In my view, this focus on DH as a (sub-)discipline of the larger Humanities is unfortunate. Because while I have gradually come to believe that there is such a thing as the Digital Humanities (in the same way that there are other (sub-)disciplinary specialisations like Post-Colonial Theory or Medieval Studies), I have also come to believe that our focus on defining what makes it different is preventing us from paying attention to what is really important about the widespread introduction of computation into humanistic study over the last few years: the extent to which technology is changing the way we do everything else. In this paper, I would like to look at how digital technologies are fundamentally changing the way Humanists—of all persuasions and sub-disciplines—are conducting their day-to-day business. How they are changing the way we teach, the way we communicate, interact with colleagues and the public, and judge our relative success. In many cases, these changes are so new that our discipline as a whole has, by-and-large, yet to grasp fully the extent to which they have already occurred. In other cases, our ability to benefit from changes that have been recognised is hindered by generational resistance, institutional inertia, and a tendency to see anything digital as belonging to the DH “fad.” This is a problem we must address. An Open Access, Open Source, social web is an internet that presents Humanists of all stripes with remarkable opportunities: to engage with far larger audiences, to work with a far wider variety of cultural and historical material, and to develop forms of communication and publication that are far better suited to the type of research and teaching we have always done. Our unwillingness to embrace more fully the opportunities before us and develop the skills and knowledge necessary to lead in their development is a terrible missed opportunity. As my title suggests, I also believe it is a generational problem: the technology that offers us the greatest opportunities has developed far faster than we have been able to integrate it into our disciplinary training. Few Associate Professors have PhDs that are newer than the popular recognition of the most significant Web 2.0 applications; many of our senior faculty began graduate school before the development of the World Wide Web.TRANSCRIPT
- 1. The astroid has struck. The dust is in the air. It's time to leave the dinosaurs to their fate and concentrate on the mammals. Notes of the New Humanities. Daniel Paul O'Donnell University of Lethbridge @danielpaulod | [email protected]
2. The future of the humanities has never looked brighter 3. More relevant than ever before Larger audiences than ever before More and better data than ever before Greater access than ever before More venues for dissemination than ever before More diverse community of researchers and students than ever before 4. Brighter than ever is not our normal narrative 5. There is unquantifiable intellectual reward from the exploration of scholarly problems and the expansion of every disciplineyes, even the literary ones, and even if that means doing bat-shit analysis like using the rule of false elimination to determine that Josef K. is simultaneously guilty and not guilty in The Trial (Shuman 2013) when we look at the public reputation of the humanities; when we compare the dilapidated Humanities Cottage on campus with the new $225-million Millennium Science Complex...; when we look at the academic job market for humanists, we can't avoid the conclusion that the value of the work we do, and the way we theorize value, simply isn't valued by very many people (Brub 2013) Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go (Benton [Pannapacker] 2009) 6. So why the disjunct? Our success is coming outside the traditional avenues 7. So why the disjunct? Our success is coming outside the traditional avenues 8. Non-traditional audiences Non-traditional venues Non-traditional technology Non-traditional checks and balances 9. The Digital Humanities 10. These two visions of the digital humanities project the perfection of traditional criticism and the inauguration of something entirely new correspond to the two attitudes digital humanists typically strike... It is the double claim always made by an insurgent movement. We are a beleaguered minority and we are also the saving remnant. But whatever vision of the digital humanities is proclaimed, it will have little place for the likes of me and for the kind of criticism I practice (Fish 2013) 11. Our unwillingness to embrace more fully the opportunities before us and develop the skills and knowledge necessary to lead in their development is a terrible missed opportunity. 12. An Open Access, Open Source, social web is an internet that presents Humanists of all stripes with remarkable opportunities: to engage with far larger audiences, to work with a far wider variety of cultural and historical material, and to develop forms of communication and publication that are far better suited to the type of research and teaching we have always done. 13. If we are going to change things, we need to break with our old way of doing things. 14. Change the way we train our students Change the way reward our practitioners Change our understanding of what it means to do the humanities 15. Some models. 16. The Lethbridge Journal Incubator Attempt to discover new resources for ensuring the sustainability of Scholarly publishing Does this by discovering hidden value in the processes by which scholarly dissemination occurs 17. Traditional OA model 18. Non-APC-funded Open Access Publication Business Publication Processes * HQP Training * Increase institutional capacity * Real world value to UG and G studies Readers/Institutions A uthors/Institutions Third parties D eans/U niversities/Parents Em ployers/G overnm ents Funders/Libraries/Departments Funders/Infrastructure Editors/Students/ A uthors/Institutions 19. Benefits for students 20. Benefits for institution 21. Benefit for journals 22. Visionary Cross Project High quality scholarly material (far better than anything previously known) 23. Visionary Cross Project High quality scholarly material (far better than anything previously known) Focus on Giving Back to the Community through on-site interpretation Teaching/self-study tools 24. Global Outlook::Digital Humanities 25. New Pedagogies Flipped classrooms MOOCs Unessays 26. The K/T Extinction 27. [email protected] Benton, Thomas H. 2009. Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Dont Go. The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 30, sec. Advice. https://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846/. Brub, Michael. 2013. The Humanities, Unraveled. The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 18, sec. The Chronicle Review. http://chronicle.com/article/Humanities- Unraveled/137291/. CretaceousPaleogene Extinction Event. 2013. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cretaceous %E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event&oldid=548502525. Fish, Stanley. 2013. Mind Your Ps and Bs: The Digital Humanities and Interpretation. Opinionator. Accessed March 30. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/mind- your-ps-and-bs-the-digital-humanities-and-interpretation/. Schuman, Rebecca. 2013. Thesis Hatement. Slate, April 5. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/04/there_are_no_academic_jobs_and_g etting_a_ph_d_will_make_you_into_a_horrible.2.html. Thank you