Introduction to Digital Humanities: A-State

Week 4

Constructing Digital Identities: A Personal Introduction

Performing Identity with Social Technologies

With the ubiquity of social technologies, we constantly make decisions about how to represent ourselves online.  Drawing on the work of theorist Judith Butler, we can interpret these decisions as "performative acts" that add up to an "identity tenuously constituted in time." Using Butler's theory of gender identity as a model, think about how digital identities are construced as you read and collaboratively annotate:

1. Judith Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519-31. Hypothes.is link.

2. Martin Lister et al., "New Media in Everyday Life" in New Media: A Critical Introduction, Second (London: Routledge, 2009), 237-307.  Hypothes.is link. 

3. Anne Burdick et al., "The Social Life of The Digital Humanities," in Digital_Humanities, Open Access (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012), 73-98. Hypothes.is link.

Assignment Part I: Bio Analysis

Select four online bios of "successful" academics or professionals in your field.  (If you would like to focus on digital humanists, check out the collaborators section of dhcommons.org, an online hub that matches digital humanities projects seeking assistance with scholars interested in project collaboration.) After you have made your selections, create a new page in our Scalar workbook titled "Student's Name + Bio Analysis." On the page embed and/or include links to your selections and discuss what they tell us about the academic or professional bio as a form. For a list of additional questions to consider, go here. Once you have completed your "Bio Analysis" page, follow the instructions on the "Assignment" page of the workbook to make sure that it  shows up in the contents of your "Portfolio" and the "Bio Analysis" page. 

Assignment Part II: Personal Bio

Using the insights you have gained from the readings and bio analysis exercise, construct an academic and/or professional bio for your "Portfolio" page of our Scalar workbook. 

 
 

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