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Introduction to Digital Humanities: A-State Main Menu Syllabus Outline, Outcomes, Policies Resources Readings , Tools, Websites Assignments Requirements, Prompts, Deadlines Schedule Weekly Overview

Week 2

27471

Examining Media-Rich Research and Communication: A Creative Introduction

New Media and DH

As we saw last week, there are many different ways to define the digital humanities. One aspect of this debate concerns the relationship between the traditional humanities and digital humanities. Whereas some scholars see barriers, others see the relationship between the two as a "spectrum," arguing that "all humanities scholars use digital practices and concepts to one degree or another" (Lincoln Mullen, 2010). One end of this spectrum consists of scholars who use basic digital tools and resources, such as word processing programs and Google. The other end includes those who use computational methods and/or produce scholarship that is "interactive," "hypertextual," "virtual," "networked" and/or "simulated." For an introductory discussion of these terms, read Martin Lister et al., New Media: A Critical Introduction, Second (London: Routledge, 2009), 9-44. Hypothesis link.

Evaluating DH Projects

The project, as Anne Burdick et al. explain in the embedded excerpt, is the "basic unit" of DH scholarship. Because DH projects are both "continuous" and "discontinuous" with traditional forms of humanities scholarship (i.e. articles and monographs), they need to be evaluated based on their humanistic merits (i.e. use of evidence, argumentation, etc. ) and digital merits. Some questions to consider when evaluating the digital merits of a project include:

How is the project set up?
Who runs it, and who are its stakeholders?
What are its assets, structure, services and displays (for definitions of these terms, go here)? What values seem to be encoded in these elements?
Who is the audience for this project? Does the audience already exist or does the project create a new community?

In recent years professional humanities organizations, such as the American Historical Association and the Modern Language Association, have published their own discipline-specific guidelines for evaluating digital scholarship. The AHA's guidelines can be found here; the MLA's here. They have yet, however, to compile bibliographies and repositories of the DH scholarship conducted and published in their fields.

Locating DH Projects

So how do you go about finding DH projects? DH projects are often multi-year collaborative endeavors. As such, they are frequently housed in libraries (see this report) and research centers, such as the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the Center for Digital Humanities at UCLA. One way to find DH projects, then, is to identify the major institutions in the field and search their collections. It is worth noting that digital humanists are a social crew and their preferred method of communication is twitter. So you can also find out about projects by following popular hashtags like #dh or #twitterstorians. (We'll talk more about social media Week 8). Finally, use Google like a scholar to search for DH projects related to particular topics and themes.

Assignment

For this week's class locate and carry out a formal academic review of a digital humanities project related to your research interests. For tips on how to conduct and structure your review read The Public Historian Digital Project Review Guidelines and consult reviews that have been published in the journal. Post your review to our Scalar workbook and be prepared to present your selected project to the class.