Event Title
Possibilities and Realities of Digital Humanities Across Disciplines: What Can Other Disciplines Learn From DH and What Can DH Learn From Other Disciplines?
Location
NSC-145
Start Date
3-11-2017 10:00 AM
End Date
3-11-2017 12:00 PM
Description
In conducting research, digital humanists find themselves in two competing worlds. We are at once citizens of a traditional academic community with established structures for conducting research, publishing results, and securing employment, and at the same time, reside in a digital community that thrives on innovation. In this overlap, emerging DH scholars might encounter those individuals or institutions who, for any number of reasons, respond ambivalently or negatively to these new practices. Meanwhile, many scholars have still been using the methods and theorizing around the topic of digital humanities and the "digital turn" in scholarship. When an institution is slow to embrace this turn, those innovative scholars can be simultaneously understood as too innovative for their specific discipline and too entrenched in their discipline compared to someone already established in the community of digital humanities.
We bring together a panel of scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss the challenges of working in and trying to bridge these two worlds. The discussion will begin with examining the root causes of the seeming reluctance to embrace digital tools, methods, and presentation or publication formats. While it might be tempting to attribute this to generational differences, structural inertia and a reluctance or lack of support for the labor involved in keeping pace with rapidly changing technology are just as likely to be root causes. Labor issues also arise when an "online presence" is essential in today's academic landscape, but such effort is rarely compensated. Similarly, the tools and financial and technical support required to do digital scholarship and teaching may be out of reach.
The conversation will also trace the issues that arise at the various stages of conducting digital research within the traditional parameters of academia. Even as projects break new ground in terms of form, analysis, and presentation, researchers are often limited by regulations and customs that were designed for more traditional investigations. From the difficulties in obtaining initial IRB approvals and copyright permissions, to the hesitancy to recognize new forms of data analysis and DH projects, digital scholarship encounters a number of roadblocks. Continuing the discussion of the often unrecognized labor involved in creating public facing, open-access, or other nontraditional forms of scholarship, the panel will also discuss ideas for legitimizing the intellectual labor involved in creating digital projects and making it count as part of a body of academic work.
There are clearly tensions between traditional and digital scholarship that have yet to be resolved, including how to bridge the disconnected textual forms used to analyze of digital mediums or bodies in space and time. Having reflected on past experiences and current challenges, the panel will conclude with a discussion of the future of digital humanities. We will invite our panelists to offer their perspectives on what the relationship between the worlds of academia and digital humanities will look like in the future, and what our disciplines can learn from digital humanities going forward.
Possibilities and Realities of Digital Humanities Across Disciplines: What Can Other Disciplines Learn From DH and What Can DH Learn From Other Disciplines?
NSC-145
In conducting research, digital humanists find themselves in two competing worlds. We are at once citizens of a traditional academic community with established structures for conducting research, publishing results, and securing employment, and at the same time, reside in a digital community that thrives on innovation.
