Month: May 2016

During this week we were presented with a lot of definitions of Digital Humanities, from paragraphs to a simple “TBA”. To me the definition of Digital Humanities is truly “TBA” because it is a relatively new field that combines two already established fields with different objectives and different values. We develop digital humanities as we work on our projects, finding out what works, what does not, and what limitations we find on the way.

Like any field there should be principles and values that are held by those participating. Some of the ones that we talked about were openness, collaboration, connectedness, diversity, experimentation, etc. I think one of the most important values of digital humanities is openness. Openness is important to digital humanities because it brings the openness and access of the digital world to the kind of closed off world of humanities. Most studies of humanities are done in an archive or with primary sources that are not easily accessible or understandable to the public but with the digital component it brings the study of humanities to everyone and broadens the audience of the study of humanities. The study of humanities has been around for such a long time and is considered to only be interesting and understandable to a select group of academics, digital humanities brings a more modern approach to how we see humanities. For the longest time history was done by old white men, and still is today for the most part but more and more people from diverse backgrounds are getting into areas of history that were previously dominated by said old white males. Digital humanities makes it easier to get a foot in the door for people who are not the majority in their field. Like a civilian female researching West Point cadets involvement in the American Civil War.

I could easily write a paper or form an exhibit about these cadets but through digital humanities I have a platform to share my project with literally the world. These cadets gave everything so that their country might live and prosper, they deserve to have their story told and to be known for more than just their military merits, but for who they were as people. I want to humanize these cadets and give them life again, because so often in history we are so quick to put men like Custer, Cushing, and O’Rorke on pedestals and praise them for their military merits but then forget that they were actual people with feelings, thoughts, and personality. Through their letters and through digital humanities I hope to show that they were just young men who went above and beyond the call of duty and what was expected of them, even as West Point cadets where expectations were sky high. Through digital humanities I can combine their military merits with their life experiences as people and not simply military figures. Digital humanities allows me to humanize these young men by displaying their stories in a way that is accessible and entertaining to the public today. By making my project interactive through the tools of digital humanities it makes the project more personal and able to connect with more people. I look forward to the research I will do and the part my project will play in furthering the definition of digital humanities.

The big question for week one was: What is digital humanities? The group read and discussed many definitions of “digital scholarship” or “digital humanities” and discovered that the term digital humanities does not really have an exact definition.  Digital Scholarship can be both individual and collaborative, traditional and creative. Everyone has their own definition for what digital scholarship is and how to go about producing digital scholarship. If you wanted a simple and unimaginative definition, you could take a textbook approach and say that digital humanities “is an area of research and teaching at the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities”(Yes, that is directly from Wikipedia). Alternatively, you could be creative in your definition and make it philosophical or just plain funny like some of the definitions on http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com/.

My own boring definition of digital humanities would be “the interdisciplinary approach to presenting the humanities by using digital tools,” but I also think that the definition of digital humanities depends on your own project and what you want it to achieve. It is extremely hard to define digital humanities because we cannot define its boundaries yet. Digital humanities is so interdisciplinary. It compasses a wide range of ideas, resources, and talents.

One value or definition that was tossed around in our discussions and readings that I thought was a good definition to play with was that digital humanities is collaborative. Whether you are working individually or in a group, there is always going to be some sort of collaboration–either between people, or the collaboration of digital and non-digital tools. I also agreed with the idea that the digital humanities are open. There is a level of openness between digital scholars and the public. This openness directly correlates with collaboration–you need to be open to collaborate.  Another value that was expressed was the idea of sharing. You have often heard the phrase “sharing is caring”, in the case of digital humanities I believe that sharing gets things done and accomplished. I would like to see all three of these values embodied in my own practice of digital scholarship. I believe that our group has been embodying these values since day one and will continue to collaborate, share, and be open. Although we are all working on different projects, we share our thoughts regarding our projects and digital scholarship with one another, are open to suggestions and help, and collaborate with one another, constantly asking for or giving advice.

At the end of this ten week fellowship, I will look back on this blog post. I will have some sentimental reasons for looking at this blog post, especially seeing how far we have come as a group or reflecting on the fact that I could still consider myself a First Year at Gettysburg College when I wrote this post. But, I will also look back to see if there was any growth. Have my perceptions of digital humanities changed? If so, why? Why have they not changed? What have I learned throughout the course of this fellowship? Do I have a new definition for digital humanities? _______________________________. The line will remain blank until I answer my self-assigned questions when it is week ten.

Greetings, my name is Julia Wall and I am a rising sophomore at Gettysburg College, with a major in History and hopefully double major in Political Science as well as minor in Civil War Era Studies. I was interested in the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship because it worked with items in Special Collections and also brought in the field of Digital Humanities which I had never heard of before this opportunity. I think that digital humanities is a great way to provide information that is more readily and easily accessible for a more modern and digital audience.

My project is based off of the photograph album of William H. Harris, a West Point cadet that graduated with the June class of 1861, in Special Collections. William H. Harris kept up with almost every classmate and where they went during the American Civil War. Which leads me to wanting to tell the stories of these cadets through a digital yearbook and collect their stories, letters, etc to contribute to a bigger picture of who they were.

 

Over the course of our first week, we read a number of texts and had multiple conversations which attempted to define digital humanities.  Part of the definition’s complexity is due to the fact that work in the digital humanities is simultaneously individual and collaborative. The digital humanities are inherently creative—they are exciting because an individual has the opportunity to transform traditional scholarship of their choosing into something new and unique through an array of digital tools. Consequently, there is a personal aspect to each project because it reflects the values and imagination of the individual. Yet, the digital humanities are bonded together by multiple networks which are necessary for the individual to succeed. The sharing of ideas and knowledge from people at all levels of experience is crucial to the success of a digital humanities project. Additionally, digital humanities projects are meant to be publicly shared and distributed to enhance people’s knowledge and build communities.   Each interaction between the individual and community results in a distinctive project, and the number and variety of projects seemingly hinders a single definition. However, I believe that the digital humanities all attempt to present scholarship from various fields in a creative, open, and engaging way through the use of digital tools and collaborative efforts.

I plan to apply my definition of digital humanities to my project this summer. It is important to me that my project represents my personal voice and imagination, while also highlighting and enlivening the work and experiences of others. My personal desire to involve myself in student led social justice movements inspired my project. It is my goal to transform traditional scholarship (found in the form of archival material and secondary sources) into a story that engages other college students and challenges them to think critically about their own position and potential with regard to the social movements happening on their campuses.  I know that this goal can only happen if I have other people’s help and input—this includes the other fellows in my cohort, who will be able to share their successes, failures, and experiences with me, just as I share mine with them, and the team of librarians and digital experts, who can offer guidance and help based on their experience. The other community I hope to reach out to is those people who were or are actively involved with social justice at Gettysburg. Humanities and scholarship are not limited to textbooks; rather, they can be found in the personal anecdotes people share and representations of their lives. As such, I aim to digitize people’s stories in a way that feels immersive and authentic to allow people to learn from each other in addition to hard facts. If my project succeeds, it will be an immersive digital storytelling that conveys my own passion for social justice, while actively featuring the voices of those who brought about social change at Gettysburg College and building off of the advice and input of the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship team.

-Lauren

Over the course of the 2015-2016 academic year, the Gettysburg College community was witness to various instances of student-led social activism. The campus activity and my own passion for social justice inspired me to frame my digital humanities project around the history of student-led social justice movements at Gettysburg College. I plan to use WordPress and Timeline JS to make an interactive timeline that examines past and present student-led activism at Gettysburg, and provides a space for future documentation. It is my hope that sharing this information on an interactive platform establishes the validity and power of student-led social justice movements, and inspires students (especially those at Gettysburg) to be involved in the various movements taking place on their own campuses.

-Lauren

I originally wanted to research women’s experiences throughout all of Gettysburg College history,  but I quickly realized the time frame was too wide for me to really delve deep into each time period. Now, I am narrowing my research time frame to before, during, and after World War II. I am going to choose three women who attended Gettysburg College during each time period and then connect each of their stories to the larger narrative of Gettysburg College History. I want to use the digital tool Scalar to create an interactive narrative to tell the stories of these women. The questions I am currently asking myself are: What were academics like for women? What did they major in? What was their social life like? Did most join sororities? Where did they live on campus? What rules did they follow? What did they get involved in? Even though I have narrowed down my time frame, I certainly still have a lot of work ahead, but I am ready to dive in and get started.

We had a great first week with the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellows! I am impressed with Julia, Keira, and Lauren’s enthusiasm and energy, and the way they have dived headlong into this experiment in student learning and digital scholarship. They took over their group space, and even started doing some crowd-sourced research on the aesthetic properties of Civil War cadets.

Something we talked about a bit this week was the idea of failure in digital scholarship, which Anne Burdick, et. al, speak to in Digital_Humanities:

Digital Humanities must have, and even encourages, failures . Outside the normative core, there is space to iterate and test, to create precarious experiments that are speculative, ludic, or even impossible. That research can benefit from failure should not be any sort of surprise—stress-testing metals and other materials is what gives us bridges that don’t collapse and buildings that stay up—but so too can the classroom digital_humanities 22 benefit from an academic culture that welcomes frequent (productive) failure. The methodologies of Digital Humanities are robust precisely because they place lasting pedagogical value in the creative, generative, and experimental processes of design-based research. Process is favored over product; versioning and extensibility are favored over definitive editions and research silos. The Digital Humanities capacity to ask, design, and model new research questions opens new possibilities for those who are willing to take risks. Too often in established cultural discourse, the experimental is absent or hastily erased, the dialogue already so well-established that new approaches are incremental at best. But it is not an experiment if it cannot fail (21-22).

This summer is an experiment, a pilot, a way for us to see if we can find a new way to engage students at Gettysburg College. We don’t have all the answers, and sometimes what we do just won’t work. Failure will happen, simply because we haven’t stress-tested this idea in production. But that’s ok; if we learn from it, if it’s a “productive failure.” We just need to get up, make the adjustments, and continue on. By letting our fellows know that failure is ok, it takes some burden off of them to think they have to “get it right the first time,” but it’s also places a burden on them to learn from their mistakes. It also places that burden on the shoulders of those of us who have worked on this project to this point, and will continue to refine and adjust through the summer. No pressure, right? At any rate, we had a strong start, and we will keep up the momentum through the summer.

But enough about failure … there was lots of productive conversation this week. When we talked about the elements of digital scholarship projects, each DSSF had great examples for projects:

• Julia: Julia talked about Project Chop Suey: Immigration and Cuisine in America’s Chinatowns. This is one of Miriam Posner’s DH101 class projects. Discussion of this led us to think about what sorts of data we could mine from past Servo menus and recipes … something worth thinking about!
• Keira: The Knotted Line, a project that was new to me, had a really cool timeline visualization, as well as a Scalar structure, which falls in line with her interests. Also, Keira showed us Remembering Lincoln, which we talked about in the Special Collections visit; this project has a great collaborative element and has a well-organized structure and display.
• Lauren: Digital Detroit was Lauren’s project to share, she liked its emphasis on action verbs in the navigation, as well as its different types of visualizations. The two-tiered navigation structure was also a good feature from a digital project perspective, since it puts the emphasis on the content, while allowing access to the data and relevant information about the project itself.

In many ways, this first week gives me confidence that we can capture some of the spirit of other collaborative efforts, such as the ILiADS gathering at Hamilton College. Students get excited about this sort of work, and it’s infectious. We hope that is the vibe throughout the summer, and something we can bring to the Fall 2016 semester to the rest of the campus.

Looking forward to week 2!

–R.C.

Salutations! My name is Keira Koch and I am a rising sophomore at Gettysburg College hoping to major in Public History and Native American Studies.

I decided to apply for the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship because I thought it would be a great opportunity to expand my knowledge in research and digital scholarship. I was eager to learn how to differently portray information to the public and bring my research virtually to life. What also inspired me to apply for the Fellowship was a job shadow I participated in over winter break. During the job shadow, the archivist told me of a digital project they were working on and how through technology you can tell a story and save a piece of history. This idea of connecting technology with storytelling fascinated me. I look forward to learning how to construct my digital project and bringing my research narrative to life.

Hello! My name is Lauren White, and I am a rising junior at Gettysburg College pursuing a double major in Environmental Studies and English.

I became interested in the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship because I saw it as an opportunity to present my ideas in an engaging, communal, and interactive way. The prospect of being able to give life to my thoughts in a digital format excited and inspired me. I look forward to learning how to use digital tools and advancing the research and analytical skills I have developed in my academic career to contribute to the field of Digital Scholarship.

Welcome! Musselman Library’s Digital Scholarship Summer Fellows will be blogging in this space during the 10 weeks of their fellowship. They will be posting 3 times a week, reflecting on their experience about the fellowship.

Comments, questions, and conversation are welcome.

–R.C.