{"id":794,"date":"2016-12-05T10:52:14","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T15:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/?p=794"},"modified":"2017-01-30T15:37:17","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T20:37:17","slug":"being-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/fall-2016\/being-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Present"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her latest blog post, Teaching Teachers in the Age of Trump, Roopika Risam writes the following: \u201clook at who is in front of you, identify their needs, teach accordingly.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

This mandate is especially important in the digital humanities, which is a developing field and thus has the potential to teach in a more inclusive and revolutionary way. Obviously, this is not an easy task, as an event as big as the election affects students and teachers alike. But, as Risam points out in her blog post, we have to actually go teach, even if that\u2019s difficult. Teachers are sources of leadership–their students look up to and rely on them. If we do not make ourselves present and available in difficult times, the student loses that locus of support and guidance. Leading in this context also means allowing time and space for students to express their emotions. To distance or try to separate what is happening in a student\u2019s life from their expectations in the classroom is impossible. Teaching holistically means acknowledging the lived experiences of students and recognizing the impact their lives have on their scholarship. Even though devoting time to emotions may seem like a waste of time, allowing room for processing can help to enhance a student\u2019s scholarship by making sure that their personal investment in a project or course is channeled healthily. <\/span><\/p>\n

It is also especially important that digital scholarship devote time to integrative and intersectional projects that explore and give attention and space to a variety of identities. Documenting the lived experiences of people of color, LGBT+ individuals, immigrants and their families, people without class privilege, or other people who are at risk for worsened marginalization is especially important now. We also have to make sure that the digital humanities expand to those to aren\u2019t literally in front of us–in other words, it is easy to look at DH through the lens of a small, predominantly white liberal arts institutions, but what are we doing to include community colleges, historically black colleges, or tribal colleges? Those colleges may have populations even more affected by recent changes caused by the election. As such, it is critical that they are given the tools so they can take advantage of their education to the fullest extent possible and express their experience. <\/span><\/p>\n

Our boss, R.C., asked us to finish this blog post by reflecting on what has been valuable about our experience this semester both as students, and peer mentor\/teachers. First, I want to re-emphasize the importance of the digital scholarship cohort. On the morning following the election, I was lucky to be surrounded by people who were willing to offer support and discussion about everything that had taken place. The cohort also helped to create What We Did Here<\/a>, a project meant to document activism at Gettysburg and give every student a voice. In general, this semester helped me realize the need for change, and I am thankful that I have been able to bring it about in some regards, especially through What We Did Here, and in emphasizing the need for the dissemination and sharing of knowledge to the students I\u2019ve worked with.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her latest blog post, Teaching Teachers in the Age of Trump, Roopika Risam writes the following: \u201clook at who is in front of you, identify their needs, teach accordingly.\u201d This mandate is especially important in the digital humanities, which is a developing field and thus has the potential to teach in a more inclusive … Continue reading “Being Present”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall16blog4","category-fall-2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":796,"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dssf.musselmanlibrary.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}