Author: Emma Lewis

The first week of this program, I went into the library and was asked to write a definition of Digital Humanities/Scholarship. That seemed like an impossible task, distilling all of DS/DH into a simple phrase. I know now that it is, it is supposed to be difficult, and that is the nature of DH.

I believe my initial definition was something along the lines of “the use of digital tools and platforms to create engaging and experimental scholarship.” It’s not bad for something I wrote in ten minutes while trying to comprehend everything I had read previously.

In the second blog post I made, I changed this definition to sound more articulate. Now, DH was “an endeavor that utilizes digital tools and platforms to enhance creations, are open to a larger community and perspectives, and are informed through risks and experimentation.”

Both of these definitions hold true for me in their own ways. DH does use the digital to enhance what is already there. Without good research, there cannot be a great project, even if the digital tools are top of the line. DH is open, both to a wider audience and experimentation, as that allows it to grow. One of the greatest aspects of digital projects is the fact that they do not have to be completely finished, they can change as needed over time. DH can also engage with audiences by making interactive sites.

These ideas guided me in creating my project. I made sure to use the digital platforms to augment my research, not distract from the lack of information with flashy features. I am not yet done with the project, but that is because I allowed myself room to continue working. I focused on what I could accomplish in a summer, and will build up my site as I can. I always kept my audience in mind, designing my site for their ease of use and comprehension of materials.

All that said, I do not have a definitive definition of Digital Humanities, but that is not for lack of trying. Over the summer, I have come to the conclusion that the scope of DH is much wider than initially perceived. I can define DH for myself and my project, and that definition will serve quite nicely. However, I do not know all the ways in which DH is being used, and I cannot speak for them all. I do not want to, as making a definitive definition might exclude some great DH that I do not know exists yet. DH should be thought of instead as a set of aspects. If a project utilizes many of DH aspects- digital tools, collaboration, openness- then it should be under consideration to be known as a DH project.

For those interested in joining the cohort next year, I urge you to try. Don’t be intimidated by the digital, embrace it and use it to your advantage. Have confidence in your project as a part of DH, it does have a place in this field. Most of all, ask for help. DH is collaborative by nature, it is the only way we all grow. I look forward to meeting you and seeing what you bring to the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship.

 

Emma Lewis

The book Digital_Humanities has been used for this program extensively. It was the first book I received on the subject, and it has helped to frame my thinking about DH. So, for one of the last blog posts this summer, I return to this book to look at a larger issue- where does DH, my project specifically, fit within traditional scholarship?

Digital_Humanities is of the opinion that DH is opposed to traditional scholarship in many ways. Where traditional scholarship is done by mainly one person, DH is collaborative. Where journals and books are out of reach to some audiences, DH is accessible to anyone with internet connection. In a way, the two are separate fields, serving different audiences. Traditional Scholarship is often self contained, while DH exists in the realm of the digital for all to see.

In creating my project, I steered away from traditional scholarship thinking and embraced some aspects of DH wholeheartedly. My project is not written to be used by other scholars or kept behind a paywall where it has limited use. It is open to the public online to be used by anyone who wants to learn more about the streets of Gettysburg. It is meant to provide a service to the public. That is not to say that scholars cannot use my work either. I have documented my research to be used by anyone, and I am open to critique by and collaboration with other scholars. That is, after all, an aspect of DH.

I did not, however, abandon traditional methods.  I used typical research techniques. I relied on the archives at the Adams County Historical Society and those who work there to help me find information. I dove deep into research to create solid interpretation, but had a wide scope to consider the history of Gettysburg with. According to Digital_Humanities, I acted like a Hedgefox. That is the book’s metaphor for a Humanist who is both traditional and open to DH. They advocate for a hybridization, where scholars embrace the best of both worlds. Like the fox, scholars should be curious and have a wide scope. Like the hedgehog, scholars should burrow and research in depth.

I certainly embrace this point of view. It is important to acknowledge new technologies and opportunities, but older methods should not be abandoned outright for their age. There is a reason why good research methods have endured. However, I think the problem falls to the issue of what is considered legitimate scholarship. Traditionally, something is known as legitimate scholarship because it has been published, peer reviewed, and is full of qualifications. DH cannot always have that because it is not always given its due. The book gives the example of Wikipedia as a DH project that is not readily embraced as scholarship despite its potential as a source of information.

That is where DH is most directly opposed to the traditional. DH puts power in the hands of many to decide what is important and should be written about, it is a decolonizing force. People are empowered to partake in this collaborative process. Most of all, DH is social and public. People can interact with it. That social aspect is what I strove for in my audio tour, as I felt it was most important that I connect with a larger audience.

These aspects may not be present in all Traditional Scholarship, but that does not mean it should be abandoned. The hybrid that Digital_Humanities described should be a model to strive for. However, to fully allow Digital Scholarship and Traditional Scholarship to coexist, the methods used to validate scholarship must be opened. Then, DH can have a place within scholarship.

 

Emma Lewis

The end of this fellowship is fast approaching, which means a lot of work for the Fellows. Instead of a regular microblog post this week, I thought I’d share some interpretation I’m doing and possibly get feedback. These versions of my interpretation have been edited a few times and looked over by Lauren, but fresh eyes are always welcome. Let me know of any notes or questions the interpretation provokes.

 

GETTYSBURG TROLLEY ROUTE: Culture

In the late 1800s, the streets of this town would have looked quite different from today – unpaved, devoid of cars, and (on this stretch of Baltimore Street) shared by a trolley.  In those days, travel options were limited. Trains brought people into Gettysburg, but getting out to the battlefield was harder. Cars did not exist to drive people around the battlefield, and so horses and carriages had to be rented if you didn’t want to walk- until this trolley came around.

Built by Gettysburg Electric Railway Inc in 1893, the trolley filled a need for transportation and made plenty of money off those who flocked to see the legendary battlefield landscape. This ease of travel meant more tourists came, some for only a day, taking advantage of both trains and trolleys to facilitate their travel. The sheer number of visitors was overwhelming!

The trolley did service townspeople, after the Borough government prompted the company to do so, making a regular loop through town. Most of its resources were dedicated to tourists, however. All the cars were named after generals, and most were made to withstand only summer weather, when most visitors would be around. This tourism culture did not last forever, and the service to both residents and tourists came to an end. On September 16, 1916, the trolley ran its last trip. When the World Wars came, the tracks were torn out for scrap metal. Now, visitors do not need trolleys to see the battlefield. Cars, buses, and roads provide the necessary transportation.

 

 

Emma Lewis

In one of the workshops this past week, the cohort was asked to do an exercise. To be more conscious of how we handled ourselves while presenting, we were given a slideshow with only a title and asked to explain the following pictures in three minutes.

Explaining was no problem. The point of the exercise was to practice presentation skills, not sharing information. My problem was that I took too long. I felt the need to give background information that was unnecessary. I knew this was a problem I had, yet I still felt the need to include this information to orient my audience.

That is what I am working on in my presentations- finding a balance between time and information. Since my project divulges information through audio, I need to make sure the necessary information is there. However, I also need to be brief so that I don’t meander and lose my audience. Finding the balance in there will strengthen my project as a whole.

 

Emma Lewis

Explaining what I’ve been doing this summer has been hard. People want to know what DH is and what exactly the acronym DSSF stands for. I find it difficult to explain a nebulous term like DH succinctly, so much so that nebulous seems to be the only word I have for it, and I sometimes mess up the acronym.

However, explaining this program is a necessary skill. That is why, this past week, the DSSF cohort focused on “elevator speeches” to explain our projects in a short, easily understandable way. I chose from a list of situations, and the outcomes are written below.

• You’re in line in Servo with one of your friends and they heard you did “some thing with computers” over the summer.

Yeah, the thing with computers was a Digital Scholarship Fellowship. Basically, I created a humanities project completely online. So, I had to learn how to use different platforms, websites, and a some coding along with researching to create this project. We are run through the library, so a lot of our links can be found on the library website. You can actually see all of the projects, including mine, online.

We used Gettysburg Sites to create them. Every student can make an account with this, so that’s pretty cool. We had a lot of discussions throughout the fellowship about how students as a whole could use Digital Scholarship, maybe introducing new forms of projects and  allowing students to see how their scholarship can work in real world situations. I can show you all of the sites made through this program. I’m always looking for feedback. Have a nice lunch! We can talk more later.

• You’re at a job fair and the recruiter is looking over your resume; they ask you, “What’s this Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship?

The Digital Summer Scholarship Fellowship, DSSF, is a library program that gives students a summer to work and create a Digital Scholarship project. Essentially, students learn skills to create public facing websites that are their project. It isn’t a research paper put online, but a truly digital project form.

I made a public history project that was a ‘choose your own adventure’ style audio tour of the streets of Gettysburg. As of now, I have one of the main roads, Baltimore Street, done. Because this is a digital project, I can easily add more to it. The project can grow with my research. If you’d like to see my website, I put the link on my resume. Feel free to listen to it and leave feedback, I am always looking for other perspectives to help this grow.

To make the projects, everyone in the cohort had to learn basic coding and website platforms. We worked together closely, as there are three fellows chosen every year. The program helped to increase my digital literacy,  and I can now use a variety of tools to make websites and digital visuals. The program has a website you can look at to learn more about this program. I can also answer any questions you may have.

 

 

Emma Lewis

There is a question has been circulating the DSSF group and our counterparts at Muhlenberg for some time- can we define a hot dog as a sandwich? It does seem like a silly internet joke at first glance, and in some ways it is. However, I have been thinking about the question in regards to DH and how easily we may dismiss some scholarship simply because it doesn’t seem like DH.

In DH, it is often easier to define what isn’t DH than what is. Even then, answers vary. Is archiving and creating metadata not DH because it serves a different purpose? Or do they qualify because they require in depth scholarship and careful consideration of end users on digital platforms? There are many more questions of this nature in DH, all asking if something really has the right to be considered truly Digital Humanities.

I am of the mindset that we should include more in DH, not less. Like a hot dog, some forms of DH are not what immediately springs to mind when we talk of “Digital Humanities,” but like hot dogs, they share enough characteristics that excluding them would be ludicrous. DH comes in many forms, with all types falling under the larger umbrella of the term. It includes new scholarship that fits no where else but in DH. Including these “unconventional” forms of DH diversifies the whole, which is something that DH should strive for and pride itself on. Definitions do not have to be prohibitive.

 

Emma Lewis

The readings of the past few weeks have been thought provoking, to say the least. The focus of last week was “Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities” by Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette, David Golumbia. It was a criticism of the apparent pointlessness of DH as it is being practiced. While there are certainly problems with DH, it is not simply humanities using digital to seem relevant. However, since I have not experienced other DH programs, I was wary about speaking for all of Digital Humanities. Since reading more this week, I have found that more people do share my reaction to the original writing. Matthew Kirschenbaum’s “Am I a Digital Humanist? Confessions of a Neoliberal Tool” and Roopika Risam’s “Digital Humanities in Other Contexts” are just a few examples of other perspectives on the point of Digital Humanities.

Now, I cannot speak for all DH programs. The authors’ insistence that DH “is not about, despite its explicit claims, is the use of digital or quantitative methodologies to answer research questions in the humanities.” That comment excludes many DH programs, including my own. Roopika Risam’s critique of this critique pointed out some of my own problems in far more eloquent arguments than I could articulate after my first reading and blog post. Risam makes a point that I have to agree with. “I’m struck,” she says, “by the many other contexts for digital humanities that are noticeably absent from narratives deriding the digital humanities. What of the work of digital history, digital rhetoric, new media, and more? Whither digital humanities in India, Poland, or Nigeria? Can digital humanities be done without $1.5M grants?”

The short answer is yes, but when put against the criticism of last week, other forms of DH seem excluded. Matthew Kirschenbaum’s piece  deals with this idea a little more directly. The title begs the question of whether or not he is a Digital Humanist. “On the face of it the question is absurd,” he answers, “of course I’m a digital humanist.” He continues, later in his post, that “the question feels less and less relevant, to be honest.” DH can be defined in so many ways, with different names and titles for jobs that may functionally do the same thing. DH cannot be defined for all definitively.

I was asked to answer two questions this week. The first asked why I thought Digital Humanities provokes such strong reactions from both its practitioners and detractors, the second asked if DH should just be considered humanities. Truthfully, I think both questions have to do with this idea of defining DH for all. DH provokes strong reactions because it is different for everyone, and can be defined personally in ways that go against the common trends of the field. As for the matter of the digital in DH, I see it as a separate thing- for now. DH is not fully defined, and to try and put it in a definitive place now would further alienate forms of the practice which could prove to be great scholarship.

In my experience, DH is not the same between institutions, nor should it be. Honestly, I am more likely to side with Kirschenbaum on this point. “I came to the realization,” he writes, “that I’d much rather use my days to work on the things I love than the things I hate. And that, let me confess, has nothing to do with being a digital humanist. It has everything to do with being me.” I have a project to workshop and finish, and I need to focus my energies on that. My official title is not of consequence in the production of digital scholarship.

 

Emma Lewis

Digital Scholarship and Humanities, although a relatively new field, already has copious amounts of criticism written on the subject. This past week, the DSSF cohort had to look at “Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities” by Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette, and David Golumbia. It made a splash, and is an interesting read for anyone trying to understand DH and what it has the potential to do (if not in practice).  The basic argument of this piece is that DH is not really revolutionary, but a prime example of how colleges have essentially “sold out” to technology, using it without purpose. (For more on this look at “The Neoliberal Arts: How College Sold Its Soul to the Market” by William Deresiewicz- these criticisms can be quite scathing).

There are some things in this criticism I agree with. Their critique of empty “Silicon Valley” buzzwords is valid, and only serve to complicate an already ambiguous subject. Analyzing anything down to its true core cannot be done and should not be attempted, especially in a vast subject like DH.

I do take issue with their stance on DH trends as a field.”Digital Humanities,” they argue, “is not about, despite its explicit claims, is the use of digital or quantitative methodologies to answer research questions in the humanities.” Digital Humanities is not exclusively empty projects hosted on digital platforms to justify the existence of the humanities. That is not the DH I have encountered and that is not the DH that people are passionate about. Looking through the past blog posts on this site readers can find examples of other meaningful DH projects and initiatives to transform DH.

The DH I encounter does have a clear purpose and works to answer a humanities research question, because that is the nature of the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship. Over the summer, Fellows work to complete a project with a purpose, using the digital format to enhance their work in ways that are not possible with more traditional formats. The projects are born digital, but the tools do not control everything. Tools simply augment what already exists. Digital Humanities is not wholly one thing. While the criticism may hold true for some programs, it cannot hope to define the whole of DH.

That said, no criticism is written to only disparage. Lessons can be taken from criticism to improve on what exists. Digital Humanities, as a field, has plenty of room for growth and improvement. My DH experience is different from what is outlined in the criticism because the field of DH encompasses many different programs, including that which needs improvement. What this criticism hates about DH does not always have to be DH. By writing this criticism, Allington, Brouillette, and Golumbia hold a mirror up to Digital Humanists so the different programs may be examined in a larger context. Criticism should be taken in stride, and used to create better DH.

(There are many more issues raised in the criticism and responses to it that I cannot touch upon in a meaningful way, but can be read for your own enjoyment)

 

Emma Lewis