Author: Julia Wall

One thing that struck me about this article was that it addressed my confusion about my frustration about the field that I’ve been feeling lately. After being immersed in DH and the DH community for about a year, I’ve noticed something: we never stop asking what DH is. We opened last summer with the question “what is DH?” and we opened the first conference of the summer, a year later, the PALA workshop opened with asking “what is DH?”. As DSSFs we fully expect to be immersed in the field so questions of asking what the field is, in the beginning, is expected. However, these articles and discussions are not easy to understand for beginners and use jargon like “pedagogy”, “Community of practice”, and even “Digital Humanities” itself.  If you’re being introduced to DH and have no idea what Digital Humanities is, these articles and discussions will confuse you. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that discussions about “what is DH?” is for audiences who are familiar with DH, not people just being introduced.

So why do we always ask what DH is? Haven’t we come to a pretty solid conclusion as a community right now? If DH prides itself on openness and accessibility, why are discussions and papers that discuss the concepts and definitions of the field littered with jargon and theory, assuming that their audience are never beginners in DH? I get it. Once you’ve been so immersed in a field you forget what it’s like to be a beginner, for everything to be new, strange, and confusing.

There is elitism in DH. We have built ourselves an ivory tower. Say what you want about History and History’s high ivory tower of academia but there is a low barrier of entry into the history community because anyone could pick up a book, go to a historic site, see a sign, hear from their family, etc. and be touched by history and pursue it. There are millions of non-academic historians and millions of academic historians as well. There is elitism in history but in a different way. History is like a backdoor speakeasy, where you can get into the main establishment easily, but to get into the academic area, you need to know a password or know someone to get in. Digital Humanities is more like the Ravenclaw common room, where you must answer a question to get in at all and much like in the Harry Potter books, there will be frustrated students who do not understand that will be left outside.

In my experience with teaching digital tools to students who weren’t necessarily in DH, I wouldn’t just hand them Lisa Spiro and say “Welcome to DH, now tell me: what is DH?”. That’s not what makes Digital Humanities. While readings do help further understand the field, I don’t feel they’re as constructive to beginners. I feel like I’ve learned the most about the field by doing my own projects, looking at and teaching tools, interacting with others projects and talking with other scholars.

While I agree with the author on many things, I disagree on one thing: I do believe that Digital Humanities can have a “Dead Poets Society moment”.

“In many ways, I think the way we often frame DH tries a bit too hard to achieve a Dead Poets Society moment: “your other teachers taught you literature with close reading and literary criticism, but in my class we’re going to disrupt that stale paradigm using computers. Now rip up your books and pull out your laptop!” But those attempts fall flat, for all the reasons I have tried to articulate thus far.”

-Ryan Cordell, “How Not to Teach Digital Humanities”

I don’t know if you’ve seen Dead Poets Society but ripping pages out of the book is not the purpose of that scene.

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman: “O me, o life of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these, o me, o life? Answer: that you are here. That life exists, and identity. That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. . .What will your verse be?”

-Robin Williams, “Dead Poets Society”

The human race is still filled with passion. Even with all the assumptions that technology is making us lifeless and brain-dead, we are undeniably filled with passion. Just like the author in his own course makes a comparison between Digital Humanities and Traditional Humanities by recalling that the Gutenberg Press was once newfangled technology and its opposition by traditional fields at the time; humanity has always found a way to express themselves and has adapted to new technology. The reason why that scene is so powerful is because everyone can relate as members of the human race that feel and love and dream. Instead repeatedly asking “What is DH?” to beginners who don’t even know what the acronym ‘DH’ is, maybe we should finally give an answer and that answer could be as simple as “It exists. It is an expression of life and identity through a new medium.”. Instead of focusing the field on that one question, we should focus on engagement and contribution because that powerful play goes on, life goes on, and we may contribute a verse. Asking “What is DH?” for the 1000000000^th time might sustain the life of the field, but digital projects and engagement are what makes the field worthwhile.

-Julia

 

When I was assigned this blog post: “How do we resist, in the sense of resisting the narratives you are working with, the tools you have been presented with, the challenges and biases you have faced as a student researcher/digital scholar, and even your own research?” Memories of everyone telling me I couldn’t do something because I was a girl or an undergraduate researcher flooded into my head all at once. I hoped to take the weekend to clear my head and find an answer because I didn’t think that just researching military subjects as a woman was an acceptable answer. Just existing can be a form of resistance in some cases, especially more extreme ones, but I don’t consider that my case. I thought about it over the weekend, especially as I went to two events with very different audiences: The Civil War Institute Conference, with a demographic of mainly older, white, straight, men; and D.C. Pride, a celebration of the LGBTQA+ community, with more diversity of races, ages, sexualities, etc. than I think I’ve ever seen. While I went to Pride and talked to people about what I was doing with research, I felt guilty. Why was I not covering these people? My people.

It’s been a constant debate in my mind: should I be doing something else? My project is literally following the cream of the crop of America, young white men with the privilege that got them into West Point in the first place. Many are from prestigious or rich families, others had fathers who had political or upper-echelon military connections. Am I resisting by merely being a woman doing this research? There are no women, no people of color, very little diversity in nationality or religion, and per many historians, LGBTQA+ did not exist until the sexual revolution in the 20^th century. Am I continuing the Great White Man tradition of history?

Especially among higher up academics that I have talked with, there seems to be a discouragement from women doing any other history besides gender history, or more specifically women’s history. Especially in war. Because of the “new cultural history” there has been a focus on diverse scholars covering diverse topics, but only the topics that fit them. Women should focus on women’s history, black people should work on black history, and so on. Like the Civil War for example, women focus on Southern women, Clara Barton, mourning dresses, etc. That’s not diversity, that is segregation.

“Only a small number of female historians – notably Barbara Tuchman – have specialised in military subjects, while feminist academics have highlighted specific contributions made by women.” -Katie Adie (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/23/first-world-war-women-remember-them)

Feminism is equality. Feminism in academia does not mean shoving women into a separate space in which they can just do women’s history. Feminism in academia means letting women go into whatever subfield of history they desire and integrating them with the existing community. Resistance in history can mean studying rights movements and telling untold narratives but it can also mean changing the community of history. Existence is not enough; normalization is the goal. When a fifteen-year-old girl isn’t mocked for going into military history, or a sophomore college student isn’t told that she should go into gender studies simply because it’s what women in history do, that’s when we’ll know.

“The gender of the scholar is beside the point and limiting our reading of a particular approach to one set of voices can only serve to diminish debate and, ultimately understanding. So dividing facets of the history of the war into men’s and women’s history is a pointless exercise.” – Jessica Meyer (https://armsandthemedicalman.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/on-being-a-woman-and-a-war-historian/)

Progress comes from the inside, the narrative will change when the community changes, and we have a long way to go.

-Julia

So I know as a Senior Fellow I don’t have to do a micropost but this needs to be said.

Let me tell you something about my project and what I do: IT’S HARD.

What I do is hard. I’m going into a field that is already greatly skeptical and highly critical of any new members. I make tons of jokes about it: like if I had a dollar for everytime someone says “that’s not lady-like” I could pay my college tuition.  Funny, right? You know what’s not funny? Literally being laughed out of a military history class in high school because you’re a woman. Dreading the response of someone when they ask, “what do you want to do?”. Being told what you’re doing is worthless and won’t get you into grad school. Maybe you should go into women’s history because you’re a woman and you obviously you can’t do any other history outside your gender.

Throughout being laughed at, ignored, interrupted, disregarded, and criticized I have tried to keep an upper hand and keep my chin up. My life has literally become my cadets because if I were any less passionate or driven I would’ve given up. I would’ve given up the first week of my military history class in high school and sometimes I wish I did, it would’ve been so much easier.

I devote so much time to records because if I say I don’t know something I am automatically brushed off as a silly girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing. Sometimes I talk over people because so many times so often if I don’t talk over people I don’t get heard at all. I take on an enormous workload in short time periods because if I don’t it will be perceived that I’m not dedicated or I don’t have what it takes. And I can’t let anything get to me or else I am perceived as weak and I don’t belong for a reason.

I know I don’t belong already. It’s abundantly clear as I can name less than ten influential women warriors in history and even fewer women military historians. It’s hard to know you’re not accepted in your field and even harder when people don’t realize how hard it will be for me to get into the field much less change it.  My mantra is “You have to work twice as hard to get even half as far as they are”. If you think that’s extreme, I’d love to see you go through half as many records as I have, contact half as many references and have them laugh in your face, or devote half as much time as I do to my site and my cadets. Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do unless you’ve been in my heels for a day.

It is hard. It is overwhelming. It is exhausting. It is what I do every day and I’m expected to suck it up and take it like a man, which is exactly what I’ll do after I vent a bit with this post.

-Julia