Author: Madison Cramer

Among academic disciplines, DH stands out in its aim at inclusion of many communities of practice, with particular emphasis on communities outside of academia. Particularly in recent years, prominent practitioners of DH have been looks back at the discipline and trying to find ways to open it up further, but even they admit there is still quite a way to go. Moreover, while DH has been trying to open space for diversity, it has still largely remained within the confines of academia. While DH is not and need not be exclusive to academia, it tends to be used and explored in colleges and universities or by graduates of such institutions. This raises new questions about who gets a say in what constitutes DH but also what comprises it; if a majority of practitioners of DH projects — and especially those DH projects that get discussed in articles and forums — are from universities, have we moved very far from the dominance of the university press?

The authors of Digital_Humanities (significantly published through MIT press) are optimistic about DH’s ability to open explorations of knowledge to everyone and move beyond traditional expectations about information. At the same time, they claim that “the notion of the university as ivory tower no longer makes sense, if it ever did,” so perhaps their optimism comes from a particular view of the then-present state of information dissemination. Their argument about the “ivory tower” is that universities have been creating networks of thinkers since their inception, so they are, in that respect, inclusive. I argue that universities have been connecting thinkers of similar perspectives (with some notable exceptions, of course) because of their inextricable link to finance and class. Certain groups of people have the time, money, and other resources to send them to universities to develop their ideas, but those ideas are no more valuable than those of someone who has not been in the right circumstances for academia to be feasible. As a result, the network of ideas in academia is essentially (there are, of course, always exceptions) a closed web. DH has excellent goals for opening that web up to new ideas, but it cannot be ignored that DH was born in the ivory tower and tends to stay close to home.

I do not intend to be unnecessarily pessimist about knowledge creation in DH; I truly believe that, by its very nature, DH intends to make important changes in what scholars see as legitimate. I agree with the authors of Digital_Humanities when they write that “[t]he scope and scale of the Digital Humanities encompass a vast archipelago of specialized domains of expertise and conversation, but also open up the prospect of a conversation extending far beyond the walls of the ivory tower that connects universities to cultural institutions, libraries, museums, and community organizations.” I appreciate that this sentiment acknowledges that many DH practitioners are academics with a particular interest they want to share in new ways. I also think that emphasis on possibility (specifically in the word “prospect”) is an important way to phrase their hopes for DH as a discipline. DH is incredible in its potential, but it is only successful when its practitioners maintain view of their goal, rather than preemptively patting themselves on the back for creating a possibility. At its worst, DH is a group of academics who have congratulated themselves for their inclusivity even as they have created equally esoteric projects; at its best, DH is a varied group of practitioners who continue to reevaluate the discipline to make sure that knowledge from all areas can be legitimized, discussed, and displayed.

Similar to my response last week, I feel that discussions about DH as a discipline that link it to other broad topics tend to be unproductive, since each practitioner of DH tends to have different ideas of what their project contributes to the discipline as well as how their project (re)defines the discipline. In that spirit I would like to focus this reflection on how my interactions with DH have affected my specific project.

Pretty early on, I changed my vision for the way I wanted to present my project. Most of our first discussions about DH emphasized the diverse possibilities for our product. During our project management session we talked about the “log cabin in the sky” philosophy of planning, where plans are lofty but attainable, but I was inspired by many of our other sessions. Early on, while attempting to define DH, we talked about the emphasis on experimentation and the possibility that comes with it. This allowed me to make plans for my project that I wouldn’t otherwise have ventured, having no idea what attainable even was for my project and the platforms I hoped to use. Since then, I’ve been genuinely amazed at the product I’ve been able to create. I’ve never had faith in my ability to work with technology of any kind since I’ve always filed it under “math and other things I can’t do.” Although I’m by no means a tech wizard, this fellowship has really changed my views about what’s possible through DH as well as what’s possible for me. In every experience where I buckled down to make something digital although terrified of breaking it, I’ve been delighted by the result. Still, if I hadn’t been encouraged early on about the possibilities for my project, my product would have been entirely different.

In addition to the way the presentation of my project has changed through specific conversations, the content of my project has changed as well. Coming into this program I had a fairly conservative idea for my website in that it would be a relatively simple interconnection of information that I gathered in a very traditional way. I imagined myself finding materials about each author in the same way (and from the same sources) as I would for a traditional essay. Then I imagined writing brief essays that bring together my source material, again with an emphasis on similarity to traditional essays. Since my project is primarily for use in the classroom, I assumed that the only way to make it seem validate was to replicate traditional scholarship on a digital platform. When I started my research, I definitely struggled with fitting this kind of research to the eight-week timeline because of the sheer number of authors I wanted to fully cover. As I result, I started using different sources and feeling more comfortable linking out to online sources rather than summarizing them as I would with a traditional project. In this way, the time frame of the project forced me to change my methods for my project; however, it was one of our discussions about DH that made me change my views of the project.

One of the most productive discussions — at least for me — that we’ve had about DH was our ongoing conversation about what “counts” both as DH and as scholarship. Although I have been jokingly asking “is this DH?” about seemingly minute details, the repetition of the phrase has definitely shaped how I conceive of DH, but moreover how I conceive of scholarship. If you had asked me at the beginning of this experience if I would consider linking out to sites like Wikipedia rather than writing a biography for some of these authors, I’d have told you that was a cop-out, largely because in traditional work, it would be viewed that way. At this point in the process, I recognize that the work done on Wikipedia is valuable and freely available, so not using it for the sake of presenting legitimacy is not a good option either.

Scholarship is not apolitical. Indeed, nothing is. The dizzying, eternally reproducing, mise-en-abyme-inducing fact is that statements to propose neutrality are self-defeating because they too propose a particular stance. Every attempt I have made to further explain my thoughts on DH has dragged me further into the paradox of the situation, so I hesitate to try again.

I have said in previous blog posts that DH appeals to me because it allows for accessibility in new ways, but the fact that it is linked to private institutions means there are still bars to access that ought to be addressed. Rather than continue to articulate this, I want to be devoting my time to making those beliefs manifest in my project and other scholarly work I do.

Although #transformDH was initially started to call attention to a panel about transformative DH, it subsequently became a call to action for practitioners of DH to transform the discipline. I think this dual meaning of “transform” – one that acts as a verb and one that is short for the adjective “transformative” – raises questions relevant to all DH projects.

The first meaning – the adjective “transformative” – describes the way DH projects should affect both those who interact with it and the project itself. In terms of being transformative of the project, I have already seen my goals for this website shift in new and exciting ways. While the act of researching an idea will often necessarily change the end result, in DH the methods are also transformative because the tools that are available to me can allow for new connections and changes to my original conception of design. As transformative for an audience, DH projects should open new doors and raise new questions in such a way that the audience is not merely taking in knowledge, but actively discovering and complicating it. In my project, I want my audience to move freely through a web of related authors so they can make their own connections, rather than merely reading how I think one author is like another. My project is and ought to be only the beginning of an exploration into the way authors of multiple identities are working with similar themes in unique ways. As a non-DH project, I could argue my perspective about the similarities and differences of two authors and complicate the field in a small way, but DH allows for me to make a bigger impact by nature of the fact that more people can find more connections that could ever have been possible in a traditional project. (As a caveat, I want to point out that this is not to say there is no value in traditional projects; sometimes a project idea is not suited to DH and to force certain methods onto a project of a different scope is not necessarily the right answer.)

The second meaning – the verb “transform” – is somewhat broader in scope. To “transformDH” means to look from my individual project to its place in a massive discipline. The sheer scope of DH projects is vast because, as an ever-changing, relatively new discipline, part of the work of DH is determining what constitutes DH. When one begins to consider how certain activities that seem distinctly un-academic can be seen in terms of DH, one can get overwhelmed by how huge the discipline already is. Existential dread of the endlessness of data aside, trying to transform any discipline can be overwhelming. Rather than conceive of my project as one that must change DH – a daunting task even without considering this is an eight week program – I have been thinking about how the project as it already is can do the work of transforming. I think that my project is already just the seed of similar kinds of projects that open up the expectations of a certain topic (eg American Gothic) for inquiry rather than merely reifying existing definitions of it; important Gothic is white, male, heterosexual, middle class, and able because we continue to describe it thus. While my project does not propose a new definition of Gothic, it inherently suggests it by including the works of underrepresented authors as those critical to defining the discipline. While I know my project is small in terms of space (a nebulous concept, I know), I think it is doing the work of transforming the discipline of DH, as well as the discipline of English.

As someone who is much more familiar with the Humanities side of Digital Humanities, I knew that the collaborative nature of this fellowship would be unfamiliar. Luckily, the fellowship is set up to both model and facilitate good practice for working together with peers and mentors alike. Watching the DSSF committee work together throughout the process has set a good example for the way scholarly discussion can flourish in a community. The committee has not only demonstrated how to collaborate, but it has also allowed me (and the other members of the student cohort) to join in discussions about what DH means and what it can do. Our Wednesday discussions about DH as a discipline as well as our planning sessions on Mondays and Fridays provide a unique space where, regardless of experience in the field of DH, all members of the DSSF community can share their ideas. These sessions are particularly important in a college setting where the professor-student relationship is often slanted such that knowledge moves in only one direction – professor to student. It is really refreshing to have a more open discussion where I feel my knowledge is valued and I can also gain from others’ knowledge.

I have also seen collaboration in the public sessions of the DSSF workshops. I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to professors (shout out to Dr. Robertson) about their research plans and feel that, despite the fact that our projects did not overlap, I was part of a collaborative effort of discovering the possibilities of DH. The public sessions have also been available to Kolbe Fellows and DTSFs, so I can see how DH extends beyond those explicitly involved it in—that is, sometimes people who are using DH methods and principles to guide their work would not necessarily describe it as DH.

Our trip to Bucknell this past week allowed me to collaborate with members far from home, while continuing to talk to those closest to my DSSF experience – namely the student cohort. While most of our time was spent learning a new tool, I most enjoyed the time we had to discuss our projects. I was inspired by the big dreams the other students had for their projects and by their model I started thinking about my project in terms of possibility rather than limitation. I was also able to hear their perspective of ways to improve my project with all the possibilities of DH. On the ride back from Bucknell I was able to see how my experience was similar to and different from that of one of the other members of my cohort, thus tying together my discussions with the Bucknell DSSRF cohort and the Gettysburg DSSF.

My cohort has been invaluable to my experience in the DSSF program because hearing about their projects continues to give me new perspectives on my own work. Moreover, I really enjoy learning about the other directions DH can take a project; my work in DH will not conclude with this project, so even things that will not directly benefit this project will be of use to me in the future. I think DH collaboration is at its best when all members come with both insight and willingness to learn (the former being much easier to come confidently with). I am grateful to the members of my cohort, the DSSF committee, and everyone else with whom I have engaged with DH who have exemplified this balance.

One major difference between traditional and digital humanities is the analysis not only of not only content material but also its means of presentation. Digital Humanities (DH) appealed to me because last summer I did very traditional research and presented my findings in a formal critical essay. While I enjoyed the work and was proud of the product, I was acutely aware that access to such research was severely limited. In tone as well as form, a formal essay tends to be inaccessible to those outside of academia. While many digital tools aim to rectify this, they should nonetheless continue to be evaluated critically.

For this project, I want to make secondary research available to students and teachers, but I also want to make the texts themselves available. Moreover, I want students to be able to engage with the text as they read, the way they would be able to flag or even mark a physical text. For that reason, I’m interested in using an annotation tool to allow students and teachers to make comments on the primary texts. Group annotation fascinates me for its ability to allow for conversation among readers rather than belated dialogue that is so often the result of conversations across published works, but it nonetheless raises questions about who can and should be allowed in those conversations. My instinct is to allow all comments from all parties because negative feedback is an important part of the reading process; texts are not only valuable if they are faultless. Still, some negative comments could affect the availability of the work in that teachers may not choose to use this site for their students if some annotations are offensive or otherwise not school appropriate.

This itself raises further questions about who is allowed to join in the discussions in academic settings. My aim with this project was to eschew the coded languages of academia – those unspoken expectations about what counts as “scholarly.” While the availability of free annotations removes such expectations as writing in full sentences and not using contractions (generally separating spoken from written language along a false dichotomy), some expectations are maintained such that some amount of vetting for comments would be appropriate.

In addition to the fact that, for this project, the finished annotation would have to be deemed appropriate, inputting the annotation itself requires a certain amount of familiarity with the tool. The major source of inaccessibility in DH at large is the fact that it inherently requires technology to access it. Although technology is becoming more widely available throughout America, it is not universally familiar; even for those who have access to the internet, it is not always widely used. Thus, although many annotation tools are intuitive for regular users of social media (is not a comments section just a space designated for annotations?) and the internet at large, it may not be as clear how to use such tools if the internet is not familiar to a given user. In order to ameliorate this in my project, I intend to create a page that uses clear text and visuals in order to explain how to use the annotation tool, thus allowing for greater access. I think that this process of bridging gaps between expected use and possible use is a key aspect of DH, which annotation makes clear.

In a lot of ways, Digital Humanities (DH) is exactly what it sounds like in that it combines the content areas and goals of humanities — scholarship about the unique things that make us human — with digital methods and mediums. Coming into the program, I assumed that was all there was to it; however, the readings, sessions, and discussions over the past week have helped me understand that DH is more complex than that. Initially I conceived of digital projects — or at the very least digital projects that would be manageable for a beginner like me — as a digitized version of a traditional project. Our very first discussion about DH indicated that not only was that not the case, but that DH is largely opposed to such projects on a philosophical level. The philosophy of DH, whether explicitly or implicitly stated, emphasizes innovation and creativity within the scope of scholarship. Merely digitizing an otherwise traditional project does not raise new questions or challenge prevailing ideas of what constitutes an academic work. Instead, DH projects try and trailblaze new avenues.

The innovative aspect of DH means there is more risk for failure, but the Musselman DH committee has encouraged me to think of failures in a positive way. Not only are failures a natural result of trying new things, they are also excellent teachers; after you fail in one way, you can learn about how to proceed in other ways and also to apply the same lessons in future situations. Lisa Spiro writes in one essay about DH as a discipline (http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/13) that “experimentation” is a key aspect of DH. Experimentation is the union of failure and innovation where the former yields the latter.

Many of the innovations in DH have been in making academia more accessible. The major thing that drew me to DH was its emphasis on openness — indeed, both Lisa Spiro and Dr. Amanda Visconti (http://literaturegeek.com/2016/07/21/dlf-digital-humanities-what-why-how) recognized that accessibility and openness are characteristic of DH. At the most explicit level, traditional humanities projects tend to be locked behind monetary access gates, whereas DH projects are usually more democratic by being freely available for those who can access the internet. Moreover — and less explicitly — the audience of traditional humanities projects are college-educated academics who are immersed in a particular subject area. DH projects tend to be more oriented to a less informed but no less interested public. The language of DH projects tends to be less esoteric and is an invitation rather than a barrier. I was delighted to read the term “passionate amateur” in a few of our readings this week because I think it accurately points to those who benefit the most from DH. Practitioners and users alike can be “passionate amateurs” in DH and neither will be left out.

My project, while firmly rooted in academia, aims to show all of these unique sides of DH — creativity, experimentation, and accessibility — by allowing the users’ freedom to navigate through the site to bring them to new (and hopefully exciting) revelations.