Author: Emma Lewis

I will admit it- at this point, I cannot think of many new ways to define DH. I should be thinking about it proactively and engaging with different communities to better critique my own definition. But this past week has been a whirlwind leading up to our final presentations, and I was unable to devote much time to thinking about the definitions of DH.

My understanding of DH is constantly shifting in small ways. While I retain a general understanding of DH, slight changes occur based on what I am reading and who I encounter. My experiences with DH last summer and this summer differ slightly due in large part to the cohort. I am around different people with different ideas. Our conversations focus on aspects of DH I might not have engaged with before, or frame them in a different way.

This expands to other communities outside of our program. No two DH programs are exactly alike. We had a few opportunities this summer to talk with other digital scholars about their programs. Each had different strengths and focuses. Our program is based around developing the projects of individual students. Other programs focus on applying digital methodology to preexisting work with the help of student specialists. Both are DH, but their implementation varies. If I were to define DH only by what I know now, I would alienate projects and programs I have not yet learned about. DH definitions are constantly expanding.

In short, I have a new definition for every experience I have with DH.  The more people I talk to, the more ideas I encounter, and the more broad and refined my own definition becomes. I have a very broad definition of DH because that is what I think is needed. Having a definition that is specific may be easier to understand, but that specificity can be detrimental. It can limit the scope of what we consider DH. Limiting and excluding new and different ideas due to a narrow definition helps no one. Every time I think I have finally figured out DH, I encounter a new project that causes me to reconsider my definition and my place in DH.

Our definition of DH works for our college and the programs we have now. That may not hold true in the future. We should embrace that quality of DH and always be willing to rework our perceptions of DH to accommodate innovation.

While it is important to consider definitions of DH and its place in academia, we should not get tied up in our quest for the perfect definition. One day, that definition will change. That is the beauty of DH.

The DSSF program uses many readings to generate discussion. My first year participating in this program, we were given exactly one physical book to consult- Digital_Humanities. For this week’s posts, the fellows were asked to consider the third chapter and respond to a question raised by the authors. One that particularly interested me asked, “What happens when anyone can speak and publish? What happens when knowledge credentialing is no longer controlled solely by institutions of higher learning?”

The book points out great examples of knowledge that were produced online despite not being associated with an institution, with Wikipedia being the prime example. Wikipedia is free and open, it is a collaboration of minds across the world. And it is incredibly accessible. If I need to remember something I learned in middle school, it is easier to do a quick search for the relevant Wikipedia page than to comb through my copious notes I saved from those days. Despite its collaborative and informative model, I was taught to never trust Wikipedia as a source. While it is fallible, that is no reason to disregard all that it has to offer. It can always be improved. One of the workshops last year had the fellows create Wikipedia accounts and edit pages they were knowledgeable about. I chose to expand and add sources to the Gettysburg College page, and it has been improved further in the year since. Wikipedia may not be controlled by a vetted institution, but it does have a community working to make it better.

The openness of Digital Humanities can be worrying to some. Association with institutions and the traditional paths of publications are trusted sources. But the decentralization of knowledge creation does not mean that there is no  accountability. Communities exist to check the knowledge that is created, and they are not too different from the traditional ones. A point brought up that I had not truly considered before writing this response was that “the notion of the university as an ivory tower no longer makes sense, if it ever did.” institutions of higher learning have always been communities of people. Knowledge credentialing now has larger communities of viewpoints and expertise to draw from.

All that I just stated is a best case scenario. Humans are, after all, fallible. The knowledge we put forth into the world may be flawed or outright incorrect. This has serious implications when knowledge can so quickly be shared. False information is made true in a sense when enough people believe it. The social aspect of this change is what interests me most and seems most relevant in our media landscape. As the book points out, social media and the communities it creates can be used to bring people together, educate audiences, and even start revolutions. Increased avenues of authorship have increased the authority of those who use them. These platforms can be used to create scholarship, and are not just for social interaction. Documentary series exist on YouTube, and Twitter is full of communities of scholars who interact with the public.

There is a danger that people lacking authority will gain authorship. These platforms make this easier to achieve, and has implications beyond the academic. Responsibility must be taken to hold people accountable. The communities surrounding institutions of learning took on this role in the past. Now, the wider communities must take this responsibility and think critically about the information being put out into the world. When anyone can publish and speak, anyone can contribute critiques or edits.

The topic of DH definitions and its place in scholarship has been an ongoing topic of conversation this summer. While it was discussed during the 2017 program, I did not consider it as much. I was focused on learning basic skills and creating a project.

This year, I have had more time to critically examine DH and my place in the community. These past two weeks have been especially enlightening. Last week’s blog posts dealt with the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB) article “Neoliberal Tools (and Archives)”, which critiqued DH for changing humanities for the worse. While I could see the basis for their arguments, I could not agree with their critique that all DH had sold its soul to the Neoliberal market.

This week, we read articles that were more in line with my thinking. The articles “Am I a Digital Humanist?” and “Digital Humanities in Other Contexts” were written as responses to the LARB article. The authors of these articles, like me, had an issue with the reduction of DH to a single stereotype that was solidly in the hands of the Neoliberal market. DH is more expansive than that. It is also not separate from Humanities like the LARB article suggests, but a new iteration of the field.

The prompt for this week asked the fellows if we could imagine the “digital” being dropped from DH. After some thought, I realized I do. DH is an aspect of humanities. As technology becomes more ubiquitous, scholars will be able to use these forms of communication to reach their audience. Education can change form with the advent of new technology. Digital humanities may fully be a part of all humanities work one day.

DH is done in many contexts. It is not just for institutions funded by grants and donors, but by small groups working to make a difference by using new tools and pathways to reach an audience. DH is not easily defined, and it will only continue to grow and become more complex. Reducing it for the sake of an argument means that other examples of DH are cut from the narrative. One of my favorite quotes from this week’s articles asks, “Am I a digital humanist? The question feels less and less relevant, to be honest.” DH is wide and varied.

The DSSF program saw how other institutions implement DH programs at a DS conference at Bryn Mawr last week. Some are like ours, with students creating individual projects using open access tools. Others are collaborative, hiring students to create digital platforms for research that stretches back years. No program was exactly alike, but all were DH.  DH cannot be judged by the success or failures of a single program. The DH community is vast, its community is growing and changing as resources change.

No matter how people view DH, their reaction is bound to be strong. People fervently defend it, vehemently criticize it, and sometimes do both in the same breath. This is because it has the ability to grow and change. As long as DH is evolving, it will be critically examined in order to make it stronger.

It is easy, in the context of our program, to lose sight of the larger trends in Digital Humanities. For these few weeks over the summer I am focused on producing good scholarship and researching well. The issues of the larger world of DH do not seem so important when I have tools to learn and books to comb through.

However, the purpose of this program is not to simply create a work of DH. It is meant to educate fellows about DH and give them tools to debate and engage with the community. I have sadly neglected that in my work this summer.

Reading “Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities” forced me to consider our program and the future of DH. The article argues that DH is essentially killing creativity in favor of tangible results and technological innovators. Digital Humanities has favored the digital over the humanities in its attempt to restructure academic circles. It paints “Digital Humanities as social and institutional movement is a reactionary force in literary studies, pushing the discipline toward post-interpretative, non-suspicious, technocratic, conservative, managerial, lab-based practice.”

While those skills are important, they are not the heart of DH that I have come to know. I am lucky, as I am involved in DH on a small campus where we are encouraged to think critically in our projects and produce transformative work. This program has produced projects that deal with political action on campus, women’s history at the college, and has encouraged us to examine our own biases. During the first weeks last year, we delayed a lesson to discuss the idea of digital imperialism and whether or not we were contributors. This program has expanded thinking, not narrowed it.

The authors of the article acknowledge that the DH they are talking about may not be the DH all people experience. Yet they argue that their view is not one of outsiders, that they themselves have experience as digital researchers, and that the DH community itself shares in their critiques. I cannot disagree with that statement, as critique is a key component of this very program. Their warnings that DH avoid the model of Silicon Valley, which prizes disruption and success over diversity and critique, are valid and need to be addressed.

My issue with this article is that it seems to regard these issues as irreparable. The article gives example after example of the failings of DH. While the last few paragraphs somewhat advocate for the transformation of DH into what it was promised to be, it has a pessimistic tone, doubtful that any transformative proposals could be truly implemented.

While I do not refute that the issues laid out in the article have an impact on DH, I will argue that they are not representative of DH. Programs like ours give agency to students to create critical works and engage with the issues facing the community. We have not sold our soul or sacrificed our integrity.  Other digital humanists have criticized this article for being pessimistic and focusing on the problems with DH instead of striving for improvement.

It is easy to look at the negatives and feel useless. I do not know if I can do anything that will increase diversity in DH or encourage transformative work. But that does not mean that DH is beyond hope. The article is reductive and casts all DH as irreparably flawed. I contest that DH is still being formed and will continue to change as new scholars, technologies, and ideologies gain support. DH is not dead yet, and our program is proof that it can change for the better.

This past week the cohort read the article Reflections on a Movement: #transformDH, Growing Up . The article made me think about how my own project can be transformative and our program’s place in #transformDH.

My project this year is not incredibly innovative or transformative. It uses Oral Histories to shed light on changing experiences at the college in the early twentieth century. Therefore, questions central to Transformative DH like race, gender, sexuality, and disability are not all present in the tapes. Women’s experiences as coeds are discussed, but there are only a total of 6 women out of 20 narrators.

This project can, however, focus in on these differences. It can look into how we have changed since the decades these tapes are concerned with, and ask where we still need to go. I plan to dedicate a good amount of the project to women on campus, as Gettysburg College was not officially a coed school in the 1920s and early 1930s. Their experiences are unique and provide insight into the changing role of women on campus. While this particular project is not incredibly transformative, it is not restrictive either. I want to use it in a transformative way as best I can.

Our program itself is transformative in a way. The practices of DH that I have learned over the past year have stressed diversity of thought and the breakdown or restrictive scholarship. Our DH is about openness, we want to engage with the community.

This program is also unique for its fellows. The cohorts have been diverse groups of young women undergraduates who have been given chances to produce great scholarship. While young women are not out of place in a library, we do not exemplify the stereotype of digital experts. Yet this program has encouraged us to become great at what we do and be confident in our work. This program should strive to bring more diverse voices in the future and encourage them to excel in DH.

We should also be open in how we define DH. I have been working with various definitions of DH for the past year. I lean towards a very open definition where almost anything can be defined as DH so long as a good argument is made. Creating a strict definition of DH is reductive and rules out possibilities of future innovation by alienating those who might add something great to this community. That openness is in and of itself transformative. It allows for more voices in discussions of Digital Scholarship, voices of people who are not established but have perspectives that can transform the community. DH must be adaptable and open to new sources if it is to continue its mission.

There is a question raised in the article that particularly struck me in the context of DH on campuses. The authors ask, “Are our institutions embracing us, or are they consuming us in the name of diversity?” To avoid becoming a part of the ivory tower of academia, our DH program should push the boundaries and extend invitations to the community. While DH has places to improve, that should be a call to action to #transformDH.

Community and collaboration are two aspects that are integral to DH. DH is meant to be open, and it cannot be so without a great community with which to collaborate. So, this past week we traveled to Bucknell to meet with the current Digital Scholarship Summer Research Fellows. This meeting allowed us to get to know other undergraduates working with DH and see how other Digital Scholarship programs function.

Since I was a part of the DSSF cohort last year, I had an opportunity to make connections in the DH community before the other DSSF18 fellows. We went to conferences and meet-ups to see how other DH programs were taking shape at colleges. It was interesting to see how different institutions built their DH programs to meet their needs. After one conference, we discussed the differences between and strengths of our programs with other DH students.

We met with Bucknell students last year as well, although it was much later in the summer. At that point, we were able to compare and critique each other’s projects to help strengthen the final product. This summer, our meet up was about learning new skills and listening to project ideas that were still being formulated. We stressed collaboration. DSSF students and DSSRF students offered advice on what tools to use and how to frame their projects to make them engaging. We were able to swap knowledge to help each other’s projects grow.

This sharing of knowledge and expertise to strengthen DH as a whole is an aspect of the community that is particularly pronounced through social media. DH uses digital connectivity to pass information along to newcomers. Last year, a lab session was conducted in which the fellows used Twitter for DH and explored the DH Slack page. We used Twitter at this past meet up to share information and show what our programs were doing. These methods of communication make it easy to stay in contact with others in the DH field.

The cohort this year is a strong community. We are all living in one apartment where it is relatively easy to share information with each other. We only need to knock on a door to get immediate feedback and help. We share ideas and swap sources constantly to help each other succeed during this program. That same sense of community should expand to the rest of DH, both on this campus and in the wider DH world.

We can help others in DH who are not a part of this program by sharing knowledge and encouraging DH work. Many of our lab sessions are open to the public so that other student researchers living on campus over the summer can benefit from this program. We can share and collaborate about our programs. This past year, as our Digital Scholarship Office was trying to set up public sessions, I reached out to DH students at Muhlenberg College for advice, as they had run similar sessions. They replied and helped me to feel more prepared.

DH is meant to be open. We value open access tools and the sharing of information, as it makes the community stronger. People can build upon each other’s work and lift up projects and tools that succeed. While I made a DH community last year, it is always possible to expand and grow in the DH community. I am not done with this community, and I hope to collaborate more over the coming weeks.

Since I was here last year and already had to do a quick Digital Tool Evaluation, I decided to take a different approach this year. I will talk about a tool I have had to use a lot this past year- Esri Story Maps from ArcGIS.

ArcGIS  Esri Story Maps is a tool that requires payment. At Gettysburg College, we gain access through the school. It is one of the tools used frequently in classes and other projects.  The mapping system can be used to create maps, narratives, and engaging visuals. It is not limited to one style of map or navigational experience. This system can be used to make different styles of maps, from the narrative Cascade to the functional Tour. Cascade focuses on how information is presented and delivered to audiences rather than creating a map. In fact, it can be made without using a conventional map at all. Tour, meanwhile, is a more traditional map tour that provides coordinates, pictures, and some information. Its style is not suited for in depth analysis, however. It serves to function as a map above all.

These maps can be embedded into sites, but it can also function as a site itself. While other mapping systems we use during the fellowship can also be an independent site, Esri story maps look better standing on their own.

The system is fairly easy to use. The interface is navigable for new users and tutorials exist to help master the tool. It takes time to learn everything, but it is not so difficult that it requires outside expertise.The website includes a blog with information about how to make and use story maps in engaging ways.

This tool is used by the school for many projects. While I will not use it for my own work, it has been useful for many other projects, from Killed at Gettysburg to the eventual Named Spaces website. It requires users to supply data, like coordinates and images, but does not require users to build a map from the ground up. Coding knowledge is not needed to make a sleek map. The college does, however, use another facet of ArcGIS to create maps for use in projects, like the Jack Piers Projects trench maps. Maps are supplied for those who cannot or do not want to build their own.

Some features could be improved, however. Inputting coordinates is tricky. I have input coordinates that are used in other mapping systems fine only to be taken to Antarctica while in Esri. The solution, I learned through trial and error, is to put reverse the coordinates. I don’t know why this discrepancy exists, but it can be frustrating. There is another method for inputting coordinates, but it is only specific to three decimal places and is not as accurate as it could be. The markers can also be moved on accident very easily, requiring constant reentering of data or approximating location to set the map back to how it was supposed to look.  

There are some questions supplied by the Criteria for Digital Tool Evaluation that I never thought about beforehand. These questions look into the documentation and data of the tool. I had never critically considered these issues before, as the tool always seemed good and secure. In the past week, I was alerted that the site would transition from HTTP to  the more secure HTTPS in order to increase security of the data. Esri does collect user data, but vows in its privacy statement to “use your personal information only for the benefit of Esri and our affiliates.” The code, meanwhile, is open source and hosted on GitHub for others to see. Esri encourages developer modification and collaboration through its code. As stated before, it does require subscription to use. This paywall limits the amount of people who can use the tool.

All in all, this tool is versatile and effective at what it does. It can be used to create maps and engaging visuals. While there are some tricks to be learned when using it, it is not prohibitively difficult to use. I will continue to work with these story maps to create engaging visuals and narratives.