Having limited knowledge on the Digital Humanities as a discipline, this week’s reading traced the key debates on the expanding field of the digital humanities, and the major forces it faces within this development. Gold and Klein’s writing in ‘moment to moment’ traced how the field must recalibrate to the ‘uncertainty brought by ruptures’ which exceed ‘any prior reference points’. In a rapidly changing field, which outpaces the rate of traditional academic literary development, which is largely collaborative in nature, the issues surrounding the digital humanities (the lack of specificity within the discipline ‘the big tent’, the lack of involvement from marginalised groups etc) have become more pronounced. The ‘public’ nature of these projects, and collaborative peer-to-peer publishing is particularly unique academically, but allows for this rapid, accountable development.
Moving DH from the academic field to the wider world, by ‘enabling communication across communities and networks’, by creating platforms that amplify the voices of those most in need of being heard’, realised in ‘mapping events in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria’, and aiding aid efforts in Puerto Rico, the humanitarian potential of the digital humanities can be realised. Special issues in the ‘American Quaterly, the Black Scholar’ etc, mark this expansion and innovation within the field. The ‘Moment to Moment’ introduction trace the ‘fusing go the personal and the historical’, detailing a ‘past characterised by unequal access and the pains of slavery’ which continue to affect academic institutions. Digital Humanities, seems to be a technological attempt to bring attention to these fissures, beyond the capabilities of traditional academia (without the restrictions of a singular field of study, encapsulating a broad variety of disciplines).
The changing attitudes towards DH from the first edition (2012) to the 2019 edition was equally interesting. In the 2019 introduction, the original over-arching optimism, while still there, was less prominent, and instead focused discussions on the major issues facing DH. Gold and Klein describe the field as remaining ‘very much Anglocentric’, expressing a desire to ‘ensure that the field can match the vitality and breadth of those who place themselves in it’. Looking at the digital in projects in class showed a snippet of this breadth, across disciplines, regions etc. Comparing the digitised Blake archive to the Geographical name-mapping website showed the ‘wide range of methods and practices’, as well as purposes, the field can capture. ‘Visualisations of large image sets, 3D modelling of historical artefacts’ encourage a re-interpretation of existing data sets, and the creation of new ones.
I find your understanding of DH very interesting, Regan! – particularly thought-provoking is for me your point about DH being an attempt to go ‘beyond the capabilities of traditional academia’. I strongly agree with this observation, and it certainly, at least in part, stems from its commitment to interdisciplinary thinking. In many ways, it also best reflects our everyday lives. On a day-to-day basis, we also do not restrict ourselves to a single field; our engagement constantly shifts between different modes of thinking, practices and interests. And sticking to the conventions of one particular discipline may very often introduce artificial rigidity and a sense of limitation, which DH has a chance to successfully disrupt.
You also drew my attention to an aspect of DH that I seemed to omit in my previous reflections – the pace of the field’s development, improvement and the need for relatively rapid knowledge production, as well as the implications this speed entails. Definitely, as you noted, DH ‘outpaces the rate of traditional academic literary development’ and this aspect is, perhaps, the most visible in the Introductions to the Debates in Digital Humanities. Over the span of just 11 years, when these four major volumes and many other companion pieces were published, the field managed to not only establish itself within scholarly institutions, define and redefine itself, but also change and refine its approaches; and all that while not even thinking of countless projects that were created within the field.
So far, I understood Digital Humanities as a form of response to the needs and issues of the current world, the best example of it being the humanitarian projects, which you also mentioned, e.g. ‘mapping events in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria’. However, alongside these really positive applications, there seems to be (in my opinion, much more) troubling dimension of DH rapid development. The fast-paced nature of the field compels academics to keep track of substantial amounts of new projects, publications, debates… The interdisciplinary nature of the discipline further adds to that already hefty workload, pushing scholars to learn outside of their disciplines (on the other hand, a very positive trait). In turn, this also encourages rapid, large-scale knowledge production while considering broad scopes of information and data. Then, to what extent does the knowledge production in DH contribute to the recent popular trends of hyperproductivity and overproduction? Isn’t this anxiety-producing for scholars (I certainly started worrying about how much time outside of tracking the debates a person can spend on different aspects of their career, and still be able to stay “in the loop”)? And finally, when projects operate on such a scale in terms of, e.g. data, questions, etc., do we not risk sacrificing quality, depth? How might these tensions be negotiated without losing the DH’s innovative characteristics?
Thank you for your comment Julia! I really appreciated your emphasis on the inter-disciplinary nature of the Digital Humanities, and how this, in turn, reflects ‘our everyday lives’ (which understandably, can’t be put into a neat, singular academic ‘box’). I didn’t make this connection at first during my readings, so thank you for making this point! Do you think academic institutions are responsible for this ‘artificial rigidity’, to an extent or which reform is necessary? Or is this a necessary byproduct of academia? I do agree, however, that the rapid pace of DH’s development, especially across disciplines, has the potential to create problems in itself. I believe this is, largely, a result of DH’s ever-broadening scope, and, consequently, its lack of specificity (as we saw so strongly in the readings this week). This does, admittedly create a problem which is difficult to solve, as the balance between increased accessibility (which is inherently positive), and maintaining high quality is tricky to secure.
I found your final question, ‘when projects operate on such scale… do we not risk quality and depth? How might these be negotiated without losing DH’s innovative characteristics?’ especially important, and (while I don’t have a singular ‘answer’, necessarily) I do think this issue is a by-product of DH’s innovation. In traditional academic spaces, as you mentioned, the pace of development is slower, but quality and depth remains high. With a tech-integrated, multi-disciplinary model, such as DH, which, as you mentioned, has tangible humanitarian potential, pace of development may be more important than stringent depth regulation . I do, however, believe the peer-to-peer semi-open review model is a good way to regulate this, given the growing pains of such an expanding discipline. (which is, both, faster and more inclusive). Perhaps this peer-to-peer model allows those within the discipline to stay “in the loop”, as you mention, encouraging interdisciplinary innovation whilst retaining a high degree of quality. I certainly agree the hyper-productivity element of rapid expansion is concerning, but I’m optimistic that as DH grows further, the work-load will be appropriately spread across the increased number of scholars (removing barriers to entry may be suitable, in this case). I think it really boils down to the major differences between traditional academia and the Digital Humanities. Traditional academia, often, attempts to expand, or ‘fill the gaps’, of existing scholarship (which, perhaps, increasingly narrows), when the DH (from my understanding) uses existing data sets to create new gaps, new ways of interpretation which isn’t necessarily limited to a singular subject of study as is often the case in traditional academia. Each have their strengths and weakness, and in the case of rapid expansion, fissures are certainly more obvious at first.
This was a thoughtful and thought-provoking response. I am particularly interested in your articulation of the apparent difference in optimism in the earlier versus later editions of Gold and Klein’s Digital Humanities. While I certainly noticed something similar myself, it got me thinking about why this might be and how we might approach this disillusionment (if that’s even the right word), and if we are more productive when we are able to critically assess the issues within the DH space. You touch on the “breadth” of the capabilities of DH while also noting Gold and Klein’s appraisal of the “anglocentrism” of the DH field which is certainly disappointing given that, to my understanding, one of the core values of DH is to approach online and tech spaces with openness and the willingness to use digital tools in a way which reflects the complexity of humanities fields. As this course progresses, I hope to continue to think about this issue. Is retaining this inherent optimism concerning the potential good of technology essential, or are we at a point in history where we need to be more intentional about addressing the issues and shortcomings within DH spaces? Is it a mix?