THEME:

“We should all probably start by admitting that none of us really knows what digital humanities is….” – Dave Parry, “The Digital Humanities or a Digital Humanism”

The Digital Humanities is often portrayed as a quasi-quantitative field, yet it has also given rise to an enormous amount of theoretical scrutiny and critique, especially by practitioners themselves. For our second meeting, we will explore a range of these assessments and critiques.

TIME:

Friday, Nov 9, 2012 – 12-2pm

PLACE:

Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities Conference Room, Kresge Hall, 1880 Campus Drive, #2-360, Evanston, IL 60208 (click for map).

READINGS:

• Gold, ed., Debates in the Digital Humanities, 75-136, 429-437, 490-509, book available for pickup at Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.
  • Ch. 5, Ramsay and Rockwell, “Developing Things”
  • Ch. 6, Drucker, “Humanistic Theory and Digital Scholarship”
  • Ch. 7, Bianco, “This Digital Humanities Which is Not One”
  • Ch. 8, McCarty, “A Telescope for the Mind?”
  • Blog posts, Scheinfeldt, “Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology?”; Hall, “Has Critical Theory Run Out of Time for Data-Driven Scholarship?”; Hall, “There Are No Digital Humanities”
  • Ch. 24, Parry, “The Digital Humanities or a Digital Humanism”
  • Ch. 29, Liu, “Where Is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?”

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTED READINGS:

• Fred Gibbs, “Critical Discourse in Digital Humanities,” Journal of Digital Humanities 1, 1 (April 2012), http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/critical-discourse-in-digital-humanities-by-fred-gibbs/.

• Natalia Cecire, “Theory and the Virtues of the Digital Humanities” Conversation Section, http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/introduction-theory-and-the-virtues-of-digital-humanities-by-natalia-cecire/.

• Toma Tasovac, “It’s not just about scholarly work: digital infrastructures, transnationalism, and Europe,” http://metapoetika.org/featured/its-not-just-about-scholarly-work-digital-infrastructures-transnationalism-and-europe/.

• Frederick W. Gibbs and Trevor J. Owens, “The Hermeneutics of Data and Historical Writing (Spring 2012 version),” in Writing History in the Digital Age: A Born-Digital, Open-Review Volume, ed. Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/data/gibbs-owens-2012-spring/.

• Jerome McGann, Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web (New York: Palgrave, 2001)

• N. Katherine Hayles, How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).