THEME:

How should we understand the conjunction of the digital and the humanities in material, structural, ethical, and political terms? Should digital tools, conceptualizations of evidence and “data,” and modes of digital communication be incorporated into humanistic studies with or without regard for these larger factors? How might we grapple with the stakes of digital technologies with regard to questions of race, gender, class, and nation? What kinds of competencies and critical approaches do we need as critical digital humanities scholars?

TIME:

Friday, January 25th, 12-2pm

PLACE:

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

FOOD:

Lunch served.

READINGS:

• Gold, ed., Debates in the Digital Humanities, 139-246.

• Miriam Posner, “Some things to think about before you exhort everyone to code,” 29 February 2012, http://miriamposner.com/blog/?p=1135.

• Evgeny Morozov, “Don’t Be Evil,” New Republic, 13 July 2011, http://www.tnr.com/article/books/magazine/91916/google-schmidt-obama-gates-technocrats.

SUGGESTED READINGS:

• Brian Croxall, “All Things Google: Google Maps,” Profhacker, April 5, 2011, http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/all-things-google-google-maps-labs/32421.

• Christine Smallwood, “What Does the Internet Look Like,” The Baffler 18 (December 2009), 8-12, republished at http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/4/3/what-does-the-internet-look-like.

• Tom Slee, “Seeing Like a Geek,” 25 June 2012, http://crookedtimber.org/2012/06/25/seeing-like-a-geek/.

• Noah Wardrip-Fruin, “The Prison-House of Data,” Inside Higher Ed, 20 March 2012, http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/03/20/essay-digital-humanities-data-problem.

• Michael J. Kramer, “The Fetishization of Data,” Issues in Digital History, http://www.michaeljkramer.net/issuesindigitalhistory/blog/?p=559, 2 February 2012; “The Scales of Theory,” Issues in Digital History, http://www.michaeljkramer.net/issuesindigitalhistory/blog/?p=693, 4 May 2012.

• Kate Theimer, “The problem with the scholar as ‘archivist,’ or is there a problem?,” http://www.archivesnext.com/?p=2522, 28 February 2012.

• Ted Underwood, Katherine Harris, Adeline Koh, Roger Whitson, and Natalia Cecire, “Editors’ Choice – Archival Silences Roundup,” http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org/2012/03/editors-choice-archival-silences-round-up/.

• William Pannapacker, “On ‘the Dark Side of the Digital Humanities,'” Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 January 2013, http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/01/05/on-the-dark-side-of-the-digital-humanities/

• David Golumbia, “Computerization, Centralization, and Concentration,” Uncomputing, 25 October 2012, http://www.uncomputing.org/?p=158.

• Alexander R. Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004)

• Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker, Exploit: A Theory of Networks (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007)

• Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006)