A great big thanks to Emily, Amanda, Andrew, Kevin, Beth, and all the other HASTAC@NUDHL Scholars for organizing a productive meeting!

A few “takeaways”:

We need to move from talking just about graduate education and DH in an all-purpose way to (1) the different stages of graduate education (1st year vs midpoint vs. home stretch) and DH and (2) where the intersections are among disciplines in graduate training and where it’s good for different disciplines to be just that: different—and then how DH can help to mediate those points of convergence and divergence in productive ways.

To me, the example of Andrew’s research encourages graduate students to (1) go for it with whatever tools you have at your disposal…dive in and explore, dead ends and negative results can be just as productive as brilliantly clear breakthroughs; digital humanities can encompass toying with MS Word or even pen and paper…”Why not?!” (2) think about the digital as both a tool of analysis (screwmeneutics, heuristic, analytic in the literal sense and think about it as a tool for visualization, narration, dramatizing an argument you already have articulated; (3) talk with others, consult, converse, seek new perspectives on your research questions, go deeper into your specialty and explore more broadly across different methods; (4) visualization of a poem, the poem as a visual object, comparative work through the digital, layering versions, and other ways that the digital is quite literally (literature-istically?) fertile, productive of new readings and interpretations.

Josh’s presentation reminded me that there is an emerging network or constellation of people, resources, projects, and interests at Northwestern. The challenge is how to give these better “definition,” more support, more instances of connection and elaboration.

– Michael