Definition 

In our first class, we were challenged to define the Digital Humanities. I described the field with three branches flowing into each other: theory, building digital resources, and integration into pedagogy. While I still argue that these three branches broadly describe the work that occurs in Digital Humanities, this definition is at once too broad and too limited. Instead, Digital Humanities is reflection and production in accordance with its values.  

For one, these branches are hardly separate entities. One may argue that the various editions of the Debates in Digital Humanities fall under theory, since the primary goal of the text is to contextualize and present discourse within the field. Through its interactive online publication with the University of Minnesota Press, however, these editions and their authors also fall into the latter categories of building resources and integrating those resources into pedagogy.  

Furthermore, while I had originally considered “building digital resources” to be composed of writing code for a particular project, our readings for this week have proved to me that this is in fact not the case. In fact, contrary to Stephen Ramsay’s definition, I would argue that one does not need to know any programming language to be a member of the DH field or to contribute to its existing projects. For example, the articles in Reviews in Digital Humanities are plain text – no programming necessary. Yet, in writing reviews for various DH projects, the authors provide a vital step in the development of these projects – providing constructive feedback and promoting the work for consumption. Both functions are necessary for the project to grow and develop.  

After finishing our readings for this week, I agree with Kelly Josephs Baker and Roopika Rasam that the “theory/praxis/pedagogy” models do not suffice in summarizing the digital humanities. They describe the “what” of the work, but not its spirit. Digital humanities is the reflection on and production of digital resources that reflect our humanity. For me, this means that DH does not merely produce and reflect upon digital resources, but its projects must be openly accessible, collaborative amongst authors, authors of other projects, and the communities they represent, and attentive toward the whole human experience, to create my own list of values inspired by Lisa Spiro.  

Further Site Reflections 

From our other sites for this week, both the Colored Conventions Project (CCP) and the early caribbean digital archive (ECDA) fight the epistemicide (as defined by Fiormante and Chaudhari) of white supremacist history. In providing an archive of digitized primary sources, exhibits, and teaching curricula on the pre-Civil War Colored Conventions Movement, the CCP reasserts the contributions of Black men and in particular Black women in the historical narrative of the nineteenth century fight for civil rights.  

Similarly, the early caribbean digital archive both digitizes texts by black, enslaved, Creole, indigenous, and/or colonized people for public access and invites its participants to curate the collection to reclaim and celebrate these narratives. As an example, the archive encourages its participants to help them reidentify authorship to represent who is telling the account rather than the colonist claiming credit. The archive actively transforms the existing historical narrative in the Caribbean by placing the power into its rightful hands. It actively strives for a postcolonial archive, falling into postcolonial DH as mentioned in “The Black Atlantic.” 

Finally, Torn Apart / Separidos utilizes Wernimont and Losh’s MEALS system to to highlight the severity of the humanitarian crisis brought about by the US’s 2018 “Zero Tolerance Policy.” Its Materiality stems from the experiences of asylum seekers reflected in publicly available datasets on ICE facilities. Its Values are defending humanity and refuting the set narrative of a nation that would implement this “Zero Tolerance Policy.” The map and its reflections embody the harsh realities implemented by this policy, providing an affect of shock and horror. The labor is undertaken by various scholars, text contributors, the authors of the work researched, and those affected by this tragedy. For situatedness, this project is a product of its time and origin, an openly accessible radical, or political response.  

Digital humanists, according to “A DH That Matters”, create platforms that amplify the voices of those most in need of being heard; They pursue projects that perform the work of recovery and resistance and undertake research that intervenes in data surveillance and privacy areas. Examples of such works are mentioned throughout this reading including Mobilized Humanities, an outgrowth of the hurricane mapping project, Safiya Noble’s exposure of the racist assumptions planted in Google search algorithms, and Marie Hicks’s illustration of the relationship between gender discrimination and inequities of representation in technological fields.

So then, what is digital humanities? As someone without any prior experience with the digital humanities, I understand it as using digital tools to present or address issues that impact our fellow man.  It encourages us to think about the following question: how can we use technology and data to not only contribute to a solution for these issues but also bring awareness about them? I also see it as a sort of archive of information that serves to preserve data on topics not often spoken about or researched but can be easily accessed.

Take the Colored Conventions Project, for example, a research hub that uses digital tools to “bring the buried history of nineteenth-century Black organizing to life”. By utilizing their inclusive partnerships, they locate, transcribe, and archive documentaries and records related to that period and then, through digital exhibits, present their findings which emphasize the significance of its events and themes. These exhibits are easy to navigate and visually appealing. One of the exhibits that caught my attention was “The Colored Conventions and The Carceral States” which includes a section on the role African American women reformers played in protesting against incarceration. Mary Church Terrell, one of the women featured in that section, while noted as one of the founding members of the National Association of Colored Women, had many of her contributions go unnoticed. She was responsible for publishing an essay titled “Peonage in the United States: The Convict Lease System and the Chain Gang”, that underscored that the perpetuation of slavery continued in the form of the chain gang system in the South. She further calls out the courts and lawmakers for enabling such a system to take root, going as far as stating that by doing so they have rendered the Constitution meaningless.

I just found that little tidbit of information fascinating and appreciated that the overall structure of their website wasn’t too overwhelming despite containing so much information.

The definition of Digital Humanities feels hard to pin down, perhaps this is by design. Prior to doing the reading I would have defined DH as using digital tools to analyze data (texts, media, etc.) within the humanities in order to assist in a research project. After doing this weeks reading I think the definition is much broader and more nuanced than that. I found the “Big Tent” characterization of DH apt as it captures the varying components of what DH is and reminded me of the limitations of such concepts (if something is anything then what can it really be?). My initial understanding limited the scope of digital humanities to its function in a traditional academic research project. The readings opened up a much broader possibility that DH can be a harbinger of change not only in academia, but also the world. It would be a waste for DH to be limited to traditional research projects. This is obvious with Torn Apart / Separados. Vol I and II combine what feels like an impossible amount of data into an easy-to-use and understand interactive interface. This sites impact goes far beyond the academy and showcases the potential for a more engaged, political Digital Humanities.

The definition of digital humanities is so encompassing that it seems it could be anything. I thought it was particularly useful when Ramsay stated the Digital Humanities “involved moving from reading and critiquing to building and making”. This is one of the most poignant part of the introductory reading for me. Something I find myself preoccupied with is how the past will be translated into the our digital present/future. Both The Colored Conventions Project and the Early Caribbean Digital Archive felt like looking at a museum exhibit. When I was an undergrad I had the opportunity to see the Riot Grrrl Zine Collection at NYU. I asked the archivist if they would make the zines accessible online and she said that they weren’t going to digitize them because it would go against the very ethos of zines (or something to that effect it was a long time ago). It’s dramatic given the content, but it felt like an injustice to keep these zines locked away in an archive where only a small number of people would ever see them. There must be a way to interact with these kinds of documents/artifacts in a digital space that doesn’t degrade the value of the object or the experience of viewing it. The CCP and ECDA show us this is possible.

Another defining characteristic of the Digital Humanities is access. Based on the assigned readings it is clear that DH practitioners are invested in pushing the field to be as ethical and accessible as possible. Many of the readings touched upon the ways the digital humanitarians are working to challenge inherent bias and intersecting identities. In The Digital Black Atlantic, Josephs and Risam note that they are de-centering whiteness by putting African diasporic communities and cultural production at the heart of their inquiry, which challenges the assumption that white, English speaking people from the “Global North” are “universal”. Wernimont and Losh also touch on this in Bodies of Information when they note that technologies are not neutral, they promote particular ethical and ideological values. In a DH That Matters, Gold and Klein argue that moving away from the “Big Tent” to viewing digital humanities as a set of vectors of inquiry that are defined by tensions, alignment, and oppositions is the future of the field. I am hopeful that this commitment from the digital humanities will bear out a better future that is truly interdisciplinary, diverse, and multifaceted.

In attempting to understand the definition of Digital Humanities through these six introductory texts, it is clear that one sentence just won’t do it. However, a few key themes emerge. Digital Humanities uses digital and technological tools to build upon, rework and create productions of knowledge. Central to the idea of Digital Humanities is a sense of open access, inclusivity, and community. Furthermore, Digital Humanities cannot be defined without the mention of responsibility, as a newer field, to social justice and the demarginalization of certain communities.  

Digital Humanities often includes building something new from existing data or knowledge as well as reworking the ways in which we approach and disseminate knowledge. Examples provided in the readings include mapping and other data visualizations, archives, virtual reality, and games. Lisa Spiro refers to a sense of play in the name of curiosity and experimentation. Digital Humanities also relies on the values of open access, inclusivity, and community. The use of open peer review processes, social media platforms such as twitter, and easily accessible archives allow for communication, collaboration, and the building of ideas. To this end, Digital Humanities is an organic field.  

There is a responsibility as a new field as well as field built on community for the Digital Humanities to always be morphing into something better and more informed. This not only includes the values of diversity and inclusion but also the awareness of whose voices may be marginalized and the scholarly standards that may be privileged. Digital Humanities also aims to contextualize technology and the digital tools in use. 

The Colored Conventions project showcases all the aforementioned themes. However, for my own understanding, it redefined the nature of building and the timeline of Digital Humanities. In the introduction to The Digital Black Atlantic, Josephs and Risam invoke Toni Morrison’s term of ‘rememory’ as a way of remembering that crucially links it to the present and the future. 

In The Colored Conventions, modern digital tools are used to share how technology was used by Black Americans throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries to organize, fight for their rights, and express their experience. Rather than taking archaic information and plopping it into a digital space, it translates the technology used in the past into something new and accessible. For example, in the exhibit ‘Black Women’s Economic Power: Visualizing Domestic Spaces in the 1800s’, black women’s use of physical spaces and print advertisements to gain financial freedom is highlighted. This is done through the digital tools of interactive mapping and archiving.  

“Information is not a commodity to be controlled but a social good to be shared and reused.” – Lisa Spiro

If I could center an understanding of DH around a project, it would be “This is Why We Fight” by Lisa Spiro. Throughout the readings, the following questions arose: where the digital begins in the humanities discipline, how does it change the scholarship regarding humanities, who constitutes a “digital humanist” and what skills does a digital humanist have that an academic in humanities does not?

In “This Is Why We Fight,” the message that comes across is that instead of defining concretely between digital humanities and humanities, the values can be seen as one and the same. Preservation, diversity, equity, promoting the free exchange and exploration of ideas all encompass DH. The values in traditional humanities of access to knowledge, intellectual freedom, and the democratic sharing of ideas holds true in DH, the difference is in translating these values from print to digital. Spiro notes the wisdom of the crowd, which builds, expands and reconfigures knowledge, this is a key difference between DH and humanities, were ownership of knowledge is clearly defined and controlled by academics in traditional humanities. Within DH the lines of ownership are blurred to create a free-flowing exchange of knowledge.

A personal Digital Humanities Definition

From the very beginning of our readings this week, I resonated with Pannapackers’ 2011 observation that Digital Humanities are now simply “the Thing” and the seeming inevitability of DH simply being “the humanities”. With the proliferation of digital tools and their applications towards enhancing the study and access of humanities, it became necessary to find a term to describe this emerging way of doing things. And although tools will continue to develop or evolve, the incorporation of digital tools with the humanities is here to stay. 

I find Digital Humanities best as an umbrella term in which these different ideas and technologies can be more concretely defined within. For example, what are the applications of mapping software to express topics in the humanities, and how does one use them? What are common data visualization techniques and outputs that can be incorporated with better understanding of humanities related topics? What humanities topics in general may best be represented via digital means over the written word? And so on…

I think that Digital Humanities is part of a wave of a burgeoning interdisciplinarity not just in academia, but those that are curious enough to explore and create. We are all increasingly participating across dynamic and collaborative media, so why not apply this to scholarship in order to truly lift whatever area of study is put out? Instead of waiting for “response papers” to add to the scholarly conversation, why not have the ability to comment and add to it now? And to open that ability up to anyone? Instead of a static article or book, why not have the ability to continually add or revise? Instead of limiting who publishes, why not open it to all?

How do the sites and projects reflect the issues in the readings
The sites and projects all reflect a way of presenting and providing access to different sets of data and information in a digital format. More specifically, Torn Apart/Separados speaks to a DH “that matters” and can bring about awareness of social issues to motivate action from the public. The Early Caribbean Digital Archive and Colored Conventions Project provides access to connect researchers and members of a diaspora to better understand that time in history, make connections today, and perhaps better understand themselves. They too seek to contribute to the decolonization of the archives and provide representation for traditionally marginalized voices from the past. The Reviews in Digital Humanities journal archive complements all of the readings in being able to browse through various DH projects that exemplify various aspects discussed within.

here is a new post that I am writing