I am about to start a new course on the Digital Humanities so I have been thinking about this area of research in preparation for the first class. I have some experience with DH through coursework (I took a data visualization course and you can see my final project here and my write up on DV here. I also took a course that questioned the new humanities and I wrote some on the crisis in the humanities and a very little bit about DH for that blog here and here), and journal work (I was managing editor for Digital Medievalist, worked with Digital Studies/Le champ numerique, and published a book review on Gold’s Debates in the Digital Humanities that you can read here if you like). This amounts to just barely dipping my toes into the DH waters, but I would like to continue getting wet, so to speak. It is for this reason that I am taking this course, though I also recognize that my research will engage with the digital quite a bit (including digital-born material and digital native subjects) so the more experience I can get in the field, the better my research will be. As such, I decided to make a few comments here that will probably be added to in later blogs as the semester goes on (or later in my research). This blog starts with my consideration of the number of blogs and articles that speak to the ability of DH to save the humanities.

There is a danger in continually referring to DH as a way to “save” the humanities (and I have been guilty of this as well). First, this assumes that the humanities need saving, which is not exactly true — the humanities may need some upgrading but what they really need is better PR management (and maybe an overhaul that includes professional development plans for students too).

Second, and perhaps more importantly, this assumes that the only reason for DH is to bring the humanities into the twenty-first century which, in turn, assumes that we need to change the humanities — neither of which is true. DH is a separate part of the humanities, computer sciences, and even social sciences to a certain extent (because we’re not just examining the technology or re-examining the humanities through technology, we’re also engaging with social media and the people who use technology). DH is necessary not just as a tool for more immense genre studies, for example, it is also a community that engages in critical analysis of both the technology and our use of it. For this reason we must recognize that DH is not (just) a methodology, it is a field of study that exists autonomously.

DH has come a very long way since the early days of digital fiction or humanities computing — it is criticism of the technology we use daily or for specific research, as well as the creation of technology for research purposes. Its position as a separate field of study has been cemented by the recent spate of publications that are finally beginning to critique the field itself (rather than continuously working to define it). While there is still an element of definition required in many of these texts, the push to question and build a space for this work and these questions shows that it is setting itself apart from its various parent disciplines.

While it may appear that the humanities could eventually become a part of DH, I think that DH will continue to remain separate from its parent disciplines. We need a field of research that questions the tools that are (or will be) ubiquitous and the humanities as they exist now are not set up to effectively question digital methodology. The connection to computer science is absolutely necessary in this case. Just as I think that those researchers coming out of computer science that are working within DH will not fit easily into the parent discipline. There is a need to combine these two areas of research given the technological environment in which we live. Likewise, I think DH is necessary to force researchers to consider the global aspects of our digital world. Both the interconnectedness and related policies (and/or political concerns) offered by communications technology as well as the lack of ready access to such technology globally (and “our” — read, Western — lack of understanding of this global discrepancy). DH is the perfect place to consider all of these aspects of digital technology and digital-born media.