In Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s “The Humanities, Done Digitally,” she jokingly asks whether the digital humanities includes “every medievalist with a website.” The answer is probably no, but it does raise the question of what sets digital humanities projects apart from websites or even from books.
Briefly look at the digital humanities projects below. After getting a general sense of all of them, pick one project to focus on for this blog post. Answer these three questions about the project:
- In Digital_Humanities, Burdick et al. describe over a dozen emerging “methods and genres” of digital work in the humanities. Which of their methods or genres does this particular DH project seem to belong to? Explain your reasoning. If the project doesn’t seem to fit any of their categories, then make up a new category for it!
- What does this project do that the same content in another form (for example, in a printed book) does not do? What’s the advantage of its digital form?
- In Data Feminism, Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein explore how power and oppression intersect with digital representation. While they focus mostly on data science, many of their arguments extend beyond the world of big data. Ideas like privilege hazard, the matrix of domination, asymmetrical data extraction, counterdata, data justice (as opposed to data ethics), and more are relevant to just about any work in the digital humanities. Pick a key idea from either chapter 1 or chapter 2 of Data Feminism and apply it to the digital project you’re looking at. Maybe the DH project illustrates the kind of failing that D’Ignazio and Klein critique. Maybe the DH project is an antidote to some of the problems they critique. Maybe it’s both at the same time! In any case, take some time to provide context to the idea from Data Feminism and walk us through your argument.
Digital Projects to Consider:
- The Resemblage Project
- Cork LGBT Archive
- Feral Atlas
- Mapping Memories of Africville
- Discovering Wilmington 1898
- Enslaved
- Slave Voyages
- Colored Conventions
- Taller Electric Marronage
- Lili Elbe Digital Archive
- Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde
Standard Specifications for Blog Posts Also Apply
