Professionalizing viaDigital Humanities

Roopika Risam

Salem State University

@roopikarisam

Defining Digital Humanities

• My definition: At the intersection of

the humanities and computing,

digital humanities combines the

analytical work of the humanities

with digital technologies, tools, and

methodologies.

Snapshots of Digital Humanities

• Using computational technology to

analyze texts

• Engaging visualization tools in

research

• Using mapping software or GIS to

understand literature or history

Snapshots of Digital Humanities

• Digitizing texts to create new archives and

theorize digital archival practices

• Using knowledge of culture and history to

understand digital objects and cultures

• Creating scholarship that pushes the

boundaries of print form

Will digital humanities save me?

No.

Will digital humanities kill the humanities?

Seriously?

Digital Humanities and the TT

Digital Humanities and the JIL

DH Beyond the TT

Robert Vega, “Graduate Student Alt-ac and Digital Humanities Jobs”http://www.utexas.edu/cola/orgs/lacs/Students/Graduate-Students/Career-Guides/Alt-ac.php

What can digital humanities do for me?

Professionalization - Research

• The affordances of digital humanities

methods add dimensions to research

that are inaccessible without digital

or computational technology.

Professionalization - Teaching

• Digital humanities foregrounds

multimodality, an essential form of

literacy for our students.

• Bonus: Fun things.

Professionalization – Job Seeking

• Digital humanities enables us to

envision broad horizons for what we

can “do” with doctoral degrees.

Selected Resources • Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter

Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp -

Digital_Humanities (MIT Press)

• Matthew K. Gold, ed. - Debates in the Digital

Humanities (University of Minnesota Press)

• Melissa Terras, Julianne Nyhan, and Edward

Vanhoutte, eds. - Defining Digital Humanities (Ashgate)

• #alt-academy: Alternative Academic Careers (mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/)

Selected Resources

• DHCommons (dhcommons.org)

• Digital Humanities Now (digitalhumanitiesnow.org)

• Digital Humanities Quarterly (digitalhumanities.org/dhq)

• Hybrid Pedagogy (hybridpedagogy.com)

• Journal of Digital Humanities (journalofdigitalhumanities.org)

Selected Resources

• Praxis Network (praxis-network.org)

• DH Answers (digitalhumanities.org/answers)

• Bamboo DIRT (dirt.projectbamboo.org)

• Centernet (digitalhumanities.org/centernet)

• THATCamp (thatcamp.org)