Monthly Archives: September 2021

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1.

I appreciate Ramsay’s comment regarding the ability to code or “build something” as a key consideration in one’s acknowledgement that they are a DH scholar. This struck me as useful in drawing a line in the sand in a field where a “definitional dilemma” seems to rear its head regarding the field from time to time. The problem with this, however, is that the scope of projects available to burgeoning scholars intending to code from the ground up in my view are limited. One could create a “collaboratively built tool that enables other scholars to add descriptive metadata to digitized manuscripts” but would another project really be necessary to practitioners when there is already Hypothesis and Manifold?

And with so many useful text analysis (Voyant), geo-spatial mapping, and data viz tools (Tableau) readily available, why the emphasis on knowing a computer programming language? Maybe the point is to have a working-knowledge of coding. In the same way a Literature major might need to know how to compose a sonnet. They may not be experts in the achievement of this goal, but can create one from the “ground up”. Alternatively can a Philosophy major be considered a scholar if they are unable to write a paper incorporating symbolic logic? It may not fit the end goal of their research which relies perhaps more on the merits of literary value rather than math and an Analytical style.

Maybe the issue of ground-level working knowledge of a skill? Wittgenstein famously came to Cambridge without having read Aristotle, which is very much in line with Keats’ Negative Capability. In the Humanities we don’t have a distinction between working knowledge and technical knowledge the same way other faculties like Social Science might have. A social scientist who can’t run a lab or has difficulty with statistics, seems to fail the tenets of the field, but what does that look like in the Humanities? Would it be one’s ability to mention at the drop of a hat five major themes from Songs of Innocence and Experience? Is a Literature major’s scholarly status docked for not having read Blake?

2.

So DH is a “motley of effort” (Krauss) and since I’m also taking a Pedagogy course this semester I’ve been made aware of two big sectioned off areas of DH. One in which the field makes a commitment to grappling with the fine points of online and hybrid learning in a way that is equitable and caters to the needs of students; the other is one which leans towards public scholarship: “addressing our work not simply to ‘the public’ but also… to specific communities” (Brennan). With social, racial, historical concerns to the fore. Its the explanation and pedagogical utility of DH projects that I feel could benefit from a reevaluation.

At least two of the projects offer an “explore” tab which breaks down the crucial elements of research and offers up the historic reasons for why a project is so vital. These explore tabs are inherent to most DH projects I’ve seen online and go a long way towards reckoning with the issue that ”scholarship that is not always fully legible to those not versed in the particular methods or conversations taking place in that domain”.

If this breakdown of core concepts is such a common occurrence, then it seems to me that; in the same way that there are just a few standards of notation software available that most people have agreed to use, can’t there be a software that organizes these Archive-heavy projects for people? The problem I run into is that, I know that project which perform archival work: gathering documents and organizing them across a timeline are set up the same way. That is, they have sections organized into: Explore, Find out More, Dig Deeper, Outline View modes, etc… Sometimes when I want to quickly switch from one to the other to compare the two, the UI is set up in such a way that I have to flip through pages and pages or differently organized and color-coded navigation views just to have the two side-by-side. I wonder if there isn’t room for a more Unified Approach to Archival Projects.

(Untitled no. 1, aka blog post no. 1)

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The realm of DH is appealing for a few reasons, and I would like to outline the following few below. Like any discipline that is going through the process of shaping and constant re-shaping, its frontiers are still fluid and therefore new features or, rather, values are being added and accepted. This is one of the strengths of the discipline: to be open and easily shift to explore novel fields and themes and possibilities—in other words, be inclusive. This philosophy, on the other hand, may lead to having troubles because enduring everything is not probably the most ideal take, and at one point you do need to say: “That’s not fitting in here.”

The field of DH, it seems to me, might benefit when keeps being open but, at the same time, consider establishing some visible boundaries. In this respect, I agree with Matt Kirschenbaum who argues that “the digital humanities today is about a scholarship (and a pedagogy) that is publicly visible in ways to which we are generally unaccustomed, a scholarship and pedagogy that are bound up with infrastructure in ways that are deeper and more explicit than we are generally unaccustomed […].” Interestingly, this was written all the way in 2010 but his points still remain cohesive and valid.

Another feature that is of special note is that DH can quickly react to ongoing debates, unrepresented fields and effectively create responses – i.e., open new platforms – in terms of scholarship and pedagogy. Unsurprising that many ground-breaking projects emerged in recent times and were well-received, these projects were implemented, in part, thanks to DH.

While looking at the digital projects assigned for our next class, all of them feature something special and unique. Torn Apart/Separados is probably the most sophisticated from a technological standpoint, a project that requires lots of attention in terms of tools, but also the research conducted to present this project requires a special note. Early Caribbean Digital Archive is an example of decolonization studies; it effectively combines the work from the past and serves as a library and exhibit but also presents these materials in a way that could be easily used both by scholars in the area but also students. The same concerns Colored Convention Project – and both are open to submissions – meaning, anyone who has any ideas or knowledge in those areas could contribute and share their findings with others. Finally, Digital Humanities in Review is as important as anything else on this list: someone must keep an eye on all novel projects and developments in the field and offer a springboard for constructive feedback and to be able to have a dialogue.

The Digital Humanism of the Early Caribbean Digital Archive

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I found the Early Caribbean Digital Archive (ECDA) to be a succinct representation of the many valences in the digital humanities’ expanded field.

The archive participates in some “traditional” motivations of digital humanities. The project follows Ramsey’s urging for digital humanists to “build things” from “Who’s in and Who’s Out.” By creating a digital archive like, the ECDA hues closely to the camp of digital humanists “who use new digital tools to aid relatively traditional scholarly projects” (Gold, 2012). The emphasis on catalogs and manuscripts harkens to an operating mode where DH comprises a set of methods to make traditional archival material more accessible via digital technologies. Moreover, the metaphors used on the EDCA homepage ground the project in the conventional notion of digital humanists that an observer outside of the field might expect. Imperatives like “take a tour,” the categorization of material as “archive” and “exhibits” fall within the tropes of physical museums. The “curated collections” indicate some level of expertise deployed for creating “ new entryways into the archive,” carving out grooves by which a “guest” can navigate or “explore” the archive. These motivations to build a tool for researchers, to digitize archival material, and provide structured guidance – couched in purview of what typical institutions may expect from digital humanities – are visible in how the EDCA frames its project. These motivations go some way to understanding not only why Northeastern University would host this archive, but also the library partnership that the project attracts.

The project’s palatability to institutional forces doesn’t diminish the EDCA’s participation in the more unorthodox practices in DH. Sidestepping the colonial project inherent in these texts goes beyond the preternatural “recombinatory” and nonlinear benefits of digitalization mentioned in the “Decolonizing the Archive: Remix and Reassembly” section of the website. The tagline “is it possible to decolonize the archive?” hints at the experimentation in how the archival material is arranged to try and answer that question. Slave narratives embedded in books written by European colonial authors are broken free from that context in the EDCA “to form a new digital anthology of narratives that speak to one another (beyond the context of the words of Bryan Edwards or similar texts) in new ways and across new contexts.” This reassemblage meshes well with the “constellation of terms…curiosity, play, exploration” that Spiro identifies as experimentation, a unifying value she sees for the DH community. Breaking up these early Caribbean texts also aligns the EDCA (albeit in a very small “c” conservative way) with DH scholars that draw their lineage from McGann and Samuel’s Deformance and Interpretation. By reading a text in reassembled order — backwards, with words removed, or the order of paragraphs, sentences or stanzas reassembled etc. we can generate new knowledge about the text in question, and reveal the structures that undergird it. In the spirit of Spiro’s elevation of collaboration as an inherent DH value, I appreciate that the EDCA curators set the extracted slave narratives in conversation with one another, having those voices collaborate on a new narrative with the potential to

Caroline 9/2 Post

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In 2012 Tom Scheinfeldt argued that the Digital Humanities field did not need to answer questions, but should be allowed to “experiment, and to play”. Now a decade later, has Digital Humanities moved past the play of childhood into a young adult that seeks meaning and definition?

There is no question that the Digital Humanities has grown exponentially in recent years, no longer in its infancy, it is teetering between its founding ideas of unbounded openness and the desire to solidify into a defined field of study. As all revolutionaries discover, there is a difference between overthrowing a system and creating one. The central conflict of creating guidelines and the ideals of openness is one that is evident in the articles we studied and by necessity, creates an exclusionary world that is an anathema to so many in the Digital Humanities. Though much of the field already share the ideals of Openness, Collaboration, and Diversity, the challenges ahead are reconciling these with a world that is becoming increasingly polarized. Certainly, the freedom found in “The Big Tent” view of the Digital Humanities has enabled a diversity of research, inclusion across multiple disciplines, and new researchers to chart their course in the digital realm. Lisa Spiro in her article “This Is Why We Fight: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities,” attempts to bring order to the chaos by implementing business fundamentals of a mission statement and core values into the conversation. If one were to judge many of our largest companies solely by their core values and nothing else, one would imagine we are living in a utopia. As an I/O Psychologist, and someone who has helped write core values for companies, I can attest to how they are used in strategic ways, even as they espouse diversity of thought. Many corporations establish Core Values as a tactic to build cohesion, increase engagement, modify behavior, promote a company brand and build a unified culture. Employees are hired, rewarded, promoted, and fired based on “fit” to these values. In a corporate setting, a commitment to openness can be used to negate an argument when it is polarizing or inconvenient. Rather than focus on the ideological definition, a focus on process and creation should be the guiding principle of the Digital Humanities.

Sites such as the “Torn Apart / Separados” are a mesmerizing display of the capabilities of mapping and data visualization to demonstrate how the Digital Humanities can approach an important social issue. Digital Humanities should be leveraging these interactive capabilities to create something greater than a dataset, to break free of the spreadsheet, and create content that is engaging. Increasingly it is becoming obvious that the public often fails to connect to data no matter how clear the correlation may be. We see a hesitancy to trust data sources but this can be overcome through presentation. Projects in the Digital Humanities which include digitized versions of archives, exhibits, and journals to fully-realized interactive digital models, do not necessarily change content but rather make it more digestible. Conversely, our minds evolved to recognize patterns, but it seems we engage most with those that are narrative in structure and not just quantitative.

This is not to say that there is no space for traditional methods. “Reviews in Digital Humanities”, is an accessible website without elaborate infographics with the goal to capture the expansive and ever-evolving landscape of current Digital Humanities scholarship. Published monthly, the archive collects reviews of new projects including notable achievements pertaining to Digital Humanities methodology. Though the timeliness of the publication is a distinct feature of the Digital Humanities field as a whole, what is most compelling about this platform is its restrained simplicity and approach to democracy. Projects are reviewed with equal weight from soundscapes to a massive transcription project of the “Scribes of the Cairo Geniza.” Even projects that do not pass the peer-review board still appear in the registry. “Reviews in Digital Humanities” is inclusive and unapologetically “in pilot mode” with an unspoken glimmer of hope of surviving (unlike its failed precursors mentioned on the About page). Openness should refer not to an ideological purity but rather an acceptance of all sources as potentially relevant.

In short, the central tenant of the Digital Humanities should not be an idea, but rather ideas as a whole. While the loft declarations of a manifesto may be comforting, if we truly believe in the supremacy of diversity of thought and openness, then we must by necessity know that even in the cacophony that creation ring loudest. The most telling readings we did were less about what the digital humanities should be, and more about how effective digital humanities projects (no matter how flawed) like “Torn Apart / Seperados” are.

Jean Fischer 9/2 blog post

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The Digital Humanities is an ever-flourishing field, filled with bountiful information, perspectives, focus, understandings, and justice that are accessible to a wide audience. It is a field created by the scholarly people, with technological advances and aid, for the citizens, who have access to technology, that are seeking new perspectives, information and aid. After reviewing the Torn Apart/ Separados site that focuses on the inhumane injustice, displacement, narratives, and resources for immigrant families affected by the U.S. Government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it is clear that the Digital Humanities serve the online community as not only a provider of a multitude of incredible resources for humans that are impacted by human rights crimes but also the Digital Humanities serve as a teacher of empathy in which students can ascertain in depth research and connect in the creation of community, establishing support and ally ship. The Digital Humanities institute the human and social obligation to research, create, publish, teach and learn with a wide-scope of compassion towards many communities so that we can unite and incite progressive change in society.

The Torn Apart/ Separados Vol 2. gave an in depth look at the political, economic, and societal agenda of the social injustices performed by the U.S. Government’s ICE Program. Torn Apart/Separados, Vol. 2, provided a broken down outline emphasizing each sector of ICE’s reign into data visualizations, entitled: “Districts”, “Rain,” “Gain,” “Freezer,” and “Lines.” Each digital visualization gives research based information to clearly present factual data on the creation of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the trickling effect of its power. The “Districts” data visualization provided a US dollar amount that each state contributed to ICE’S funding in addition to also providing each state’s representative. The “Rain,” data visualization shows what large financial corporations benefit from ICE. The “Gain” data visualization, also entitled, “The Scroll of Shame,” illustrates what companies and businesses benefit from endowment received from ICE. The “Freezer” data visualization breaks down the costs of each department in each ICE detainment facility- demonstrating astronomical number figures for inhuman services by the US Government. The “Lines” data visualization draws the captures and displacements of ICE’s victims, regionally.

As a provider, the Digital Humanities “represent a convergence of several sets of values, including those of the humanities; libraries, museums, and cultural heritage organizations; and networked culture,” referenced in Lisa Spiro’s chapter in “Introduction: The Digital Humanities Moment,” entitled, ‘“This Is Why We Fight”: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities.’ Serving the digital community as this initiative-seeking oasis of community knowledge and outreach, the values that the Digital Humanities perpetuate are, “to advance knowledge, foster innovation, and serve the public” (“This is Why We Fight”: Defining the Values of Digital Humanities, Spiro.) ** With these values instilled in the foundation of Digital Humanities, these publications that are created to be used for public knowledge with correct research, open narratives, and an eye for change, in regards to the ever-changing future, are safe to be considered incredibly reliable sources of data information as the purpose to utilize them follow a deep moral code, ethical code, and social obligation to produce reliable, factual data information, not typically covered. These values that the Digital Humanities follow are fully demonstrated in The Torn Apart/ Separados Vol, 2. site, providing a spectrum of research, records, graphics, narratives, and hope for people to recognize the inhumanities carried out by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Torn Apart/Separados Vol, 2. site also displays a digital data map pinning allied- organizations across the United States. These allied- organizations are meant to provide insurance for an audience who are in need of these resources as well as allies who want to share these resources to people who need this knowledge. The pinned allied- organizations include: Immigration Connection Project (ICON), in New York, El Refugio, in Georgia, Santa Fe Dreamers Project, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and many others. These pins provide addresses; locations, contact information and a directory to ensure quality communication and ample resources to those who need them.

As a teacher of empathy, the Digital Humanities promote the pedagogical values of openness, collaboration, collegiality and connectedness, diversity, experimentation, mentioned in Lisa Spiro’s “Chapter 3:“This is Why We Fight:” Denying the Values of Digital Humanities, ’ in a universal curriculum. These values are not discriminatory and apply to the basic fundamental rights of human beings. As an educator of the Digital Humanities that works with text that are created for the mass education, it is a social code and obligation to create, educate and promote a supportive community that advocates an overall total ally-ship for communities whose voices are silenced and need provision. Demonstrated on The Torn Apart/ Separados, Vol, 2, the “Allies” section provides extensive contact data to allied organizations to help the victims of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiate. The action of creating this site, which is a valuable resource, and also focusing a section on specifically where people can find important allied-organizations’ contact information establishes that the Digital Humanities is made by humans for humans in need of help and to also teach, share and listen to researched narratives, that have been initially silenced by society, to ultimately learn and exhibit compassion for humankind.

Post 1 – Troy

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Since first watching the movie Jerry Maguire in middle school, I have a fear of manifestos. I understood manifestos to have negative consequences based on the repercussions on the titular character after he wrote one, and anytime I hear the word, I am automatically mentally presented with potential negative ramifications. From my first viewing of the movie, many quotables, that still resound in contemporary evaluations of the best movie quotes, were seared into my brain. However, also seared into my brain were the consequences of an impromptu, stream of consciousness, manifesto. In this regard, contrary to Jerry Maguire, I believe Lisa Spiro is well-grounded as she deliberately identifies what she considers to be to the most pertinent values of DH: openness, collaboration, collegiality and connectedness, diversity, and experimentation.
Each of the projects evaluated this week incorporate at least one of the values mentioned by Spiro. The Torn Apart project is the epitome of openness. The transparency of the financial benefits received by certain entities, and how it is displayed on a distinctly outlined map, is a clear DH representation. The juxtaposition of the Congressional districts, Representatives, and largest profiteers leaves nothing to the imagination. Without question, the cartographic depiction is more effective at illuminating the geographic impact of ICE’s financial entanglements than any other medium. The CCP and ECDA project put an emphasis on access – allowing anyone the opportunity to view obscure exhibits and artifacts that would otherwise be inaccessible in the absence of the digital curation and forum. The ECDA project illuminates collegiality and connectedness by reappropriating contributions by European publishers to aggregate the histories of the Caribbean. Rather than dismiss the European contributions to this collection, the ECDA recenters them in a manner that puts Caribbean experiences, as opposed to European interpretations, at the forefront.
Even after all the reading I completed before this blog post, I am not yet sure how to classify or define Digital Humanities. Unlike ignorance in most matters, I do not yet find this troubling as I am slowly linking the conversation around interspersing theory and practice to my interpretations of DH. Considering the ease and ubiquity of digital access in almost all aspects of life, I am not sure of what does or does not fall into the DH bucket. The “DH community” is referenced often in the readings, but who are the members of said community? Better yet, who are not members at this point? Furthermore, who makes these decisions? Perhaps I will have a better understanding when I enter the social media world and create my Twitter account.

9/2 Blog Post – Olivia M

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Using the project Torn Apart / Separados to (re)define Digital Humanities

The Digital Humanities is a field that centers on creating and disseminating collaborative, open sourced and interdisciplinary research projects that often adhere to a particular political agenda. Projects are digital in nature and almost always include pedagogical instructions and a description of methodology. In terms of the political effectiveness, DH believes that “small acts of recuperation” can create “building blocks to larger collective action.”

Torn Apart / Separados situates the Digital Humanities as a discipline using digital tools to (re)produce/(re)position the data informing and derived from current events/historical sources to inspire change and action. Here, the topic is ICE’s financial regime in the US, and an implicit call to action through “the data and visualization intervention… of culpability behind the humanitarian crisis of 2018.”

Digital Humanities is a discipline focused on exploring humanistic “data” -in this case both qualitative and quantitative- and creatively interprets and visualizes data from a broad range of sources and media types (institutional archives, public reporting, and social media posts are all examples of “data” for DH). DH is focused on translating a data set into a living “product” or visual/textual project that grows and updates alongside the evolution of the study and reporting on the topic in question. (Here, the project has two volumes, and both iterations remain visible online with details on the changes per volume.)

It’s also highly interdisciplinary — bringing together a range of professionals and types of reporting to enhance the spectrum of research methods utilized and types of data explored. These participants, practices and sources are also highly documented in a way that promotes further investigation into the topic at hand and the technology platforms themselves. In turn, the discipline inspires researchers and everyday people to consistently question traditional modes of information sharing and lean towards a methodology that is more relational and expands context across space and time.

DH projects inherently call into question the systems used to gather information for inquiry through their (re)positioning and (re)purposing of data. Here, they explicitly ask us to question the “truth” behind reporting and numbers released by governing bodies and major companies in regards to ICE funding and operations. As a result, a unique characteristic of the discipline is that it is inherently contradictory as it relies on the systems of information it seeks to dismantle and reposition (ICE records).

While “open access,” (aka available free/online) the discipline also seems restrictive to cultures and individuals who value numerical reporting and textual analysis over more subjective forms of knowledge and testimonial like oral history. However, this project is particularly visual and does appeal to individuals who might be more literate in data vis. Perhaps this is the shift from “humanities” to “digital” humanities? For instance, here, we are asked to examine and explore financial reporting, rather than the stories behind the individuals deported.

To what end? That’s up for debate, as DH projects call for others to step in and expand on the project as a way of keeping the “story” alive. In this project, there is no specific call to action other than a new addition to Volume 2 that highlights “Allies” in the fight to expose ICE. Transparency is clearly a major player in Digital Humanities, with the call to action being making information more widely accessible in a way that advances institutional critique, rather than promoting some specific IRL action towards change-making. That said, I look forward to discussing the ways in which this might succeed/fail with the class!