{"id":798,"date":"2015-10-16T13:02:21","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T13:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endlesshybrids.com\/?p=798"},"modified":"2015-10-16T13:02:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T13:02:21","slug":"remarks-to-vicula-on-dh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/endlesshybrids.com\/digital-humanities\/remarks-to-vicula-on-dh\/","title":{"rendered":"Remarks to VICULA on DH"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following is a draft of remarks I gave to a meeting of VICULA (Virginia Independent College and University Library Association) today at its meeting at Washington and Lee. I don’t read my talks directly from a script, so what I actually said varies but this represents the heart of it.<\/em><\/p>\n I’m going to give an overview of our digital humanities and some of the issues we’re facing. And my colleagues are going to go into more specifics about the aspects that they are working on.<\/p>\n First, about that term digital humanities: DH. It’s a problematic term in an undergraduate college. It’s very hard to define and is more often associated with graduate education and faculty research. I do like this definition: DH is a set of “convergent practices that explore a universe in which print is no longer the primary medium in which knowledge is produced and disseminated\u201d (Burdick et al. 2012, 122<\/a>) [pdf] But what does that really mean in practice? What does it mean for undergraduate teaching and learning?<\/p>\n Many liberal arts colleges have adopted different terms, such as the digital liberal arts or digital studies. DH is more than the humanities. These techniques can apply to many disciplines. There’s really little distinction between DH and digital scholarship. My advice is not to focus too much on trying to define the term because that can lead to a lot of non-productive conversations as you pull in people from different disciplines.<\/p>\n At W&L we have a very practical reason for using DH: the dean of our college.\u00a0She likes the term DH. She started the conversation here about DH about 3 years ago and she is the champion for our DH initiatives. So, here at W&L the term DH has developed a certain brand, a recognition, that works here. I encourage you to find the term that works at your institution. But spend more time talking about what you do and not about a definition.<\/p>\n