Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Digital Humanities at Small Liberal Arts Colleges Digital methodologies and new media are changing the landscape of research and teaching in the humanities. Scholars can now computationally analyze entire corpora of texts or preserve and share materials through digital archives. Students can engage in authentic applied research linking literary texts to place or study Shakespeare in a virtual Globe Theater. Such developments collectively fall under the name “digital humanities,” which includes the humanities and humanistic social sciences and has largely been characterized by computing-intensive, collaborative, interdisciplinary projects at research institutions. Faculty, staff and students at small liberal arts colleges, however, are making significant contributions to the digital humanities, especially by engaging undergraduates both in and out of the classroom. Rebecca Frost Davis, Program Officer for the Humanities at the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), will introduce the digital humanities landscape and share examples from small liberal arts colleges.
Citation preview
What Does Digital Humanities Mean for Teaching And Research
at Small Liberal Arts Colleges?
Rebecca Frost DavisMt. Holyoke Digital Humanities Seminar
February 17, 2012
Humanities at Risk
“It is precisely that perceived lack of rigor and meticulousness that causes critics of the humanities to assume that they are inferior disciplines and therefore expendable, especially during state fiscal crises.”
--Gary Olson, “How Not to Reform Humanities Scholarship,” Chronicle of Higher Education
Challenges & Opportunities for Liberal Education
• John Seely Brown, NITLE Fellow 2011– Explosion of data – Exponential advances in computation storage and
bandwidth– Large-scale, deeply-connected problems
• Ken O’Donnell– Assoc. Dean, Office of the Chancellor, California
State University, Opening Forum, AAC&U– Produce systems thinkers that innovate– Teach ability to work in a team structure
Digital Literacy: An Agenda for the 21st Century
“by “digital humanities” we mean learning about, with, and through technology–making it, thinking about it, including it in pedagogy and institutional transformation.”
Cathy Davidson’s blog for her book,
Now You See Ithttp
://www.cathydavidson.com/2012/01/digital-literacy-an-agenda-for-the-21st-century
/
Digital Humanities
• 2004: Blackwell’s Companion to Digital Humanities (Schreibman, Siemens, Unsworth)
• 2005: Alliance for Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO)
• 2006: Digital Humanities Initiative, now the Office of Digital Humanities (ODH), NEH
• Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin 150 (2010).
DH and Liberal Education
Alexander & Davis. “Should Liberal Arts Campuses Do Digital Humanities? Process and Products in the Small College World.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Matthew K. Gold. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Why the Digital Humanities?
Provide wide access to cultural information
Enable us to manipulate that data: manage, mash up, mine, map, model
Transform scholarly communication
Enhance teaching and learning
Make a public impact
Slide courtesy of Lisa Spiro. Find out more: “Why the Digital Humanities?”
What kinds of impacts do these motivations have on research, teaching and learning at liberal
arts colleges?
Proceedings of the Old Bailey
• http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ • A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts
detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
• Analysis tools: http://criminalintent.org/
Text Visualization Results
“make it possible for the ‘ordinary working historian’… to integrate text mining and visualization into his or her day-to-day work” (Data Mining with Criminal Intent)
(Slide courtesy of Lisa Spiro.)
New Forms of Argument: Digital ThoreauPaul Schacht, Prof. & Chair of English, SUNY-Geneseo
http://www.digitalthoreau.org/
Open Peer Review: Writing History in the Digital Age
http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/
(Slide courtesy of Lisa Spiro)
Lexomics, Wheaton College
• Close reading & Distant Reading
• Interdisciplinary:– Computer science– Statistics– Old English texts
• Algorithms from genomics for stylistic analysis of corpora
Crowdsourcing
Teaching and Learning
• Authentic, applied humanities research• Inquiry-guided learning• Problem-based learning• Produces
– Systems thinkers who can integrate across disciplines
– Ability to work in a team
Lexomics, Wheaton College
• Connections– Integrative learning
program
• English-Computer Science Team-Teaching– Computing for Poets (Co
mp 131)
– Connection (Computing and Texts)
Digital Humanities for Undergraduate Learning
• NITLE Digital Scholarship Seminar, Friday, 2/17, 3 pm – Christopher Blackwell, Prof. of Classics, Furman University– Laura McGrane, Assoc. Prof. of English, Haverford College– Jennifer Rajchel, Digital Humanities Intern, Bryn Mawr
College
• Chris Blackwell & Tom Martin,“Technology, Collaboration, and Undergraduate Research.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 3, no. 1 (2009).
Students and DH
• New Media• Critical reading
Jen Rajchel, Bryn Mawr College
Networked Classes
• http://lookingforwhitman.org/
Student Initiative
• Re:Humanities '12 : March 29-30, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, & Swarthmore Colleges
• Right to Research Coalition of Student Groups– http://www.righttoresearch.org/– Nick Shockey, Trinity University
NITLE Digital Humanities
http://www.nitle.org/help/digital_humanities.php
