Reading
The material on the following sites is important and should be read either before or after the text in this section.
One Republic of Learning: Counting Stares
Jonathan Green
This blog post by Modern and Classical Languages scholar Jonathan Green critiques an article by developmental biologist Armand Marie Leroi. Leroi claims that the humanities, “if they are to have a future, must make the transition to a mathematically-based science.” Although he is sympathetic to some aspects of these claims, Green argues that the presuppositions and particular set biases inherent in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM fields) are often not consonant with humanistic scholarship, and, consequently, the methods of the former are not directly transferrable to the latter.
Read: One Republic of Learning: Counting Stares
Digital Humanities Scholars Are Like Silicon Valley ‘Disruptors’
Carl Straumsheim
In a 2016 article, education scholar Carl Stramsheim discusses an article in the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB) which claims that digital humanities scholars “are – intentionally or not – leading a ‘neoliberal takeover’ of colleges and universities”. An argument can be made that digital humanities work, especially in its adoption of STEM tools, is displacing other forms of humanities scholarship. The LARB article criticizes the pedagogical and research methods used in the digital humanities, which value laboratory projects over reading and writing, and the perception that rebranding humanities fields as “digital humanities” will help to insulate humanities scholars from insecure academic employment situations.
Read: Digital Humanities Scholars Are Like Silicon Valley ‘Disruptors’
Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?
Alan Liu
Drawn from a widely-cited 2012 paper, this web article by digital humanities scholar Alan Liu of the University of California, Santa Barbara, advocates for more incorporation of cultural criticism into DH fields, as the lack of such engagement will inhibit the growth of the digital humanities. Lui argues that although digital humanists apply necessary criticism to the tools and techniques the adopt and develop, “rarely do we extend the issues involved into the register of society, economics, politics, or culture in the vintage manner.”
Read: Where is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities?
Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities
Allington, D., Brouillette, S., and Golumbia, D. Los Angeles Review of Books
May 1, 2016
This thoroughly argued article discusses how the digital humanities may directly or indirectly contribute to neoliberal tendencies – in the sense of increasing commercialization and a pronounced business-oriented focus – in the academy.
Read: Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities
The following material is optional. However, interested readers are encouraged to peruse it.
The Scandal of Digital Humanities
Brian Greenspan
Debates in the Digital Humanities, 2019.
This article is a response to the points made in “Neoliberal Tools (and Archives)” by Allington, Brouillette, and Golumbia. The author explains how some practices, methodologies, and activities undertaken in the digital humanities, particularly its dependence on technological tools and techniques, may be construed as supporting neoliberal tendencies. Although he agrees with some of the general points made by the LARB article, the author defends the discipline, and points out although digital humanities scholarship can be seen as closer to neoliberalism than other humanities fields because of its technological emphasis, in fact, it simply uncovers the material underpinnings of most scholarship undertaken in the present day. The author also emphasizes that digital humanities scholarship favours open-source models of software and platforms, and therefore resists commercialized “solutions” in humanities research.
View: The Scandal of Digital Humanities
Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display
Johanna Drucker, Digital Humanities Quarterly, 5(1), 1-21
This 2011 article by Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles points to problems inherent in information visualization techniques adopted by digital humanists. Like Jonathan Green, she also notes that STEM approaches do not readily translate into humanities work. Specifically, visualization approaches tend to treat data as observer-independent, objective, and self-evident, and do not represent the ambiguity, uncertainty, and interpretive aspects that are at the core of humanities disciplines. This lengthy article provides detailed and thoroughly developed argumentation, as well as a large sampling of illustrations and figures, and will be discussed in greater depth in the sections on information visualization. For the present purposes, however, the reader is encouraged to examine the illustrations to get a sense of the problems of information visualization, as well as some proposals to improve them.