As I read these chapters on debates within Digital Humanities I became quite frustrated with the topics. Not that the writing was poor or that it was boring, but I just felt like many of conflicts or debates that were brought up were not needed. Although Digital Humanities certainly has a history I think its save to say its still an extremely young field. So to make claims of issue with race and gender and location for short falls within the field is a bit unwarranted in my opinion. Many of the points that were brought up were valid, but nonetheless I think it has to due with just has new the field is. Roopika Risam brought up the fact that the field is largely dominated by Canada, the United States and UK by explaining how there were vastly more centers for Digital Humanities in those places than the rest of the world. That is indeed true and not something I would argue against. However I think the reasoning for that is not because there is some great big agenda to keep the rest of the world out, its merely because that is where the means of creating these centers can be met. She brought up the point that english largely dominates the field and that other languages and local vernaculars are missing from much of the field. Again this is true, but this is largely an economic issue. I'm not naive enough to say that the rest of the world is behind and lacks internet access because that is certainly not the case by and large. However the finical support to set up high quality DH centers is not easy to obtain. If it were then there would be more centers. I would just argue that the reasoning for the lack of these centers is because the extra money that is available in other parts of the world it being used for other things as DH hasn't yet become a pressing field everywhere. We even noted in our class that Germany, a highly westernized country with economic power and academic know how, has a different structure for their higher education, thus not having the same means to achieve these DH Centers. To me its not a matter of it being a problem, but more so a reality. Risam also mentions the domination of Western thinking in the DH world. I don't believe this is an issue related to DH, but actually academia in general. There are very highly intelligent people all over the world, but to make a broad generalization, I don't believe the emphasis has been put on the humanities in other places like it has in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. For example there is such an emphasis in India to become a doctor that many many young students pursue that career. As a result there is an influx of doctors working at call centers. The point I'm trying to make that I've now run around Robin Hood's barn to discover is that I get rather frustrated with people claim that there is a great problem with something somewhere but aren't looking at the entire big picture. Now I know I'm not an expert on this, but after we had established that DH is supposed to be about openness and collaboration, it seems silly to me that we would be angry that we are getting more collaboration from one place and not another. Give it time, it'll get there. If in twenty years these number have gotten strikingly worse, then perhaps theres a problem. But despite that fact that the world is connected much more so than it ever has been before, it doesn't change the fact that many places in the more are still at very different situations in their development.
Finally I thought it was rather interesting when Wendy F. Hsu pointed out about working with the public to create humanities projects. She really hit the nail on the head when she mentioned that humanities scholars are often very happy to sit back and explain the problems we see in the world, but are often uncomfortable giving specific solutions. We often view everything we do as for the public good. However I think it is awesome for someone to press the mindset a bit deeper and ask how and why. Why is it good and helpful for the public that I create a Civil Rights Timeline? How does it help the public to document the stories and memories of the Bombing of Hiroshima? As the creators of these projects we should have answers to these questions to justify our work. We shouldn't settle on the fact that working hard and showing knowledge is always super useful. We can create a wonderful work that may not be that useful to the public. So I agree that getting the public involved early in projects is cool. It will lead to more involvement and therefore more relevancy and there is never a bad thing with more relevancy for the Humanities.
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Adam RudyHistory Teacher, Cross Country and Track Coach, Runner, Amateur Blogger Archives
September 2017
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