Week 13: Why (and how) should digital humanists critique the digital humanities?

Thanks for another set of excellent workshop days during Week 12. The Gray Jacket site is really starting to take shape, and I hope you’ll continue to revise the items you’ve added to the site and improve the metadata associated with each item. I’ll be working on the layout and theme during the next week (please let me know if you want to help with this!), and we’ll show it to our partners in the library during Week 14.

First, though, we’ll return to our “traditional” schedule during Week 13, with one reading day and one workshop day. Here’s an overview of our plans:

• On Monday, we’ll explore various critiques of the digital humanities, with Arian and Michelle serving as our discussion superheroes. Before you come to class, please read all of the articles in Part III of Debates in the Digital Humanities (“Critiquing the Digital Humanities,” pp. 139–246).
• On Wednesday, we will spend most of class in a peer critique workshop for the individual project. Because all of your projects are unique, conducting this workshop will be a little tricky, but generally speaking, you should be ready to project your laptop onto one of the screens in our classroom and talk through your project with your classmates. If you have a written component that you would like us to review, please feel free to bring that, too.

Finally, I hope some of you will be able to join us for our final “Digital Discussion” of the semester: a digital scholarship show-and-tell session, held on Friday, April 25, at 1:00 p.m. in the library’s new Multipurpose Room (1st Floor).

Questions? Concerns about your individual project? Feedback about our class project? Come see me during office hours (slightly adjusted this week: Tuesday and Wednesday from 9–12) or email me.