debates in the digital humanities This page intentionally left blank DEBATES IN THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES Matthew K. Gold editor University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London Chapter 1 was previously published as “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin, no. 150 (2010): 55– 61. Chap- ter 2 was previously published as “The Humanities, Done Digitally,” The Chron- icle of Higher Education, May 8, 2011. Chapter 17 was previously published as “You Work at Brown. What Do You Teach?” in #alt- academy, Bethany Nowviskie, ed. (New York: MediaCommons, 2011). Chapter 28 was previously published as “Humanities 2.0: Promises, Perils, Predictions,” PMLA 123, no. 3 (May 2008): 707– 17. Copyright 2012 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Debates in the digital humanities / [edited by] Matthew K. Gold. ISBN 978-0-8166-7794-8 (hardback)—ISBN 978-0-8166-7795-5 (pb) 1. Humanities—Study and teaching (Higher)—Data processing. 2. Humanities —Technological innovations. 3. Digital media. I. Gold, Matthew K.. AZ182.D44 2012 001.3071—dc23 2011044236 Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents introduction The Digital Humanities Moment | Matthew K. Gold ix part i Defining the Digital Humanities 1 What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments? | Matthew Kirschenbaum 3 2 The Humanities, Done Digitally | Kathleen Fitzpatrick 12 3 “This Is Why We Fight”: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities | Lisa Spiro 16 4 Beyond the Big Tent | Patrik Svensson 36 blog posts The Digital Humanities Situation | Rafael C. Alvarado 50 Where’s the Beef? Does Digital Humanities Have to Answer Questions? | Tom Scheinfeldt 56 Why Digital Humanities Is “Nice” | Tom Scheinfeldt 59 An Interview with Brett Bobley | Michael Gavin and Kathleen Marie Smith 61 Day of DH: Defining the Digital Humanities 67 part ii Theorizing the Digital Humanities 5 Developing Things: Notes toward an Epistemology of Building in the Digital Humanities | Stephen Ramsay and Geoffrey Rockwell 75 6 Humanistic Theory and Digital Scholarship | Johanna Drucker 85 7 This Digital Humanities Which Is Not One | Jamie “Skye” Bianco 96 8 A Telescope for the Mind? | Willard McCarty 113 blog posts Sunset for Ideology, Sunrise for Methodology? | Tom Scheinfeldt 124 Has Critical Theory Run Out of Time for Data-Driven Scholarship? | Gary Hall 127 There Are No Digital Humanities | Gary Hall 133 part iii Critiquing the Digital Humanities 9 Why Are the Digital Humanities So White? or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation | Tara McPherson 139 10 Hacktivism and the Humanities: Programming Protest in the Era of the Digital University | Elizabeth Losh 161 11 Unseen and Unremarked On: Don DeLillo and the Failure of the Digital Humanities | Mark L. Sample 187 12 Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities | George H. Williams 202 13 The Digital Humanities and Its Users | Charlie Edwards 213 blog posts Digital Humanities Triumphant? | William Pannapacker 233 What Do Girls Dig? | Bethany Nowviskie 235 The Turtlenecked Hairshirt | Ian Bogost 241 Eternal September of the Digital Humanities | Bethany Nowviskie 243 part iv Practicing the Digital Humanities 14 Canons, Close Reading, and the Evolution of Method | Matthew Wilkens 249 15 Electronic Errata: Digital Publishing, Open Review, and the Futures of Correction | Paul Fyfe 259 16 The Function of Digital Humanities Centers at the Present Time | Neil Fraistat 281 17 Time, Labor, and “Alternate Careers” in Digital Humanities Knowledge Work | Julia Flanders 292 18 Can Information Be Unfettered? Race and the New Digital Humanities Canon | Amy E. Earhart 309 blog posts The Social Contract of Scholarly Publishing | Daniel J. Cohen 319 Introducing Digital Humanities Now | Daniel J. Cohen 322 Text: A Massively Addressable Object | Michael Witmore 324 The Ancestral Text | Michael Witmore 328 part v Teaching the Digital Humanities 19 Digital Humanities and the “Ugly Stepchildren” of American Higher Education | Luke Waltzer 335 20 Graduate Education and the Ethics of the Digital Humanities | Alexander Reid 350 21 Should Liberal Arts Campuses Do Digital Humanities? Process and Products in the Small College World | Bryan Alexander and Rebecca Frost Davis 368 22 Where’s the Pedagogy? The Role of Teaching and Learning in the Digital Humanities | Stephen Brier 390 blog posts Visualizing Millions of Words | Mills Kelly 402 What’s Wrong with Writing Essays | Mark L. Sample 404 Looking for Whitman: A Grand, Aggregated Experiment | Matthew K. Gold and Jim Groom 406 The Public Course Blog: The Required Reading We Write Ourselves for the Course That Never Ends | Trevor Owens 409 part vi Envisioning the Future of the Digital Humanities 23 Digital Humanities As/Is a Tactical Term | Matthew Kirschenbaum 415 24 The Digital Humanities or a Digital Humanism | Dave Parry 429 25 The Resistance to Digital Humanities | David Greetham 438 26 Beyond Metrics: Community Authorization and Open Peer Review | Kathleen Fitzpatrick 452 27 Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data | Lev Manovich 460 28 Humanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Predictions | Cathy N. Davidson 476 29 Where Is Cultural Criticism in the Digital Humanities? | Alan Liu 490 acknowledgments 511 contributors 513 This page intentionally left blank Introduction The Digital Humanities Moment matthew k. gold ecent coverage of the digital humanities (DH) in popular publications such as the New York Times, Nature, the Boston Globe, the Chronicle of Higher R Education, and Inside Higher Ed has confirmed that the digital humani- ties is not just “the next big thing,” as the Chronicle claimed in 2009, but simply “the Thing,” as the same publication noted in 2011 (Pannapacker). At a time when many academic institutions are facing austerity budgets, department closings, and staffing shortages, the digital humanities experienced a banner year that saw clus- ter hires at multiple universities, the establishment of new digital humanities cen- ters and initiatives across the globe, and multimillion-dollar grants distributed by federal agencies and charitable foundations. Even Google entered the fray, making a series of highly publicized grants to DH scholars (Orwant). Clearly, this is a significant moment of growth and opportunity for the field, but it has arrived amid larger questions concerning the nature and purpose of the university system. At stake in the rise of the digital humanities is not only the viabil- ity of new research methods (such as algorithmic approaches to large humanities data sets) or new pedagogical activities (such as the incorporation of geospatial data into classroom projects) but also key elements of the larger academic ecosystem that supports such work. Whether one looks at the status of peer review, the evolving nature of authorship and collaboration, the fundamental interpretive methodolo- gies of humanities disciplines, or the controversies over tenure and casualized aca- demic labor that have increasingly rent the fabric of university life, it is easy to see that the academy is shifting in significant ways. And the digital humanities, more than most fields, seems positioned to address many of those changes. The recently created international group 4Humanities, for instance, argues that the digital humanities community has a “special potential and responsibility to assist humanities advocacy” because of its expertise in “making cre- ative use of digital technology to advance humanities research and teaching” (“Mis- sion”). In a moment of crisis, the digital humanities contributes to the sustenance [ ix x ] matthew k. gold of academic life as we know it, even as (and perhaps because) it upends academic life as we know it. We’ve come a long way from Father Busa’s digital concordances.1 Indeed, the rapid ascent of the digital humanities in the public imagination and the con- comitant expansion of its purview have masked, and at times threatened to over- shadow, decades of foundational work by scholars and technologists who engaged in “digital humanities” work before it was known by that name.2 Though longtime practitioners, having weathered decades of suspicion from more traditional col- leagues, have largely welcomed an influx of newcomers into the field— the theme of the 2011 Digital Humanities Conference was “The Big Tent,” a metaphor much debated in the pages that follow—some DHers have found the sudden expansion of the community to be disconcerting. Indeed, fault lines have emerged within the DH community between those who use new digital tools to aid relatively tra- ditional scholarly projects and those who believe that DH is most powerful as a disruptive political force that has the potential to reshape fundamental aspects of academic practice.3 As the digital humanities has received increasing attention and newfound cachet, its discourse has grown introspective and self-reflexive. In the aftermath of the 2011 Modern Language Association