Slides from Demystifying Digital Humanities Workshop 1: What are the digital humanities, and why should I care? -- taught at the University of Miami Libraries in February, 2016

1. What are the digital humanities, and why should I care?
Paige Morgan
Digital Humanities Librarian
February 12, 2016

2. Goals: what I can do
• Provide necessary background and strategic
advice.
• Allow you to begin charting your own course.
• Help make UM Libraries a supportive space for
experimenting and learning about DH.
• Continue building a digital humanities cohort at
Miami.

3. Limits: what I can’t do
CAN BECOME
A DIGITAL HUMANIST

4. But don’t worry...

5. The point of this
workshop is not to
convert you to digital
humanities.

6. There is no single
way of being a digital
humanist.

7. Defining DH
• By the start of the “first DH project” (1946,
approximately: date of Roberto Busa’s plan for
the Codex Thomisticus, a digital concordance
of the works of Aquinas)
• By its stability, or lack thereof, its self-
consciously mutable and multimodal nature
• According to its friction with traditional a.k.a.
“analog” humanities

8. Defining DH
• “the use of digital evidence, [and/or] methods
of inquiry, [and/or] research, [and/or]
publication and[/or] preservation to achieve
scholarly and research goals.” (Scholarly Communication
Institute, University of Virginia)
• “research that uses information technology as
a central part of its methodology, for creating
and/or processing data.” (University of Oxford)

9. DH goals and
methodologies depend on
the specific subject matter,
and the availability of
primary/secondary source
materials and tools.

10. Alternatives to the “What is DH?” question
• How does this project/essay/argument
engage with current and previous
scholarship in my discipline?
• What sort of critical thinking and
interpretive work is involved in this
project?
• How does this project fit into the
existing environment of projects and
resources?

11. Why values?
• While the tools, projects, and methods are
diverse, values tend to be more holistic
• Understanding the values that drive digital
scholarship allows you to participate in
conversations whether or not you yourself
identify as a digital scholar

12. Values behind DH
• adaptive
• sustainable/resource-
aware
• multimodal
• interdisciplinary
• auto-didactic
• collaborative
• ad hoc
• process & product-
driven
• accessible
• public & transparent
• project-oriented
• social

14. Most DH projects are,
in essence, sources,
processed and
presented.*
• “Sources, processed and presented” is the framework used by Miriam Posner in “How Did They Make T
hat? The
Video,” http://miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that-the-video/

15. They’re also
designed with a
specific audience (or
audiences) in mind.

16. Websites for Evaluation
TBA Friday!

17. Questions for Evaluation
• What is the project doing? Why are its
creators doing this?
• What aspects of it work well? What aspects
could be improved?
• Which DH values do you see exhibited
within the project?

18. What is DH?
(a humbler definition)
Thinking about the available materials;
how digital tools will allow you to process
them and present them to audiences in
ways that weren’t previously possible (or
at least, weren’t easy) – and acting on
your thoughts.

19. Why should you care?
• Opportunities for scholarship in new forms.
• Better understanding of how digital scholarly
sources are made.
• Even if you’re not planning to build digital
tools, your scholarly expertise is relevant to
digital humanities research.

20. The big question:
What do you want to
do with digital
scholarship?

21. Flash Project Development
Brainstorm a DH project with your team!
(Students at Cabrini College brainstorm a DH project on porn. Image c/o Adeline Koh.)

22. Will it focus on one distinct topic? Or on
bringing multiple topics together?
What artefacts will it contain, or collect?
How will users interact
and/or contribute?
What forms (modes) will it take?
Flash Project Brainstorming
What perspectives do you want it to explore?

23. Resources for further training and
collaboration
• Florida Digital Humanities
Consortium (http://fldh.org/)
• HASTAC: http://www.hastac.org
• DHNow:
http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org
• TransformDH: http://transformdh.org
• Profhacker:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker
/
• How Did They Make That?
http://miriamposner.com/blog/how-
did-they-make-that-the-video/
• Digital Humanities on Twitter -- no
account needed
https://twitter.com/paigecmorgan/digi
tal-humanities and
https://twitter.com/GrandjeanMartin/li
sts/digital-humanities
• Digital Research Tools (DiRT)
http://dirtdirectory.org
• DHCommons
http://www.dhcommons.org
• DHSI: http://www.dhsi.org
• TEI Seminars at Brown University:
http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/ou
treach/seminars/

24. Thank you!
Want to chat more about DH?
Email me (p.morgan@miami.edu )
or
make an appointment (http://paigecmorgan.youcanbook.me)