18.397 research in humanities computing

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 397.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: "Christine Goldbeck" <cgoldie_at_verizon.net> (104)
         Subject: Re: 18.391 what is research in humanities computing?

   [2] From: derouen_at_uga.edu (24)
         Subject: Re: 18.391 what is research in humanities computing?

   [3] From: "Yager, Susan [ENGL]" <syager_at_iastate.edu> (7)
         Subject: RE: 18.391 what is research in humanities computing?

   [4] From: Martin Holmes <mholmes_at_uvic.ca> (28)
         Subject: Re: 18.391 what is research in humanities computing?

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:33:13 +0000
         From: "Christine Goldbeck" <cgoldie_at_verizon.net>
         Subject: Re: 18.391 what is research in humanities computing?

Hi:

Your question is one about which I have been thinking, although I have not
considered it from the angle of software development. Nonetheless, I do see
important relationships among humanities/software/research. As a scholar,
an artist and a business person, I do believe that objects such as you
propose can be viewed as research.

For example, I am designing a hyperfiction, an artists' book and a Flash
movie that uses my art, made as based on my research. With the design of
each project, I have several questions that I hope audients will answer
when the works are exhibited/used. This is research? Although I am making a
product, an object, I am seeking answers to questions I have with regard to
materiality, embodiment and media forms.

Have you read Brenda Laurel's Utopian Entrepreneur? She waxes fairly
prosaic on research. One of my favorite quotes from her is:

"I am committed to working in the language of popular culture. Doing
culture work well requires research. Our work relies on our understanding
of perception, cognition, and how people construct meaning. Culture work
also functions as research. We are continually informed about our time and
out nature through the responses of people to the artifacts of popular
culture . culture work excites the will to action. It requires means of
dissemination, often found in commercial media, which after all are at the
intersection of communication technologies and the market economy." (11)

This is an interesting topic that I am most willing to discuss at length.

Sincerely,

Christine

----- Original Message ----- From: "Humanist Discussion Group (by way of
Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>)"
<willard_at_LISTS.VILLAGE.VIRGINIA.EDU>
To: <humanist_at_Princeton.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 1:47 AM

> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 391.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu
>
>
>
> Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 06:40:19 +0000
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
> Subject: research questions
>
>I'd like to get some help thinking about the question of research in
>humanities computing.
>
>A great deal of the work that goes on in the field is directly concerned
>with the making of software objects. The question with regards to research
>is, are these objects *in themselves* research? This is certainly not an
>easy question to answer, for at least two reasons. The first is that like
>all other disciplinary terms that I can think of, the meaning of "research"
>varies from field to field, as does the recognized forms it may take.
>Consider, for example, research as it is known in physics, philosophy,
>anthropology and history.
>
>So, my question really is, what meaning can we reasonably and persuasively
>give to the term? I think in this case, at least, being reasonable and
>being persuasive are potentially two quite different things.
>
>One could say that nothing is research that is inarticulate -- about which
>the researcher has not been reflective (in the mode of his or her
>discipline) and communicative (ditto). So, if I make a fine chair, it's not
>research, but if having done that I write about chairs, analyzing the one I
>have made and comparing it to others, then I could claim to be doing
>research. Furthermore, if in my analysis I explicated the thinking that
>went into the chair, is manifested in the chair and arguably communicated
>by it, might I be able to say that the chair *is* research? Or is that way
>over the top?
>
>How about software? Software is unlike wood in that it is made of language
>(of a particular, formally defined sort). Therefore it cannot strictly
>speaking be inarticulate. If a program has been well designed, if genuine
>thought has gone into it, e.g. insights about processing the particular
>kind of data it processes, then it also bears the reflective thought that
>I've tentatively specified as necessary to research. But *is* it research?
>To be that, by the conventional measure, it has to be communicated and
>assessed; it has to be part of the ongoing scholarly conversation and
>recognized as making a contribution. In the humanities, it has to lead to
>further, better questions than those with which we started. In some sense
>it has to identify those questions if it is to be successful research.
>
>But wait. A poem is articulate and communicative but is clearly not
>research. Research on poetry is a different matter; its kind of discourse
>is different. At the beginning of the Anatomy of Criticism, Frye remarks
>that all art is mute, including poetry; criticism is how we talk about it,
>how scholars respond creatively to it. So is software like poetry, or is it
>like criticism? I would think the latter, because it is a way of talking
>analytically about the data it processes, as it were.
>
>My thoughts on the topic may be muddled, but it should be very clear to us
>all that the question is not an idle one. Can we have a humanities
>computing if the answer to this question is not, "Yes, software is (or can
>be) research"? If the better answer is "can be", then what must we do to
>make it so?
>
>Comments?
>
>Yours,
>WM
>
>[NB: If you do not receive a reply within 24 hours please resend]
>Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
>Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
>7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk
>www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:33:39 +0000
         From: derouen_at_uga.edu
         Subject: Re: 18.391 what is research in humanities computing?

<<So is software like poetry, or is it like criticism? I
would think the latter, because it is a way of talking
analytically about the data it processes, as it were.>>

I think it depends on the position from which you view the
software. I can conceive of "reading" a program the way that
I might read a book or a poem, querying the choices made by a
particular coder and trying to determine the underlying
rationale or message the code/coder imparts. I could
also "read" the interactive moment with the software (some
dull as dishwater and completely utilitarian, others engaging
and lively). Viewing from the criticism position, the choices
made by a coder/critic enact some critical evaluation of the
text or the interaction, placing importance and pressure on
various elements.

Anita M. DeRouen
Graduate Student
Dept. of English
The University of Georgia
Athens, GA
derouen_at_uga.edu
*********************

"Anyone who looks at life in all its aspects will see how far the
remarkable, the great, and the beautiful predominate in all things, and he
will soon understand to what end we have been born." --Longinus

--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:34:31 +0000
         From: "Yager, Susan [ENGL]" <syager_at_iastate.edu>
         Subject: RE: 18.391 what is research in humanities computing?

A more flexible term for this type of research in humanities computing may
be "scholarship," as it can encompass traditional research, creative work,
synthesis, and so on. The term has become widely used on American campuses
as a way to describe intellectual work since the 1990 publication of Ernest
Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered.

Susan Yager
Iowa State

--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:34:03 +0000
         From: Martin Holmes <mholmes_at_uvic.ca>
         Subject: Re: 18.391 what is research in humanities computing?

Hi there,

At 10:47 PM 30/11/2004, you wrote:
>How about software? Software is unlike wood in that it is made of language
>(of a particular, formally defined sort). Therefore it cannot strictly
>speaking be inarticulate. If a program has been well designed, if genuine
>thought has gone into it, e.g. insights about processing the particular
>kind of data it processes, then it also bears the reflective thought that
>I've tentatively specified as necessary to research. But *is* it research?

Software is methodology in action. Any process of designing, coding,
testing and refining algorithms that manipulate data for a research project
constitutes establishing and formalizing a methodology for the project; in
that sense, it can surely be viewed as a legitimate and important part of a
research, I think.

Defining "software" is perhaps more complicated. Is a document made
interactive with scripting "software"? Is a complex XQuery expression
designed to pull data from an XML database "software"? Everything from a
CSS stylesheet to an OS written in machine code could be software.

Cheers,
Martin

______________________________________
Martin Holmes
University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre
mholmes_at_uvic.ca
martin_at_mholmes.com
mholmes_at_halfbakedsoftware.com
http://www.mholmes.com
http://web.uvic.ca/hcmc/
http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com
Received on Thu Dec 02 2004 - 03:00:58 EST