Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 35, No. 302.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2021-10-16 07:25:33+00:00
        From: Alasdair Ekpenyong <kekpenyo@syr.edu>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 35.300: pubs: A Biography of the Pixel (with review & commentary)

Dr. McCarty,

In response to your question about how to get digital humanities scholarship to
focus more on the mechanics of how computing works, in addition to the current
focus on social impact, I think the solution would be to get more data science,
computer science, etc. scholars to be interested in the digital humanities. We
as a community do a lot of work to introduce English students, history students,
etc. to the idea of using coding or programming to visualize their work, but I
don’t know that we do as strong of a job helping technically-trained students
feel comfortable and welcome joining into humanities conversations.

I’m in a Big Data Analytics course right now in a masters program, and when
given the chance to choose a topic, my team of classmates quickly chose an
analysis of healthcare industry data. I had the option to explain to them that
we have the option of studying a humanities-related subject and that this, too,
could be considered Big Data, but I didn’t feel comfortable investing the energy
to try and start that conversation and probably get the idea shot down.

In their 2006 account of one of the first DH projects, "Sorting things in:
Feminist knowledge representation and changing modes of scholarly production,"
the scholars talk about how a collaborative team approaches to DH involves
bringing together humanities scholars and STEM scholars. (Link:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277539506000215).

I definitely see more room for opportunity for bringing STEM scholars feel
invited to the DH table and if necessary empowering the junior STEM scholars to
feel confident and capable of joining humanities conversations. I wonder if the
serious humanities seem as intimidating to some STEM scholars as the idea of
learning Python sometimes seems to some humanities scholars.

Alasdair

Envoyé de mon iPhone

Le 16 oct. 2021 à 00:48, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> a écrit :

Not only are most of us
undereducated in mathematics, hardware and software engineering
and so on, but the sources of instruction one turns to tend to be written
for people within the technical disciplines, so it is an uphill battle.

A student recently complained to me that her lack of training on the
digital side of digital humanities made the path I was laying out close
to impossible. Is this not a problem we need to fix?

Comments?


_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php