Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 107.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2023-06-15 07:55:41+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: classic articles

Thanks to David Zeitlyn for his nomination of an article recommending 
humility. I'd think that humility is underplayed in academia these days.
But one must be sympathetic and more--to the 'look-at-me', to the
desperate need that is its subtext, the need for an income so that one 
has time for research, which is to say, an academic appointment. One 
statistic from a highly reputable British university I sometimes visit 
should be enough: in the previous academic year, a good-sized 
department at this institution received 202 applications for a  
lectureship (a.k.a. assistant professorship); 8 people were interviewed, 
2 were hired--a 1% success rate. But let that fact rest. There must be 
many such stories. 

Now to the question of 'classic' articles. Do we have any idea what has
stood the test of time so as to become classic? One BIG problem is our
disciplinary amnesia. For example, I would nominate for the distinction
of 'classic' Louis T. Milic, "The Next Step", Computers and the
Humanities 1.1 (1966): 3-6 -- the first article in the first issue of
the first (Anglophone) journal in our field. Why? Because it asks
questions we have not yet answered--which is rather different from
making assertions we no longer would support IF our amnesia lifted long
enough. What chance does Milic's gem have to be noticed in a crowd most
of whom (I'd argue) think that the field began with the World Wide Web,
or worse, with the commercially influenced decision to change the name
of field in the first Companion in 2005 to 'digital humanities'? (I
know, evidence for this is disputed, but plausible; see Matt
Kirschenbaum's "What Is Digital humanities and What’s It Doing in
English Departments?", pp. 2-3.)

Some might say that digital humanities is on its way to becoming one of
the humanities but that it's not there yet. Sort of like artificial
intelligence, for which see Hector Levesque's book, Common sense, the
Turing test and the quest for real AI, p. 131. To paraphrase him, I
don't think there can be ANY doubt that a bright future as a discipline
of as well as in the humanities is before us; some very fine work
demonstrates that. But we're not there yet. Still, asking the question
of 'classic' articles helps.

Comments?

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


_______________________________________________
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