Initially, I was very intrigued by the term, thinking that it would bring me into contact with others who are investigating digital media. But after a few talks by eminent academics that demonstrated how digital concordia work I felt like I had wandered into the wrong lecture. It was interesting and potentially very helpful, but since my research does not hinge on the number of times a particular word or phrase appears in an author’s body of works, it didn’t exactly revolutionize my work. (I’m still waiting for that widget.)

Now I am seeing that there may be room for a variety of approaches, just as there are in Humanities. When underserved populations are left out of the discussion, once again, it is absolutely critical to not only point this out, but to make efforts to change the narrative. The 2009 ASA panel–which I missed–sounds like it was doing just that.

Regarding Craig Bellamy’s 17 Oct 2010 post, it seems that critique and practice are both necessary. (I don’t understand the one trick pony comment at all. I know folks in the Humanities feel beleaguered, so perhaps his comment references that?)

Thanks for the response. It’s valuable because you have truly been in the trenches of DH. There’s no question that the difficult to obtain skill-sets of DH work make the barrier to producing knowledge as a DHer difficult, especially for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

I would add Tara McPherson’s Vector’s project as another great example of how to get people involved with technologically complex projects even if they have no experience working with the technologies. Vectors holds summer institutes and fellowships bringing together technical experts and humanists. But it’s scope is limited to academics (at least, I think so). I’d love to see more community based projects.

There’s also a “digital studio” (and some others initiatives) in Riverside, CA at the UCR California Museum of Photography that brings in kids, arms them with cameras, and has them create digital documentaries of issues that affect them. NEH and MacArthur funding of similar projects have me very hopeful!

And Vectors is a particularly great example because it does the more productive ideological/political critique you mention and that I gesture toward at the end of my post. I completely agree that we desperately need to devise new ways to intervene that move things forward rather than just undermine them.

Perhaps Lisa Spiro’s suggestion for a cross-campus, open digital humanities certificate is the way around this problem. When we bring more people into the fold, we not only get a chance to come up with new and better ideas but also a chance to have those ideas critiqued from a variety of perspectives.

At the same time, I wonder if it’s possible to shift how ideological/political discussions take place within the humanities so as to make them more productive. I believe that many DHers are concerned with these issues but also that there is some relief in having escaped the culture wars of the 1980s and onward into the space of methodological work. That relief should of course be interrogated, as you’re doing here. But that relief also represents a site for those who critique to turn a lens on their own projects (and hence down the hall of mirrors).