Last weekend, I was able to attend THATCamp, a “unconference” aimed and technology and humanities, with a particular focus of Liberal Arts Colleges. Since I work for a Liberal Arts College (albeit at a public Tier 1 Research Institution), I find a lot of resonance between the work my faculty clients are pursuing and what I see in smaller colleges and private schools.
I enjoyed lots of practical tips on e-publishing and searching with regular expressions, but the session about Digital Humanities vs. Digital Pedagogy was the most thought provoking. There was a strong focus on separating Pedagogy from Teaching, I think to point out the need for more strategy about the ways we use technology in the Liberal Arts classroom. A small group talked through the boundaries and intersections of all those concepts, and we collective came up with three definitions with 140 characters:
2 Jun Jesse Stommel @Jessifer
Digital Pedagogy: engaged and reflexive practice and scholarship of teaching and learning through digital technologies. (?) #THATCamp #lac
2 Jun Jesse Stommel @Jessifer
Digital Teaching: Using digital technology to teach. (?) #THATCamp #lac
2 Jun Jesse Stommel @Jessifer
Digital Humanities: (rhetorical opportunity) reflexive engagements w/ digital tools and methods to investigate the human. (?) #THATCamp #lac
Rebecca Frost Davis @FrostDavis did a storify about the discussion here: http://storify.com/FrostDavis/digital-humanities-digital-teaching-digital-pedago
None of us were totally satisfied with these descriptions, but it was rather delightful to have a discussion about how slippery the term “Digital Humanities” can be. Some of my favorite ideas were about the through-line of where the term came from, in reaction to both internal and external forces (scholars and funding agencies like National Endowment for the Humanities); the idea that they are by nature disruptive and plural; and that someday, we might just call it “Humanities” again, like science is just called science, and not “digital sciences.”
Although, there are clearly many, many sub-branches of science that do define themselves by a set of tools and methods, bio- and ethno- and computer and such. And I was probably the worst about trying to make parallels to the scientific process as a means of justifying the work of digital humanities, and of humanities itself. We couldn’t even settle on humanities being homo sapiens. We had to include dogs and robots, thus, “the human” as its own construct.
The thing however that has most stuck with me was the trouble with the verb in the Digital Humanities statement. I wanted “study” or “understanding,” but would have settled for “reflective engagements,” but the others in the room wanted something less definite, more searching, more about questions than answers. One thing that I find difficult about the humanities it its insistence on resisting truth and meaning, as if it is afraid to say, “All right, campers, THIS is what we think is good and true and right and valuable and that you ought to be paying attention to.” If it’s not an empirically sound objective truth, it’s at least a commitment to a well considered point of view. We didn’t even mention him, but it’s same split noted by C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures.
As narratology suggests, the concept of “story” can provide the method and framework for these sorts of points of view. Story can be evaluated by methods specific to each humanities discipline. History and literature and religion even the social sciences. And that somehow, the commitment to this value needs to be part of what defines Digital Humanities, as opposed to the values of objectively quantifiable outcomes and results.
From my lens, science seeks to understand and control, and the humanities seek to love and accept.
They are both ways of knowing.
We need both points of view to not only survive, but thrive. And we both need to deal appropriately with our emotions and the awesome tools that we’ve created.
“Technology is […] a queer thing. It brings you gifts with one hand, and stabs you in the back with the other.” – C.P. SNOW, New York Times, 15 March 1971.
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