The Human in the Digital Humanities

Posted on by Shawn

I’m giving a talk in a month’s time, for the launch of a new DH centre at Drew University. This necessarily involves travel to the US. I’ve decided to go because these kinds of events are more important, in my view, than (say) traveling to a conference. Starting something that will benefit students > giving a paper that merely adds a line to my cv. The way things are going state-side, I see reasons for hope, and reasons for despair, and so if I can help further DH down there, I guess I’d better go. Because I do see DH as something that, when it turns outward, as something that can (does?) make a difference.

Or at least, it should.

Anyway, the title is ‘The Human in the Digital Humanities’. As I sketch it out, I wonder if I shouldn’t call it ‘the Humane’, which is a slightly different kettle of fish.  As part of my writing process, I also asked folks what they thought such a talk might cover; the point of this post is to gather the results together, to date. I also wanted to draw attention to this tweet by Paige Morgan, as I think it (and its thread, and resulting conversations) captures some of the things I want to talk about.

So, here are the other tweets. My initial tweet:

https://twitter.com/nzerik/status/943107544712544256

https://twitter.com/aejolene/status/942896436928184320

(featured image, Geralt, Pixabay)