Blog
HyperStudio at Digital Humanities 2010
By Whitney Anne Trettien on July 24, 2010
At Digital Humanities 2010 this month, Christopher York and I had the privilege of presenting a poster on HyperStudio’s “Emergent Time,” a prototype collaboration tool for humanities working with timeline narratives. As often happens at conferences, the poster itself was less important than the many fascinating conversations it sparked. Here’s a few threads of discussion running through the conference:
- Digital Humanities is an unusually strong, friendly and supportive scholarly community; but we need to be better at publicly displaying these strengths. Melissa Terras’ keynote, “Present, Not Voting: Digital Humanities in the Panopticon,” was a rousing call for DH scholars to more actively argue for their relevance in the academy, both as a way of securing our discipline’s future and as a way of strengthening the bonds between us. While there’s the danger of “over-disciplining” (I worry about this, perhaps futilely, even as I recognize the value of disciplinary status), developing better presentation methods and stronger arguments for our work can only help us.
- That being said, digital humanities is still a “big tent.” I had the pleasure of meeting archivists, computer scientists, librarians, embroiderers, literary historians, lab directors, philosophers, linguists — the list goes on and on. And, while the field diversity itself was perhaps not novel to most participants, used to crossing borders, the widespread acceptance of this diversity perhaps was. In fact, most participants I talked with came to and stuck with DH for different reasons. Perhaps more interestingly, I met others in London, outside the conference, who were clearly doing DH work but did not identify with the broader community. It’s difficult to reconcile the pressures of consolidation, articulated by Melissa, and the need to remain open to multiple, even conflicting approaches.
- There are many young and/or emergine scholars and students involved in Digital Humanities. Precisely because the sense of community is so strong in DH, it can be difficult for them to break into the pack. As we think about alternative conferencing formats, it’s also worth thinking of ways to welcome newbies to the community — not so much teaching them the ropes (which arguably don’t exist) so much as inviting them to contribute their own ideas, forming new partnerships and spaces for collaboration. Although I was unable to attend, I imagine the pre-conference THATCamp could (and perhaps did) serve this purpose.
To the many faces I met, both familiar and new, thanks for the great conversation. I’m looking forward to more in the future!
Resources:
- Melissa Terras has posted a draft of her keynote, and a video of it is available here.
- Interviews from DH2010 participants — an excellent record of the event! — are available here.
- A search for the hashtag “#dh2010″ gives a good sense of the (continuing) conversation.
