Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 645.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
                   Hosted by King's Digital Lab
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org


    [1]    From: Lewis Ulman 
           Subject: Rhetoric of digital humanities (9)

    [2]    From: Elyse Graham 
           Subject: Re: [Humanist] 32.644: the rhetoric of digital humanities (81)


--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2019-05-03 14:35:11+00:00
        From: Lewis Ulman 
        Subject: Rhetoric of digital humanities

Perhaps something in Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities, ed. Jim Ridolfo and
William Hart-Davidson (U of Chicago P, 2014)

Howard Lewis Ulman
ulman.1@osu.edu





--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Date: 2019-05-03 12:05:24+00:00
        From: Elyse Graham 
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 32.644: the rhetoric of digital humanities

I looked at the salesmanship aspect here, especially as it affects the
framing of histories that have a complex rather than a straightforward
relationship to DH:

https://acrl.ala.org/dh/2016/10/20/resource-the-printing-press-as-metaphor/


Thanks,

EG

On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 1:30 AM Humanist  wrote:

>                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 644.
>             Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
>                    Hosted by King's Digital Lab
>                        www.dhhumanist.org
>                 Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
>         Date: 2019-05-03 05:12:25+00:00
>         From: Willard McCarty 
>         Subject: the rhetoric of digital humanities
>
> Forgive my ignorance: if someone has already done a rhetorical
> analysis of the language used in digital humanities please say. If
> it remains undone then I'd like to suggest there's an opportunity for
> encouraging greater disciplinary self-understanding and maturity.
> It's my overall (i.e. fuzzy) impression, you see, that the language
> we use remains rather badly infected by promotionalism in comparison
> with other disciplines (other than our technological cousins),
> such that we overstate rather than simply say whatever it is that is
> that needs saying. The opposite of crying "Wolf! Wolf!", if you will.
>
> Computing has been bound up with salesmanship since the beginning;
> as Michael Mahoney wrote in "Shaping the history of computing"
> (Histories of Computing, p. 50),
>
> > from the outset, computing has had to sell itself, whether to the
> > government as big machines for scientific computing essential to
> > national defense, to business and industry as systems vital to
> > management, or to universities as scientific and technological
> > disciplines deserving of academic standing and even departmental
> > autonomy. The computing community very quickly learned the skills of
> > advertising and became adept at marketing what it often could not yet
> > produce. The result is that computing has had an air of wishful
> > thinking about it.
>
> It's the "deserving of academic standing" that drives much of it for us.
> But even when a major university is biting the bullet and advertising
> for a professorship in the subject, or a professor at such an institution
> moves into digital humanities and proclaims his or her new work, the
> attendant rhetoric often glitters with claims that we are barely
> able to support if at all. If, indeed, digital humanities is "transforming
> the humanities", then how is it doing that, in what sense? Justification
> makes for considerable nervousness, and so the "wishful thinking".
> Revolutions are declared, as Mahoney goes on to say, that are
> "subsequently (and quietly) canceled owing to unforeseen difficulties."
> Would it not be better instead to be asking difficult questions that
> other disciplines are struggling with, offering a new take on them --
> or that these disciplines have not yet thought to ask? And in so
> doing, building bridges to these disciplines across which mutual help
> -- and that longed-for recognition -- can flow?
>
> If there are gaps in the above, please fill them in.
>
> Comments?
>
> Yours,
> WM
>
> --
> Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/),
> Professor emeritus, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College
> London;
> Adjunct Professor, Western Sydney University; Editor, Interdisciplinary
> Science Reviews (www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20) and Humanist
> (www.dhhumanist.org)



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