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Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 379.
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
Hosted by King's Digital Lab
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Henry Schaffer
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.373: what is... (58)
[2] From: Mark Wolff
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.373: what is... (127)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2019-11-05 13:46:11+00:00
From: Henry Schaffer
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.373: what is...
On Tue, Nov 5, 2019 at 1:14 AM Humanist wrote:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 373.
> Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
> Hosted by King's Digital Lab
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
> [1] From: Michael Piotrowski
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.372: what is...? (58)
>
> ...
>
> --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-11-04 22:54:28+00:00
> From: Michael Piotrowski
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.372: what is...?
>
> On 2019-11-04, Willard McCarty wrote:
>
> > Comments?
>
> Personally, I think the refusal of large parts of the 'digital
> humanities' to even discuss what they mean by 'digital humanities' is
> one of the biggest problems that plague the field, in several respects.
> ...
>
> Thank you for mentioning grant applications; they are a good case in
> point. If you refuse to define what you're doing, how do you ensure
> that your proposal receives a fair and competent review? Most funding
> agencies associate reviewers with disciplines, and the disciplines come
> from lists that are effectively closed. If what you're doing is
> actually well situated in an established discipline then, sure, you can
> act mysteriously and remain vague about what you mean by 'digital
> humanities' it certainly sounds more interesting than 'we're using a
> computer.' For those of us who think there is more to it, however, this
> attitude is disastrous and will eventually hurt the whole field. It's
> already hard enough to get funding for interdisciplinary research (the
> Swiss National Science Foundation, for example, explicitly excludes
> interdisciplinary research from all but one of its funding instruments).
>
Do they really exclude supporting research in bioinformatics, genomics
and all those related areas which have arisen recently? Our Chemical
Engineering Department, which for a very long time was recognized as being
in a discipline (although there was some strain between the Chemistry
Department and the "Real" Engineering disciplines, has changed its name
to Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
A lot of progress IMHO has come from filling the gaps between our
disciplinary silos.
--henry schaffer
> ...
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2019-11-05 13:06:27+00:00
From: Mark Wolff
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.373: what is...
This article appeared in Inside Higher Ed, and it seems relevant to the
discussion:
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/11/04/halt-crisis-humanities-higher-
ed-should-rethink-its-classification-knowledge#.XcFx_jecg8d.link
I believe it was Matt Kirschenbaum who said that the digital humanities is a
tactical term for describing various communities who use computation for
different purposes. Could this mean that the digital humanities is a
transitional discipline, moving away from the humanities as we’ve know them for
200 years and leading its practitioners to new and as yet unzoned forms of
knowledge?
mw
> On Nov 5, 2019, at 1:14 AM, Humanist wrote:
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 373.
> Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
> Hosted by King's Digital Lab
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
> [1] From: Michael Piotrowski
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.372: what is...? (58)
>
> [2] From: Manfred Thaller
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.372: what is...? (17)
>
>
> --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-11-04 22:54:28+00:00
> From: Michael Piotrowski
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.372: what is...?
>
> On 2019-11-04, Willard McCarty wrote:
>
>> Comments?
>
> Personally, I think the refusal of large parts of the “digital
> humanities” to even discuss what they mean by “digital humanities” is
> one of the biggest problems that plague the field, in several respects.
>
> For some reason, many people seem to believe that a definition has to be
> either a complete, exhaustive account of everything that is currently
> being done under this heading, or some kind of ontological definition of
> its essence or “true nature.” Neither is possible, nor is it what is
> required. What we rather need is an explication that makes clear what
> we intend to understand by this term. Even though consensus is
> desirable, different explications are certainly possible; what is
> important—at least at this point—is to be explicit and internally
> consistent.
>
> If anyone’s interested, here is my explication of digital humanities:
>
> Piotrowski, M., (2018). Digital Humanities: An Explication. In:
> Burghardt, M. & Müller-Birn, C. (eds.), INF-DH-2018. Bonn: GI. DOI:
> https://doi.org/10.18420/infdh2018-07
>
> I thus clearly don’t believe that “the humanities elude definition.”
> Rather, my impression is that many scholars seem to abhor clarity and
> explicitness. Of course humanities disciplines are “defined,” just
> rarely explicitly—but when one talks to scholars one quickly finds out
> what belongs to their discipline and what not.
>
> Thank you for mentioning grant applications; they are a good case in
> point. If you refuse to define what you’re doing, how do you ensure
> that your proposal receives a fair and competent review? Most funding
> agencies associate reviewers with disciplines, and the disciplines come
> from lists that are effectively closed. If what you’re doing is
> actually well situated in an established discipline then, sure, you can
> act mysteriously and remain vague about what you mean by “digital
> humanities”—it certainly sounds more interesting than “we’re using a
> computer.” For those of us who think there is more to it, however, this
> attitude is disastrous and will eventually hurt the whole field. It’s
> already hard enough to get funding for interdisciplinary research (the
> Swiss National Science Foundation, for example, explicitly excludes
> interdisciplinary research from all but one of its funding instruments).
> Getting politicians, administrators, and funding agencies to recognize
> that DH can be a serious endeavor worth funding is not easy. I don’t
> think boasting how ill-defined DH is will help us with this challenge,
> nor do I see why DH would have to be ill-defined.
>
> Best regards
>
> --
> Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Piotrowski
> Professeur en humanités numériques · Université de Lausanne
> Codirecteur académique du dhCenter UNIL-EPFL
> ☎︎ +41 21 692-3039 · Quartier Chamberonne, bât. Anthropole, bureau 3137
> OpenPGP public key 0x926877BF1614A044
>
>
>
> --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-11-04 09:43:45+00:00
> From: Manfred Thaller
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.372: what is...?
>
> Dear Willard,
>> Another answer, specific to the humanities, is that
>> the disciplines thus named can only be defined by what they are not:
>> formerly, not the study of the affairs proper to God (that's theology);
>> now, not the study of the physical world, nor the study of society.
> are you sure, there is anything human - or Human - that can be
> understood outside society?
>
> ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος ζῷον πολιτικόν ...
>
> Best,
> Manfred
--
Mark B. Wolff, Ph.D.
Professor of French
Chair, Modern Languages
One Hartwick Drive
Hartwick College
Oneonta, NY 13820
(607) 431-4615
http://markwolff.name/
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