Open Scholarship Press Collections: Training/Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training

Digital Pedagogy and Training Discourse, Theory, and Best Practices

Δ Bonds, E. Leigh. 2014. “Listening in on the Conversations: An Overview of Digital Humanities Pedagogy.” CEA Critic 76 (2): 147–57. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/cea.2014.0017

Bonds surveys the different conversations about digital humanities pedagogy and analyzes how these conversations echo effective pedagogical practices. She identifies two main motivations for teaching digital humanities tools and practices: incorporating digital technologies as a means to ensure funding and believing that digital humanities experience strengthens the employment prospects of students. The author explores several debates in digital humanities pedagogy, including whether to prioritize teaching technical skills or critical thinking and the experimentation with different pedagogical approaches, such as project-based learning, “screwing around,” and participatory learning. Bonds identifies the concepts of “making” and “doing” as the core learning outcomes in digital humanities. Therefore, she encourages digital humanists to continue the conversations on digital humanities pedagogy by sharing their classroom experiences to create authentic, active learning environments of “making” and “doing.”

* Brier, Stephen. 2012. “Where’s the Pedagogy? The Role of Teaching and Learning in the Digital Humanities.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816677948.003.0038

Brier explores initiatives that aim to bridge the divide between digital technologies and pedagogy. Through the presentation of such projects, he argues that it is possible and feasible to implement ways for broadening the definition of digital humanities beyond academic research. He emphasizes the pedagogical part of digital humanities, referring to the work of other digital humanities scholars including Katherine Harris. The projects that he presents are all from the City University of New York (CUNY), including the New Media Lab, the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate Program (ITP), the Instructional Technology Fellows Program, and the CUNY Academic Commons. Brier notes these projects focus on how to improve teaching and learning strategies, and not necessarily on the use of digital technologies. However, as digital technologies play a fundamental role in all of them, they can be good examples from which digital humanists can learn.

* Burg, Jacob. 2020. “Pedagogy of and for the Public: Imagining the Intersection of Public Humanities and Community Literacy.” Community Literacy Journal 14 (2): 130–37.

Burg discusses how a pedagogy of and for the public, constructed at the intersection of university and community, implements the digital frameworks and organizational tools of public humanities to enliven practices of community literacy. This type of literacy aims to foster sustainable models of multimodal learning, social justice, and community listening. The author relies on the concepts of concrete utopianism and community listening to refocus the humanist’s work around the cultivation of publics and counterpublics. One way to implement this approach is through new graduate student conferences that expand their audience, are reimagined beyond the university context, and root interactions between organizers, presenters, and the public. Cultivating rooted spaces, Burg concludes, can be a ready-to-hand tool to expand individual and community literacy.

Δ Cordell, Ryan. 2016. “How Not to Teach Digital Humanities.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, 459–74. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1cn6thb.39

Cordell describes his experience teaching introductory digital humanities courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He argues that undergraduate students are disinterested in digital humanities, while graduate students are skeptical of them, and both are instructive for the future of digital humanities in the classroom. Cordell identifies challenges for integrating digital humanities into curricula, such as the lack of a clear definition of digital humanities, the vague definition of humanities, and students’ technological skepticism. To overcome them, he suggests framing digital humanities courses around particular skills within disciplinary structures and allowing students to engage with, and not simply use, technology in the classroom.

Δ DeSpain, Jessica. 2016. “A Feminist Digital Humanities Pedagogy beyond the Classroom.” Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy 26 (1): 64–73. https://doi.org/10.5325/trajincschped.26.1.0065

DeSpain proposes a model for feminist digital humanities pedagogy in the twenty-first century. She lists a set of rules to involve students in informal, collaborative learning that reflects feminist digital humanities pedagogical methodologies, and explains how she applied them to The Wide, Wide World Digital Edition project, an exploration of the over 170 reprints of Susan Warner’s nineteenth-century novel of the same name. DeSpain uses the ideas of feminist scholars and educators in the 1990s, including Wajcman’s study about the gender biases of technology, to explore the promises and problems in digital technologies and pedagogies. According to DeSpain, applying feminist pedagogy can challenge current institutional models and ensure more diverse scholars and scholarship.

* Fyfe, Paul. 2011. “Digital Pedagogy Unplugged.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 5 (3). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/3/000106/000106.html

Fyfe explores the idea that digital pedagogy is more than just using new technologies as tools for assisting in old methods. He argues that technology can only change the classroom if the pedagogy changes first and proposes “digital pedagogy unplugged,” which means promoting the imagination of the social conditions that digital technologies enable and creating the structures for them to be useful. Fyfe relies on cultural studies, including the work of Walter Benjamin and Sean Latham. Digital pedagogy should, according to Fyfe, prepare students to make their own interpretations and use critical selectiveness in digital spaces. He also uses the case studies of José Bowen, Daniel Pitti, and Stephen Ramsay to show how it is possible to teach digital humanities without using computers by allowing students to realize the possibilities and limitations of digital engines and to explore analog and digital experiences as inseparable. Finally, Fyfe suggests that it is irresponsible to use digital technology for teaching without digital pedagogy, either plugged or unplugged.

* Gajjala, Radhika, ACS 7700 Team 1, and ACS Team 2. 2020. “New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy.” South Asian Review 41 (1): 95–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2019.1575080

Co-writing the essay with 11 graduate students, Gajjala reviews Roopika Risam’s book New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, which analyzes digital humanities practices from the postcolonial perspective. The authors present Risam’s concept of postcolonial digital humanities as a challenge to both the myth that knowledge can be democratized through digital technologies and the dominance of knowledge from the Global North. The review points out that even the postcolonial digital humanities discipline can reinforce colonial hegemonies, mentioning Risam’s considerations on the dominance of English language in scholarship, and the lack of examples of digital humanities practices outside of the academy. They remind the reader that, when building digital archives, postcolonial digital humanities aims to put back into the centre those who have been historically marginalized. Finally, they highlight Risam’s humanistic engagement with knowledge when analyzing global shifts and crises through local and cultural views.

* Hirsch, Brett D. 2012. “</Parentheses>: Digital Humanities and the Place of Pedagogy.” In Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics, edited by Brett D. Hirsch, 3-30. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0024.01

Hirsch advocates for the importance of pedagogy in digital humanities, pointing out that it has been relegated as secondary in critical discussions in the field. He notes that not only teaching, but the whole concept of pedagogy—including the cultural politics it can engage—is even more symbiotic with research in digital humanities than in other fields because it expresses another way that knowledge is socially constructed. The author highlights that proposing a pedagogy means making choices about content, methods, strategies, and techniques for curriculum, teaching, and evaluation, which are intrinsically political choices. Hirsch remarks that pedagogy is always an open, iterative process, and his purpose is to encourage an ongoing discussion of pedagogy in digital humanities.

Δ Hirsch, Brett D., ed. 2012. Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vjtt3

Hirsch edits this collection to open up critical discussion about pedagogy in digital humanities, stating that pedagogy has been more of an afterthought in the field compared to research. He argues that digital humanists should start thinking critically about what they teach as digital humanities, how they teach it, and the broader institutional implications and political consequences of doing so. The contents of the book are sorted into three sections. The “Practices” section surveys how digital humanities are taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as in summer schools. The “Principles” section addresses the theoretical principles behind the practical applications of digital humanities pedagogy that aim to promote new ways of thinking. Finally, the “Politics” section explores the political vision for the field, including discussions of curricula, syllabi, multiliteracies, and the pedagogical use of Wikipedia.

* Hsu, Wendy F. 2016. “Lessons on Public Humanities from the Civic Sphere.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, edited by Matthew K. Goldman and Lauren F. Klein, 280–286. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/75

Hsu presents some lessons learned in the professional experience of working with civic technology in the public sector to think about public work in digital humanities. The author advocates for the importance of including public participation early and in-process to build projects with and not for the community, considering that not only solving but also defining the problems must be done collectively. Hsu relies on the work of the postcolonial intellectual Gayatry Spivak to state that humanistic practices of visioning, speculating, and reflecting are founded in interpretation, which can also lead to creative actions of making and design. Thus, she claims that digital humanists should listen more to the public, interpret problems collectively, and apply their digital making and design skills to organize public projects with a civic cause, prototype community-driven digital objects, or intervene in civic processes in a way that pushes them toward social justice. Moreover, Hsu notes that academic institutions and their members are closer to the centre of decision-making power, and that collaborating with community is a way to have a dialogue across lines of power.

Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. 2012. https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (JITP) is an open access journal that seeks to critically reflect on the role of technology in teaching, learning, and research. With 18 issues published to date, the journal accepts multiple formats as submissions, so long as they recentre pedagogy in discussions about the place of technology in education today. In addition to issues, the journal also publishes assignments, blueprints, and reviews, as well as teaching fails.

* Kouppanou, Anna. 2016. “‘...Einstein’s Most Rational Dimension of Noetic Life and the Teddy Bear...’ An Interview with Bernard Stiegler on Childhood, Education and the Digital.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 35 (3): 241-249. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-015-9504-1

In Kouppanou’s interview of philosopher Bernard Stiegler, they discuss Stiegler’s work on education and digital technologies, focusing on how the digital culture changes the way people gain knowledge and how they relate to that knowledge. During the interview, they consider how, across all disciplines, digital technologies are modifying the objects of knowledge and the concomitant necessity of investigating these changes. The philosopher believes that the web can become much more useful for political, cultural, artistic, and juridical questions if we reappropriate and redirect technology according to the interests of knowledge instead of those of the market by making technology more collaborative and deploying it in educational institutions.

* Lewin, David. 2016. “The Pharmakon of Educational Technology: The Disruptive Power of Attention in Education.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 35 (3): 251-265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9518-3

Lewin considers whether the use of technology and digital pedagogy are positive or negative for education, with a focus on attention. He argues that modern technologies are not neutral, but are simultaneously good and bad. To support his argument, he refers to Bernard Stiegler’s interpretation of digital technology as a pharmakon (that is, something that is both a poison and a cure); to Gert Biesta’s argument that technology is not at fault, but instead the process of “learnification,” which changes students into consumers; to Katherine Hayles’ concept of hyper attention; and to Mircea Eliade’s philosophy of religion. Lewin claims that structured and defined spaces and times are needed in education because they give significance and enable attention. He concludes that when digital educational technology is designed to be accessible anytime and anywhere, it cannot foster reflection in a substantive and meaningful way. He concedes, however, that this problem is not intrinsic to the technology itself.

* Lewin, David, and David Lundie. 2016. “Philosophies of Digital Pedagogy.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 35 (3): 235-240. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9514-7

Lewin and Lundie draw attention to the importance of social, ethical, and epistemic questions related to digital culture and its connection to education. They warn against the common assumption, long disputed by philosophers, that technologies are ethically and ideologically neutral. Lewin and Lundie turn their focus to the philosophy of technology, including the work of Martin Heidegger and Bernard Stiegler, and of information theory, including the work of Luciano Floridi, to support their concerns surrounding the educative purpose of “subjectification” or self-becoming and to understand how new technologies are impacting this. They do not believe it is as simple as saying that digital cultures are putting an end to the traditional classroom. Nevertheless, they suggest that we need to consider technological, normative, and pedagogical considerations together if we are to address pedagogy in the future.

Δ Mahony, Simon, and Elena Pierazzo. 2012. “Teaching Skills or Teaching Methodology?” In Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics, edited by Brett D. Hirsch, 215–26. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vjtt3.13

Mahony and Pierazzo explore what should be taught under the banner of digital humanities, with a focus on teaching new approaches and new ways of thinking about the humanities. The authors present case studies of teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on Extensible Markup Language (XML), Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), and similar technologies at King’s College London. Their experience shows that reaching all types of students requires stimulating their natural sense of curiosity by selecting exercises and examples from the students’ domains and presenting resources that allow students to accomplish research on their own. They conclude that digital humanities should not teach skills, but new methodologies and new ways of thinking, which are the most retained and the most transferable.

* Montfort, Nick. 2016. “Exploratory Programming in Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Research.” In A New Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, 98-109. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118680605.ch7

According to Montfort, exploratory programming for humanists can be used as a means of inquiry in teaching and research. He argues that humanities pedagogy should involve constructive and creative forms of thinking, including teaching programming to humanities students. Computer programming is constructive and creative because it encourages the student to think in new ways, to better understand both culture and media systems, and to participate in designing the collective future. Montfort draws on educational studies, media theory, and computer science to outline the cognitive, cultural, and social values of programming, and to define his own concept of exploratory programming. He also proposes that instead of using computers merely for task completion, humanists should experiment with computers as tools for creation, exploration, and inquiry. Moreover, he remarks that programming can be creative and fun, not unlike other skills that traditionally belong to the humanities such as writing and developing arguments.

Δ Morgan, Paige C. 2018. “The Consequences of Framing Digital Humanities Tools as Easy to Use.” College & Undergraduate Libraries 25 (3): 211–31. London, UK: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2018.1480440

Morgan discusses how researchers are encountering an approach to digital humanities growth and expansion that relies on marketing aspects of digital humanities research as easy, such as the use of digital humanities tools. She finds that couching powerful tools in what is often false familiarity undermines the goal of encouraging scholarly innovation and risk-taking. The article examines presentation and documentation in the digital platforms Omeka, Scalar, and DHBox to understand the challenges presented by the easy tool rhetoric. Labelling these tools as easy underscores competencies like data modelling, elides the critical thinking that users must do while using the tools, and can create a backlash in which users blame themselves when a particular tool is more difficult than expected.

Δ Murphy, Emily C., and Shannon R. Smith. 2017. “Undergraduate Students and Digital Humanities Belonging: Metaphors and Methods for Including Undergraduate Research in DH Communities.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 11 (3). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/3/000305/000305.html

Murphy and Smith trace how models of undergraduate digital humanities pedagogy have conceived of the student as a digital native and as an apprentice-research assistant, and explore the scholar-citizen model that informs their pedagogical practice. The authors criticize the conception of the undergraduate student as a digital native because it prevents analysis of the student’s relationship to digital technologies. They also find problematic the apprentice-research assistant model because of the unequal distribution of power between mentor and apprentice. Instead, they propose the scholar-citizen metaphor, which imagines undergraduate membership in the digital humanities field as a form of citizenship, because it allows for belonging to be gained while the student develops skills and builds community. The authors put this proposal into practice in the Undergraduate Summer Field School in the Digital Humanities at Queen’s University by blending more traditional classroom work with contributions to public scholarly projects that allow community-building. Murphy and Smith conclude that, unlike the other models, the scholar-citizen model addresses the power dynamic between students and instructors, including an acknowledgment that it is challenging to attain digital humanities citizenship, and that citizenship can be a type of privilege.

* Ng, Wan. 2015. New Digital Technology in Education: Conceptualizing Professional Learning for Educators. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05822-1

Ng addresses issues with digital technologies integration into education. She describes the difficulties that educators can face while trying to integrate novel methods into their teaching processes. She claims that inquiry-based, project-based, and problem-based approaches support students by teaching concepts relevant to them. Such approaches are especially useful for technology-rich learning environments that focus on the students’ learning experiences rather than the technologies. According to Ng, when using technology, teachers need to maintain a positive attitude and understand its capabilities and limitations. Likewise, the students must also spend some time developing experience in new tools and methods.

Programming Historian Team. 2008. Programming Historian. https://programminghistorian.org/

The Programming Historian is a resource that publishes peer-reviewed open access tutorials. Primarily targeted at a humanities audience, Programming Historian offers practical skills in digital tools, techniques, and methodologies for research. The resource is community-driven and undergoes an open peer review process through the GitHub repository. In addition to English, tutorials are available in Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

Δ Risam, Roopika. 2018. “Postcolonial Digital Pedagogy.” In New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, 89–114. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.

Risam explores the benefits of engaging undergraduate students in postcolonial digital humanities so they can become critical users and makers of digital knowledge and technology. Through postcolonial digital pedagogy, it is possible to help students understand the politics of knowledge production while mitigating the challenges of teaching postcolonial texts, such as students’ resistance to analyzing the politics of postcolonial literature, and their lack of preparation or interest in its cultural contexts. Risam challenges the idea of the digital native, since it assumes that the consumption of digital media produces a deeper understanding of it; however, she contends that digital humanities pedagogy can redress gaps in digital literacy among students. The author proposes that teaching postcolonial literature through digital humanities large-scale class projects or low-stakes assignments helps students intervene in the digital cultural record and promotes deeper understanding of literary texts.

* Saklofske, Jon, Estelle Clements, and Richard Cunningham. 2012. “They Have Come, Why Won’t We Build It? On the Digital Future of the Humanities.” In Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics, edited by Brett D. Hirsch, 311-330. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0024.14

Saklofske, Clements, and Cunningham suggest some strategies for implementing digital humanities pedagogy in universities, while being attentive to the current conservatism in academic institutions and the associated funding and budgetary concerns. They argue that digital humanities offer new forms of education and opportunities for innovative scholarship required by students of the Internet generation. The authors propose that change in the academic culture can occur gradually: by integrating digital humanities into existing curricula in an evolutionary process, understanding it as a means and not as an end. Furthermore, they believe that the initiative to introduce faculty to the field of digital humanities should start small, without the requirement of hiring new members, establishing new departments, or even adopting new resources or infrastructure.

* Waltzer, Luke. 2012. “Digital Humanities and the ‘Ugly Stepchildren’ of American Higher Education.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 335–349. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816677948.003.0035

Waltzer says that the humanities suffer from lack of resources and explains how pedagogy (curriculum development, teaching, and learning) is affected by this. He points out, however, that the digital humanities and their job markets are growing. This, he says, gives digital humanists the opportunity to influence academic thinking about the role of pedagogy and curricula, and in turn, to affect how the humanities are considered within academia. He offers examples from the University of Mary Washington (UMW) in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the New York City College of Technology (City Tech) to show how this could be achieved through an online publishing platform that allows faculty and students to collaborate with content production using digital tools. Waltzer acknowledges that the social and political problems of American higher education are too large to be solved by the efforts of a single field. Nevertheless, he argues that the field can strengthen the argument that the humanities are relevant to society. For this to happen, he says, it is necessary to give more attention to pedagogy and curriculum.

* Welsh, Michael. 2013. “From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able.” In Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities, edited by Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, 69–77. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/dh.12172434.0001.001

Welsh discusses the effects of new media and technologies on the educational system. He argues that this context has created a need to redirect students from being knowledgeable to being knowledge-able, due to the risk of facing a lack of meaning and significance regarding their education. He argues that the access to information has changed along with the way we physically, socially, and cognitively relate to information. He argues that we need to redefine the classroom based on our current relationship with information. Welsh refers to his cultural anthropology research and to the work of psychologist Thomas Szasz. He says that instead of teaching subjects, we should help students to attain “subjectivities,” by which he means ways of approaching, understanding, and interacting with the world. He adds that the role of educators should be to manage learning environments to encourage practices that help develop these subjectivities. The author concludes by remarking that some issues, such as how to perform effective assessments, remain an open question.

Practical Approaches to Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training

Δ Álvarez Sánchez, Adriana, and Miriam Peña Pimentel. 2017. “DH for History Students: A Case Study at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (National Autonomous University of Mexico).” Digital Humanities Quarterly 11 (3). http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/3/000312/000312.html

Álvarez Sánchez and Peña Pimentel explain the institutional context in which they implemented a digital humanities course for history undergraduates at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico’s largest public university. Some of the challenges they encountered were the students’ unfamiliarity with using digital tools for academic purposes, the humanities department’s lack of infrastructure for supporting digital humanities teaching and research, and the department’s omission of the acquisition of digital skills from the curriculum that was set in 1998. The authors based their course on Paul Fyfe’s idea that digital humanities pedagogy should not focus only on tools, but also reflect on their use and context. They contend that humanities students and faculty members can find digital resources helpful for their research. Therefore, to update the university’s history program, they suggest implementing activities with digital tools into different courses, and educating students and faculty on the importance, implications, and advantages of using digital technologies.

† Ball, John Clement. 2010. “Definite Article: Graduate Student Publishing, Pedagogy, and the Journal as Training Ground.” Canadian Literature 204: 160–62.

Ball speaks from his position as editor of the journal Studies in Canadian Literature on the social and pedagogical role of journals in graduate training and, thus, discipline formation. He suggests that academics view themselves as a part of a three-way pedagogical continuum that includes journals and graduate students. Although journals should not replace supervisors, they can play a significant role in the professionalization of graduate students by reviewing, critiquing, and disseminating graduate work. In this way, graduate students are better prepared to face the post-convocation job market.

* Battershill, Claire, and Shawna Ross. 2018. Using Digital Humanities in the Classroom: A Practical Introduction for Teachers, Lecturers and Students. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Battershill and Ross introduce various rational structures that can be explored using widely available digital tools. They claim that these tools can satisfy our pedagogical goals and expand our personal teaching philosophies. The authors also argue that digital humanities, as a field open for innovations, can offer novel approaches to significant pedagogical challenges and questions. Battershill and Ross assert that the use of new approaches can remind us about the purpose of humanistic inquiry and help set pedagogical priorities in the field. Ultimately, the authors suggest using digital methods to enrich one’s teaching strategies, to widen the research area, and to achieve new outcomes.

Δ Birnbaum, David J., and Alison Langmead. 2017. “Task-Driven Programming Pedagogy in the Digital Humanities.” New Directions for Computing Education, edited by S. Fee, A. Holland-Minkley and T. Lombardi, 63–85. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54226-3_5

Birnbaum and Langmead propose a humanities-oriented programming pedagogy to teach digital humanities students how to code. They advocate that proficiency in programming is best acquired in the context of performing contextualized, discipline-focused tasks that are meaningful to humanists. This approach is similar to the oral-proficiency-oriented (OP) foreign language pedagogy, in which the primary goal is to learn how to communicate in another language, rather than to obtain an academic understanding of the grammar. The oral proficiency model can be applied to teach humanists how to code by including tasks and examples that humanists understand and can relate to their fields. When humanists learn to code, the authors conclude, they can view programming as part of the research process and even build their own tools when the existing ones are insufficient for their research.

* Braun, Steven. 2018. “Critically Engaging with Data Visualization through an Information Literacy Framework.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 12 (4). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/12/4/000402/000402.html

Braun presents a framework for information literacy for higher education. He discusses the importance of critically engaging students when teaching data and information visualization, and reminds readers that visualization is not objective—rather, its authority is constructed and contextual. The author uses critical theory, including the work of Johanna Drucker, to propose an interactive teaching format. Finally, he suggests that, as information design is a creative process, the pedagogical approaches for teaching it should be as well.

* Crompton, Constance. 2017. “Teaching About and Through Computing: Victorian Record Keeping, Data Management, and the Class Edition.” In Teaching Victorian Literature in the Twenty-First Century: A Guide to Pedagogy, 211–27. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58886-5_15

In this chapter, Crompton addresses digital approaches to Victorian Studies and methods of teaching digital editing. In the first part, she outlines nineteenth-century computing and the ways in which the Victorians managed to quash opportunities for digitality in England in the 1840s and the 1890s. The second part describes the ways in which Victorian Studies scholars can use digital humanities projects to facilitate new learning outcomes in this field, with a particular focus on creating digital editions using the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). Crompton also highlights two pedagogical principles that encourage the use of digital tools in the classroom: 1) instead of only consuming scholarly knowledge, students should also be co-creators of that knowledge; 2) in addition to teaching traditional subjects, humanities courses should also teach digital literacy. Together, the author argues, these principles would ensure that English literature courses encourage students to become knowledge producers and to disseminate that knowledge within the field.

Δ Davis, Rebecca Frost, Matthew K. Gold, and Katherine D. Harris. 2020. “Curating Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities.” Modern Language Association. https://doi.org/10.17613/55a0-am43

Davis, Gold, and Harris describe the collection Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, a publication that provides concrete teaching materials so that faculty can expand their pedagogical practices. The collection has materials relating to 59 keywords. Each keyword contains a statement by the scholars who curated it and a list of 10 annotated resources about the keyword. The authors explain six key concepts of digital pedagogy—openness, collaboration, play, practice, student agency, and identity—and how they are manifested across the collection. By publishing the collection online and in open access, the authors hope it can be used for guidance to expand teaching practices and to inspire more research on pedagogy.

* Estill, Laura. 2017. “Collaborative Knowledge Creation and Student-Led Assignment Design: Wikipedia in the University Literature Class.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 11 (3). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/3/000320/000320.html

Estill details a case study in which undergraduate students in a third-year Renaissance Drama class use Wikipedia in a literature class. She argues that using Wikipedia can enable students to carry out research using primary and secondary sources, as well as to consider the role of editions and to practice their writing and communication skills—all while working on hypertexts and ontologies. Students also consider the stakes of writing for a real audience that is looking for information, instead of just for the professor who already knows the material. According to Estill, by completing an assignment in this class, students developed a sense of intellectual ownership and learned about collaborative authorship. She also asserts that learning about and analyzing Wikipedia in the classroom can promote digital civic engagement by making digital spaces more inclusive and representative.

* Gold, Matthew K. 2012. “Looking for Whitman: A Multi-Campus Experiment in Digital Pedagogy.” In Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics, edited by Brett D. Hirsch, 151-176. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0024.07

Gold describes the experience of working on a digital pedagogy project called Looking for Whitman. The 2009–2010 experiment was a collaboration between four academic institutions in the United States and one in Serbia, which had the purpose of connecting students from multiple campuses to explore the relationship of Walt Whitman’s poetry to local geography and history. Gold advocates for an open and networked pedagogy using Walt Whitman’s own ideas about education. Just as Leaves of Grass calls for “unscrewing the locks and the doors” and “destroying the teacher,” the project aimed to displace the teacher from the centre of the learning process. The author also highlights the collaborative aspect of the proposal and the use of digital technologies for achieving its goals, while also reporting the evaluation made by the students who participated in the project. Based on the evaluation survey that students submitted, Gold concludes that although the connection between institutions has been less substantial than expected, the experiences with both Whitman's work and digital technologies have been positive. Gold proposes that the experiment can serve as a model for developing other cross-institutions collaborative education projects.

Δ Harris, Katherine D. 2013. “Play, Collaborate, Break, Build, Share: ‘Screwing Around’ in Digital Pedagogy.” Polymath: An Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Journal 3 (3). https://ojcs.isg.siue.edu/ojs/index.php/polymath/article/view/2853

Harris discusses how she incorporates risk, play, and productive failure as part of her pedagogy at a non-research-intensive university. She explains that digital humanities pedagogy can be incorporated as single-day assignments, an entire course scaffolded in multiple assignments, or as individual assignments that facilitate screwing around and play. Her definition of screwing around is based on Stephen Ramay’s (2010) talk “The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around,” in which he defines it as “unbounded playing and learning in order to achieve cultural literacy” (6). According to Harris, screwing around, as well as collaboration, process, building, and tinkering, are digital humanities mainstays. By including screwing around and play in assignments, students can become life-long learners; but it also means embracing failure over the need of assessment, structure, and bounded learning that is the dominant model of current humanities classrooms.

† Jing, Tee Wee, Yue Wong Seng, and Raja Kumar Murugesan. 2015. “Learning Outcome Enhancement via Serious Game: Implementing Game-Based Learning Framework in Blended Learning Environment.” 5th International Conference on IT Convergence and Security (ICITCS), 24–27 August. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICITCS.2015.7292992

Jing, Seng, and Murugesan discuss how serious games have emerged as a new learning strategy because of the need for engaging and interactive educational practices. They integrate pedagogy and game-design strategy and implement the game-based learning (GBL) framework in blended learning environments. The authors rely on instructional design theories and educational game-design models in their study. Their framework can be referred to for the identification and refinement of key elements in serious games. Jing, Seng, and Murugesan conclude that a proper implementation of the game-based learning framework in serious games will increase students’ interest and enhance their academic outcomes.

* Johanson, Chris, Elaine Sullivan, Janice Reiff, Diane Favro, Todd Presner, and Willeke Wendrich. 2012. “Teaching Digital Humanities through Cultural Mapping.” In Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics, edited by Brett D. Hirsch, 121–50. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vjtt3.10

Johanson et al. introduce the University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) Digital Mapping Program. This program aims to teach students how to use geospatial/geotemporal tools for humanities research, while developing critical thinking skills. They believe that the tools of computer science combined with spatial modeling can contribute to current scholarly conversations in established disciplines. It will also aid in the creation of new programs in digital humanities that will lead to further research on a larger scale at UCLA.

Δ Kennedy, Kara. 2017. “A Long-Belated Welcome: Accepting Digital Humanities Methods into Non-DH Classrooms.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 11 (3). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/3/000315/000315.html

Kennedy argues that digital humanities methods belong in humanities classrooms to foster digital literacy and engage in digital pedagogy. She explains that it is an ethical duty and a feminist imperative to incorporate digital humanities methods in humanities courses because this can help women gain competence and confidence with technology. Women make up the majority of humanities students and they potentially face gender biases related to digital technology because competence in computing is usually associated with male traits. Therefore, adding digital humanities to the humanities classroom engages female students with technology and helps them to develop digital skills in the degree program they choose and enjoy. Some of the proposed ways to accomplish this are incorporating multimedia assignments instead of essays, exploring digital archives, visualizing texts with textual analysis tools, and remixing and sharing humanities content online. This type of digital pedagogy allows students to critically read, reflect, and write in both traditional and digital environments.

Φ * Montfort, Nick. 2016. “Exploratory Programming in Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Research.” In A New Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, 98-109. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118680605.ch7 (Φ Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training > Digital Pedagogy and Training Discourse, Theory, and Best Practices)

* Robin, Bernard R. 2008. “The Effective Uses of Digital Storytelling as a Teaching and Learning Tool.” In Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts, Volume II: A Project of the International Reading Association, edited by James Flood, Shirley Brice Heath, and Diane Lapp, 429-440. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315759616

Robin proposes the use of digital storytelling as an educational tool, and presents an overview of its components, categories, requirements, and challenges. He notes that digital stories can be created by teachers to capture both the students’ attention and their emotions. Robin emphasizes, however, that digital storytelling is an even more effective tool if students create their own stories. Referring to educational studies (including the work of June Brown, Jan Bryan, and Ted Brown), Robin argues that by designing, creating, and presenting their own digital stories, students are improving their digital, global, visual, technological, and information literacies while developing research, writing, organization, technology, presentation, interview, interpersonal, problem-solving, and assessment skills. Robin claims that not only digital humanities, but all subject areas and levels of education can benefit from using digital storytelling in the classroom. Finally, he presents the steps for creating a digital story and a framework for assessment of students’ stories.

Δ Russell, John E., and Merinda Kaye Hensley. 2017. “Beyond Buttonology: Digital Humanities, Digital Pedagogy, and the ACRL Framework.” College & Research Libraries 78 (11). https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.78.11.588

Russell and Hensley argue that digital humanities instruction is often focused on introductory software training—what they call buttonology—rather than reflecting on the broader context. The authors use the Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (2016) to connect digital humanities work to the instructional mission of librarians. To make digital humanities instruction more information-literate, they propose thinking of it as a two-step process: software training alongside a focus on further developing research questions, managing data, and refining methodology. According to the authors, isolating information literacy instruction from digital humanities work does not make sense. On the contrary, articulating digital humanities work in terms of information literacy makes it easier to convey the value of digital work.

Δ Stommel, Jesse. 2018. “The Public Digital Humanities.” In Disrupting the Digital Humanities, edited by Dorothy Kim and Jesse Stommel, 79–90. Santa Barbara: Punctum Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19cwdqv.8

Stommel defines the public digital humanities as a Venn diagram at the point where public, digital, and humanities work intersect. He argues that making scholarly work legible to the public and helping it find audiences is a form of outreach, community building, and advocacy. An example of this work is the Hybrid Pedagogy journal, which he founded. The journal aims to make publishing more pedagogical and to make pedagogy more public and dialogic, which includes making the work legible to a broader audience and embracing post-print publishing. Stommel concludes by saying that digital humanities cannot innovate through competition and hype cycles, but by listening to more diverse voices and advocating for marginalized teachers, scholars, and students.

† Van Staalduinen, Jan-Paul, and Sara de Freitas. 2011. “A Game-Based Learning Framework: Linking Game Design and Learning Outcomes.” In Learning to Play: Exploring the Future of Education with Video Games, edited by Myint Swe Khine, 29–54. New York: Peter Lang.

Van Staalduinen and de Freitas suggest that there is a need for new design methods that have an effect in both academic and formal contexts. The authors propose a hybrid framework that can be used in the design of new games, as well as in the analysis of existing game designs; it can also serve as a guide for designing new, more effective serious games. They lay out the limitations of the field of learning from video games, then acknowledge what they consider to be good instructional games. Van Staaduinen and de Freitas conclude that the learner has an important role to play in the dialogue between game design and learning, yet there needs to be greater assessment of the efficiency of learning-driven game-design strategy.

Digital Humanities Assignments, Curricula, and Programs

* Bell, Christina. 2015. “In Practice and Pedagogy. Digital Humanities in a Small College Environment.” In Digital Humanities in The Library: Challenges and Opportunities for Subject Specialists, edited by Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Laura Braunstein, and Liorah Golomb, 103–26. Chicago: Association of Research Libraries.

Bell explores the place of digital humanities in the small college library. In particular, she describes how librarians can take on the role of collaborative partners in the digital humanities. She argues that in planning to offer services in digital humanities, institutions should listen to users and learn their needs. Moreover, it is important to make decisions about strategic priorities, as well as existing organizational structures and services. Bell relies on her own experience as a librarian with knowledge of humanities disciplines, including languages, literatures, history, and specific area studies at Bates College. She suggests that a small college is a perfect environment for digital humanities development and emphasizes the importance of additional structures such as collaborative research partnerships and strong pedagogy. Furthermore, she stresses that libraries and librarians often assist digital humanities development and sustainability.

Δ Clement, Tanya. 2012. “Multiliteracies in the Undergraduate Digital Humanities Curriculum: Skills, Principles, and Habits of Mind.” In Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics, edited by Brett D. Hirsch, 365–88. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

Clement explores why, how, and what students should learn in an undergraduate digital humanities program. She discusses the possible roles that undergraduate digital humanities curricula can have in fostering multiliteracies “through general skills, principles and habits of mind that allow students to progress within and engage society in the twenty-first century” (383). Clement identifies three interconnected topics that influence the development of undergraduate digital humanities curricula: the history of the digital humanities and their ties to curriculum development, institutional infrastructure, and the notions of digital literacy in undergraduate education. In addition to discourse that focuses on defining digital humanities, Clement contends that similar discussions are needed about how the logistics of departments, the intersections of different fields in digital humanities curricula development, and the allocation of resources shape how undergraduate digital humanities programs are taught.

Δ Cummings, James. 2019. “Building DH Training Events.” In Doing More Digital Humanities, edited by Constance Crompton, Richard J. Lane, and Ray Siemens, 264–77. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429353048-18

Cummings explores the intensive digital humanities training events that have become a staple in the field. The author compares his experience working at the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School (DHOxSS) with similar events like the European Summer University in Digital Humanities (ESUDH) and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI). He explains the challenges and successes the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School has encountered regarding finance, student evaluations, academic outputs, and international cooperation. One pedagogical challenge of the workshops offered is the difficulty to retain the fluency in the methods and skills taught. However, Cummings thinks that intensive training events are successful at providing introductory support while improving or learning new skills.

Δ Mapes, Kristen. 2020. “Discovering Digital Humanities Methods through Pedagogy.” In Routledge International Handbook of Research Methods in Digital Humanities, edited by Kristen Schuster and Stuart Dunn, 331–52. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429777028-24

Mapes examines the syllabi, methods, and approaches to teaching in 10 different introductory digital humanities courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels from 2014 to 2018. She found that these courses included many topics and methods, the most frequent being digital humanities history and definitions, text analysis, and mapping. The analysis was based on similar curricular studies carried out by Melissa Terras (2006) in “Disciplined: Using Educational Studies to Analyse ‘Humanities Computing’” and Lisa Spiro (2012) in “Knowing and Doing: Understanding the Digital Humanities Curriculum.” According to the syllabi of the 10 courses, the digital humanities are characterized by group project work, often oriented toward experimentation at the undergraduate level and professionalization at the graduate level.

Φ * Saklofske, Jon, Estelle Clements, and Richard Cunningham. 2012. “They Have Come, Why Won’t We Build It? On the Digital Future of the Humanities.” In Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics, edited by Brett D. Hirsch, 311-330. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0024.14 (Φ Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training > Digital Pedagogy and Training Discourse, Theory, and Best Practices)

Δ Sula, Chris Alen, Sarah E. Hackney, and Phillip Cunningham. 2017. “A Survey of Digital Humanities Programs.” The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy. https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/a-survey-of-digital-humanities-programs/

Sula, Hackney, and Cunningham examine the location, structure, and disciplinarity of digital humanities programs in the Anglophone world and compare them with similar European programs. The authors found that the majority of Anglophone programs are not degree-granting, while European programs are mostly degree-granting. Their survey applied the Taxonomy of Digital Research Activities in the Humanities (TaDiRAH) to capture the basic functions common to scholarly activities across the digital humanities. Anglophone programs focused more on analysis and meta-activities (community building, project management), as well as creation (designing, programming, writing), whereas enrichment, capture, and storage were more prevalent in European programs. The survey results show how the digital humanities are presented to prospective students and which skills and methods are taught.

* Taylor, Laurie N., Poushali Bhadury, Elizabeth Dale, Randi K. Gill-Sadler, Leah Rosenberg, Brian W. Keith, and Prea Persaud. 2018. “Digital Humanities as Public Humanities: Transformative Collaboration in Graduate Education.” In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Networks, and Community, edited by Robin Kear and Kate Joranson, 31–44. Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102023-4.00003-3

Taylor et al. present the University of Florida’s perspective on digital humanities programs and practices, which conceptualises them as public humanities. The authors frame the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate and the Graduate Internship Program as models for both transformative collaboration and engagement of students. They mention case studies of interns who have worked on publishing, sustaining, and translating digital humanities work to emphasize the creative and collaborative aspect of the initiative, as well as the important support it gives to all involved, including students, librarians, and faculty members. They add that as experienced professionals, librarians who work in collaborative practices and with communities are essential partners in their “digital humanities as public humanities” concept.

Δ Walsh, John A., Peter J. Cobb, Wayne de Fremery, Koraljka Golub, Humphrey Keah, Jeonghyun Kim, Joseph Kiplang’at, et al. 2021. “Digital Humanities in the ISchool.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 73 (2): 188–203. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24535

Walsh et al. investigate digital humanities education and research as practiced in information school (iSchool) contexts worldwide. They analyze university websites to identify which types of digital humanities degrees are offered, the course descriptions of 426 digital humanities courses, and the presence and content of these courses within iSchools. The authors found that master’s degrees are the most common model of digital humanities education, especially in Europe. Their course analysis findings suggest that there are two main clusters of topics in digital humanities courses in general: one related to digital topics (such as software programming, statistical data analysis, and web applications), and another cluster related to humanities topics (such as critical digital media, digital art, and cultural heritage). On the other hand, iSchools themselves offer 34 digital humanities courses in 26 institutions, usually a single or introductory course followed by an advanced one. Since iSchools are so diverse, the authors believe that it is difficult to suggest a common curriculum for digital humanities programs in iSchools. However, the disciplinary and methodological diversity of the digital humanities allows iSchools to offer a credible program even if it differs from programs in other institutions.

Φ * Waltzer, Luke. 2012. “Digital Humanities and the ‘Ugly Stepchildren’ of American Higher Education.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 335-349. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816677948.003.0035 (Φ Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training > Practical Approaches to Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training)

Student Training and Labour in Digital Humanities

Δ Anderson, Katrina, Lindsey Bannister, Janey Dodd, Deanna Fong, Michelle Levy, and Lindsey Seatter. 2016. “Student Labour and Training in Digital Humanities.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 10 (1). https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:18075/

Anderson et al. interrogate the rhetoric of sharing, exchange, and openness present in digital humanities scholarship by examining student labor, training, and funding. They argue that this rhetoric conceals the hierarchies of academic spaces. Their essay includes the results of two surveys, one aimed at 39 students, and the other aimed at 40 faculty members. Students perceived their work on digital humanities projects to be less collaborative than faculty researchers, with less than 20% of the student respondents contributing to research dissemination in the form of conference papers or research articles. The authors conclude by offering a series of best practices to mitigate disparities in digital humanities projects, such as formalizing group structure, counting project management and training as research, encouraging student-led digital humanities projects, supporting student-led publications in large-scale projects, and recognizing affective labour in the digital humanities.

Colligan, Colette, and Kandice Sharren. (2020). Notes from the Field: Student Perspectives on Digital Pedagogy. Digital Studies / Le champ numérique 10 (1): n.p. https://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.382

This special collection critically addresses digital pedagogy and training in humanities graduate education. Authored by graduate students within the Digital Pedagogy Network (DPN) who focused on the exchange of digital humanities research and skills between Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria, the collection is made up of four clusters that tackle the areas of Collaborating with Galleries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) Institutions (Christina Hilburger et al. 2021); Digital Doctorates (Randa El Khatib et al. 2021); Student Labour and Major Research Projects (Anna Mukamal et al. 2021), and Transforming Digital Humanities Pedagogy (Nadine Boulay et al. 2021). The essay clusters centre student perspectives on digital pedagogy that draw on the many roles they inhabit throughout their training, including researchers, teachers, collaborators, project managers, and others, to offer their insight on digital humanities pedagogy.

Δ Keralis, Spencer D. C. 2018. “Disrupting Labor in Digital Humanities; or, The Classroom Is Not Your Crowd.” In Disrupting the Digital Humanities, edited by Jesse Stommel and Dorothy Kim. Santa Barbara: Punctum Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19cwdqv

Keralis criticizes the use of student labour in digital humanities courses when students work on a professor’s project without receiving any pay or credit. He explains the labour economy of digital humanities projects in the context of the innovation economy, with crowdsourcing and crowdfunding as its pillars. Keralis argues that student labour within the academy cannot apply crowdsourcing’s system of informed consent and volunteerism, because labour in the classroom is coerced, and the intellectual property of work produced in the classroom should belong to students. To conclude, the author states that it is possible to ethically manage student labour in the classroom by encouraging students to produce public-facing work that can be added to their CVs while receiving credit for their labor.

Δ Mann, Rachel. 2019. “Paid to Do but Not to Think: Reevaluating the Role of Graduate Student Collaborators.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, edited by Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein, 268–78. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvg251hk.25

Mann discusses the potential pitfalls of collaboration that come with digital humanities scholarship, especially when the collaborative relationship includes faculty members and graduate students working together. In digital humanities projects, graduate students tend to do the computational work, while the director publishes the findings. Mann finds this problematic because students are not treated as scholars-in-training but as employees, so they are not encouraged to think and write about their work. She argues that even when students are paid, their relationship with their supervisor or mentor should not be seen as a relationship between employer and employee, but as a relationship between teacher and student. The author contends that documents that discuss labour in the digital humanities, such as The Collaborators’ Bill of Rights and The Student Collaborators’ Bill of Rights, address neither the lack of digital humanities publications authored by graduate students nor the multiple roles students and faculty members play when working on projects. Since students are not on an equal footing with faculty, Mann proposes that projects that employ graduate students should include student publication as a metric of success.

Φ Δ Murphy, Emily C., and Shannon R. Smith. 2017. “Undergraduate Students and Digital Humanities Belonging: Metaphors and Methods for Including Undergraduate Research in DH Communities.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 11 (3). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/3/000305/000305.html (Φ Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training > Digital Pedagogy and Training Discourse, Theory, and Best Practices)

† Nowviskie, Bethany. 2012. “A Digital Boot Camp for Grad Students in the Humanities.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Last modified April 29, 2012. http://chronicle.com/article/A-Digital-Boot-Camp-for-Grad/131665

Nowviskie discusses the Praxis program she directs out of the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia. She demonstrates how a combined commitment to interdisciplinarity, collaboration, and tacit knowledge is used to effectively train graduate students in contemporary humanities (and especially digital humanities) work. Nowviskie acknowledges the challenges and benefits of blending radically new methods for graduate training with traditional humanities practices and credit systems. Overall, she reiterates the value of training graduate students in an open-ended, community-minded way; in this way, humanities programs can facilitate both graduate and postgraduate school careers.

Δ Rogers, Katina L. 2020. Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and beyond the Classroom. Durham: Duke University Press.

Rogers explains that humanities graduate training can lead to careers outside of the academy with meaningful public impact. She argues that an expanded understanding of postgraduate success can foster more equitable and inclusive systems in and around the academy, which involves shifting the current mindset about career opportunities so that humanities PhD students consider a faculty career as one option among many. Her proposal addresses labour issues and training for faculty careers, as well as the stakes of the career diversity movement, which she thinks can be understood as a social justice project. She concludes with a list of 10 ways to build a university worth fighting for at individual and structural levels, aimed at students, faculty members, and administrators.

Digital Humanities Training in Libraries

* Hubbard, Melanie, and Dermot Ryan. 2018. “Digital Humanities as Community Engagement: The Digital Watts Project.” In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Networks, and Community, edited by Robin Kear and Kate Joranson, 139-147. Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102023-4.00010-0

Hubbard and Ryan elaborate how the partnership between a librarian and a faculty member can foster community engagement by students working on a digital public humanities project. They report on the Digital Watts Project, which allowed English students to reflect on the characteristics of a public—as opposed to purely academic—history project. The authors rely on postcolonial and subaltern studies, including the work of Ranajit Guha, as a basis to argue how the narratives and the representation in collections can oppose or reinforce biases and prejudices. They close the chapter by highlighting that the librarian/faculty partnership has been successful in terms of getting students to think about the production of materials as a form of activism against racism, and to feel that they are contributing to the community beyond the university.

† Lightman, Harriet, and Ruth N. Reingold. 2005. “A Collaborative Model for Teaching E-Resources: Northwestern University’s Graduate Training Day.” Libraries and the Academy 5 (1): 23–32. https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2005.0008

Lightman and Reingold expand on the annual Graduate Training Day held by the library at Northwestern University. This program aims to increase the information literacy of incoming graduate students. Ideally, Graduate Training Day will better prepare students for their upcoming scholarly practices as well as their professional lives after graduate school. Lightman and Reingold argue that information literacy is necessary training for graduate students, as it introduces bibliographic, research, digital humanities, and project management tools students may not be familiar with prior to their graduate education. (At the time of writing, it is unclear whether Graduate Training Day continues.)

Δ McGrath, Jim. 2020. “Teaching Digital Public Humanities with the Public Library.” In Doing Public Humanities, edited by Susan Smulyan, 39–54. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003058038-3

McGrath describes digital public humanities in specific contexts to document how digital spaces and tools should vary depending on audiences and objectives. He uses the collaboration between his graduate-level course on digital public humanities and the Providence Public Library as a case study to explore the benefits of approaching digitization and publication through the lens of public humanities. McGrath argues that digital public humanities should require institutions to reassess their approaches to staffing and training, their ideas about labour and expertise, and their methods of collaboration. Furthermore, he encourages public humanities practitioners who are new to digital initiatives to learn from the people, projects, and publications that have been debating the value of public and digital humanities efforts over the last few decades.

Δ Rasmussen, Hannah, Brian Croxall, and Jessica Otis. 2017. “Exploring How and Why Digital Humanities is Taught in Libraries.” In A Splendid Torch: Learning and Teaching in Today’s Academic Libraries, edited by Jodi Reeves Eyre, John C. Maclachlan, and Christa Williford. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources.

Rasmussen, Croxall, and Otis use five case studies to survey how libraries teach digital humanities, a practice they claim is underexamined. After conducting interviews with librarians from five United States colleges and universities, they identified three themes related to teaching digital humanities in libraries: the teaching differs by the context of each library; librarians usually rely on informal communities for enabling teaching and learning new skills; and teaching digital humanities in a library context does not necessarily require a digital humanities centre. The authors explain that libraries teach digital humanities at several levels and to several audiences, even when they lack a specialist in the subject. This context-dependent approach to teaching based on informal communities complements the fluid nature of the digital humanities.

Φ Δ Russell, John E., and Merinda Kaye Hensley. 2017. “Beyond Buttonology: Digital Humanities, Digital Pedagogy, and the ACRL Framework.” College & Research Libraries 78 (11). https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.78.11.588 (Φ Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training > Practical Approaches to Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training)

Φ * Taylor, Laurie N., Poushali Bhadury, Elizabeth Dale, Randi K. Gill-Sadler, Leah Rosenberg, Brian W. Keith, and Prea Persaud. 2018. "Digital Humanities as Public Humanities: Transformative Collaboration in Graduate Education." In Digital Humanities, Libraries, and Partnerships: A Critical Examination of Labor, Networks, and Community, edited by Robin Kear, and Kate Joranson, 31-44. Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102023-4.00003-3 (Φ Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training > Practical Approaches to Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training)