[open-humanities] Critical Digital Humanities

[Andrew Prescott]

Another seminar in London, this time in the Senate House Building at Malet Street which may be of interest and to which everyone is welcome:

London Seminar in Digital Text and Scholarship

17 January 2013
(Thursday)

Venue: Room 234 (Senate House)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Dr David Berry (University of Swansea): 'Critical Digital Humanities'

Digital Humanities have been criticised, perhaps unfairly, for being narrow and lacking cultural critique, most notably by Geert Lovink and Alan Liu. In this paper I want to look at the way in which digital humanities as a field of research can address these critiques. This ranges from the particular research agendas that have become prominent within digital humanities itself, and which are strongly related to prior research interests drawn (or not) from the humanities themselves, and to the new research agenda that is driven primarily in relation to big data, gamification, MOOCs, and the so-called “industrialised” digital humanities. Whilst digital humanities have created critical versions of archives, tools, platforms, etc. and have begun to explore approaches to the use of the computational, how should digital humanities respond to the issues raised by the computational in society, economics, politics, or culture. Does the call for "more hack, less yack", calling for digital humanists to "do" rather than "talk", imply a reluctance to engage critically, or can discussions informed by the hashtag #transformDH, for example, help us to develop a more critical digital humanities. In what ways can hacking and "building" be undertaken in a critical vein and how can these "critical" practices inform theoretical discussions of digital humanities?