1. What are the digital humanities, and why should I care?
Paige Morgan
Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship
May 7, 2015

2. Goals: what I can do• Provide necessary background via these
workshops and Sherman Centre website,
events, and staff.
• Allow you to begin charting your own course,
and figure out what kind of engagement you
want with digital humanities.
• Make digital humanities a safer, less
intimidating, and more welcoming space for
experimenting.
• Start building a digital humanities cohort at
McMaster.

3. Limits: what I can’t do
CAN BECOME
A DIGITAL HUMANIST

4. But don’t worry...

5. The point of this
workshop is not to
convert you to digital
humanities.

6. There is no single
way of being a digital
humanist.

7. Defining DH
• By the start of the “first DH project” (1946,
approximately: date of Roberto Busa’s plan for
the Codex Thomisticus, a digital concordance
of the works of Aquinas)
• By its stability, or lack thereof, its self-
consciously mutable and multimodal nature
• According to its friction with traditional a.k.a.
“analog” humanities

8. Defining DH
• “the use of digital evidence, [and/or] methods
of inquiry, [and/or] research, [and/or]
publication and[/or] preservation to achieve
scholarly and research goals.” (Scholarly Communication
Institute, University of Virginia)
• “research that uses information technology as
a central part of its methodology, for creating
and/or processing data.” (University of Oxford)

9. What others say
“A term of tactical convenience.”
--Matthew Kirschenbaum, U of Maryland
“I think digital humanities is an unfortunate
neologism, largely because the humanities
itself is a problematic term.”
--Trevor Owens, Library of Congress
“I don’t. I’m sick of trying to define it. When forced to, I’ll
make the referent the people instead of the ideas or methods -
- Digital Humanities is the thing practiced by people who self-
identify as Digital Humanists. It’s helpful to have a name for
the field chiefly for institutional authority. Though granted I
think it does involve coding/making/building/doing things with
computers, things related to, you know, the humanities.”
--Amanda French, Center for History and New Media
All quotes from Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, U of Minnesota Press, 2012
http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/40

10. DH goals and
methodologies depend on
the specific subject matter,
and the availability of
primary/secondary source
materials and tools.

11. Alternatives to the “What is DH?” question
• How does this project/essay/argument
engage with current and previous
scholarship in my discipline?
• What sort of critical thinking and
interpretive work is involved in this
project?
• How does this project fit into the
existing environment of projects and
resources?

12. Why values?
• While the tools, projects, and methods are
diverse, values tend to be more holistic
• Understanding the values that drive digital
scholarship allows you to participate in
conversations whether or not you yourself
identify as a digital scholar

13. Values behind DH
• adaptive
• sustainable/resourc
e-aware
• multimodal
• interdisciplinary
• auto-didactic
• collaborative
• ad hoc
• process & product-
driven
• accessible
• public &
transparent
• project-oriented
• social
(not all of these values must be present simultaneously)

15. Most DH projects are,
in essence, sources,
processed and
presented.*
• “Sources, processed and presented” is the framework used by Miriam Posner in “How Did They Make T
hat? The
Video,” http://miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that-the-video/

16. They’re also
designed with a
specific audience (or
audiences) in mind.

17. Websites for Evaluation
Old Bailey Online
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org
Letters of 1916
http://dh.tcd.ie/letters1916/
A Co-Citation Network for Philosophy
http://tinyurl.com/philDH
Coptic Scriptorium
http://copticscriptorium.org
Geography of the Post
http://cameronblevins.org/gotp/
Radical Scatters Archive
http://radicalscatters.unl.edu
Mr. Seel’s Garden
http://www.mrseelsgarden.org/

18. Website Evaluation
Questions
What do you see as the project’s critical goals and/or
priorities? (What sources, how processed and
presented?)
What sort of usage (and audience) is being posited?
What aspects work especially well? What aspects (if
any) aren’t working well?
Which DH values do you see influencing this project?

19. What is DH?
(a humbler definition)
Thinking about the available materials;
how digital tools will allow you to process
them and present them to audiences in
ways that weren’t previously possible (or
at least, weren’t easy) – and acting on
your thoughts.

20. Why should you
care?• DH creates opportunities for
scholarship in new forms, presented to
new audiences.
• DH knowledge can allow you to
understand and assess new scholarly
primary and secondary sources.
• Even if you’re not planning to build
digital tools, your scholarly expertise is
relevant to digital humanities research.

21. The big question:
What do you want to
do with digital
scholarship?

22. Flash Project
Development
Brainstorm a DH project with your team!
(Students at Cabrini College brainstorm a DH project on porn. Image c/o Adeline Koh.)

23. Will it focus on one distinct topic? Or on
bringing multiple topics together?
What artefacts will it contain, or collect?
How will users interact
and/or contribute?
What forms (modes) will it take?
Flash Project Brainstorming
What perspectives do you want it to explore?

24. How the Sherman Centre fits
in• We can help you think through the steps of a project,
and how it fits into your research
• We can help you understand the choices you’re making,
and what you need to learn
• The Demystifying Digital Scholarship workshops
introduce you to social media use, data wrangling, and
project management
• Our monthly Colloquiums let you hear about what other
people are working on (or speak yourself)
• Our graduate fellowships provide access to the
Sherman research community and staff

25. Resources for further training and
collaboration
• Sherman Centre for Digital
Scholarship: http://scds.ca
• HASTAC: http://www.hastac.org
• DHNow:
http://digitalhumanitiesnow.org
• TransformDH: http://transformdh.org
• Profhacker:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker
/
• How Did They Make That?
http://miriamposner.com/blog/how-
did-they-make-that-the-video/
• Digital Humanities on Twitter -- no
account needed
https://twitter.com/paigecmorgan/digi
tal-humanities and
https://twitter.com/GrandjeanMartin/li
sts/digital-humanities
• Digital Research Tools (DiRT)
http://dirtdirectory.org
• DHCommons
http://www.dhcommons.org
• DH @ Guelph:
https://www.uoguelph.ca/arts/digital-
humanities-guelph
• DHSI: http://www.dhsi.org
• TEI Seminars at Brown University:
http://www.wwp.northeastern.edu/ou
treach/seminars/

26. Thank you!
Want to chat more about DH?
Email me (pmorgan@mcmaster.ca)
or
make an appointment (http://paigecmorgan.youcanbook.me)