Does the work of humanists have to carry a lot of emotional capital to matter? If this is the standard by which our scholarly endeavor is going to be judged, then most of the work that is done across the humanities is at danger of being deemed irrelevant. For that matter, even much of the sciences would be at risk, if we start measuring by criteria of social relevance and immediate benefit. As part of the community of scholarship, I think it is important to keep in mind why our work might matter outside our small scholarly enclave. But the opportunity to tap directly into the heart of a story that has captured the interest of the nation cannot be expected to be a routine event in the careers of the majority of researchers.
Lindsey McKenzie’s article, about the digital mapping project that documented the location of detention centers involved in the resent news story of immigrant children who were separated from their parents after illegally crossing the border into the United States, raises issues of the potential social relevance of such digital projects. Her article documents some very enthusiastic responses to this sort of project being a model for how the digital humanities should function. Certainly this project is compelling, and I applaud the efforts the people behind the project Torn Apart/Separados put into this mapping this story. However, I am concerned about this being held up as a model of what digital humanists should be doing. For most scholars, I think the opportunity to respond with this kind of immediacy to a news story that has captured the attention and heartstrings of the nation will only rarely arise, if it ever arises at all. A project such as Torn Apart has merit that is hard to ignore, but I don’t think this work can stand alone as the gold standard of digital scholarship.
Because there is a certain degree of novelty still attached to digital scholarship, it may have a certain sense of capital within the humanities at the moment. But if it continues to be successfully integrated into the tool kit of the humanities, that novelty will fade, and with it the capital. In a sense, the success of digital humanities should be manifest in an increasing sense of invisibility, as the digital tools become become part of the customary experience of communication. Social relevance in our research may manifest itself in many different forms. To illustrate this point one might consider Anne McGrail’s discussion of her efforts to introduce digital humanities to students at community colleges. Because community colleges disproportionately serve lower income and minority families, their operating budgets are smaller, and their access to educational resources is often narrower than the opportunities afforded to students at four year colleges. As an educator at a community college, McGrail faces a unique set of challenges in providing her students experiences working in the digital humanities, that her colleagues working at more prestigious universities are less inclined to face. Activism may come in many forms, and certainly the tools offered by the digital humanities may offer a broader range of communicating across these goals. But it is good to keep in mind, there is not just one model for how we should do our work.
Lindsey McKenzie, “Digital Humanities for Social Good,” InsideHigherEd / July 2018
A. McGrail, “The ‘Whole Game’: Digital Humanities at Community Colleges,” Debates in Digital Humanities 2016
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