Category Archives: Digital Humanities

Tales of the Burning World

One of the hardest things for academic historians to accept is that their characteristic engagement with the past is deeply, arguably inextricably, interwoven with the very particular ways that nations and modernity use history as a tool. E.g., both nations … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Production of History | 1 Comment

TL;DR for Historical Scholarship

Because all the cool kids are doing it, let me dash off a quick thought on William Cronon’s essay “Professional Boredom”. I’m very sympathetic with Cronon’s reasoning on almost every point, particularly with his sense that what ought to matter … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities | 7 Comments

Kony Heads

I’m not alone in my fascination with the YouTube video Kony 2012. It splits me right down the middle, tears at opposing sides of my identity as an intellectual. When you’re opened at the middle, your heart is exposed. So … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, Digital Humanities, Politics | 6 Comments

UnConference or MutateConference?

This morning I was drawn to a post by Mitch Joel claiming that the “unconference movement” is dead. I hadn’t encountered Joel’s blog before, so I hope I’m not reading this piece out of the context of his usual commentary. … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 5 Comments

The Work of Criticism

Jumping straight out of my Twitter feed about THATCamp Games, I want to work a bit more on a reaction I had to a morning panel on teaching games in a higher ed class. I heard a pretty strong strain … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Games and Gaming | 5 Comments

A Way To Think About Online Courses (By Apple, For Example)

So Apple’s big education-oriented product announcement has come and gone. I’m going to tread softly here about what it might lead to, because I’ve been wrong before on tech rollouts (both overestimating and underestimating impacts). In general, most of what … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Swarthmore | 3 Comments

Just Because You’re Paranoid

Last month, I had a really interesting opportunity to participate in an open peer review for the project Writing History in a Digital Age. Somewhat to my dismay, I found myself falling into old-fartism in various ways as I made … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities | 2 Comments

I Endorse These Messages

Remember when people used to use blogs mostly just for shout-outs to other bloggers? Ok, they’re often still for that purpose, but it seems to me that Twitter serves that function far more efficiently. Also, with my own bloggorhea, I’ve … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 5 Comments

The Author Is Human

Stanley Fish’s NYT response to Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s Planned Obsolescence is actually a pretty useful provocation in several respects. As I read it, Fish basically moves to identify digital humanists as playing out the next move of postmodern politics and epistemology. … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities | 4 Comments

Mechanical Turks and Mirror Stages

I like this essay by John Jones about search algorithms, which he compares to “mechanical Turk” automatons of the 18th Century. It’s a point that’s well-understood in some circles and completely not in others. Witness the degree to which users … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 2 Comments