How should DH alternatives to requirements in analog humanities courses look?

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How should DH alternatives to requirements in analog humanities courses look?

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Asked 5 years ago by Amanda Visconti
Latest answer from Julie Meloni
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Amanda Visconti
Member
As a digital humanist Ph.D. student in literature, I'm interested in DH-style assignments myself and fellow DH grad students can propose to our professors as alternatives to the standard long paper course requirement. I've seen stellar DH digital projects come out of humanities dissertations, but don't have a good sense of where to look for examples of digital projects created by graduate students for pre-dissertation work (i.e. coursework and seminars), with its much tighter time constraints.

So:
What kind of characteristics should a DH alternative to an analog course assignment include?
As a professor, if one of your graduate students proposed a digital humanities alternative to one of your course assignments, what elements would you want to see in the project?
How should a student balance the desire to provide a work that is as scholarly and mentally challenging as the traditional full course paper with the ability to complete the project within the same time constraints used for an analog assignment?
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Posted 5 years ago Permalink
Julie Meloni
Admin
Best Answer

Replying to @amandavisconti's post:

This is an interesting question for me because as someone who recently completed my PhD I can say it never occurred to me to do an "alternative" digital project in lieu of something like a paper because, well, I know that very good digital projects tend to take longer/require more resources than "just" a paper, and quite frankly I'd expect to have to write a paper as well. In other words, within the scope of a seminar I'd not do twice the work. Would I use the opportunity of a paper to work through the potential theoretical challenges of a digital project, and do what I could to plan the project I'd eventually do? Sure. But would I also do the project? Not if I was teaching and had two other seminars, no.

I'm also of the mind that a professor who does not also—from day one—offer a digital alternative clearly defined is not a professor able to adequately judge the intellectual, creative, and technical merits of a digital project. And that's great, actually, to my mind, as it reduces the risk that professors will stamp simple static websites with suspect design as spectacular contributions to the field when they're just, shall we say, not.

Some might argue that it's our duty to push forth and make professors change their requirements, and I'm all for education of someone already willing to learn/who has an open mind. But if that professor isn't truly able to give the same level of feedback, support, and mentoring that they would with the analog assignments...I just don't know. I'd save the actual work for a time when I could get legitimate feedback (probably from outside reviewers).

Posted 5 years ago Permalink

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