Reading Assignment - D_H Short Guide (Undergraduates & Graduates): Lu Jing
This reading first attempted to define digital humanities as a “collaborative, trans-disciplinary, and computationally engaged” practice, diverting from views that suggest digital humanities as a digital “remapping” of humanities practices. Instead, emphasis is placed on devising new boundaries, expanding impact, and developing innovative inquiry and knowledge production in the digital print-plus era for humanities knowledge.
Most interestingly, the author suggests that digital humanities be used as a means of training for future humanists through project-based learning. The author underlines the use of projects in digital humanities in the second section of this reading, touching upon the topics of team structure, partnering organization, funding, and authorship. Digital humanities are then highlighted as an “augmented model of pedagogy” by the author, taking on the framing as educators.
The author highlighted a third point regarding integrating visual, audio, and other multimedia elements with textual content in the “new generation of Digital Humanities.” A design-based approach is necessary for humanists to utilize a myriad of digital functions adeptly. The author discussed augmented features of the “digital print-plus” era, such as multiple views, fluid scale shifts, interweaved datasets, and coexistence of multiple pathways and versioning, et cetera, in the processing and presentation of information. What was mesmerizing is how the author suggests works in digital humanities be viewed as having “lives” - supported by rapid refreshes and going through “remixing” or splitting with no definite completion point. I believe such an ecological view would be instrumental in guiding the designs of fluid approaches to digital humanities projects.