In “Notes towards a Deformed Humanities,” Mark Sample writes, “I want to propose a theory and practice of a Deformed Humanities. A humanities born of broken, twisted things. And what is broken and twisted is also beautiful, and a bearer of knowledge. The Deformed Humanities is an origami crane—a piece of paper contorted into an object of startling insight and beauty.” Citation practices on the web have begun to contort and twist like the origami crane Sample describes here. For many, this leads to a certain despair, but I find myself reveling in a moment, a threshold, across which our scholarly practices now teeter. Citation is becoming less about name-dropping and positioning and more about generosity and collaboration.
In “The Four Noble Virtues of Digital Media Citation,” Pete and I write, “the work we do as hybrid and critical pedagogues, digital humanists, and alternative academic publishers depends on our sharing ideas as part of a much larger project or conversation.” The questions we raise in this article recently served as the prompt for a #digped discussion of “New Media Conventions and Digital Citation.”