Author: Joan Fragaszy Troyano

Paper delivered on 29 September 2011 in Special Collections of the University of Cardiff Library as the “Inaugural Annual Cardiff Rare Books and Music Lecture.”

The challenge to our engagement in and with the humanities today is the digital medium. This engagement moves into fresh light and focus in consequence of the medium, since, through the new mediality, ‘what we have always done’ is no longer a matter of course, hence remaining unreflected in itself, but demands instead reflection and questioning.

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If there are two things that academia doesn’t need, they are another book about Darwin and another blog post about defining the digital humanities. But it’s always right around this time of year that I find myself preparing for my digital history course and being pulled down the contemplative rabbit hole about how describe the nature of the digital humanities to a new and varied audience. But rather than create my own definition, I wanted one cobbled together from everyone else.

I’m delighted that the edited version of Hacking the Academy is now available on the University of Michigan’s DigitalCultureBooks site. Here are some of my quick thoughts on the process of putting the book together.

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For my presentation at Digital Humanities 2011 at Stanford, I am analyzing a collection of 134 syllabi to understand how the DH curriculum is being conceived.  What kinds of assignments are being made? What works appear most frequently on reading lists? What are some major concepts that the courses explore?

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One longstanding debate in the Digital Humanities has been the value of teaching programming skills in humanities courses. The main argument in favor of it: 21st century humanists need skills to harness growing amounts of (digital) data. The main argument against: it’s too technical a skill for a methodology that’s largely antithetical to why people go into the humanities. On this issue I have remained on the fence for some time, but as I continue to experiment with various text mining projects, and continue to fiddle with my digital history course, I am now convinced that basic techniques for data manipulation should be taught as part of the humanities curriculum.

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