Digital Humani,es Ini,a,ve:
Some Analogies and Thoughts

Growing up, I was always taught that Jews are the most disputa,on‐prone of
all ethnici,es and religions. Put nine Jews in a room and you get ten opinions.
Then I went in to academia and started working on commiEees. Some of the
most interes,ng DHI discussions I’ve had about both the defini,on of digital
humani,es and the purpose of the Digital Humani,es Ini,a,ve make yeshiva
pilpul look like, well, playground arguments. So anything I assert about the
DHI is inevitably open to debate.
I say this because I have found DHI commiEee
conversa,on a fascina,ng reflec,on of the puzzlement
that the Humani,es at large is experiencing in the face
a new and pervasive medium. Every Digital Humani,es
Center I have visited online is trying to figure out
precisely what they should be doing.

So let me start with an asser,on whose main point of
controversy is hopefully that it is a bit tautological: the Digital
Humani,es Ini,a,ve is trying to encourage the study and use
of digital technology from a cri,cal perspec,ve.
We have decided to start with what we would
not like to do: we are not suppor,ng classroom teaching.
There are several organiza,ons on the Boulder campus that
support teaching with technology, including ATLAS, The
Dean’s Fund for Excellence, and FTEP. It’s not that we provide
sufficient encouragement for teaching with technology on
this campus – we don’t. It’s just that there is almost no
organized support for scholarship in Digital Humani,es. So
here is what we don’t do: we don’t provide support for
clickers; we don’t provide funds for experimental classroom
methods.

We are engaged in the following ac,vi,es:
finding and applying for grants, uncovering scholarly and
ar,s,c projects to support, and engaging in a consor,um –
Project Bamboo – with several other universi,es for the
same purposes.
We are been in business for just a year, so we
are looking for worthwhile projects to help out. And by
help out, I mean provide help with fundraising rather than
directly with funds. We have no funds.

I’d like to spend some ,me talking about some
sample projects going on at other ins,tu,ons.
In 2008 curators at the
Boston Museum of Fine
Arts X‐Rayed a
TintoreEo
“Na,vity” (1570), and
found that what had
seemed an awkward
single pain,ng was in
fact a s,tching‐together
of several works.

One of which was a crucifixion
A na,vity that is a palimpsest of a crucifixion
changes rather significantly our sense of the
meaning of the pain,ng. X‐Ray and infrared
technology have changed the way art cri,cs
and historians understand their object of
study. For example, our sense of provenance
and even of subject is further destabilized.

Most of the university centers for research thema,ze their
research projects. For example, Stanford’s Center for
Computer Assisted Research in the Humani,es focuses on
Music research; King’s College Centre for Compu,ng in the
Humani,es specializes in “visualiza,on research”;
University of Virginia’s Ins,tute for Advanced Technology
in the Humani,es (IATH) favors historical projects, with an
emphasis on histories of the Far East, and Medieval and
Renaissance Europe; The Center for the Digital Humani,es
at the University of South Carolina uses its Scholarly
Edi,on and Digital Archive of the works of Edmund
Spenser as a sort of centerpiece; MIT’s Hyperstudio
digi,zes documenta,on around specific subjects
interes,ng to different kinds of scholars; George Mason
University’s Center for History and New Media originates
new soiware for scholars: Zotero, Omeka, and Text
Mining, to name a few. And so on.

Many projects are essen,ally databases, for which the
revolu,on has already been televised. These are
interes,ng ways of rela,ng Humani,es research and
technology. Their prolifera,on is a sign of health in the
Humani,es, and a sign that the way we think about
scholarship is changing.

Though worthwhile, these projects seem to me to
be not pieces of original scholarship in the way we
think of such work – as contribu,ng a new bit of
knowledge or a new way of looking at familiar
knowledge. Rather, these examples of digital
scholarship tend to either disseminate already‐
existent knowledge to a general public, or to provide
the tools for other scholarship that is not itself
digital.
We now know how to use digital
technology to data‐mine, archive, visualize, and
collaborate. The ques,on is: to what end?

The problem with using digital technologies to do
tradi,onal cri,cism is that it is intellectually
reac,onary, a way of retrea,ng from the cri,cal
heights and highs the Humani,es has experienced in
the last few decades. A throwaway line in an ar,cle
submiEed to the DHI list reminded me of this: “no
sugges,on for rehabilita,ng [the Humani,es] can be
as controversial as making digital informa,on and
technology its savior.”

I have to admit to being more interested in kinds of
scholarship that actually change the way we do
scholarship. For example, the Hinman Collator, of the late
1940s, which allowed Shakespeare scholars at the Folger
Library to compare folios for physical differences in type,
encouraged an interest in the material condi,ons of
books, print, and type.
By the by, the campus library evidently owns a
Hinman collator, which is preEy cool by any
standard. Does anyone know where it is?

What Humani,es scholarship can deploy, reinvent,
or re‐imagine digital technology in a way that makes
people think differently, or that makes other
scholars do scholarship differently? You should be
hearing a number of interes,ng research projects
origina,ng at or around CU in the next couple of
days, (my presenter‐colleague’s discussion of Zotero,
for example) but here are a couple that are
happening elsewhere.

For my money, some of the most interes,ng stuff in
the Humani,es is going on in the Arts, for example
at Rhizome.org

Here is an idea for changing the way Humani,es scholars
interact.
CinemaBus: An Online Film Journal
A journal that can make use of the various forms of representa,on available to
the Internet – video, text, sound, image – in order to provide an open‐access
online journal of interest to scholars, film buffs, and the general public.
Such a journal can provide a new model for scholarship in the
public sphere; further, because it is mul,media, it can provide an ideal venue for
film scholarship that does not exist in print media.
The journal will func,on as a scholarly journal 2.0. That is to
say it will bring film scholarship to the public sphere, and provide the public
sphere to film scholars. Other hard‐copy film journals have in the past
aEempted this kind of crossover; the BFI’s Sight and Sound is probably the most
successful. But no such journal has had the kind of mass par,cipa,on that the
Internet enables. Even now, no such film studies journal website exists on the
Internet. And, except for a very few such experiments as Vectors, very few
Humani,es journals are as ambi,ous to use the poten,al of the Internet as a
site for the experimental representa,on of scholarship.

Here is a brief, prac,cal descrip,on of the journal website:
1. This quarterly journal will be publically accessible by anyone who signs up for a
(free) account. Anyone with an account may contribute to an ar,cle’s wikis and
blogs. While the journal ar,cles will not be editable, the wikis will u,lize soiware
(for example “Reframe It” [reframeit.com]) that will allow commentary,
annota,on, and other forms of marginalia.
2. The journal will consist of ar,cles – created as wikis – wriEen by scholars for a
large audience. Film scholars will be solicited to provide essays on central
ques,ons about the cri,cism, history, produc,on, and theory of film. These
essays will be highlighted as exemplary texts designed for emula,on, annota,on,
cri,que, and discussion. Though we are aiming for ideological neutrality, themes
for each issue will be provoca,ve. We are considering “Covert Racism in Recent
Hollywood Film” as the journal’s first entry. The prose style will range from Sight
and Sound to the BFI books on film. (Again, the point of these Bri,sh publica,ons
is to bring scholarship to a popular audience.)
3. Ar,cles will be accompanied by suppor,ng visuals (for example, video clips) in
a design agreed upon by the writer and the journal. Each author will receive
technical help in moun,ng film s,lls, video clips, and other visuals in a way that
best represents the argument of the ar,cle.
4. The journal will collect the most interes,ng blog discussions as separate
publica,ons.