Slides from a talk given at the NEH-ODH 2015 Summer Institute on Digital Humanities at the community college

1. Digital Humanities at the
Community College
Dr. Jennifer J Dellner
Professor of English and Literature
Ocean County College

2. What is [are] the Digital
Humanities ?
Wikipedia Definition (7.31.2011) quoted by Kirschenbaum (2012) and Klein (2015):
The digital humanities, also known as humanities
computing, is a field of study, research, teaching, and
invention concerned with the intersection of computing
and the disciplines of the humanities. It is
methodological by nature and interdisciplinary in scope.
It involves investigation, analysis, synthesis and
presentation of information in electronic form. It studies
how these media affect the disciplines in which they are
used, and what these disciplines have to contribute to
our knowledge of computing .

3. You may already be doing
digital humanities without
thinking about it.
What are some practices that could be thought of as
engaging in digital humanities?

4. Digital Humanities in Practice:
Using digital resources, e.g. digital(-ized) archives or
exhibitions:
http://exhibitions.nypl.org/biblion/worldsfair
Studying or using digital objects, e.g. games, e-lit:
http://prynovella.com/
Project based learning: creating a digital object, e.g. a map
or creative piece:
E-portfolio or web page/site
https://sites.google.com/site/radicalfeminismofthemodernera/ Hannah Wieczorek ENGL H 256
2014
Hypertext document/multi-modal composition
http://creatingmultimodaltexts.com
Digital storytelling and art
https://micharoja.itch.io/redshift-and-portalmetal
https://vimeo.com/29704452 (Inanimate Alice episode created by grade school
student)

5. An NEH Advanced Topics in Digital Humanities Institute for
Community College Digital Humanists:
“Beyond Pockets of Innovation, Toward a Community of
Practice”
held at Lane Community College, July 13-7, 2015
“Since I first began my engagement with DH, I
have noticed that community college humanists
have been slow to join conversations and
communities of practice in digital humanities
(DH). This is in part because serving students in
an open-access context involves intensive
teaching and service workloads and constraints
on professional development. This institute seeks
to address this lag in DH at community colleges.”
---Dr. Anne McGrail, Institute Leader, Prof. of English, Lane
Community College, Eugene, OR
https://blogs.lanecc.edu/dhatthecc/

6. The DH @ the CC
Commons
This site serves as a Commons for Institute
members and other community college faculty
interested in Digital Humanities and the
community college classroom.
https://dhatthecc.lanecc.edu/

7. Summary of an Institute
Discussion about the role of DH at
the CC:
“…when we see ‘University’ are we included--or,
better, how does the community college disrupt
the university? how do CCs fulfill what they
want? The university does not have to think
about the community college but we have to
think about them. We want to be invited to the
table, and our students want to be invited to the
table… but if we wait for an invitation, then we’re
waiting for someone else to act.” 7.15.2015

8. Integrating DH into Existing Courses: Example One:
Sharon Utakis, Bronx Community College (CUNY) and Dominique Zino,
LaGuardia Community College (CUNY)
Exploring Digital Humanities Tools in the First-Year Seminar
First-year seminar objectives: college skills 101 (critical thinking, information literacy), integration of
support systems across the college (ePortfolios, peer mentors, studio hour, co-curriculum education,
learning competencies); introduction to the discipline (@ LaGuardia, there are three meta disciplines:
liberal arts, health sciences, business and technology)
Use of a local archive: the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives, specifically The New York City Housing
Authority Collection:
http://www.laguardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu/COLLECTIONS.aspx?ViwType=1&ColID=2
Semester-long project objectives in the FYS: Students will be ...
interviewing long-time neighborhood residents (and/or partnering with the NYPL to obtain oral
histories)
scaffolding the course in ePortfolio, maybe even linking ePortfolio sections across campuses in
Spring 2016 (may need admin approval--ideas for how to pitch this to admins across two
campuses?)
using Google maps (street view) to tag locations, annotating them with images and notes from the
archives, to display past/present change in their respective neighborhoods (the mapping element
could extend the resource for classes over multiple semester)
What we want students to gain: an introduction to how different liberal arts disciplines would
approach the study of their neighborhoods

9. Integrating DH into Existing Courses Example Two:
Jack Norton, Normandale Community College, MN
Materials for a whole World History Course using
Digital Humanities Tools:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0CODA
_wUP4DfnROMkxBYWdLQ0dqTHJBSkQ2aXFrU
WFodDYxRWFyakJQRXBIWkJxazQyNmM&usp=
sharing
GIS mapping
Voyant and Ngram
Library databases for articles
and more….

10. Where can we talk and
share and debate DH at
Ocean?
One place among many, I hope: This Digital
Ocean: https://dhatthecc.lanecc.edu/digitalocean/