Tuesday, October 11, 12:30-1:45PM
MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135
“Criticism in the Digital Humanities” by FRED GIBBS
As the digital humanities community expands beyond its computing roots, and as humanistic inquiry and interpretation (as opposed to methodological novelty) feature more prominently in its projects, the boundaries between digital and analog humanities grow increasingly blurred and permeable. One fortunate result is that more DH work has been opened up to scholarly critique by a considerably broader humanities audience. However, much of this work — often the most innovative — cannot be fully evaluated through the traditional critical lenses of the humanities.
This talk argues that the DH community neither has established a sufficient rubric for critiquing its work, nor has been critical enough of its own projects. It argues, too, that DH work does require special consideration that is not part of typical humanities criticism, and without it, calls its own value into question. So what constitutes a scholarly DH project? How many critical rubrics might be needed to accommodate the variety of valuable projects? Can the diversifying DH community ever agree on these? This talk grapples with a critical theory for the digital humanities with hopes of fostering a much longer conversation about how humanities scholars can appreciate and fruitfully critique the variety of digital work that is reshaping the humanities.
Dr. Gibb’s talk will be held in the MITH Conference Room, in the basement of McKeldin Library.
Fred Gibbs is an assistant professor of history at George Mason University and Director of Digital Scholarship at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. His research interests lie at the intersection of natural philosophy and medicine in the late medieval and early modern periods. His current research explores medical literature on poison c.1200-1600, especially how physicians debated its ontological existence and its role in disease. At RR-CHNM, he develops and executes both large and small digital humanities projects sponsored by a variety of funding agencies, including the NEH, NSF, Sloan, and Mellon Foundations. Most of these grapple with the theoretical and practical challenges of using large datasets for historical research. More detailed info at fredgibbs.net
Coming up @MITH 10/18: Jennifer Guiliano (Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities), “Practical Strategies for Digital Humanities Development: 10 Things I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me Before I Began Digital Humanities Research”
A continuously updated schedule of talks is also available on the Digital Dialogues webpage.
Unable to attend the events in person? Archived podcasts can be found on the MITH website, and you can follow our Digital Dialogues Twitter account @digdialog as well as the Twitter hashtag #mithdd to keep up with live tweets from our sessions.
All talks free and open to the public. Attendees are welcome to bring their own lunches.
Contact: Emma Millon, Community Lead, MITH (http://mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-9887).