Proposed Talk Session:

Is there room for failure in digital humanities? Of course! But most people don’t advertise their failures. This proposed talk session provides an opportunity for a community of fellow travelers to share turning points that could not be foreseen, paths taken and then retraced, and dead ends that resulted after promises of success.

We learn from failure. We can gain resilience, perspective, and capacity by attempting what we have not done before. But not every failed project teaches great lessons. Introducing a collegial space for contemplation in project planning, operations, and evaluation can help.

The conversation could be structured by looking at several ways of contextualizing the social meanings of undertaking projects. How does failure (or fear of it) affect relationships, relate to resource allocation decisions, reflect or shape perspectives, or testify to the power of ego?

Suggested quotes for starting the discussion:

• “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” (Alexander Pope)
• “You break it, you own it.” (Colin Powell)
• “It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.” (Ellen DeGeneres)
• “All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.” (Sophocles)

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about digital humanities is the expansiveness of the field. It has no single definition, no limitations on what it is and isn’t. The possibilities within the field are limitless, but its liminality – its existence somewhere between “real” humanities and “real” tech – is also one of its largest drawbacks. For all of its possibilities, the field of digital humanities is also rife with questions: Can young academics put their DH work on their CVs? Can assistant professors use it to gain tenure? Can alt-ac doctorate-holders transform it into a non-academic career? And, perhaps most important of all, can those of us toiling in the (often-unpaid) DH bowels get, and keep, others on board to help them with their projects? Ultimately, I hope to explore how can we explain the importance and significance of this growing and dynamic field to our core audiences: other academics, and the public at large.

I am an ACLS Public Fellow/Engagement Analyst at the Center for Public Integrity, the managing editor of Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society, and a writer whose first book (a history of marijuana activism from the 1960s to today) is being published by Basic next year. I work with DH every day, and I hope to use my presentation to discuss the possibilities and potential of this field for academia/alt-ac, but also dialogue with others about where we see the field going, where its greatest applications lie, and how we can bring more people into the conversation. The emphasis of DH has long been, in my opinion, an opening of the humanities to as broad as audience as possible – certainly a worthy goal. But it begs even more questions: What can we do, and what goals can we keep in mind, to achieve this? And where are the richest possibilities for the field?

Last year, more than 50% of all internet traffic took place within mobile devices. How should the DH community respond to this ongoing shift to mobile-computing? How does it impact our teaching/research goals? How should we define a “mobile” technology? How can such technologies reshape our perspective on a physical space?

In this session, I would like to explore these and other questions as I share some of my own experience in creating mobile augmented reality applications for humanities projects. Specifically, I want to explore how DH can leverage this uptick in mobile computing to create location-based digital experiences for culturally significant sites. To contextualize this discussion, I will discuss some of my experiences using mobile technologies in the classroom. In addition, I will introduce a location-based mobile app I am co-creating for use at TPC-Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL.

According to Matthew G. Kirschenbaum and Doug Reside, “The ‘challenge’ of the born digital is thus at least as much  social as it is technological.  New textual forms require new  work habits, new training, new tools, new practices, and new instincts.”

This session examines ENG 3817 Digital Archives, a course I teach at UCF to undergraduates.  The course examines the development and function of digital “representation” from a practical “hands on” perspective.  In focusing on the creation, management, and preservation of electronic texts and images as it relates to personal and public archive practices, students gain experience with image scanning, Optical Character Recognition use, text-encoding processes, and other skills. They also study platform delivery, interface usability, copyright laws, and metadata creation by using Omeka, an open source web-publishing platform, as part of a course project. In addition to understanding how metadata is used with electronic records, they  examine the “Wayback Machine” and the basics of “web archiving” efforts to preserve what is on the Internet.

I would like to use my course as a springboard for discussion of similar courses at other institutions and of how to foster a digital humanities curriculum in general.

I would like to propose a teach session on how to use online exhibit creation to teach students valuable critical thinking and digital humanities skills for lifelong learning. Based off teaching Omeka and Weebly to various undergraduate courses at UF, this session would cover what types of critical thinking skills can be learned from using Omeka and free website building sites, how to use these programs in the classroom, and what types of projects students can create. Best practices for teaching and other guidelines would also be covered. If scheduled, I would anticipate attendees would also get an opportunity to play around in Omeka as well. Although my experience is in the higher education classroom, I think this session would also be great for those who work in secondary schools as well.