We’ve been here all along: DH and (In)visible Labor: DSSN 2023 Symposium: Home
The following is a collection of companion literature to go with the theme of the 2023 DSSN Symposium of labor and the Digital Humanities
Last Updated: Jan 8, 2024 4:44 PM
- People, Practice, Power byISBN: 9781452965130Publication Date: 2022-01-18An illuminating volume of critical essays charting the diverse territory of digital humanities scholarship The digital humanities have traditionally been considered to be the domain of only a small number of prominent and well-funded institutions. However, through a diverse range of critical essays, this volume serves to challenge and enlarge existing notions of how digital humanities research is being undertaken while also serving as a kind of alternative guide for how it can thrive within a wide variety of institutional spaces. Focusing on the complex infrastructure that undergirds the field of digital humanities, People, Practice, Power examines the various economic, social, and political factors that shape such academic endeavors. The multitude of perspectives comprising this collection offers both a much-needed critique of the existing structures for digital scholarship and the means to generate broader representation within the field. This collection provides a vital contribution to the realm of digital scholarly research and pedagogy in acknowledging the role that small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, historically black colleges and universities, and other underresourced institutions play in its advancement. Gathering together a range of voices both established and emergent, People, Practice, Power offers practitioners a self-reflexive examination of the current conditions under which the digital humanities are evolving, while helping to open up new sustainable pathways for its future.
- The Adjunct Underclass byISBN: 9780226496665Publication Date: 2019-04-24Class ends. Students pack up and head back to their dorms. The professor, meanwhile, goes to her car . . . to catch a little sleep, and then eat a cheeseburger in her lap before driving across the city to a different university to teach another, wholly different class. All for a paycheck that, once prep and grading are factored in, barely reaches minimum wage. Welcome to the life of the mind in the gig economy. Over the past few decades, the job of college professor has been utterly transformed--for the worse. America's colleges and universities were designed to serve students and create knowledge through the teaching, research, and stability that come with the longevity of tenured faculty, but higher education today is dominated by adjuncts. In 1975, only thirty percent of faculty held temporary or part-time positions. By 2011, as universities faced both a decrease in public support and ballooning administrative costs, that number topped fifty percent. Now, some surveys suggest that as many as seventy percent of American professors are working course-to-course, with few benefits, little to no security, and extremely low pay. In The Adjunct Underclass, Herb Childress draws on his own firsthand experience and that of other adjuncts to tell the story of how higher education reached this sorry state. Pinpointing numerous forces within and beyond higher ed that have driven this shift, he shows us the damage wrought by contingency, not only on the adjunct faculty themselves, but also on students, the permanent faculty and administration, and the nation. How can we say that we value higher education when we treat educators like desperate day laborers? Measured but passionate, rooted in facts but sure to shock, The Adjunct Underclass reveals the conflicting values, strangled resources, and competing goals that have fundamentally changed our idea of what college should be. This book is a call to arms for anyone who believes that strong colleges are vital to society.
- Disrupting the Digital Humanities byISBN: 9781947447714Publication Date: 2018-11-06All too often, defining a discipline becomes more an exercise of exclusion than inclusion. Disrupting the Digital Humanities seeks to rethink how we map disciplinary terrain by directly confronting the gatekeeping impulse of many other so-called field-defining collections. What is most beautiful about the work of the Digital Humanities is exactly the fact that it can't be tidily anthologized. In fact, the desire to neatly define the Digital Humanities (to filter the DH-y from the DH) is a way of excluding the radically diverse work that actually constitutes the field. This collection, then, works to push and prod at the edges of the Digital Humanities - to open the Digital Humanities rather than close it down. Ultimately, it's exactly the fringes, the outliers, that make the Digital Humanities both lovely and rigorous. This collection does not constitute yet another reservoir for the new Digital Humanities canon. Rather, our aim is less about assembling content as it is about creating new conversations. Building a truly communal space for the digital humanities requires that we all approach that space with a commitment to: 1) creating open and non-hierarchical dialogues; 2) championing non-traditional work that might not otherwise be recognized through conventional scholarly channels; 3) amplifying marginalized voices; 4) advocating for students and learners; and 5) sharing generously to support the work of our peers.
- Workplace Culture in Academic Libraries byISBN: 1780633688Publication Date: 2013-02-11Workplace culture refers to conditions that collectively influence the work atmosphere. These can include policies, norms, and unwritten standards for behavior. This book focuses on various aspects of workplace culture in academic libraries from the practitioners' viewpoint, as opposed to that of the theoretician. The book asks the following questions: What conditions contribute to an excellent academic library work environment? What helps to make a particular academic library a great place to work? Articles focus on actual programs while placing the discussion in a scholarly context. The book is structured into 14 chapters, covering various aspects of workplace culture in academic libraries, including: overview of workplace culture, assessment, recruitment, acclimation for new librarians, workforce diversity, physical environment, staff morale, interaction between departments, tenure track/academic culture, mentoring/coaching, generational differences, motivation/incentives, complaints/conflict management, and organizational transparency. Includes the most current best practices and models in academic libraries Represents the viewpoints of both the employee and manager Focuses on the academic library as workplace rather than as a service provider
- Reframing Digital Humanities byISBN: 9781626101036Publication Date: 2020-10-01Growing from Reframing History, a podcast about history theory and practice, Reframing Digital Humanities: Conversations with Digital Humanists, Julian Chambliss, Professor of English at Michigan State University, brings together a diverse group of digital humanities practitioners to reflect on theory and practice. From the question of public engagement and knowledge production to considerations of identity and cultural production, the conversations presented in this work shed light on the ways digital humanities offer scholars tools to ask humane questions. Are the benefits promised being achieved? Are the right tools and training available? Are we asking the right questions? In this volume, scholars deeply engaged in using digital tools reflect on their work and this dynamic academic field.
- Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019 byISBN: 9781452961668Publication Date: 2019-04-30The latest installment of a digital humanities bellwether Contending with recent developments like the shocking 2016 U.S. Presidential election, the radical transformation of the social web, and passionate debates about the future of data in higher education, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019 brings together a broad array of important, thought-provoking perspectives on the field's many sides. With a wide range of subjects including gender-based assumptions made by algorithms, the place of the digital humanities within art history, data-based methods for exhuming forgotten histories, video games, three-dimensional printing, and decolonial work, this book assembles a who's who of the field in more than thirty impactful essays.
- “Just a few files”: technical labor, academe, and care, by Andromeda YeltonThe post that inspired the event. Written in response to a peer-reviewed that included the quote "They tired of care-taking, even though this involved little more than continuing to host the project files on a server", Yelot speaks of the expertise, time, and energy required to maintain all the DH projects. Yelton highlights how " the labor conditions of your techies’ work lives are an important part of that plan. If your plan rests on making their jobs suck, it is not a sustainable plan. Or one that anyone should feel good about."
- Disrupting Labor in Digital Humanities; or, The Classroom Is Not Your Crowd, by Spencer D.C. KeralisFrom "Disrupting the Digital Humanities." Students end up becoming part of many DH projects but end up not getting proper credit for their work. Spencer Keralis argues how you can do better by your students.
- Digital Writing & Digital Divides in the US: Electronic Literature & Privilege, by Leonardo FloresFrom Leonardo Flores' presentation to UVA's Scholar Lab in 2022. The digital divide has led areas like electric literature as predominantly white, and influences who we assume is a scholar in this area. Leonardo argues for expanding our concept of digital writing to diversify the field.
- Reproducing the Academy: Librarians and the Question of Service in the Digital Humanities, by Roxanne ShiraziAs part of a panel for ALA focusing on DH and Libraries, Shirazi concentrates specifically on the librarian's role. More importantly, she asks, "Do librarians work in service of scholarship or are they servile to scholars?"
- Emporia State University is about to suspend tenure. Here’s why you should care. from Kansas ReflectorFaculty rely on tenure as protection from losing their jobs, but what happens when that protection is stripped by a government entity? Here's an example of what happened at Emporia State in Kansas, and why this is also a conversation about academic freedom and what is owed to workers.
- Minimizing Computing Maximizes Labor, by Quinn DombrowskiA focus on the practice of minimal computing, and the technical workers who must teach scholars how to implement the practice in their own work. Dombrowski asks about the emotional work of taking responsibility for training and having the know-hows, but getting dismissed by your position in academia.
- The Ivory Ceiling of Service Work, By Joya Misra, Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, Elissa Holmes, and Stephanie AgiomavritisService work continues to pull women associate professors away from research. What can be done?
- A Digital Humanities Tenure Case, Part 2: Letters and Committees, by Sean TakatsSean Takats, history professor and former co-director of the Zotero project, had his digital scholarship projects dismissed during his tenure review by the campus review committee. Even though they voted 10-2 in his favor, Takats notes how the committee viewed his work as service instead of scholarship, and how this plays into the larger dismissal of project management in academia.
- Don’t Call Me, by Dr. Jennifer GuilianoA companion to the Takats piece, but also argues for reconsidering the title "project manager" and academic bureaucracy continues to delegitimize the work of non-senior faculty.
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