Reflective blog post #1

connor
Mon, 19 Sep 2022 04:56:16 +0000
Week 1, blog post, connor, Digital Humanities, reflection

“[T]he Digital Humanities has greatly expanded the potential power and reach of the humanities disciplines, both within the academy, and, just as importantly, outside its walls.”
Burdick et al. “One: From Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 3.

Why did this particular passage grab your attention?

One of the most important parts of the acquisition and expression of knowledge is that it be accessible to others, even those without formal training in a given field. At least in the laboratory sciences there is the assumption that actual researchers will produce literature for other academics while designated “science communicators” will relay the most important of this information to the masses through means such as news programming or pop science journalism, so to see accessibility emphasized so strongly as a foundation of a field rather than an afterthought was quite surprising to me.

What elements of your past experiences, current interests, or future plans did it kindle?

As a biology major I have had to read many, many research articles and am always struck at how dense and aloof the writing is. Even professors confess to having to read through a given article multiple times to fully absorb its contents, so someone with no STEM experience would be hopelessly lost trying to interpret the vast majority of work done in some of the most influential fields of work today.

My own personal frustration with this type of writing has given me a strong desire to make my future work available and understandable to anyone interested in it, especially those outside of academia. The fact that many academics are trying to emphasize this type of accessibility in the humanities gives me some reassurance that a similar mindset can be achieved in the sciences as well.

Under the large umbrella of Digital (Arts &) Humanities, which areas of inquiry, methods or techniques are you most eager to pursue this term and why?

I am very eager to learn about the use of visual representation tools like 3D modelling and web design to distribute one’s work. I am also interested in learning more about the techniques used by DAH academics to help those outside their fields find and understand their work, especially projects that might be considered more dense or difficult to engage with than a simpler project such as the http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com/ website.