[-empyre-] Engineering the University - Closing Week 03

[Hamilton, Kevin]

Hello all,

This week Rhiannon and Julia took the occasion of the newly visible labor
afforded by Digital Humanities research to dive more deeply into the
details of where values emerge at the level of applied technical
problem-solving and collective disciplinary work. It should come as no
surprise to those on the list familiar with Art-Science, Research
Creation, or Art and Technology discourses that one has to get into such
details before the clearest and hardest questions emerge. Clearer
critiques and discernible choices emerge at such levels of specificity, as
do the various possible arrangements by which we might explicitly address
the different divisions of labor, responsibility, and reward of our moment.

I really appreciate how the discussion of "standards" that Rhiannon and
Julia left us with  challenges us to recognize the discipline-making we
all do, despite how uncomfortable some might be with the idea. This
resonates for me with scholarship in anthropology and social theory that
shows how the valuing of the "interdisciplinary" is of a piece with
disciplinary work - a part of the process of producing boundaries.

Rhiannon and Julia did some mammoth work this week. Julia especially gave
a great deal to the task of describing the different convergent and
divergent conversations taking place in the "estuary" of Digital
Humanities, and orienting  us to the precedents and problems in that area.
I found her description of the landscape some of the most lucid I've
encountered, with great connections, for what its worth, to some equally
valuable work I recently encountered from Beth Novwiskie, a colleague of
Chad's at University of Virginia. (Posted at
http://nowviskie.org/2015/a-game-nonetheless/ as a response to a paper I
recently delivered.)

I'll be back later today to introduce our final week of the month's
conversation. For now, I want to thank Julia and Rhiannon so much for
their generosity, and also Ben, Murat and others for wading in with
questions and clarifications.

More later today,

Kevin