[en] What can the digital humanities learn from feminist game
studies?Elizabeth Losh, University of California, San Diego
Abstract
[en]
When game studies became an area for scholarly inquiry in the academy, feminist
game studies soon followed. The first generation of feminist theory in game
studies built on the work of Sherry Turkle, Brenda Laurel, and Janet Murray,
although some might argue that the legacy of challenging gender norms in game
studies goes back even earlier. Now feminist game scholars organize
international conferences, edit journals and scholarly collections, and shape
trends in the profession, much as their counterparts in the digital humanities
attempt to do, but critics in feminist game studies have been able to take
advantage of what is seen as a relatively long trajectory of feminist
theoretical inquiry and field development. Articulating a need for a feminist
corrective in the digital humanities has come at a much slower pace, perhaps
because the instrumentalism of a “tool” seems much less
blatantly anti-feminist than the instrumentalism of a gun. Furthermore, calls to
action from more radicalized forms of feminist approaches to science and
technology studies have been noticeably absent in the literature around digital
information retrieval in the humanities. This issue of DHQ indicates that a sea change may finally be taking place.
[en] Beyond the Margins: Intersectionality and the Digital
HumanitiesRoopika Risam, Salem State University
Abstract
[en]
This article examines the relationship between intersectionality and the digital
humanities. Intersectionality offers a critical approach to debates between theory
and method in the field, transcending simplistic hack vs. yack binaries. This article
situates debates over difference in the digital humanities within the context of the
culture wars within the U.S. academy during the 1980s and 1990s, locating the stakes
for diversity in the digital humanities. It surveys digital humanities projects,
outlining the need for alternate histories of the digital humanities told through
intersectional lenses. Finally, the article proposes ways of looking forward towards
the deeper intersectional analysis needed to expand intellectual diversity in the
field and move difference beyond the margins of the digital humanities.
[en] #transform(ing)DH Writing and Research: An Autoethnography of
Digital Humanities and Feminist Ethics Moya Bailey, Northeastern University
Abstract
[en]
My research highlights the networks contemporary Black trans women create through the
production of digital media and in this article I make the emotional and
uncompensated labor of this community visible. I provide an added level of insight
into my research process as a way to mirror the access I was granted by these
collaborators. I use Digital Humanist Mark Sample’s concept of collaborative
construction to demonstrate my own efforts to enact a transformative
feminist process of writing and researching in the Digital Humanities (DH) while
highlighting the ways in which the communities I follow are doing the same in their
spheres of influence.
[en] The Shock of the Familiar: Three Timelines about Gender and
Technology in the LibraryGabrielle Dean, Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
[en]
Widespread ideals about libraries are in conflict with deep-rooted gender-based
inequities within the library and gendered perceptions of libraries and librarians by
the larger public. These contradictions are particularly striking when we look at
gender in conjunction with information technologies that help to structure work-roles
in the library, especially as these change. This article uses conventional and
“fictional” timelines to survey the historical junctures of
gender and technology in the library and to speculate about the future of the
academic library, with particular attention to deployments of the digital humanities
in the library and its potential for disrupting these long-standing gender
patterns.
[en] Enlisting “Vertues Noble &
Excelent”: Behavior, Credit, and Knowledge Organization in the Social
EditionConstance Crompton, University of British Columbia, Okanagan; Raymond Siemens, University of Victoria; Alyssa Arbuckle, University of Victoria; Implementing New Knowledge Environment (INKE)
Abstract
[en]
A part of the special issue of DHQ on feminisms and digital humanities, this paper
takes as its starting place Greg Crane’s exhortation that there is a “need to shift from lone editorials and monumental
editions to editors ... who coordinate contributions from many sources and oversee
living editions.” In response to Crane, the exploration of the “living edition” detailed here examines the
process of creating a publicly editable edition and considers what that edition, the
process by which it was built, and the platform in which it was produced means for
editions that support and promote gender equity. Drawing on the scholarship about the
culture of the Wikimedia suite of projects, and the gendered trolling experienced by
members of our team in the production of the Social Edition of the Devonshire
Manuscript in Wikibooks, and interviews with our advisory group, we argue that while
the Wikimedia projects are often openly hostile online spaces, the Wikimedia suite of
projects are so important to the contemporary circulation of knowledge, that the key
is to encourage gender equity in social behavior, credit sharing, and knowledge
organization in Wikimedia, rather than abandon it for a more controlled collaborative
environment for edition production and dissemination.
[en] An Information Science Question in DH FeminismTanya Clement, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin
Abstract
[en]
In 1986, Susan Harding published The Science Question in
Feminism in which she suggests that feminism had moved past
questioning “‘What is to be done
about the situation of women in science?’” – or first-wave
feminist initiatives — to include more women in the work of science. Aspects of
the “science question” that
consider the politics underlying epistemologies of “purportedly value-neutral claims and
practices”
resonate for the work (the research,
theory, and practices) being done to build information infrastructure in the
humanities today — the work that I am defining here as digital humanities work.
Reconsidering this work by using the lens of feminist inquiry to understand the
concerns common to information science and digital humanities is the perspective
I describe here. Specifically, as my title suggests, I am proposing that
feminist inquiry can help us articulate and better understand the epistemologies
in digital humanities and information science that are shaping the
infrastructures we are building and using in the humanities.
[en] Man and His Tool, Again? Queer and Feminist Notes on Practices
in the Digital Humanities and Object Orientations EverywhereJamie "Skye" Bianco, New York University
Abstract
[en]
As Matthew K. Gold acknowledges in his introduction to Debates in the Digital Humanities, there are some gaps, some
preferred object orientations, if you will, in the digital humanities. Many of
us and our work fall into these gaps, cracks, and in some cases, void space.
This work is not intended to indict the two collections examined here, Debates in the Digital Humanities and Companion to Digital Humanities, and in fact I am
represented in Debates in a piece entitled, “This Digital Humanities That Is Not One.” The piece at
hand intends, rather, to apply a basic computational humanities method,
frequency of keyword occurrence, to bring to the surface what is and what is not
visible or embodied across the scope of digital humanisms.
[en] Orientation: “Man and His Tool,
Again?”Nicole Starosielski, New York University
Abstract
[en]
A response to Jamie "Skye" Bianco's "Man and His Tool, Again? Queer and Feminist Notes on Practices
in the Digital Humanities and Object Orientations Everywhere."
