What do you do? <\/em> There is always more we can say about ourselves, our interests, and our work. If I decide that I want to go into greater depth, I might specify to this person that\u2014while I love Austen\u2019s novels\u2014the literature I study typically comes later in the century than Austen\u2019s. In fact, I am currently writing a dissertation that examines late-nineteenth century British literature that deal with issues of social reform and resistance. And if I\u2019m feeling really chatty, I might add that my dissertation uses literary cartography and geocriticism to look at places where particular communities lived, where they were forced to move, and how literary accounts correspond with these maps. The point is, in many circles of academia, we\u2019re asked to clearly define our disciplines or areas of expertise: late-nineteenth-century British literature, twentieth-century American history of baseball, biochemical engineering, etc. We often have titles, categories, or topics that delineate our \u201careas\u201d into nice and neat sound bites. I\u2019ve quickly found that is less true of our work in the digital humanities (DH). What are the digital humanities? Or, better yet, how am I defining DH? When Clifford A. Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), was asked how he would define \u201cdigital scholarship?\u201d<\/em> his response was seemingly evasive, but honest:<\/p>\n \u201cDigital scholarship is an incredibly awkward term that people have come up with to describe a complex group of developments. The phrase is really, at some basic level, nonsensical. After all, scholarship is scholarship\u201d (10).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Even though I know this\u2014that scholarship is scholarship\u2014I\u2019ve still struggled with my relationship with the digital humanities as I work within \u201cthe field,\u201d but still feel outside of it. I turn back to the continuous question that many before me have posed: What does it mean to work in the digital humanities?\u00b9<\/p>\n As I look around this morning, sitting at one computer of many in the Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio (DSPS), I assume that behind many of the screens my summer fellowship colleagues are busy coding or revising code that they\u2019ve been working on this summer. This seems like the obvious addition to make something digital\u2026 get to coding. (Keep in mind I say this with about the same amount of \u201ccoding knowledge\u201d as my pet terrier.) I\u2019ve sat in on conversations about \u201ccoding concerns,\u201d like: when to write new code, and when to use what\u2019s available; when to take a coding break and focus on thematic and theoretical concerns; and which types of coding are sustainable and transferable across platforms. And yet, the truth is, I don\u2019t code! Sure, I was exhilarated when I figured out how to create a hanging indent in html (as demonstrated in my earlier post); I wanted my bibliographic entries appear in correct MLA format in Omeka.\u00b2 However, I don\u2019t code and I don\u2019t program; I read, I research, and I analyze.<\/p>\n My work became \u201cdigital\u201d when I applied for assistance to create a map of where characters lived and traveled in William Morris\u2019s utopian romance, News from <\/em>Nowhere<\/em>. Then when several of my colleagues assisted with this endeavor,\u00b3 my project expanded to analyze the literary cartography and geography of several authors and their work in my dissertation. Most of my time on the \u201cdigital\u201d side of things has been simple data entry. I\u2019m working with Neatline (as a plug-in for Omeka), and after I finished importing my first batch of records from an excel spreadsheet (in csv format), I\u2019ve simply been revising records in Omeka and adding new ones (fig. 1).<\/p>\n For a while, I felt self-conscious about this perceived gap between my assumptions about DH and my own skills and my project. I wondered if my records and maps would reveal anything useful and hoped that this wasn\u2019t all a waste of time. I shared my concerns with White, my point person in DSPS, embarrassed to admit my uncertainty and expose my potential for failure. However, she reassured me that almost everyone feels this way at some point, regardless of their expertise: \u201cWorking in the digital humanities is about figuring out how to ask the right questions and who to ask.\u201d Basically, it means asking questions all the time to everyone who will listen and being ready to learn.<\/p>\n How is this different from \u201cnon-digital\u201d scholarship? It isn\u2019t, really. As a DH project, my work this summer has demanded my attention to process (how and why I enter certain records) and my desperate reliance on others.4<\/sup> Now these demands have been digital-specific\u2014in that I am working with online platforms and plug-ins, and working with a digital librarian (shout out, Nikki!)\u2014but they are not specific to digital work generally<\/em>. All scholarship requires diligent consideration of process and\u2014although many of us in the humanities try to deny it\u2014scholarship is a collaborative<\/em> endeavor. As Lynch says, \u201cscholarship is scholarship,\u201d and the tools we use don\u2019t change that. To say that I work in the digital humanities, doesn\u2019t mean that I am a computer guru or can code with the best of \u2018em. All it means (for me), is that I have found useful digital tools (created by someone else and used by many others) to address a research question.<\/p>\n As I study the work of Mathilde Blind and Mary Macpherson, I am thrilled to see that my data reveals a distinction in the Neatline map between the places these authors lived (London and Glasgow) and the northern Highlands they portrayed in their poetry and political discourse (see figures 2 & 3). I am continuing my research in additional Neatline exhibits to address similar discrepancies between how a place is portrayed and how it is experienced. Neatline allows me to demonstrate these points of interest, but it is only one part of my scholarship puzzle. Similarly, the digital humanities can be useful and impactful, but\u2014as I have found\u2014DH is not a helpful or neat category to describe scholarship; it\u2019s messy and ambiguous. Instead, I adopt Lynch\u2019s statement as an adage for our generation of scholars, remembering that while digital tools and techniques can help us answer our questions: “scholarship is scholarship<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00b9 For additional discourse on what it means to work in the digital humanities see: Edward Ayers, \u201cDoes Digital Scholarship Have a Future?\u201d Educause Review<\/i>, July\/August 2013, pp. 24-34.<\/p>\n \u00b2 K.E. Wetzel, \u201cWhen to Work Alone, and When to Ask for Help.\u201d University of Iowa Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio Blog<\/i>, 13 July 2017.<\/p>\n \u00b3 Laura Hayes and Caitlin Simmons are currently working on a larger and more in-depth mapping project on William Morris\u2019s News from Nowhere<\/i>, for the William Morris Archive <\/i>(WMA). They are working with Professor Florence Boos, the general editor for WMA;<\/i> Robert Shepard, GIS specialist with the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio; and additional graduate students at the University of Iowa, including Kyle Barton.<\/p>\n 4 <\/sup>I am gratefully reliant on my project \u201cpoint-person,\u201d Nikki White, Digital Humanities Research & Instruction Librarian at the University of Iowa DSPS. She assists with the coding and programing side of things, but more importantly she has been a mentor through the \u201chow and why?\u201d issues of my project (e.g. which platform to use, how to structure my archive, the limitations of any given visualization, etc.), so that I can be intentional with how I enter and store my data\u2014and how I use it in my writing and teaching.<\/p>\n Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n Lynch, Clifford A. \u201cThe \u2018Digital\u2019 Scholarship Disconnect.\u201d Educause Review<\/i>, May\/June 2014, pp. 10-15.<\/p>\n Boos, Florence, editor. The William Morris Archive<\/i>, url: morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I meet someone, our introduction typically goes something like this: What do you do? I teach college literature and I\u2019m a graduate student. Oh, what do you study? Victorian Literature Oh, like Jane Austen, and stuff? \u2026sure. There is always more we can say about ourselves, our interests, and our work. 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\nI teach college literature and I\u2019m a graduate student.
\nOh, what do you study?<\/em>
\nVictorian Literature
\nOh, like Jane Austen, and stuff<\/em>?
\n\u2026sure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n\u2026 but I digress.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/files\/2017\/07\/screenshot.jpg\")
<\/a>
Fig. 1, Screen shot of record entry in Omeka<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/a>