Afterword

In February 1950, Waldemar Kaempffert, the science editor of the New York Times, published an article titled “Miracles You’ll See in the Next Fifty Years,” and—as could be guessed—he was often spectacularly wrong.1 He predicted that in the year 2000, houses would be made of metal, plastic sheets, and aerated clay resembling a petrified sponge. He thought a house would cost only about five thousand dollars. And he asserted that “because everything in her home is waterproof, [the future housewife of 2000] can do her daily cleaning with a hose.” Kaempffert imagined massive change in building materials but not in gender roles. He is instructive when he is wrong because his imagined future underscores the need to foresee technological change as one strand in a whole fabric of change.

Future changes in digital scholarship and pedagogy will be shaped by larger forces, all of them difficult to predict, in the academy and beyond. Unlike the upbeat Kaempffert, the writers contributing to this volume are sober and reflective, displaying little, if any, of the unbounded enthusiasm that marked some earlier phases of digital humanities, or “humanities computing,” as it was commonly called in the 1990s. At that time, though early adopters faced skepticism and resistance, the vast possibilities of computationally assisted work nonetheless were also thrilling, even intoxicating. By contrast, the restrained tone that marks these essays is suited to shrinking enrollments in the humanities, dwindling support for public education, and a declining professoriate job market that has gone from meager to almost nonexistent. These essays are, nevertheless, written with social change as a major preoccupation—including the pandemic, the increasingly urgent calls for racial justice, and the underfunding of the academy. The editors of Digital Futures of Graduate Study in the Humanities, Gabriel Hankins, Anouk Lang, and Simon Appleford, offer in this volume a “series of meditations in an emergency.” By their nature, emergencies tend to pass, but we should not, therefore, conclude that the essays presented here will quickly date just because of changing circumstances. The current crisis has brought lasting issues in higher education into bold relief. And, as Katina Rogers observes, we are also in a rare moment in which we have seen abrupt and radical change occur in how education is understood and delivered, indicating that other big changes larger than ordinarily contemplated are actually possible.

I am pleased to have been asked to provide this afterword. It is not feasible to comment on each argument—many of them excellent—so instead, I address what I see as some of the key issues brought to mind by this volume. My own vantage point is worth noting—I am a fully promoted white male teaching at a midwestern state university in the United States (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) that has invested in digital humanities. My experiences no doubt enable some perceptions and blind me to others. My involvement in digital scholarship dates to the mid-1990s when I wished to address research questions that defied adequate treatment in print: specifically, through The Walt Whitman Archive, initiated in 1995, I wanted to collaborate with others to treat a poet whose writings and restless revisions spanned six distinct editions and also included manuscript drafts, notebooks, corrected proofs, and much else. Along the way, I have gained other perspectives on DH through codirecting the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at Nebraska. I have also had the opportunity to codirect Civil War Washington, an interdisciplinary study of the massive transformation of the nation’s capital during four years of war. This project, including its transcription of the emancipation petitions of approximately three thousand enslaved people in the nation’s capital, underscored my growing interest in how DH could address issues involving race and social justice. My other recent efforts—I have recently begun coediting the African American writer Charles Chesnutt, and I served as a co-convener on an American Council of Learned Societies-funded digital ethnic studies summer institute involving wide-ranging consultations and partnerships with minority-serving institutions—were motivated in part by revulsion at the endorsement of white supremacist ideas at the highest levels of government.2

Not surprisingly, I am particularly drawn to the numerous essays compiled here addressing racial justice, diversity, and inclusion. In their introduction, the editors follow Christopher Newfield in highlighting a connection between U.S. higher education and whiteness: “Public investment in higher education was tightly linked to the expanding white middle classes that were its primary beneficiaries, a link that has slowly come undone.” The disinvestment in education raises significant and worrisome issues at many levels. Although not the only cause of the crisis of the job market, this disinvestment worsens it. Going forward, as we contemplate how our choices and policies impact the future of graduate education, we need to keep both the job market and our relation to a diverse public very much in mind. Digital humanities has extraordinary potential to expand public access to education, and we have much to offer in efforts to restore the frayed relation between the academy and the public. Regrettably, we have lived through what Eric Hayot calls a “50-year culture war against the academy in general and the humanities in particular.” A destructive narrative has tried to dismantle the welfare state while conveying false information, including that “majoring in the humanities leads to lower salaries and higher unemployment” (“Humanities Have a Marketing Problem”). This is not in fact the case, but it has taken firm hold as entrenched understanding, and the idea surfaces regularly in popular culture, to our detriment (Schmidt, “Humanities Are in Crisis”).3

In recent years, much commentary has lamented the “whiteness” of DH (Bailey, “All the Digital Humanists Are White”; McPherson, “Why Are the Digital Humanities So White?”). Once accurate, that characterization of digital humanities grows increasingly less so thanks to the energizing work of many scholars and efforts by organizations such as Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations and ACH to promote diversity and inclusion. As Brandon Walsh argues in this volume, digital humanities has been strengthened also by the “work of activists involved in the creation of #TransformDH, Postcolonial Digital Humanities, and DHWOGEM,” an email list for women and gender minorities in digital humanities. Many other projects could be mentioned, including Black Covid, the Transgender Archive, Torn Apart/Separados, and Mukurtu CMS, an open-source platform developed with Indigenous communities to share, exchange, and manage digital cultural heritage. Also notable has been a turn toward more progressive policies seen in both foundations, including Mellon, Spencer, ACLS, and Ford, and in some of the newly articulated priorities of government funding agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. I agree with Alison Booth and Miriam Posner who remark that in the future, DH pedagogy “must concern itself deeply with race, gender, disability, economic and linguistic access, and other intersecting axes of power embedded in our materials and methods, as demanded by this troubled moment in the world” (“Materials at Hand,” 10).

How can we put such an approach into effect in practical ways? Here are some possibilities to consider. As we teach in our graduate programs and shape their policies, we should be attentive to how they may inadvertently produce or reproduce biases. For example, do our admissions processes value previous experience when in fact DH curricula and other opportunities are limited in most undergraduate programs and particularly at minority-serving institutions? Do past hiring practices that led to a lack of racial diversity among DH faculty in most institutions produce biases and weaknesses in our teaching and thus risk reinscribing a limited perspective within DH? Does our reliance on software produced by a segment of the population yield bias in our results (Noble, Algorithms of Oppression)? Are we poorly serving women, people of color, and those who are economically disadvantaged? How can we make DH more welcoming and appealing to those who in the past have been on the outside? Can we do more to cut across educational hierarchies, in ways discussed by Olivia Quintanilla and Jeanelle Horcasitas, so that we promote new alliances that address the needs of people of color?

Even a rich and extensive collection like this one cannot discuss everything. I find myself wishing for a substantive discussion of minimal computing given the promise of this approach for both sustainability and equity issues.4 Minimal computing can lower the barriers to DH and can be deployed in a wide range of settings. The approach thus has appeal on various grounds, including ease of maintenance, control of cost, and the advancement of equity. For cash-strapped graduate students everywhere and for faculty members with limited financial and technical support, we need reasonable and attainable approaches. Minimal computing makes sense both for getting started and for sustainability over the long run. The general principle animating minimal computing is sound: we should employ just enough technology to address scholarly problems without acquiring unsustainable technological, financial, and administrative burdens.

Manfred Thaller suggests another facet of DH that is less frequently considered; in his contribution to this volume, he reminds us that computer and humanities courses have been offered for fifty years, yet paradoxically, they still have an aura of being new. He unearths a disturbing trend when he asks: “Why have so many programs failed, and why do the discussions seem to form an endless loop?” Thaller would like to see a “clearer sharpness of profile of the degrees offered.” I understand this wish, but it may well be that DH is strengthened by its protean nature and its ability to lodge itself within and across disciplinary niches. The extraordinary diversity and proliferation of forms of digital humanities strengthens the overall ecosystem. There are, of course, forces that make it difficult for DH to establish itself, as Thaller notes, but other characteristics of DH contribute to its ongoing appeal. As Booth and Posner remark, DH “prizes interdisciplinary collaboration and technical experimentation” (emphasis in the original), and DH is most worthwhile if it also “promotes public engagement and humanistic knowledge and understanding” (“Materials at Hand,” 10). In her essay in this volume, Booth recognizes that we take certain risks if we advocate for digital graduate study because of its usefulness. I would argue, though, that high-minded and practical arguments alike are valid: what should be emphasized at any time must suit the moment and immediate context.

As noted, DH is situated in remarkably varied institutional settings, but regardless of that variety/diversity, those who teach need to be concerned with the prospects for graduate students. Leonard Cassuto holds that the anti-utilitarian case for humanities should give way so we make progress “in search of a usable future.”5 Too many of us, as faculty members, remain inattentive to the large academic-adjacent market, and so we often fail to guide our students toward these opportunities. We need to remedy that and adjust our mentoring to instill flexibility in students and promote career diversity. In good conscience, we can only continue to train students for vanishing tenure-track jobs if we also prepare them for a broader array of rewarding and productive jobs. Doing so may force tenured faculty to quell our own anxieties about deprofessionalization.

Several essays here argue persuasively that we should normalize preparation for multiple career pathways. Rogers notes that such an approach should be reinforced in various ways: credit for interdisciplinary projects; credit for group-based, public-oriented work; a recommitment to teaching; and listing of all jobs obtained by their graduates as opposed to the usual tenure-track placement list (“Cultivating a Joyful Workplace,” 227–31). Mentorship should be extended beyond a student’s home department and ideally even beyond the university. A low-stakes, one-credit seminar could be developed featuring speakers who could present either in person or remotely to highlight the possibilities for meaningful and rewarding lives beyond the academy.

In response to the disinvestment in public education, I would urge us to consider doing more to involve ordinary citizens in our work so that they share to some degree in the creation of knowledge and become more invested in colleges and universities. Engaging the public with our research, and enabling them to partner in it, can strengthen ties. Ordinary citizens value freely available online resources and thus often jump at the opportunity to help create them across divergent subjects, as seen in such successes as the University of Iowa’s effort to engage the public in transcribing Civil War notebooks, the U.S. National Archives project to involve the public in transcribing census records, and the New York Public Library’s work with the public on their collection of historic menus. What can we do to shape our institutions so that they bolster faculty engagement with the public while also being attentive to underserved communities? Crowdsourcing projects offer a way for public-facing humanities projects to engage in cocreation with the interested public. Contributions by nonprofessionals hold great promise where both strong organization and well-developed systems for vetting content are present. We would also be wise, of course, to reduce our own posturing and needless jargon in an effort to limit hierarchies and increase access to knowledge. Crowdsourcing is especially good for massive, labor-intensive undertakings, and work in this area does not have to be undertheorized. Learning how to communicate beyond academic-speak to reach interested lay people is enormously valuable, as is grappling with the complexities of crowdsourcing so that it can be pursued ethically.6

One approach I would advocate for is project-based digital humanities pedagogy, mentioned at least in passing in several essays. Specifically, I think there are great advantages in having a class, or a series of classes over a span of years, contribute to a genuine project. Having students learn in such a hands-on way encourages them to think beyond individual achievement (and competition) toward collective action and accomplishment. An ideal project—something bold and self-evidently important—can inspire students if it is something both significant and too big for any one person to attempt but remains an achievable goal if many people work in a coordinated way over several years. I think such a marriage of research and teaching is most likely to work when students can delve into matters of local cultural history that also resonate with meaning for that area and beyond. For example, Georgetown University students could delve into the case of Patrick Francis Healy, a person born enslaved who “passed” his way to the presidency of Georgetown University (Greene, “Born Enslaved”). What can church records, the university archives, Healy’s personal papers, and city ordinances tell us about this individual, and how does he fit into broader stories about race and passing in America? Or at the University of Minnesota, Morris, what can be learned about education in a place that was home to the Dakota people and later the Ojibwe people? Could a decolonial archive be built with and in consultation with the descendant communities, yielding new insight into the history and legacy of American Indian boarding schools as they were operated, in this case, by the Sisters of Mercy and the U.S. government (1887–1909)?7 Or students at Fisk University in Nashville, home of the Fisk Jubilee Singers who saved that distinguished HBCU from financial ruin, could study how “music city” nonetheless became associated overwhelmingly with white country music despite the remarkable achievement of the Jubilee Singers. At California State University, Fresno, students could transcribe oral histories from Manzanar, the famous concentration camp where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II. Or at California State University, Chico, a project focused on wildfires could be developed, tracking their location, changing frequency over time, known or suspected cause; gathering oral history testimonials of loss and heroism; documenting the use (and abuse?) of imprisoned laborers; and analyzing political commentary from the good to the incomprehensibly ill-informed. Such a site would require a multidisciplinary team drawing on experts in mapping and GIS, forest management, web design, oral history, archival theory, and other domains. In fact, all types of climate disasters raise opportunities to document similar changes over time and effects on the local community. This can yield socially useful information and engage the public in broad matters of common concern. A creative response along these lines has emerged at Xavier University of Louisiana studying recovery itself by recording ordinary people and their resilience in the face of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction. My Nola, My Story is a project developed by Shearon Roberts and her students “to record and share the stories of people of color in New Orleans. These stories reflect snapshots of lived experiences of communities of color who have called New Orleans home. It serves as a testament that they were here, are here, and shaped the fabric of this historic, cultural space” (“My Nola, My Story”). Some projects like those I have mostly imagined in this paragraph are underway.8 The model etched out here is not meant to replicate a workshop or apprentice model with the teacher/master owning the labor. Rather, this is meant to be a collective undertaking with a teacher’s guidance and with crediting that reflects the roles and contributions of those involved.

Many of the projects I have just suggested are archival and rely heavily on data gathering. An unsympathetic colleague could argue that they lack the analytical edge that is prized in humanities projects, but that view is shortsighted if the projects display a creative and compelling reformulation of what should be remembered, recorded, archived, and highlighted. Because of past neglect, violence, and destruction, there are significant gaps in the cultural record, and it requires acumen to reconstruct a past littered with distortions and absences. Such efforts are consistent with what Cecily Raynor calls “project-based deep learning in digital humanities,” with humanities content, skills, methods, and theory all learned in context while contributing to a project, rather than acquired in the abstract. This type of teaching-as-research offers students the opportunity to engage in large-scale project management and confront and grapple with digital preservation issues, copyright negotiations, crediting questions, collaborative achievements and frictions, and, depending on the topic, politically fraught decision making. As Walsh asks, “How do we teach right now? Why do we teach now? And, for this audience, what might DH pedagogy, in particular, have to do with and for this moment?” He argues that a sense of urgency always should have been key to our practice.

Another pressing issue is that of data justice. What information is collected, why, and what use is it put to? Gaps in what we know provide pedagogical and research opportunities to be seized. There is a great deal of attention paid now to decolonizing and anti-racist editorial and archival practices, and we can energize students by providing them with opportunities to contribute to these efforts. As we do so, we need to cultivate in students a self-conscious awareness, a critical stance, toward the medium in which research takes place, itself a worthy subject of inquiry.

In their different ways, the essays collected here speak to these and other pressing concerns that both animate the present and foreshadow potential futures of graduate studies in digital humanities. Despite the challenges we face, it seems wise for us to be as bold as possible, because digital humanities pedagogy has much to offer higher education and the broader public. In the coming years, we will see established disciplines in the humanities even more thoroughly remade as we work with ever-growing troves of digital texts and artifacts. And we will see new programs emerge, as is already happening, in data and society and in data science. Digital humanists can bring a critical consciousness to these developments as we remind ourselves and others of the omissions and distortions that make the entirety of the digitized text, as Lara Putnam notes, “anything but representative of the temporal and geographic contours of human life in the past” (“Transnational and the Text-Searchable,” 389). As Putnam suggests, we need to do all we can to recover lost histories, many of them painful and repressed, as we strive for a more fully informed and ethically directed society.