Taking the Reins, Harnessing the Digital

Digital tools and methods are not just for analysis and for understanding humanities research in new ways. They can also be harnessed to afford research a reach and scope beyond what has traditionally been available in the humanities.1 One of the most wide-reaching methods in leveraging digital platforms and increasing reach is public scholarship, defined by diverse modes of creating and circulating knowledge for and with certain publics and communities. An example of this kind of work is apparent in the work of MA students, as described by Maria José Afanador-Llach, and Germán Camilo Martínez Peñaloza in “Digital Futures for the Humanities in Latin America” in chapter 7 of this volume, who used digital tools and methods to create a space for a community in Colombia to share and record their traditional knowledge. Sharing research digitally can be just as much a force for advancing research as doing digital work; however, this is a skill often neglected by graduate programs, many of which already fail to provide their students with sufficient training and guidance in writing. Although the traditional model of academic publishing has changed and many programs are incorporating public scholarship into aspects of hiring and tenure review, graduate programs have yet to update their curricula to provide sufficient training in such areas; as a result, training in public scholarship and digital research has fallen squarely on the shoulders of graduate students who must take on the tasks of training and supplying venues for public scholarship. Reflecting on their work as graduate students at the University of California San Diego, Olivia Quintanilla and Jeanelle Horcasitas’s “Rewriting Graduate Digital Futures through Mentorship and Multi-institutional Support” in chapter 15 of this volume describes how this often occurs in practice. Often this means finding our way through the dark together toward an understanding of just how robust a tool digital public scholarship platforms truly are. Providing training in this area and a venue for this work, through whatever means necessary, has become crucial for successful graduate student careers.

How do we recognize the time- and effort-intensive work required to provide training in digital, public scholarship from the top down but still give graduate students the tools they need? One method for training public scholarship outside of an academic–public binary is to allow graduate students to take the reins in their public scholarship education beyond the structures of bureaucratic academia and without any association with the rigors of promotion, tenure, and the job market. Writing for a digital public scholarship venue can also give graduate students clarity about their commitments to specific communities, often ignored and undifferentiated by traditional academic discourse. As Gold and Klein argue, “Now is the time when digital humanists can usefully clarify our commitments to public scholarship, addressing our work not simply to ‘the public’ but also, as Sheila Brennan has observed, to specific communities and the needs that they, and not we, identify as most pressing” (“Introduction: A DH That Matters”).

The following chapter argues for a particular version of student-led public scholarship. At Brown University, a private, research-intensive American university, we implemented a graduate student-run public scholarship blog called The Ratty, providing students with training based on the concept of digital publication. Graduate students approach the blog with an idea, and we work with them through multiple rounds of editing to translate or transform that idea into a scholarship directed at and created for the public and using digital methods of presentation, citation, and supplementation. Our goal with this project is not just to provide an outlet for graduate student research but to focus on training. Each participant works with many different editors, focusing on everything from content to copyediting, to readability online and beyond a student’s discipline. The Ratty also works on training editors to provide this feedback and offers carefully designed workshops for graduate school departments to provide a one-shot guidebook for students on how to start thinking about crafting research for the digital and public spheres.

This initiative grew out of the apparent general absence of available training and mentorship in public scholarship and digital publishing methods. We recognized that such engaged scholarship was important and that our careers, both within and beyond the academy, would be improved by such training. It was no surprise to us that the students most interested in joining The Ratty and training in public scholarship belonged primarily to populations that academia has reliably left behind—women and nonbinary students, Black students, students of color, and queer students. In the absence of reliable modeling, mentoring, and teaching in public scholarship, and as faculty and bureaucracy fight about how public scholarship should be viewed for faculty members, these are the students who stepped up to gain their own experience and use their own learning to help guide and train others.

Training in digital public scholarship benefits graduate students even when under-cultivated. Students who leave their graduate programs having engaged in public scholarship often leave with stronger writing skills, favoring clarity and concision over the ability to cite entire historiographies. Moving from an academic venue to a more popular one requires more than just reshaping lecture notes or revising research data (Cox, “Accountability, Public Scholarship, and Library”). Writing for a digital platform means writing differently, if not considerably better, which requires restructuring, rephrasing, and refocusing different aspects of the work.2 Although discipline-specific language is important for advancing discipline-specific discourse, developing a communication style that translates ideas concisely in the time it takes the average person to scroll through a webpage is an equally important skill (Glass and Vandegrift, “Public Scholarship in Practice”). In confronting the isolated, disciplinary nature of academic writing, offering students pedagogies that ask them to write more concisely for a wider audience is in essence asking them to move beyond the model of the traditional monolithic research paper. Writing for a public digital platform means carefully assessing whom one wants to reach and choosing one’s venue accordingly (Meyers, “Public Scholar, Beware”). In turn, students become more reflective about their writing and about the nature of their research.

Considered in terms of impact and reach, harnessing digital tools in graduate education can make research resonate with not only fellow graduate students and faculty but also with a diverse set of publics beyond the walls of academia; in fact, much public scholarship writing does a far better job of fulfilling the mission of educating, advancing ideas, creating an intellectual environment, and bettering the lives of others than projects upheld by a more limited view of scholarly activity (Williams, “Lack of Reward Mechanisms”). Further, students can reach beyond their scholarly communities and connect with readers in hours or days rather than the months or even years required by the traditional scholarship trajectory (Meyers, “Public Scholar, Beware”). The increased pace of these digital tools allows us to engage with time-critical issues and supports conversations through which community input can be readily incorporated and supported.

Public scholarship is also one channel for graduate students to advocate for their disciplines and for themselves in the time after their degree. This form of scholarship arises from an ethical call to engage with the public intellectually and to position ourselves for the future as citizen-scholars in a variety of possible jobs. Institutionalizing public scholarship may lead to greater academic recognition and value, greater exposure, and wider accessibility between academics and the public (Kilty and Crépault, “Institutionalizing Public Scholarship”). As tenure-track jobs become scarcer and graduate students look beyond the ivory tower both during and after their programs, the very survival of academia is predicated on encouraging graduate students to engage in wide-reaching activities that speak to and for the public.

Although students are arriving at graduate programs with increasing levels of interest in and experience with diverse forms of sharing knowledge through writing, recognizing the benefits writing offers to their academic progress and extra-academic jobs, there may be few opportunities in graduate programs for students to further develop these skills (Clark-Taylor et. al., “Modeling, Mentoring, and Pedagogy”). The lack of opportunity not only halts the expansion of skills for these students but also fails to acknowledge the integral role public scholarship plays in crafting doctoral students who can succeed both inside and outside of the academy. Often the work of academic writing is considered crucial preparation for the writing to come in a later academic career. However, engaging students in civic-minded writing asks them to consider their future roles as professionals in a wide variety of contexts and as citizens of the wider community (DelliCarpini, “Coming Down”). Further, the nature of online digital platforms forces students to remain engaged in their work—by responding to comments and publishing follow-up material, for example—in ways that traditional academic venues do not. Therefore, the graduate students influenced by this training receive their degrees as much more civic-minded citizens, aware of the impact their research has on the larger population beyond their academic department.

Given the evidence of student interest in public scholarship, as demonstrated by the creation of platforms by graduate students, and the (nascent) recognition of how it benefits both research and researchers, some faculty have begun the work of incorporating public scholarship into their research or their teaching (Parry, “The New Ph.D.”). This is most often conceived of in the form of pedagogy—that is, providing training for students through coursework, lectures, and workshops. However, the additional work required to reconceive classes can be a barrier to the implementation of the traditional pedagogical approach (Cox, “Accountability, Public Scholarship, and Library”). Of course, there are other ways to support developing public scholarship skills. Clark-Taylor et al. argue that establishing collaboration with community partners and embedding these extra-academic relationships within graduate school curricula can cultivate engaged scholarship (“Modeling, Mentoring, and Pedagogy”). Modeling such engaged behavior is a critical component of training for graduate students and has the benefit of being a productive outlet for faculty as well. Additionally, working one-on-one to mentor students in public scholarship is another potential outlet for training.

Methods of mentoring, modeling, and pedagogy seem to be necessary components of graduate student training in public scholarship (Clark-Taylor et al., “Modeling, Mentoring, and Pedagogy”). Yet these methods can be demanding for faculty who are often already overworked and buried under extra-academic demands of service, especially in the cases of the early career researchers and contingent faculty who are more likely to recognize the importance of public scholarship and digital tools. Furthermore, the current setup of the academy that focuses on “publish or perish” in the pursuit of promotion and tenure puts those who do work on public scholarship at risk for their own career advancement, contributing to feelings of isolation within the academy (Kilty and Crépault, “Institutionalizing Public Scholarship”).

To lighten the load on faculty, we must change how fellow academics view public scholarship. We must be careful, for example, not to fall into the trap of considering public scholarship as any less academic or well-researched than the traditional form of academic writing. The very definition of public as opposed to other forms of scholarship implies a binary that we do not endorse. As graduate students prepare for life after graduate studies, they are also preparing to enter academic institutions with increasing levels of recognition for public scholarship. Compared with the most lavishly resourced institutions, a significant portion of higher education evaluates faculty publications through a more diverse set of lenses (Bond and Gannon, “Public Writing and the Junior Scholar”). Rather than arguing that op-eds and blog posts are a waste of time, these institutions are beginning to recognize their scope and power. Several graduate degree-granting institutions have served as models in this kind of recognition. Most notably, George Mason University and the University of Nebraska have implemented public scholarship requirements at the institutional level, as Laura Crossly, Amanda Regan, and Joshua Casmir Catalano assert in chapter 13 in this volume. This view, more indicative of a general reception of public scholarship, should be recognized and emulated more widely.

Instead, we are taught about the strict requirements that must be completed to be viable candidates on an increasingly fraught academic job market.3 “As we internalize these expectations and work to meet them,” argue Kilty and Crépault, “our intellectual labour becomes increasingly oriented around the demands of the institution” (“Institutionalizing Public Scholarship,” 628). Not only is public scholarship disincentivized as standard scholarship methods are prioritized, but graduate students are trained to therefore place less value on public scholarship, as it does not help them meet the requirements of the academic job market.

The struggle to understand how to “count” public scholarship in tenure files and toward article requirements for doctoral students mimics the early days of the digital humanities (Bond and Gannon, “Public Writing and the Junior Scholar”). For example, how was a traditional, publication-oriented professor on a tenure committee supposed to evaluate a candidate’s interactive digital project? In trying to compare digital projects with traditional ones, one ends up misunderstanding both. As a corollary, those who do prioritize public scholarship list their digital works under headings like “other professional activity,” categories of a CV that are undervalued by most academic institutions (Kilty and Crépault, “Institutionalizing Public Scholarship,” 619). Though their contributions harness digital platforms to disseminate their work far beyond the insular academy, they are working against a system that does not know how to value this work.

There are similar problems with incorporating public scholarship into coursework. When public scholarship is explicitly juxtaposed to academic writing, as is often the case for “public engagement” assignments within a class, we inadvertently reinforce the binary between the two types of writing (Hardy and Milanese, “Teaching Students to Be Public Intellectuals”). This contributes to misunderstanding public writing as somehow “not academic” and public audiences as somehow less intelligent; both are untrue and contribute to poorer public engagement. We must, therefore, incorporate public scholarship in ways that do not only juxtapose it with academic writing, putting the analog at odds with the digital. Luckily, the digital, open-access nature of many modern methods of public scholarship can reduce the amount of work necessary for inclusion within coursework, for both faculty and students: no purchase necessary, no library legwork required—just a hyperlink. Despite this seeming ease, we must be cognizant of the time and effort required to update existing sources and exercises in syllabi. Recognizing this need and supporting the labor required to fill it are integral for enacting this change.

Placing the burden of training on graduate students does mirror some of the issues encountered with asking professors and early career researchers to do this work. Graduate students are often overworked and underpaid (Freeman; Hugo; Linder et al.; Perry; Puri). Asking them to contribute what little free time they have to continued academic activities is morally questionable, no matter what good may come of the endeavor. Moreover, asking them to serve as advisors for themselves and their peers brings up issues of labor and stress that pervade graduate studies and the digital humanities (Boyles et al., “Precarious Labor”). However, working to recognize the value of digital engagement and public scholarship at the faculty level can help graduate programs to recognize the value of graduate-led training and the value of supporting it. Although graduate-led initiatives like The Ratty are valuable for students’ leadership training, legitimizing its work at the faculty level could shift the narrative around digital engagement and public scholarship.

Looking to the future, higher education needs to expand current thinking and practice to see public scholarship not just as an end for promotion and tenure. Instead, engaged scholarship should be integrated as much as possible into an institution’s mission by everyone from professors to the graduate students they train (Franz, “Holistic Model of Engaged Scholarship”). Acceptance of an expanded definition of scholarship necessarily requires the integration of public writing into graduate training (Scarpino, “Some Thoughts on Defining”). At their core, graduate programs are lengthy internships that socialize future academics into the profession. Teaching students to harness and value the digital forms of research dissemination will make research more accessible and produce more civic-minded academics.

Writing this chapter is a luxury that many untenured faculty likely could not afford as a result of the general attitude toward public scholarship and, tacitly or otherwise, taught to graduate students (Williams, “Lack of Reward Mechanisms”). The current disciplinary publishing conventions often dissuade emerging scholars from exploring open publishing options. Although a significant number of journals are being made available online, their openness still does not compare to that of digital public scholarship platforms. Rather than argue that engagement should be valued equally with scholarship, more institutions and graduate training programs need to show that public scholarship is research and scholarship (Johnsen, “Public Scholarship”). This notion applies regardless of the form the engagement takes.

Ultimately, training graduate students in public scholarship, whether it comes from faculty or programs or the students themselves, is necessary. Such training prepares us for careers outside of academia and for the majority of academic jobs that are available at institutions that value teaching and outreach (Bond and Gannon, “Public Writing and the Junior Scholar”). But more than just career preparation, training in public scholarship can help make us more engaged students and citizens. We increasingly live in a digital world where our academic and digital personas are becoming more difficult to keep separate. However, being present in academia should not exempt us from being present citizens of the larger digital world.