Teaching Digital Humanities: Neoliberal logic, class, and social relevance

O'Sullivan, James

Teaching Digital Humanities: Neoliberal logic, class, and social relevance

Files

jos_debates_in_dh_pedagogy.pdf(161.43 KB)

Accepted Version

Date

2023

Authors

O'Sullivan, James

Publisher

University of Minnesota Press

Abstract

The digital humanities have a class problem. This is not to say that other disciplines are immune from socioeconomic disparities, but that DH is a space in which students, across all stages of education, benefit from access to resources that would not normally be a necessity in the arts and humanities. To succeed in the digital humanities often requires privileged knowledge and resources, access to expensive equipment, software, expertise and training networks that remain beyond the reach of many students and their institutions. Many students do not have access to computers capable of performing substantial analytics, or they attend institutions where licensed platforms commonplace in DH are not provided. Many students do not have access to digital libraries providing readings and datasets, or cannot afford the majority of the field’s major publications, still in print and quite expensive. Many students do not have the resources to attend the field’s many training networks, and many students, in this age of remote learning and working, do not even have sufficient bandwidth to engage with DH through web-based tools and communities. Education is always subject to the dynamics of class, but the humanities before the digital turn were at least a space through which social relations could be challenged, relatively free of the cultural logic and resource requirements that heighten inequalities.

Keywords

Digital humanities , Pedagogy , Teaching , Digital humanities , Neoliberalism

Citation

O'Sullivan, J. (2023) 'Teaching Digital Humanities: Neoliberal logic, class, and social relevance', in Croxall, B. and Jakacki, D.K. (eds.) What We Teach When We Teach DH: Digital Humanities in the Classroom. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.