What is Digital Humanities? (To Us)
Digital Humanities is an open, diverse, and collaborative platform. It encourages collectiveness and community. By producing digital information we have the ability to share knowledge that should be public. Digital humanities is a network of ideas that has the ability to be revised and added upon with new information. It is the digital preservation of information that supports experimentation with new perspectives. Digital humanities is an ever changing interface that is fueled by curiosity and openness.
What are our Values?
We value willingness to share. Our statement of values enables us to remain true to our principles and stay united when confronting challenges. We value being in a community that is very supportive and safe. We share our knowledge across disciplines and value any kind of feedbacks as well as criticisms. We view digital humanities as flexible and contextual rather than fixed and eternal. The process of creating a project is open, participatory and networked, therefore communication and collaboration is very important. We value access, conversation, fluidity, and collaboration. The need for people with a range of skills to contribute affirms the community value. Being “open” allows us to reach to a larger audience, in order to get more evaluations and attentions. Being “open” also means that our sources are available for anyone else to use, which augments digital humanities’ public influence. We value “diversity” because it makes our projects more vibrant and our statements stronger. Last but not least, we value failures. We acknowledge that digital humanities is an expanding new field, and we can learn from any failure along the way of exploration.
What are our hopes and ambitions for this summer program?
By conducting digital humanities research, we hope to bring to light new ways of understanding and interpreting the world as we know it. In looking at issues and topics of study from varying perspectives, we have the ability to uncover and create. Digital humanities is all about making information more accessible to today’s modern world, and by conducting this form of research, we can contribute to the self-awareness of mankind. We grow stronger by the spreading of knowledge, and discovery can motivate development. We hope that through our work, we can inspire open-mindedness and draw attention to multidimensional issues that we deal with today. In learning how to approach research from different points of view, we can create projects that significantly build on what society has already come to know. It is through digital humanities that we can enrich the foundations of knowledge in the minds of those around us.
Conclusion
This summer, we will strive our best to maintain our visions toward the values that we have stated. We expect to run into problems, whether with our research leads or in the process of presenting our content. In this community of ours, we will help one another with the roadblocks that we encounter and encourage each other to produce the best projects we can. We hope that this, in turn, will help us not only fulfill our projects’ objectives but also exceed them.
Written by Cassandra Brown ’22, Yanyu (Lily) Li ’21, Morgan McMullen ’21, Meredith Newman ’21, Aung Pyae Phyo ’21
Inspired by the Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0