2012 Workshop: viability of university "Digital Humanities" faculties
Henry Gladney
I have been invited as one of two speakers/debaters for the "Controversy 6" described below, and have accepted contingent upon their choosing the April 2/3, 2012 candidate date (one of five, and the only one that I can manage).
At my suggestion, Chaim Zins of
Best wishes, Henry
H.M. Gladney, Ph.D. http://www.hgladney.com/ (408)867-3933
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Conference Description
The Cologne Dialogue on Digital Humanities
“Computing in the Humanities” has been a field of studies, which originally derived much from two different roots: On the one hand the strong believe, that there must be easier ways to handle a couple of hundred thousand small details than write them on 5” x 8” cards; on the other an intellectual climate, which assumed that different traditions of the Humanities and hard sciences could and / or should converge, of which C.P.Snow’s famous lectures have rather been a symptom, than the cause. The field has been influenced by rather different developments. Intellectual or methodological fads, as e.g., the popularity of interdisciplinary reception of the methodology of the (empirical) Social Sciences during the sixties and seventies. Technological innovation: Strangely enough, when new key technologies arise, as the PC or the WWW, during the first few years there seems always to be a widespread conviction, that with that technology a totally new methodological platform for the interdisciplinary cooperation between the Humanities and information technology and its conceptual underpinnings flourishes. And, of course, funding possibilities: It seems to be doubtful whether the term “Digital Humanities” would exist, if the huge funding programs for Digital Libraries at the turn of the millennium would never have arisen; it seems to be almost beyond doubt, that nobody would have thought of “eHumanities”, if the promise of funding for eScience would not have been there.
1962 at the castle Wartenstein in Austria a group of scholars met to discuss The Use of Computers in Anthropology, presumably the first attempt to clarify a methodological position for the interdisciplinary world between the Humanities and Computer Science. Fifty years later, there is consensus that there is a shadowy subject between these disciplinary worlds, to describe it precisely seems only marginally easier than in 1962; or maybe harder, as the number of possibilities has exploded.
The University at Cologne has been the first German University to create a professorship for applied Computer Science to the Humanities, outside Computational Linguistics. It has recently strengthened its commitment to the field by founding the Cologne Centre for the eHumanities as a framework for the cooperation between interdisciplinary projects in the realm indicated by its name. Being strong in the field, the university sees it as part of its mission, to contribute to the intellectual consolidation of Humanities Computing / Computing in the Humanities / Humanities’ Computer Science / Digital Humanities / eHumanities.
To do so, it would like to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the methodological discussions on “the field” by inaugurating a series of high-quality workshops. Workshops, which shall deviate from the traditional Digital Humanities conferences in two important aspects.
(a) We do not intend to collect peer-reviewed ten-minute papers. We invite highly visible scholars of undisputed rank and allow them sufficient time to develop and defend their intellectual position.
(b) Academic research and scholarship should be driven by controversies, not by celebrating superficial consensus. We therefore invite pairs of distinguished scholars, known to hold positions controversial to each other.
These workshops shall be held at Schloß Wahn, an 18th century manor house, where the university runs a conference facility for its top level events. The manor house is outside of the city of Cologne, so participants will not be distracted, but easily reachable – fifteen minutes from the airport of Cologne.
A continuation of the series is planned.
Invited contributors will be expected to prepare for the workshop a thirty minutes presentation; they will be introduced to their opponents by eMail before the workshop. They are expected to bring a paper representing their view to the workshop, which will be published immediately afterwards. To keep the attention of the audience away from eMail and other temptations, neither the papers nor abstracts of any form will be made available before the meeting, however. Besides the printed publication, a discussion forum will be opened during the workshop, the contributors expected to react within it.
Contributors have the possibility to nominate one guest each, supporting their respective views, which are invited to join the discussion and provide contributions to book and discussion forum, are not assigned time for individual presentations, however. We can at this time not guarantee, however, whether it will be possible to invite each nominated guest, depending on the costs incurred by long distance travel.
A number of local guests will join the discussion.
At the time of this writing, the following controversies, which we have noticed on different occasions, shall be discussed. No names of speakers are visible yet, before both members of an invited pair of opponents have accepted.
Conference Schedule
Day 1 – What are the Digital Humanities?
9:00 Setting the Agenda
10:00 – 11:30 Controversy 1: Do the Digital Humanities have an intellectual agenda or do they constitute an infrastructure?
12: 00 – 13:30 Controversy 2: Are all approaches towards interdisciplinary research between the Humanities and Computer Science meaningfully represented by the current concept of Digital Humanities?
15:00 – 16:30 Controversy 3: What is the scope of the Digital Humanities? What is the relationship between individual disciplines served by them?
17:00 – 18:30 Discussion
Day 2 – Making the Digital Humanities work: Tools, infrastructures, technology and conceptual work.
9:00 – 10:30 Controversy 4: What is the appropriate role of markup?
11:00 – 12:30 Controversy 5: Are big infrastructures the road to the future or a dead-end street for technical development?
14:00 – 15:30 Controversy 6: “Digital curation” or “digital preservation” is a topic, which has originated within the world of digital libraries; recently it has been drawn closer and closer to the Digital Humanities. What is the balance between conceptual work and technology?
16:00 – 17:30 Controversy 7: “Digital Libraries” have started their life as an answer to opportunities created by a specific stage of technical development. Where are they now, between Computer Science and the Digital Humanities?
18:00 – Continuing the agenda … Planning for round 2