An update to our DCHU Irregular newsletter about the goings-on around the DH Program at Carleton U, along with other musings on DH in the world
It’s amazing how if you control a major media organization, you can re-write reality to suit your own interests. Ditto if you’re a company making a large language model – you just add a layer to filter out those things you don’t want repeated. “Technology is neutral! It’s people who are at fault!” is something we hear sometimes, but: technology has agency. The purpose of a system is what it does, they say, and you couldn’t come up with a better system for fostering the illusion of one-on-one connection with The Leader than social media; you couldn’t come up with a better system for destroying shared reality; you couldn’t come up with a better system for changing reality than generative AI.
Sometimes, I think the internet was a bad idea.
DH and cats go together. This is Tilly, overwhelmed by the world.
What are we to do? For starters, we ought not to take what’s been handed to us. Several universities in Europe, recognizing this, have started setting up their own social media powered by Mastodon (for instance you can read the University of Freiburg’s explanation here). The university’s message gets out (since Mastodon can inter-operate with other systems), and they retain control of the platform. It takes a bit of time, it takes a bit of effort, but: enshititfication check-mate! I’d like to have that discussion: What would it take to move our university communications to our own masto-Carleton? I for one don’t see why we should spend any more time or energy on the likes of X or Facebook. You?
(As for language models: if Deepseek can build one for $6 million, what’s to stop a confederation of universities developing their own?)
DH and Healthy Cities
We had a wonderful turn out for our Healthy Cities panel at the Dominion Chalmers Centre on January 21st. There was a full house (over 50 people!) and over the course of a few hours we heard from four very distinct perspectives on DH. Amanda Montague (Postdoc in Community DH at Carleton) described her research in community based storytelling. Constance Crompton (Chair of Digital Humanities, Ottawa U) took us through her research using linked open data to understand the history surrounding an iconic pub in Toronto for LGBTQ history. Jada Watson (Associate Professor, Information Studies, Ottawa U) showed us the hard numbers on how commercial radio promotes – or hinders – what we hear on the radio (Canadian radio, across all genres, plays the mandated 35% cancon and no more, adhering to the letter of the law but not the spirit). Laura Banducci (Associate Professor, Greek and Roman Studies, Carleton) toured us through the problems of legacy data and data publishing (including 3d models) in the context of the ancient city of Roman Gabii.
It was fascinating to see such different research streams coalesce around shared problems of data curation, management, and representation; of whose stories get told, how we encounter information, and how these coalesce (or not) to inform particular visions of the city. Several students were in attendance; Theo Dunn, one of this year’s cohort of MA in DH students, remarked later that
…it was inspiring to listen to the work of DH professionals and how they engage with public, culture, and metropolitan life to solve current problems. I found it really interesting how each panelist was working on research with very different deliverables and topics, but all followed very similar core tenants and guidelines in their methodologies. In particular, this panel helped me reflect on public applications and benefits for my research. Engaging in DH communities and having constructive conversations about public research applications helps me consider my goals as a researcher and what change I want to see through my work.
StudioDH Update
We’re making progress! Amanda has been talking with several different community groups around the city, learning about some of the citizen-led research projects different groups are trying to do. The goal is to find points of intersection so that our students can engage with the practices of doing DH with groups that could use an assist. It’s looking very exciting – stay tuned!
DHSI
The StudioDH gift is sending three students to this year’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the Université de Montréal ; they’ll be taking Jason Boyd and Edmond Chang’s class ‘Queer(ing) DH’, and Sean Smith and Jeffrey Lawler’s ‘Engaging Play’. How awesome is it that DHSI is in Eastern Canada this year! Just look at these two course descriptions…. don’t you want to sign up too?
‘Queerness and the digital humanities share a common ethos: a desire to make meaning in new ways. Indeed, the intersection of DH and queerness is a site of rich potential that can inspire (and challenge) us to think differently about DH, its methods, its purpose, and its politics. This is true whether we are building a DH project or writing DH critique.’
‘[Engaging Play] provides students with hands on experience with games and their uses in the humanities classroom. The focus of our course is to learn how games are structured, how they function and how they can become an integral part of a humanities curriculum. Participants will learn to use Twine and incorporate game narratives into their own classes.’
I look forward to hearing all about these classes when the students return and we can learn from their experience!
There’s still time to enroll, and if when you look at what’s on offer you feel a bit overwhelmed I wouldn’t blame you. It’s a rich selection from some of Canada’s most engaging DHers. Why not give Markus Wust’s ‘DH Sample Platter’ a try? Or if you were intrigued by Constance Crompton’s talk at Healthy Cities, they’re giving ‘Text Encoding Fundamentals’, a course that would show you the underpinnings of their research.
I have to admit that I’m intrigued by ‘DH for Chairs and Deans’, as well as the one on Spectral Imaging, where you use various light frequencies to see what is otherwise hidden in medieval documents. Did you know that Carleton has a medieval manuscript collection? Well now you do. Finally, Bill Turkel from UWO is teaching a course on ‘Writing Nonfiction in the Company of Artificial Intelligence’; I’ve known Turkel for a long time, and know that anything he cooks up is well worth your time.
Until next time…
If we know how the magic works, if we pull back the curtain, we don’t have to accept what we’re given. That’s why I teach and work in DH. It’s worth remembering that, here in the deep of winter.
Please feel free to share! This edition of the DHCU Irregular -aside from the bit written by Theo Dunn who so graciously shared their experience with us- was written by Shawn Graham to whom all blame obtains: shawn.graham@carleton.ca
Previous editions of the DHCU Irregular were courtesy of Buttondown and may be read here; unfortunately, we’re no longer using that service as there were simply too many issues with our Carleton email domain servers eating every issue and many people not receiving them. We will post here until we come up with a better solution.