Refracting Digital Humanities
Critical Race, Gender and Queer Theories as (Digital Humanities) Methods
August 4 – 8, 2014
Course Schedule
Course Software
Course Reading List
HILT
Course Description
The methods and tools used and produced by Digital Humanists function as organizing principles that frame how race, gender, sexuality, and ability are embodied and understood within and through projects, code-bases, and communities of practice. The very ‘making’ of tools and projects is an engagement with power and control. Through a critical theoretical exploration of the values in the design and use of these tools and methods, we begin to understand that these methods and practices are structures which are themselves marginalizing, tokenizing, and reductionist.
By pairing hands-on learning/making with Critical Race Theory, Queer, and Gender Theories, we will interrogate the structures of the tools themselves while creating our own collaborative practices and methods for ‘doing’ (refracting) DH differently. To accomplish this, each day will focus on one tool or method. Mornings will be a combination of reading-based discussion and experimental structural/tools-based exercises, while afternoon sessions will focus on pulling it all together in collaborative analytical projects.
While no prior technical experience is necessary, you will be experimenting with, and creating your own theoretical practice that incorporates key themes in critical race, gender and queer theories with digital humanities methods and tools. Therefore, the key requirement for this course is curiosity and a willingness to explore new ideas in order to fully engage with the materials. Students are also encouraged to bring their own research questions to explore through these theories and practices.
Course process website:
This site reflects our process over the course, and is not a complete repository.
Student review of course (Kayla Hammond Larkin) at Digital Library Foundation
Dec 2014, update:
This syllabus is now part of the Modern Language Association Book Project Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments, which is “an open-access, curated collection of downloadable, reusable, and remixable pedagogical resources for humanities scholars interested in the intersections of digital technologies with teaching and learning”
To read more about this project go here:
https://github.com/curateteaching/digitalpedagogy/blob/master/announcement.md
To look at other resources for the keyword queer, go here:
https://github.com/curateteaching/digitalpedagogy/blob/master/keywords/queer.md