Moving Forward, Looking Back: Taking Canadian Feminist Histories Online

Canadian feminist histories have long been bound to the printed page, potentially eluding audiences online. This article investigates how feminist histories can be expanded beyond traditional paper-bound venues by adopting a form of scholarly production that we call the “networked model.” Drawing on digital humanities methods, we argue that this model enables greater alignment with feminist epistemologies and an improved capacity to reach new audiences.RésuméLes récits féministes canadiens ont longtemps été confinés à la page imprimée, éludant potentiellement les publics en ligne. Cet article étudie comment les récits féministes peuvent être étendus au-delà des supports papier traditionnels en adoptant une forme de production que nous appelons le « modèle en réseau ». En s’appuyant sur les méthodes numériques des sciences humaines, nous défendons l’idée que ce modèle améliore l’harmonisation avec les épistémologies féministes et la capacité à atteindre de nouveaux publics

"Enlisting 'Vertues Noble & Excelent': Behavior, Credit, and Knowledge Organization in the Social Edition"

A part of the special issue of DHQ on feminisms and digital humanities, this paper takes as its starting place Greg Crane’s exhortation that there is a "need to shift from lone editorials and monumental editions to editors ... who coordinate contributions from many sources and oversee living editions." In response to Crane, the exploration of the "living edition" detailed here examines the process of creating a publicly editable edition and considers what that edition, the process by which it was built, and the platform in which it was produced means for editions that support and promote gender equity. Drawing on the scholarship about the culture of the Wikimedia suite of projects, and the gendered trolling experienced by members of our team in the production of the Social Edition of the Devonshire Manuscript in Wikibooks, and interviews with our advisory group, we argue that while the Wikimedia projects are often openly hostile online spaces, the Wikimedia suite of projects are so important to the contemporary circulation of knowledge, that the key is to encourage gender equity in social behavior, credit sharing, and knowledge organization in Wikimedia, rather than abandon it for a more controlled collaborative environment for edition production and dissemination

Digital Humanities and/as Media Studies

This chapter of The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities addresses how frameworks from intersectional feminist media studies scholarship can be productively applied to address limitations of digital humanities. We argue here that the interconnection between media studies and digital humanities has often existed only on a rhetorical level, and that a deeper engagement with critiques of platforms common to media studies is necessary to continue to expand the scope of scholarship that falls under the term "digital humanities.

Student Labour and Training in Digital Humanities

This article critiques the rhetoric of openness, accessibility and collaboration that features largely in digital humanities literature by examining the status of student labour, training, and funding within the discipline. The authors argue that the use of such rhetoric masks the hierarches that structure academic spaces, and that a shift to the digital does not eliminate these structural inequalities. Drawing on two surveys that assess student participation in DH projects (one for students, and one for faculty researchers), the article outlines the challenges currently faced by students working in the field, and suggests a set of best practices that might bridge the disparity between rhetoric and reality

Para imaginar una historia de las escritoras en digital

In this paper we present some important contributions that digital technologies are supplying to the research in the field of women writers history, mainly in Europe. We use arguments to assess these contributions in three domains: massive digitization processes in libraries and archives concerning women writers; collections, repositories and data-base ; digital tools for analysis. We claim for feminist perspectives, critical ones, in any digital development.  En este artículo repasamos algunas importantes aportaciones que las tecnologías digitales están haciendo a la investigación en el ámbito de la historia de las mujeres escritoras, principalmente en Europa. Presentamos argumentos que nos permitan valorar el alcance de estas aportaciones en tres campos: los procesos de digitalización masiva en bibliotecas y archivos; la construcción de colecciones, repositorios y bases de datos; la utilización de herramientas digitales para el análisis, siempre en lo que se refiere a las mujeres escritoras. Se pone así de manifiesto la necesidad de imprimir perspectivas feministas, críticas, a cualquier desarrollo digital

Digital Histories: Emergent Approaches within the New Digital History

This chapter discusses the various practical, epistemological and methodological issues of importance when a historical scholar with limited digital skills wants to take a step towards learning how to conduct digital analyses. As a feminist historian, the author combines this approach with a discussion of the relation of feminist research and digital humanities. In line with practice in feminist research, she uses a self-reflexive approach and asks how the increase in the understanding of digital methods influences research questions in feminist history. Do digital humanities tools transform the work as feminist historians? How can digital analyses develop the field of gender history in general and the history of feminism in particular? Can a scholar who has limited technological skills engage with an informed and critical discussion with digitised materials? In doing this the chapter provides an inside reflective history of the making of digital history. </p

Naisten kirjoittaman kirjallisuuden ylirajainen vastaanotto: Kohti kirjallisten toimijuuksien historiaa

Artikkelini tarkastelee, minkälaisia uusia lähestymistapoja kirjallisuushistoria vaatii silloin kun lähtökohtana on ylirajaisen kirjallisen kentän kartoitus, laajasti ja ylirajaisesti ymmärretty kirjallinen vastaanotto sekä naisten toimijuus kirjallisella kentällä. Pohdin keskusta–periferia-dynamiikkaa eurooppalaisessa kehikossa ja kysyn, mitä hyötyä laajoihin aineistoihin perustuvista, digitaalisia työkaluja ja virtuaalisia tutkimusympäristöjä hyödyntävistä menetelmistä voi olla ylirajaisen kirjallisuushistorian yhteydessä. Varsinaisena tutkimusaineistonani toimivat kirjastokokoelmat, jotka nähdään 1800- ja 1900-luvun vaihteen naisten kirjoittaman kirjallisuuden vastaanottoaineiston tärkeänä osana. Keskityn Turun kaupunginkirjaston vanhaan kokoelmaan, varsinkin sen yhteen osaan, Gustav Cygnaeuksen kokoelmaan. Artikkeli osoittaa, mitä uutta digitaalisten työkalujen kehittäminen ja kriittinen käyttö sekä Franco Morettin teorioista tutun ”kaukolukemisen” ja perinteisemmän lähilukemisen yhdistäminen voivat tuoda laajojen vastaanottoaineistojen tutkimukseen ja sen myötä kirjallisuushistoriallisiin keskusteluihin

Gender influences in Digital Humanities co-authorship networks

PURPOSE: This paper presents a co-authorship study of authors who published in Digital Humanities journals and examines the apparent influence of gender, or more specifically, the quantitatively detectable influence of gender in the networks they form. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: This study applied co-authorship network analysis. Data has been collected from three canonical Digital Humanities journals over 52 years (1966–2017) and analysed. FINDINGS: The results are presented as visualised networks and suggest that female scholars in Digital Humanities play more central roles and act as the main bridges of collaborative networks even though overall female authors are fewer in number than male authors in the network. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This is the first co-authorship network study in Digital Humanities to examine the role that gender appears to play in these co-authorship networks using statistical analysis and visualisation

Digital Archives and the Irish Commemorative Impulse: Gender, Identity, and Digital Cultural Heritage

The current ‘Decade of Centenaries’ (2012-2023) in the Republic of Ireland has created a pretext for funding high-profile national digitisation projects. During this decade, digital archives have become part of the public experience of commemoration in a way they were not before. Social media also emerged as a prominent mode of communicating the commemorations online, leaving behind an historical record of engagement. Releases of state digital archives have been aligned with key anniversaries, notably in 2016, and has set a precedent for digitisation as a new ritual of commemoration in this late-modern remembrance culture. Online engagement built towards and spiked between March and April 2016, and though it is a burgeoning area of interest in digital history and memory studies Twitter as a source for the systematic study of contemporary commemoration in Ireland has been little explored. In this context, this thesis demonstrates how the profusion of digital archives and online engagement with heritage emphasises the digital space as a territory for the performance of remembrance culture, underpinned by a critical heritage and feminist discourse. Taking three centennial collections as case studies, it demonstrates how ‘digitisations may be recognized as vibrant and historically situated sources in their own right’ even as they instantiate Irish cultural and collective memory and identity. Using digital humanities methods, it further substantiates the ways in which Twitter was (re)appropriated for the commemorations for feminist ends. Commemorating the 1916 Easter Rising continues to be a powerful reference point in defining and redefining Irish cultural identity. This thesis shows how both digital commemorative archives and Twitter have been mobilized in articulating national identity during this decade of commemorations, as well as in critical remembrance around the centenary of the Easter Rising, challenging inequality and authorised commemoration

Disrupting the Digital Humanities

All too often, defining a discipline becomes more an exercise of exclusion than inclusion. Disrupting the Digital Humanities seeks to rethink how we map disciplinary terrain by directly confronting the gatekeeping impulse of many other so-called field-defining collections. What is most beautiful about the work of the Digital Humanities is exactly the fact that it can’t be tidily anthologized. In fact, the desire to neatly define the Digital Humanities (to filter the DH-y from the DH) is a way of excluding the radically diverse work that actually constitutes the field. This collection, then, works to push and prod at the edges of the Digital Humanities — to open the Digital Humanities rather than close it down. Ultimately, it’s exactly the fringes, the outliers, that make the Digital Humanities both heterogeneous and rigorous. This collection does not constitute yet another reservoir for the new Digital Humanities canon. Rather, its aim is less about assembling content as it is about creating new conversations. Building a truly communal space for the digital humanities requires that we all approach that space with a commitment to: 1) creating open and non-hierarchical dialogues; 2) championing non-traditional work that might not otherwise be recognized through conventional scholarly channels; 3) amplifying marginalized voices; 4) advocating for students and learners; and 5) sharing generously and openly to support the work of our peers