Liberal arts learning in the digital age

Hamilton College’s Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi):
A Liberal Arts Model for Future Scholarship, Research, and Teaching

Angel David Nieves, Ph.D., Associate Professor & Chair, Africana Studies Department
Co-Director, Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi)

Since the fall of 2008 I have had the distinct privilege of working with an interdisciplinary team of scholars, IT professionals, programmers, and students in the development of a comprehensive digital humanities program at Hamilton College, a small, private liberal arts college in upstate New York.  Today, liberal arts colleges and universities face a set of unprecedented challenges as they prepare their students for employment, leadership, and service.  Specifically, in the wake of America’s fiscal crisis, they must attempt to justify the growing costs of attending those four-year private schools with a history of extreme privilege.  Educators at the college level are also being asked to expand opportunities for students of science, technology, mathematics, and engineering while these same educators grapple with changes in research and teaching triggered by the revolution in digital technologies.  The liberal arts model, which has maintained a strong and principled foundation in teaching undergraduates, can no longer ignore the kinds of pedagogical shifts and epistemological questions that have resulted with the growth of computational technology.  Schools such as Hobart and William Smith, Union, Colgate, St. Lawrence, Skidmore, and Hamilton College, known among their peers as the “New York 6 Liberal Arts Consortium (NY6)” have all embraced the advent of new digital technologies in different ways based on existing resources and institutional leadership.  The Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi) at Hamilton College is a collaboratory where new media and computing technologies are used to promote humanities-based teaching, research, and scholarship across the liberal arts.  DHi creates opportunities for new interdisciplinary models and methods of collaboration between faculty and students.  These activities support a fundamental shift in humanities research, leveraging the potential of technology to access and manipulate rich media collections in ways that increase collaborative scholarship (not only within Hamilton humanities but also, potentially, with other institutions around the world) and lead to the generation of new knowledge.

The LTS Digital Humanities Team has launched a new Google Site on Digital Scholarship and Learning in the Humanities.

To get the site started we have posted some readings about Digital Humanites, a list of projects and courses at Wellesley that have DH content (only the ones that we know about so far – help us add to it!), a list of some external DH project websites that you might find interesting, and a list of DH organizations. We invite you to come to the site, add to the content, and start conversations in the discussion forum.

When you visit the site you’ll see a ‘Save the Date’ tab alerting you to a program on Digital Humanities that will be offered on March 6 (4-5:30 PM in Clapp Library lecture Room) as part of LTS’ Spring Symposium on Liberal Arts Learning in the Digital Age.

The featured speaker will be Angel David Nieves, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Initiative at Hamilton College.  Hope to see you there!