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 lovely and rigorous.This collection does not constitute yet another reservoir for the new Digital Humanities canon. Rather, our 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 to support the work of our peers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS //

Cathy N. Davidson, Preface: Difference is Our Operating System

Dorothy Kim and Jesse Stommel, Disrupting the Digital Humanities: An Introduction

I. Etymology

Adeline Koh, A Letter to the Humanities: DH Will Not Save You

Audrey Watters, The Myth and the Millennialism of ‘Disruptive Innovation’

Meg Worley, The Rhetoric of Disruption: What are We Doing Here?

Jesse Stommel, Public Digital Humanities

II. Identity

Jonathan Hsy and Rick Godden, Universal Design and Its Discontents

Angel Nieves, DH as ‘Disruptive Innovation’ for Restorative Social Justice: Virtual Heritage and 3D Reconstructions of South Africa’s Township Histories

Annemarie Perez, Lowriding through the Digital Humanities

III. Jeremiad

Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo, Gold Star for You,
Mongrel Dream Library

Michelle Moravec, Exceptionalism in Digital Humanities: Community, Collaboration, and Consensus

Matt Thomas, The Trouble with ProfHacker

Sean Michael Morris, Digital Humanities and the Erosion of Inquiry

IV. Labor

Moya Bailey, #transform(ing)DH Writing and Research: An Autoethonography of Digital Humanities and Feminist Ethics

Kathi Inman Berens and Laura Sanders, DH and Adjuncts: Putting the Human Back into the Humanities

Liana Silva Ford, Not Seen, Not Heard

Spencer D. C. Keralis, Disrupting Labor in Digital Humanities; or, The Classroom Is Not Your Crowd

V. Networks

Maha Bali, The Unbearable Whiteness of the Digital

Eunsong Kim, The Politics of Visibility

Bonnie Stewart, Academic Influence: The Sea of Change

VI. Play

Edmond Y Chang, Playing as Making

Kat Lecky, Humanizing the Interface

Robin Wharton, Bend Until It Breaks: Digital Humanities and Resistance

VII. Structure

Chris Friend, Outsiders, All: Connecting the Pasts and Futures of Digital Humanities and Composition

Lee Skallerup-Bessette, W(h)ither DH? New Tensions, Directions, and Evolutions in the Digital Humanities

Chris Bourg, The Library is Never Neutral

Fiona Barnett, After the Digital Humanities, or, a Postscript

Conclusion

Dorothy Kim, #DecolonizeDH or A Practical Guide to Making DH Less White