Building Digital Humanities in the Undergraduate Classroom

At the “History and Future of Digital Humanities” panel at the 2011 MLA, Stephen Ramsay discussed the perennial problem of defining what “counts” as work within the digital humanities. Taking what he knew would be a provocative stance, Ramsay declared, “Personally, I think Digital Humanities is about building things. [...I]f you are not making anything, …

While many debate the definition of the digital humanities, whither its political concerns lie (see Liu), and indeed “who’s in and who’s out” (Ramsay), what has largely escaped examination is how the digital has the potential to alter pedagogy.[1] As transformative as Franco Morretti’s distant reading and Paula Findlen, Dan Edelstein, and Nicole Coleman’s “Mapping …