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Thoughts Before Class - Week 7


I’m in the Rhetorical Precis group for this week. I selected “The Place of Video Games in the Digital Humanities” by Trent Hergenrader from my Zotero entries. I’ve posted my RP and Presentation here.

The readings for this week include the final two chapters of The Emergence of the Digital Humanities, “Publications” and “Practices.” In “Publications” Jones discusses the shifts and changes that have occurred within the publishing world in the wake of ongoing technological advances. His discussion addresses academic and general publications, as well as digital and print publishing. I found this particular chapter to be particularly interesting. And I’m always interested in the discussion of digital publishing versus traditional publishing. 

Throughout this chapter, Jones points out several different and new publishing platforms that have come about in recent years, and he also discusses how academics (including himself) are using some of these digital tools. Toward the end of the chapter, Jones explains that much of his own writing is done “almost entirely on an iPad with an external keyboard…Nor is it unusual that I drafted portions of the book on two different blogs (on Wordpress and Tumblr), often expanding a blog entry to produce a chapter. Comments on both blogs, as well as Twitter, where I called attention to new posts and sometimes carried on conversations about them, helped shape the book” (174). To me, this just exemplifies how much has changed about writing in general, and about academic writing in particular. I regularly scroll through #AcademicTwitter and interact from time to time with others. However, I feel like this is becoming more and more a part of the scholarly experience. I know that for some academics, an active digital presence is a significant part of their career. And as Jones explains, a lot of academic conversations are happening in these digital environments. At what point (and how close are we to that point) do these types of digital interactions become a requirement and/or an expectation for a successful academic? Will there come a time when all scholars will be expected to interact with their work on a digital level?

Work Cited

Jones, Steven E. The Emergence of the Digital Humanities. Routledge, 2014.

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