History 9808A: Digital History (Fall 2011). Hacking the Academy

In the crowdsourced volume Hacking the Academy, Tad Suiter writes:

We can see two highly complex systems—computer technology and the academy, one complex by nature and one deeply complex by force of history—colliding and hybridizing. And as this happens, we are faced with a situation where even the very clever people on the cutting edge who have working knowledge of both systems cannot fully synthesize them and predict outcomes. We don’t know what this hybridization will amount to. So all we can do is steer it by getting out there and learning more by creative experimentation.

Readings for Discussion

• Allosso, “Visualizing Historiography,” The Historical Society (18 December 2010).
• Bogost, “Beyond the Elbow-Patched Playground,” Part 1 and Part 2 (23-25 August 2011).
• Clark, “Docs are Old-School, We Need PageRank for People,” ThreeMinds (9 June 2009).
• Davidson, “The Open Laptop Midterm,” HASTAC (9 March 2011).
• Fischer, “On the Vocation of Public History,” #alt-academy (7 May 2011).
• Fitzpatrick, “Do ‘the Risky Thing’ in Digital Humanities,” Chronicle of Higher Education (25 September 2011).
• Gibbs, “Coding in the Humanities,” Historyproef (5 August 2011).
• Helft, “The Class That Built Apps, and Fortunes,” New York Times (7 May 2011).
• Horowitz, “From Technologist to Philosopher,” Chronicle of Higher Education (17 July 2011).
• Jaschik, “No More Plan B” Inside Higher Ed (3 October 2011).
• Kirschenbaum, “Hello Worlds: Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program,” Chronicle of Higher Education (23 January 2009).
• Kraus, “Creative Futures,” (9 February 2011).
• Lazorchak, “Unconferences,” The Signal (28 September 2011).
• Might, “The Illustrated Guide to a PhD,” (n.d.)
• Moesch, “Code Concepts 1: Performing the Algorithm,” HASTAC (10 October 2011).
• Nowviskie, “Eternal September of the Digital Humanities,” (15 October 2010).
• Pink, “Think Tank: Why We All Need a ‘To Don’t’ List, Just Like Moses,” The Telegraph (23 April 2011).
• Ramsay, “Who’s In and Who’s Out” and “On Building” (8-11 January 2011).
• Reisz, “Google Leads Search for Humanities PhD Graduates,” Times Higher Education (19 May 2011).
• Sample, “The Digital Humanities Is Not About Building, It’s About Sharing,” Sample Reality (25 May 2011).
• Spiro, “Getting Started in the Digital Humanities,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (14 October 2011).
• Torrone, “Is it Time to Rebuild and Retool Public Libraries and Make ‘TechShops’?” MAKE Blog (10 March 2011).
• Tweney, “DIY Freaks Flock to ‘Hacker Spaces’ Worldwide,” Wired Gadget Lab (29 March 2009).
• Unsworth, “Scholarly Primitives,” Humanities Computing Symposium (13 May 2000).
• Z, “The First Step is to Start,” 37signals Blog (31 August 2011).