• Reflections on a DH Dissertation

    Author(s):
    Zoe LeBlanc (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    CSDH-SCHN 2020
    Subject(s):
    Digital humanities
    Item Type:
    Presentation
    Meeting Title:
    CSDH-CSDH 2020
    Meeting Org.:
    CSDH-SCHN
    Tag(s):
    Digital history, Humanities PhD
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/7hvy-se04
    Abstract:
    In August 2019, I defended the first digital history dissertation at Vanderbilt, an outcome I had worked towards since 2011. But getting to that point took me far longer and further afield than anything I had initially envisioned when I first entered graduate school. To help make visible the process of a DH dissertation, my talk will trace my trajectory into DH, and in turn how this new field radically transformed my dissertation and research. In particular, I will reflect on how I went from a first-year graduate student, with a hobbyist interest in computers, to a postdoc in DH, who uses programming and statistics daily. Though my experiences represent one data point, I believe that commonalities exist across institutions, especially given the unique constraints to undertaking DH research as a graduate student. Some of these pressures that I navigated include: - Encouragement to pursue DH because of its perceived ‘attractiveness’ on the job market, while simultaneously having almost no institutional support for this research. - Undertaking DH summer workshops and fellowships and then facing an absence of any opportunities for advanced DH training. - Attempting to meaningfully integrate DH within my historical research, but then facing criticisms regarding both the time to completion and whether this research ‘counts’ as scholarship. Ultimately, I hope sharing my perspective on conceiving, executing, and defending a DH dissertation will provide insights into how graduate students can *and* cannot push the boundaries of humanities’ disciplinary practices.
    Notes:
    powerpoint slides for roundtable "Digital Humanities PhD Postmortems: We Did It, We’re Still Here, Ask Us Anything"
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
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