Developing less burdensome and more equitable ways to support scholarly difference is a preeminent challenge when thinking about the future of assessment and promotion in higher education. At stake in this is the very capacity of institutions to do the work of scholarly inclusion, to recognize the range of approaches well captured in the digital humanities caucus of the American Studies Association’s succinct 2016 characterization of humanities work that is “innovative, critical, boundary-pushing, justice-based, and experimental work—scholarship that takes a diversity of forms, that reaches and is produced by thinkers, teachers, practitioners, and makers from a wide range of communities and contexts.” Assessment potentially shadows or highlights scholarly identity at every institutional juncture, and this is as true for undergraduate research work as it is for matters of promotion, tenure, or contract renewal for faculty and staff.
With that in mind, this article surveys responses to the challenges of assessing DH work in institutional settings, and also reviews the work of Five College Digital Humanities 2016 draft report on digital assessment, “The New Rigor.”