This semester, each DHIL team member picked an article for the lab to read and discuss in our weekly lab meetings. This was a fun opportunity for us to learn from one another, as digital fellows, developers, and the digital scholarship librarian brought in articles from our areas of expertise to share. We also got to explore the wide range of digital humanities research. Topics ranged from open pedagogy and student writing to feminist bibliography; from data storytelling to the value of blogging as scholarship; from stylometry, to semiotic mediation, to annotation.  

DHIL Spring 2023 reading list 

Adcock, T., Grant K., Nation-Knapper, S., Robertson, B., & Slumkoski, C. (2016). Canadian History Blogging: Reflections at the Intersection of Digital Storytelling, Academic Research, and Public Outreach. Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada, 27(2), 1–39. https://doi.org/10.7202/1040560ar

Hasan, R. (2002). Semiotic Mediation and Mental Development in Pluralistic Societies: Some implications for tomorrow's schooling. In G. Wells and G. Claxton (Eds.) Learning for life in the 21st Century (pp.112 - 126). Blackwell Publishers Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470753545.ch9

Kalir, R. & Garcia, A. (2021). Chapter 1. In Annotation (pp. 1–32). MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12444.001.0001

Leclercq, E., and Kestemont, M. (2021). Advances in Distant Diplomatics: A Stylometric Approach to Medieval Charters. Interfaces (Milano), 8,  214–44. https://doi.org/10.54103/interfaces-08-10  

Lund, B. D. (2022). The Art of (Data) Storytelling: Hip Hop Innovation and Bringing a Social Justice Mindset to Data Science and Visualization. The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, 6(1/2), 31–41. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48665362

Ozment, K. (2020). Rationale for Feminist Bibliography. Textual Cultures, 13(1), 149–178. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26954243 

Savonick, D. (2019). What Can Our Writing Do in the World?: The Feminist Praxis of Publishing Student Writing. Radical Teacher, 115, 64–70. https://doi.org/10.5195/rt.2019.635 

What our team had to say

Andrew: "The eye-catching title aside, "The Art of (Data) Storytelling: Hip Hop Innovation and Bringing a Social Justice Mindset to Data Science and Visualization" delivers the importance of storytelling around data and how impactful the story can be on published results (both negatively and positively). I chose this article as it relates to some problems facing technology, data presentation, libraries, social justice, and the humanities which I thought would be helpful to myself to bridge the gap in my understanding of the digital humanities. I also want to highlight the importance of data usage and how it can easily be misused if not properly handled with care." 

Sophie: "Lately I have been interested in student publishing and course journals on OJS. I chose "What Can Our Writing Do in the World?: The Feminist Praxis of Publishing Student Writing” because it piqued my curiosity about alternative forms of writing for undergraduate student publishing, including Zines and other forms that might better support earlier-stages of student writing. I think it is important to value undergraduate student voices in academic publishing, and recognize/appreciate the different stages of the writing process."

Ali: “I’m currently working on a scoping review project, investigating how researchers report knowledge mobilization activities in their CV. This article, "Canadian History Blogging: Reflections at the Intersection of Digital Storytelling, Academic Research, and Public Outreach" is one of the ones that came up in the review because it addresses how scholarly blogging can be valued as academic labour - and it caught my eye because one of the authors, Tina Adcock, is from SFU History.” 

Julianna picked Dr. Ozment’s “Rationale for Feminist Bibliography” as she recently took a graduate course about book history and wanted to learn more about the scholarship of book history and how to ensure that it is feminist. Julianna also works for SFU’s The Women’s Print History Project, 1700-1836, instigated by Dr. Michelle Levy, where she works alongside Dr. Ozment. There, they analyze and collect data on women’s contributions to print in the long eighteenth century. This article provided insight into print history in and around the eighteenth century, and it was a fascinating discussion amongst the DHIL.

Joey: “The challenge of encoding, handling, and adding annotations is frequently encountered by projects in the lab. In the Lyon in Mourning project, for instance, we have had many conversations about the nature of annotation and the multiple ways that editors—both historical and contemporary—have used annotation to make claims about and engage with a text. I chose Chapter 1 from Kalir & Garcia’s recent book as it not only details a very useful history of the ‘affordances’ of annotation, but also charts ways to think critically about how we see and understand annotation in our own engagements with texts.” 

Read with us 

Have a suggestion for an article we should read? Want to join the DHIL reading group? Get in touch with us: dhil@sfu.ca