This summer, the DHIL team read a wonderful variety of articles and book chapters, covering topics such as digital humanities scholarship and practice, librarianship, social media, decolonial approaches to research, and open educational resources. We had rich discussions about the ways that our work engages, perpetuates, or refutes the benefits and challenges of work in digital humanities - and we often connected what we read to broader cultural content, like “Barbenheimer,” Puss in Boots 2, and Anthony Bourdain. Read on to learn more about what we read this term and what we thought. 

DHIL Summer 2023 reading list  

Atef, N., Fleerackers, A., & Alperin, J. P. (2023). “Influencers” or “Doctors”? Physicians’ Presentation of Self in YouTube and Facebook Videos. International Journal of Communication, 17(0), 24. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/19700

Coble, Z. & Karlin, J. (2023). Reference Rot in the Digital Humanities Literature: An Analysis of Citations Containing Website Links in DHQ. DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly 17(1). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/17/1/000662/000662.html

Ettarh, F. (2018). Vocational awe and librarianship: the lies we tell ourselves. In the library with the lead pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/ 

Flanders, J. (2023). Jobs, roles, and tools in digital humanities. In J. Nyhan, G. Rockwell, S. Sinclair, & A. Ortolja-Baird (Eds.), On making in the digital humanities: The scholarship of digital humanities development in honour of John Bradley. UCL Press, pp. 148–161. https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/211148

Flisfeder, M. (2021). Input/Output. Algorithmic desire toward a new structuralist theory of social media (pp. 113 - 138). Northwestern University Press. https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/book/81971

McBride, M., & Abramovich, S. (2022). Crossing the boundaries through OER adoption: Considering open educational resources (OER) as boundary objects in higher education. Library & Information Science Research, 44(2), 101154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2022.101154

McPherson, T. (2012). Why Are The Digital Humanities So White? or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation. In M. Gold (Ed.), Debates in the digital humanities, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 139-160. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttv8hq.12

Risam, R. (2018). Introduction: The Postcolonial Digital Cultural Record. In New Digital Worlds : Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (pp.3-22). Northwestern University Press. https://sfu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1ecgsju/01SFUL_ALMA51288633890003611 

Tuck, E. & Yang, K. W. (2014). R-Words: Refusing Research. In D. Paris & M. T. Winn (Eds.) Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities (pp. 223 - 247). Sage https://doi.org/10.4135/9781544329611.

Zvyagintseva, L., Cawthorn, K., & Quamen, H. (2023). Digital Literacy as a Theory of Power: Critical Pedagogy in a Library Digital Scholarship Centre. IDEAH. https://doi.org/10.21428/f1f23564.ded41de0 

What our team had to say: 

Ali: “It’s hard to pick a favourite article from this semester’s readings as I think what I appreciated most was actually the connections that emerged from reading Tara McPherson’s “Why Are The Digital Humanities So White?” followed by an excerpt from Roopika Risam’s New Digital Worlds followed by Tuck and Yang’s “R-Words: Refusing Research.” All of these pieces have strong decolonial or antiracist approaches to research, and generated really great conversations in the DHIL about how and why we work in the way that we do, and what we could change.”

Andrew: “I chose the “Reference Rot in the Digital Humanities Literature” article because I wanted to learn more about link permanence from another perspective (DH vs CompSci). Also it was from the same issue as the "From Tamagotchis to Pet Rocks: On Learning to Love Simplicity through the Endings Principles" article written by our own Joey Takeda.

My favourite reading was "Vocational awe and librarianship: the lies we tell ourselves" which had an interesting story to tell and perspective on librarianship (which can be extrapolated to other 'public good' type jobs).”

Julianna: I chose Roopika Risam’s “Introduction: The Postcolonial Digital Cultural Record” found in New Digital Worlds : Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy. I had the pleasure of visiting the University of British Columbia’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre in July for my English graduate class on the archive with Dr. Michelle Levy. Here, we attended a presentation on the formation of the Centre and the work they are doing to recover and reunite Indigenous people with information and documentation from Residential Schools. During this presentation, one of the sources they used was Risam’s and I had to recommend it for the DHIL Reading List! 

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