What inspires you to work in digital humanities and how did you get started?
My interest in the digital humanities began during my grad school course work at Saint Louis University. In one course, I had to research a digital tool and give a short presentation. I chose the census mapping tool Social Explorer. The tool made it fairly easy to explore census data and create a map with that data. It also had a feature that allowed you to make multiple maps and present them as part of their storytelling tool. I was struck by telling a story spatially and with images and wanted to do this in my teaching and with my research.
You describe yourself as a “digital humanist.” What is a digital humanist?
I think digital humanist means different things to different people, whether they call themselves a digital humanist or not. I find there are two main actions that cut across these many definitions that I most identify with:
- A digital humanist applies digital methods and tools to their research to augment their exploration and analysis of their subject of interest.
- They use their training as a humanist to critically analyze the digital tools and methods they apply to their research. In doing so, they recognize the limitations and biases of these tools and methods and how their application may shape their conclusions or representations of their research.
Your book manuscript, Mexican Corridors: Migration and Placemaking in the Lower Midwest, is an exciting case study of migration to a region typically not associated with Mexican communities. Can you explain your motivation to develop Mapping the Mexican Midwest to visualize these communities.
Mapping the Mexican Midwest evolved out of my interest in telling stories with maps (which began with my use of Social Explorer) and my hope that my research could reach beyond the limited audience of academic writing. While Mapping the Mexican Midwest highlights some of my scholarly arguments, the project’s broader purpose is to engage with the public. The project also materialized because of my lack of geographic knowledge about the Midwest. As I explored archives, I came across the names of towns and cities in Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas that I could not point to on a map. So I decided to look them up and place a marker on Google MyMaps. It gave me a better sense of where Mexican migrants built communities and if these places were in close proximity or not. This process led me to one of my earliest conclusions: that I was looking at a regional community that bridged urban and rural. As further research cemented my argument of a regional community, it led to a more forceful argument that
I share on the project site and in a recent article: Mapping the Mexican Midwest counters the myth that the Midwest is solely a rural and white heartland. The contextualizing information on the website and the central map illustrate how early twentieth century Mexican placemaking weaved their communities into the economic and social fabric of the region.
Your work in the digital humanities is wide ranging from using maps to making oral histories accessible on the web (Dartmouth Vietnam Project & Dartmouth Black Lives Matter Project). What is your favorite digital medium to work with?
I think maps remain my favorite digital medium. I really like engaging with the challenges of creating a map. Map making may appear straight forward, but every step of the process makes you ask scholarly, technical, and design questions that build on each other. For example, if I’m mapping a historical community, do I want to represent that community with a point or a shaded polygon. If I chose a polygon, how I am sure of the exact boundaries? What year should I pick as the representative year to help me define those boundaries? Do I put the polygon on a map from that period or something current? If I choose a historical map, how do I actually get that image into my mapping platform or program and make sure it aligns with the accepted coordinate system? Does my historical map argue something different than a current map?….you get the idea.
On the pedagogical side of things, are students receptive to more technology in the classroom? Do you think that students would like more options/assignments to create their own digital humanities projects?
I think students are receptive to technology in the classroom, but instructors shouldn’t add technology and/or DH assignments for the sake of doing so. What’s proved valuable and worthwhile to my students about the different digital projects in my courses is that students left the course with something to show to others. For example, one student who created a digital exhibit in my course later shared that exhibit as proof-of-concept of a larger project they wanted to pursue to support a scholarship application. Others have shared projects for internships, grad school applications, and jobs.
But this doesn’t mean every instructor should offer a digital project option. Digital assignments should accomplish some larger learning objective and avoid assuming digital literacy. The instructor must provide learning and support around the types of acceptable projects and the tool(s) one may suggest or require. For example, when I assigned a digital exhibit project, I had the digital humanities librarian provide two in-class training sessions for the tool (Omeka-S) that we used, I had students complete readings on digital storytelling and digital humanities ethics, and I built in work days where students could troubleshoot any issues they may have as they navigated the user interface. In another course focused on mapping, I scaffolded reviews of other projects, digital skills building exercises, data gathering and organizing training, and mini mapping projects that assessed their skills before they even began work on their final research-based mapping project.
If anyone is considering adding DH components to their course, Jennifer Guiliano’s A Primer for Teaching Digital History: Ten Design Principles is a must read. It helps with assignment and project ideas, but more importantly it emphasizes your responsibility to your students and reasonable expectations for DH projects.
Where do you see the future of digital humanities going? Are there any exciting new technologies or ways to present history digitally?
This isn’t anything profound, but I think Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming DH. I’m going to be diplomatic: people believe there are pros and cons to this. What I will say is that whether you see AI as a threat or boon to the field or academia, DH practitioners should be at the forefront of critiquing these tools and applying those methods. The risk of increased surveillance, labor exploitation, and environmental destruction is too great for us to just ignore or dismiss AI and LLMs out of hand.
As for me, I’m excited about the increased development around static websites because they are one way to address the preservation and sustainability crisis surrounding digital projects. Here are a few examples of what make up this crisis:
- What were once cutting-edge projects are now outdated and use up financial and labor resources just to maintain the project as it was 10 years ago.
- Server space to host projects is harder to find or saps financial resources.
- Project team members move to other institutions and the project becomes stagnant.
Static sites are a solution because they are easier to maintain and have minimal hosting requirements. Sometimes they have a steeper learning curve, but I think this is a good thing that helps reveal rather than obscure how your computer and digital infrastructure work. Lately, I have used a static site digital exhibit framework called CollectionBuilder. You can quickly get a project up and running or you can make a highly customized site by exploring their tutorials and documentation. I’m excited about developments like CollectionBuilder because by trying to address preservation and sustainability, it also contributes to the greater democratization of digital tools and resources. Hopefully tools like static sites allow low-resourced institutions and organizations to create projects that they and their communities want and will benefit from.