#GWDH15: the Disrupting DH Symposium at GW

Disrupting DH Roundtable. Photo credit: M.W. Bychowski.

The GW Digital Humanities Symposium: DISRUPTING DH took place in the Jack Morton Auditorium on Friday, January 30, 2015 9am – 4pm. The event was organized by Jonathan Hsy, Founding Co-Director of the GW Digital Humanities Institute (the other DHI Founding Co-Director Alexa Huang is currently away on a Fulbright in the UK) as well as by the DHI Graduate Assistants M.W. Bychowski and Shyama Rajendran.

DISRUPTING DH brought together academics, activists, and publishers to explore critical approaches to the Digital Humanities (DH). DH is an interdisciplinary area that uses digital media to examine the arts and humanities and also vice versa: using creative and humanist methods to teach and analyze digital media and its use.

The symposium was GW Digital Humanities Institute (GW DHI), in collaboration with the Department of English, Creative Writing, Department of History, Dean’s Scholars in Shakespeare Program, Disability Support Services, GW Libraries, GW Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute, and the DH Graduate Working Group. Special thanks should also be given to the many GW English graduate volunteers who helped work the front desk.

The heavy lifting of the symposium was done by the invited speakers, Angela Bennett Segler (creator of Material Piers), Eileen Joy (Director, punctum books), Dorothy Kim (medievalist, feminist, digital humanist), Roopika Risam (Co-founder, Postcolonial Digital Humanities), Jesse Stommel (Director, Hybrid Pedagogy), and Suey Park (Co-founder, Killjoy Prophets). It is a great pleasure to set up spaces then bring in brilliant thinkers to play and start revolutions.

Jesse Stommel presents on pedagogy. Photo credit: M.W. Bychowski.

Disrupting DH began at 9:00 with registration, coffee, and bagels. Jonathan Hsy took the stage at 9:40 for introductory remarks. Diane H. Cline (History, Director of Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration) and Jeffrey Cohen (Director, GW Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute) introduced the "ARCHIVE" panel featuring Angela Bennett Segler, “Medium Data–Machine Reading, Manual Correction and the End of the Archive” and Dorothy Kim, “Disrupting the Archive: The Ethics of Digital Archives.” [Read more about this session here, with twitter archive here.]

From 11:00-12:00, the "CLASSROOM" panel challenged traditional notions about pedagogy and technology. Holly Dugan (Acting Director, Dean’s Scholars in Shakespeare Program) and Kavita Daiya (Director, MA Program in English) introduced Jesse Stommel's presentation on MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) entitled “Stand and Unfold Yourself: MOOCs, Networked Learning, and the Digital Humanities” and Roopika Risam presented a talk “Towards a Postcolonial Digital Pedagogy.”

After a short break for lunch, the symposium returned for the third panel on the "IVORY TOWER." Dolsy Smith (GW Libraries, Librarian for the Humanities) and Jennifer Chang (Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Founder and Co-Chair, Kundiman) introduced the final pair of panelists: Eileen Joy, who spoke about “The Importance of Illegitimacy” and Suey Park, whose talk was entitled “Theorizing Transformative Justice in a Digital Era.”

The day concluded with a roundtable that included all of the speakers, co-moderated by Jonathan Hsy (GW DH Institute) and Lori Brister (Founder, GW Graduate DH Working Group). Questions were fielded by the speakers, audience, and online participants. At last, everyone came together for a bounty of food at a reception catered by Whole Foods.

Disrupting DH audience members on computers. Photo credit: M.W. Bychowski.

The event was extensively documented and connected to a wide variety of digital media. On the day, audience members communicated each other and others through twitter (#gwdh15 and #DisDH). These tweets have since been collected and curated by a variety of conference participants: Disrupting the Digital Humanities: #GWDH15 by Alexis Lothian, #Disrupting DH @ George Washington U by M.W. Bychowski, and Disrupting the Archive by Angie Bennett Segler.

In addition to the tweeters, bloggers took on the task of relating their experiences of the event to a wider public. These bloggers include a number of PhD students in English at GW: Sam Yates wrote a piece on The Efficacy of Disrupting DH: Disability Access, Animacy, and Community. Alan Montroso wrote Digital Compassion: Reflections of Disrupting DH #GWDH15. M.W. Bychowski wrote #Disrupting Digital Humanities at the GWU.

We hope that the conversations that began at the symposium will continue online, in print, around the department, and beyond.

If you created a digital record or archive for DISRUPTING DH and would like it to be included in the list, please contact M.W. Bychowski (Mbychows@gwu.edu).

GW DHI Co-Director Jonathan Hsy. Photo credit: M.W. Bychowski.

Visit the official website for the DISRUPTING DH Symposium

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GW English Professors on Twitter

Professor Hsy tweets
@Jonathan Hsy

GW English is on Twitter!  And we thought it might be useful to our readers, especially as the next Digital Humanities Symposium kicks off, to have a round-up of where to find us.  Join us on Friday, January 30, for a Digital Humanities Symposium which in fact includes a few twitter "celebrities" or experts such as Suey Park (@suey_park) and Dorothy Kim (@dorothyk98).  Professor Kim has done some excellent work theorizing Twitter as a digitally-mediated public space.  You can access her work here.

With any of the Twitter handles listed below, you can click right through and follow your professors if you choose.  As more faculty are on Twitter, we'll update this post, so check back later.  See you in virtual space!

With a medieval Grumpy Cat avatar-persona, Professor Jonathan Hsy tweets @JonathanHsy.  Follow this twitter feed if you're interested in linguistics, diversity in and outside the academy, disability history, digital humanities, and nerdy medieval things.  Professor Hsy has also blogged about the use of twitter at academic conferences; the blog post accessible here, which is from "In The Middle" (where he co-blogs alongside Professor Jeffrey Cohen and others), addresses medieval studies but extends to twitter usage in other domains.

Professor McRuer tweets
@RobertMcRuer

Department Chair Professor Robert McRuer tweets @RobertMcRuer.  Many of his tweets are connected to cultures of queerness and disability, and to globalization and resistance to austerity politics.  He is also on Instagram @RobertMcRuer.

Professor Jeffrey Cohen, with reflections on medieval studies, the future of the university, digital humanities, pedagogy, fossils, history, ecocriticism, and silly thoughts in general, can be found @jeffreyjcohen.

Professor Gayle Wald (@gaylewald) doesn't tweet very often, but when she does it's usually about academic conferences, noteworthy books she's read, and current events.


Professor Daniel DeWispelare (@periphrast) tweets sporadically about upcoming DC-area events, literacy, theory, philosophy, and contemporary fiction. 

Professor Holly Dugan tweets @trickyholly about Shakespeare, the senses, and early modern literature and history (as well as the occasional tweet about baseball, knitting, and perfume).

Professor Dugan tweets
@trickyholly

Professor Dan Moshenberg tweets @danwibg, focusing on women in and beyond the global prison, household, city, information networks.

Professor Maria Frawley tweets @janeaustenandme.  Her tweets explore a range of professional and personal interests connected to Honors education, nineteenth century print culture, and environmental issues. 

Professor David Mitchell tweets @dtmitchel. Many of his tweets are related to disability experience, crip/queer cultures, and disability studies.

Professor Margaret Soltan isn't on Twitter, but you can find her thoughts on university life and a range of other topics on her blog here.

PhD candidate Lori Brister tweets @LoriBrister. Lori tweets about Victorian literature, tourism, and the Digital Humanities.

PhD candidate and Graduate Assistant D. Gilson tweets and Instagrams @dgilson. Most of his posts are about contemporary poetry and creative nonfiction; hipster and gay culture; and frustrations with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

PhD candidate and Graduate Assistant Maia Gil'Adi tweets @maiagiladi. Many of her tweets are connected to teaching experiences, remote-work updates with her writing group, and the digital humanities.

PhD candidate and Graduate Assistant Molly Lewis (@maebemollyfunke) tweets about a myriad of things, including but not limited to the topics of medieval literature, medieval and modern race, feminism, digital humanities, academia, popular culture, and encounters with life in DC.  She also live-tweets various academic talks and conferences. 

Ph.D candidate and Graduate Assistant  M.W. Bychowski tweets @Transliterature and blogs here.  Her blog, Things Transform, focuses on transgender, queerness, disability, and medieval studies.

PhD candidate and Graduate Assistant Haylie Swenson tweets (infrequently!) @haylieswenson. She also blogs about animal studies, ecologies, and medieval literature and art here.

And of course you can always follow GW English directly here.  A new Communications Liaison will have that Twitter account moving again very soon.  Tweet at us and let us know how your classes are going!

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