Student Writing as Digital Humanities Method

Mackenzie Brooks, Brandon Walsh, and Abdurrafey Khan (Washington and Lee University)

Whether it is a blog post, a journal article, a Hypothes.is comment, or a README.md file, writing is a fundamental digital humanities and digital scholarship activity. We encourage undergraduates to pursue DH to improve their technology and research skills, but often neglect to include writing in the list of transferable skills. Encouraging students to write in public asks them to think about themselves as contributors to ongoing conversations about the critical use of technology. Far from presenting public writing as a utopian ideal, by discussing copyright and licensing, professional identities, and more with our students, we can help them better understand the risks and affordances of the work we ask them to do. In this presentation, we will share several methods used in our DH program to help students build the skills necessary to publish writing on the Web.

Mackenzie Brooks is Assistant Professor and Digital Humanities Librarian at Washington and Lee University. Prior to her current position, she worked as Metadata Librarian at W&L and at the Loyola University Chicago Health Sciences Library. As a member of the Digital Humanities Action Team, she advises faculty and students on best practices for metadata standards in digital humanities projects. Additionally, she teaches undergraduate courses on scholarly text encoding and digital humanities.

Brandon Walsh is Mellon Digital Humanities Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in English at the Washington and Lee University Library. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia.

Abdurrafey Khan is a student at Washington and Lee University.

[gview file=”http://budsc16.scholar.bucknell.edu/files/2016/11/Student-Writing-as-Digital-Humanities-Method.pdf”]