How, when, and for whom is digital humanities also public humanities?

Scholars, artists, and new media practitioners-including Sharon Daniel, Erik Loyer, Alex Juhasz, Liz Losh, Tara McPherson, Kathleen Woodward, Sarah Elwood, Margaret Rhee, Kim Christen, and Alan Liu-have recently investigated the intersections of digital methods with cultural criticism, demonstrating how investments in technologies and computation are not necessarily antithetical to investments in critical theory and social justice. Building on these investments, this special issue of New American Notes Online (NANO) asks how, when, and for whom digital humanities is also public humanities, with particular attention to project-based research.

For instance:

Which digital humanities projects are currently engaging contemporary politics and social exclusion, under what assumptions, and through what mechanisms?

How are these projects articulating relationships with their publics and community partners, and through what platforms and forms of collaboration?

How are public humanities projects being preserved, circulated, and exhibited through digital methods? By whom? Using what protocols and technologies?

Does public humanities have “data”? If so, then how is that data defined or structured? If not, then what are some concerns about data-driven research?

What might the histories of digital humanities (however defined) learn from social justice activism, participatory research, context provision, and witnessing?

How are building, making, or coding activities embedded in social justice initiatives?

Across text, image, audio, and video, authors are invited to individually or collaboratively submit notes or brief “reports” detailing projects that work across digital and public humanities, including projects that do not identify with either term. For this issue, a note or “report” implies a submission that, at a minimum:

Focuses on an existing project, which is in development or already live;

Provides screengrabs, screencasts, or snapshots of that project and (where possible) treats them as evidence for an argument about the project;

Intersects questions of computation and technology with questions of culture and social justice; and

Articulates a narrative for the project, including (where applicable) its workflows, motivations, interventions, management, and partners.

Invited by NANO, the editor of this special issue is the Maker Lab in the Humanities at the University of Victoria, including Adèle Barclay, Nina Belojevic, Alex Christie, Jana Millar Usiskin, Stephen Ross, Jentery Sayers, and Katie Tanigawa.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: For this special issue, we are accepting submissions across text, image, video, and audio. All submissions should be submitted to bothmaker@uvic.ca and editor.nanocrit@gmail.com by 11:59pm on 1 October 2013 in your time zone. The body of the email should include your name(s), your affiliation(s), the title of the submission, five keywords describing the submission, and media type(s) and format(s) for the submission. Where possible, the submissions should be attached to the email. Should a submission exceed the email attachment limit, then the body of the email should also include a URL for the submission. The URL should not be discoverable on the web (e.g., it should be behind a passcode-protected wall, in a private cyberlocker, or not visible by search engines). Do not include your name(s) in any file name. Your name(s) should only be included in the body of your email.

If your submission is in text, then it should not exceed 3500 words (DOC(X)s and RTFs are preferred). Up to 15 high-resolution (at least 600 dpi) images are permitted (JPEGs are preferred) per submission. Video submissions should be 3 to 10 minutes in duration (MOVs and MP4s are preferred; minimum resolution: 426 x 400; maximum resolution: 1920 x 1080). Audio essays should also be 3 to 10 minutes in duration (MP3s and WAVs are preferred, encoded at 256 kbit/s or higher). Both audio and video can also be embedded in any text submission (no more than 5 instances of embedded media per submission).

All submissions should follow MLA guidelines for format, in-text citations, and works cited. Please email any questions about the submission guidelines to maker@uvic.caand editor.nanocrit@gmail.com.

SCHEDULE: Below is a tentative timeline for this special issue:

April 2013: Call for papers

October 1, 2013: Deadline for submissions to maker@uvic.caand editor.nanocrit@gmail.com

October 2, 2013: Peer review commences

November 1, 2013: Comments by the editors sent to all authors

November 25, 2013: Authors return final, revised submissions to the editors

December 1, 2013: End of peer review process

December 1, 2013: Final versions of selected submissions sent by editors to NANO

December 6, 2013: Publication in NANO

COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSIONS: NANO expects that all submissions contain original work, not extracts or abridgements. Authors may use their NANO material in other publications provided that NANO is acknowledged as the original publisher. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for reproducing copyright text, art, video, or other media. As an academic, peer-reviewed journal, whose mission is education, Fair Use rules of copyright apply to NANO. Please send any questions related to copyright and permissions to editor.nanocrit@gmail.com.

QUESTIONS: Please do not hesitate to contact the Maker Lab in the Humanities (special issue editor) at maker@uvic.ca with any questions or concerns about this special issue. We are looking forward to receiving your contributions to this issue of NANO.