Working the Digital Humanities: Uncovering Shadows between the Dark and the Light

The following is an exchange between the two authors in response to a paper given by Chun at the “Dark Side of the Digital Humanities” panel at the 2013 Modern Languages Association (mla) Annual Convention. This panel, designed to provoke controversy and debate, succeeded in doing so. However, in order to create a more rigorous conversation focused on the many issues raised and elided and on the possibilities and limitations of digital humanities as they currently exist, we have produced this collaborative text. Common themes in Rhody’s and Chun’s responses are: the need to frame digital humanities within larger changes to university funding and structure, the importance of engaging with uncertainty and the ways in which digital humanities can elucidate “shadows” in the archive, and the need for and difficulty of creating alliances across diverse disciplines. We hope that this text provokes more ruminations on the future of the university (rather than simply on the humanities) and leads to more wary, creative, and fruitful engagements with digital technologies that are increasingly shaping the ways and means by which we think.