Alex Gil at is the Digital Scholarship Coordinator, Columbia University Libraries.

He participated in THATCamp 2013 and we asked him to reflect on the four questions we’ve been posing to other posters who attended last year, or will attend in Chicago in 2014. He suggested, instead, offering his thoughts on the panel he was due to participate in (ultimately foiled due to transportation woes) at the recent American Studies Association conference, “Digital Humanities and the Neoliberal University: Complicity and/or Resistance.” 

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The jury is still out on the role that the digital humanities can play in redressing some troubling trends in Higher Ed in the United States. I side with those voices that warn against placing too much responsibility on what remains an ill-equipped band of hackers and hucksters, for what remain at the core structural and historical woes that require political, financial and cultural redress at scale. The first question I pose myself then is not what can DH do, but why is DH being called upon?

For those who don’t understand and stand to benefit, the main attractor is the word “digital,” no doubt an empty vortex collecting sound and fury, the center of a predictable hurricane. To those who begin to know and want to play, our importance derives from the knowledge of institutions, intellectual property, publishing platforms, networks and computation that inevitably accrues the more you spend time doing DH. In other words, the digital humanities seem to generate awareness and can-do that seem absent from business as usual, and perhaps could save the day. This misleads some to believe that we can provide or promise the conditions for full employment. Again, these are problems best addressed at other scales, through other registers.

To those who do know, a couple of hacker-sized efforts seem a better fit: the construction of viable models for scholarly research and learning that move us away from the stranglehold of closed-access, print based publication; a revised, humanities-centered curriculum for graduate and undergraduate education, offering added possibilities to participate in the professional and academic middle class; sustainable oversight over the remediation of our material inheritance; a micro-cultural shift in the humanities from representative to participatory democratic collaboration, i.e. the death of the Genius; finally, and perhaps least urgent, a reconciliation between procedural thinking, arts & crafts and the critical enterprise.

The question of our collusion with that nasty neoliberalism comes from some unfortunate consequences of the efforts above—some unforeseen, some avoidable. That said, for the most part, we all find it hard to disentangle the complicit from the resistant; some of us even refuse to use the word neoliberal any more. As Dennis Tenen pointed out to me during the MLA 2013 panel, “The Dark Side of the Digital Humanities,” all panelists were wearing Microsoft Research lanyards while they talked of DH complicity with neoliberalism. Complicit much? If not, what then? Is it crowdsourcing? Is it the use of computers with blood on the production line? Is it our energy consumption? Is it Twitter? Is it unpaid interns? Credential-creep? Is it that espresso macchiato we had with the provost?  Is it race? Gender? Citizenship? The prevalent euro-centric canons?  MOOCs (that’s not us, by the way)? Is it doing while talking?

All these questions are receiving attention as time and talent allows, and as all human endeavor paving roads to hell with their good intentions…

I digress. What I meant to say is that within what is being done in the name of a humanities turned digital much activity can have unintended consequences. Who would disagree with that? Isn’t the answer to remain vigilant and respond with alternatives? I will just use one semi-comic example to illustrate my point: The production of expensive, gargantuan digital humanities projects funded by soft money for the glory of a faculty member who couldn’t open a terminal on their overpriced Mac if their tenure depended on it.  Such projects usually tend to hire either a contingent labor force or existing library developers whose role is reemphasized as that of staff, when in reality their contribution shapes the epistemological core of the project. These boutique projects tend to create more problems than they solve, not the least of which are problems of missed opportunities.

I am not opposed to large projects per se, just the ones that are imagined as mono-credit juggernauts. Undoubtedly, several layers of the administration, both in libraries and schools, benefit from such projects, but the knowledge and labor ecologies that we would prefer are sidestepped. Coincidentally, these projects become large burdens to sustain over a period of time, and make us wonder about the return for investment. A large project can, though, serve a more salutary purpose, if for example, instead of having those who can build it, have those who can’t learn how to; If we raise the status and financial well-being of those who can teach the digital in the digital humanities by hiring them permanently and gainfully as integral parts of the university; If the project is built as an addition to an existing community-loved platform, or as a new platform; If we make it well worth the students’ efforts by also paying them to participate. I have seen such models succeed first hand.

These are just some preliminary thoughts considering the question at hand is one of justice, the object of infinite desire. Coming from me, they will always be preliminary. I refuse to address all problems at once, and choose tactics over impotence. Call it an ethics of the Robin Hood in times of greed and subservient reason.

Alex Gil at is the Digital Scholarship Coordinator, Columbia University Libraries. He’s also Affiliate Faculty in the Columbia University English and Comparative Literature and Vice-Chair, Global Outlook::Digital Humanities. This was cross-posted on Alex’s own website here.

CUNY Graduate Center Ph.D Candidate Andrianna Campbell attended the American Art and Digital Scholarship Conference at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, held last week (November 15-16, 2013). It seemed like a meeting of minds that would produce discussion and collaboration that would chime well with the aims of THATCamp at CAA 2014. We asked her to reflect on the same questions we’ve been posing to our other posters, and on the conference itself. 

My involvement with digital art history currently involves the use of pedagogical tools for my classes at Parsons The New School of Design, an e-book about collaborative practice to which I am co-contributing a chapter and a curatorial project, Decenter, which began at the Henry Street Settlement’s Abrons Arts Center in New York and has now traveled to the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery at George Washington University in Washington DC. The latter demanded rigorous participation from me and Daniel Palmer, my co-curator.

In Decenter: An Exhibition on the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show, we proposed an atemporal comparison of abstraction in 1913 and abstraction today. Much abstraction today is mediated through digital technology. The exhibition took place in the gallery (off-line) and decenterarmory.com (on-line) and expanded to include over 500 participants. Because of this exhibit, I was invited by the Archives of American Art (AAA) to attend their American Art and Digital Scholarship symposium held on November 15 and participate in the accompanying workshop on November 16. As we know, the AAA and other Smithsonian Institutions have been in the throes of a widespread and rapid digitalization campaign; their main concern has been the use of digital tools as a means for searching, organizing and archiving information. As a retrieval tool, the Internet is certainly without parallel but the aim of these two gatherings was to move beyond these fundamental concerns. By sharing new digital methodologies for examining data, mapping and visualizing material, scholars/practitioners illuminated their current and future impact on academic research, curatorial projects and pedagogical prospects and thus their transformative influence on the study of American Art.

Digital visualization informed all of the papers at the AAA Symposium. There is something about manifesting abstract data into something seen that has been at the forefront of other disciplinary practice, but has only recently been a burgeoning aspect of research in the humanities. For example, Laura Wexler and Lauren Tilton presented “Revisioning the Archive: The Photogrammar Project” in which they use the catalog of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Office of War Information (OWI) photographs of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Ben Shahn et al to create a diagrammatic map, which can be searched temporally, thematically, geographically and incorporates historical census data for a richer understanding of the period. During the workshop, Wexler elaborated on her view of the project as a means to overcome the “digital divide,” a term that she uses to problematize the high-tech gaps seen in users from different social classes or male and female contributors. She points out that young lower-class male voices are well represented online, but less so for educated females, who make up less than 15% of contributors to Wikipedia.

In my own research, I call attention to this as an instance of “historical erasure” that is so common when we maintain similar patriarchal narratives on the Internet as we previously did offline and repost the equivalent information as if it were new. The “digital divide” or “historical erasure” is a major concern of my analysis of the archive. One of the works from Decenter is Andrea Geyer’s Indelible, which shows the names of 9 of the 50 women who were originally featured in the 1913 Armory show, but do not make it into the canonical history of that exhibition. As scholars, we have to be careful of the Internet’s seemingly democratic presentation, which occludes its ability to re-present problematic one-sided information. As researchers, we have to integrate new perspectives and present them online, where there is the potential for mass access. Other projects, from David Sledge’s “When and Where Did They Paint? Schematizing Landscape with the Inventory of American Paintings” to Titia Hulst’s “Documenting the Postwar Audience for American Avant-Garde Art” used mapping technologies to give us geographical or informational maps, which allow us to propose alternative art histories. The full presentations can be watched here.

The workshop on November 16 distilled these major concerns into four categories— Access & Pedagogy, Data Management, Research Methodology & e-Publishing, and the creation of a Tool Kit for Scholars. Attendees at the workshop included Kate Haw, the Director of the Archives of American Art, Kelly Quinn from the Terra Foundation’s Online Scholarly and Educational Initiatives, Emily Shapiro, the Executive Editor for American Art, Louisa Ruby from the Frick Library, Hilary Culbertson, Program Coordinator of HASTAC and other curators and doctoral candidates with an interest in the topic. The conversation was lively and groups generated project proposals that will certainly benefit the field in the future.

I found that the most pressing issue, the scattered and often piecemeal initiatives of so many major organizations, was not addressed. From my conversations with curators at Rhizome and the New Museum, and constructors of visualization projects at the Getty—I know that similar workshops and discussions have been happening for curators of contemporary art for the past decade. How can we bridge this divide between the scholars of a history of American Art pre-1985 and those of art with digital tools post-1989? We are all asking the same questions and in many cases require overlapping and similar solutions. By bringing together scholars from disparate fields with multiple funding options, I hope that innovations can be shared across platform, and perhaps approach our democratic ideals of digital technologies. THATCamp CAA in Chicago should certainly address this issue since they are in a wonderful position to do so.

Andrianna Campbell is a PhD candidate in Art History and Graduate Teaching Fellow at the CUNY Graduate Centre as well as an Adjunct Lecturer at Parsons, The New School for Design. She received a BFA (2001) in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design.

We asked last year’s graduate student coordinator for THATCamp CAA (held in Feb 2013 in NYC), Ileana Selejan, to reflect a little on her participation. Anyone want to take up her suggestion for a panel for next year…..? Proposals can be made here. 

I should start by saying it was THATCamp CAA 2013 that inspired and motivated me to pursue DH “methods” in my research and writing. One question that has always been central to my working process, especially since I started teaching: how do students learn? How do I learn? How does our educational community learn through its practices? I do believe that broader access to education online (albeit unequally distributed), coupled with the prevalence of tech in our daily routines have had profound effects on precisely these learning processes, and hence our responsibilities as scholars, writers, curators and educators have changed. I’m very interested in understanding these massive shifts; philosophically, that’s where I think sustainable innovation can happen.

I’ve been working on some ideas for online publications and collaborative research, both academic and beyond. I think it’s a pressing concern, yes, for young scholars, although not exclusively. It’s about trying to think through alternative models for art writing. DH has already proven that the grounds for experimentation are ample and can generate rich content.

Art Writing in the Digital Playground — perhaps a panel for THATCamp CAA 2014?

Ileana is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, an Adjunct Lecturer at Parsons, The New School for Design. She’s also a contributing member of kinema ikon, a Romanian-based new media experimental art group. She received an MA (2007) and a BA (2005) from Jacobs University Bremen. 

It’s time for Part IV of the mini-introductions to the 2014 CAA THATCamp organizers. On this hot seat this time is Christine Sundt, Professor Emerita, Architecture and Allied Arts Library, Visual Resources Collection, University of Oregon, and Editor, Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation.

1. What is your current involvement with “digital art history”?

As editor of a scholarly journal (Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation – VR), I am surrounded by digital resources, many based or focused on art history or closely allied with it. Through my work with authors, I encounter ways that technology has affected, altered, or replaced analog methods and processes in our workflows. Today’s books and journals are still recognizable as they were a couple of centuries ago, but will that always be the case? In today’s scholarly universe, full-color images are central to all types of communication, which is very different from Pre-D (before digital) days when text reigned supreme on a printed page and we viewed art mostly in greyscale in the static book format. Technology has expanded modes of presentation, access, and communication, putting us in touch with resources, which by their very nature as precious art objects and documents had previously been locked away and off the radar for all but a few specialists. Digital art history promises to bring art to the masses in ways that we could only dream of a few decades ago. How this is happening and reshaping cultural boundaries is what I look for in guiding VR. In doing so, I am trying to enrich my understanding and appreciation of technologies that supply tools and systems upon which art history is being constructed.

2. What is one of the most pressing issues in the field of “digital art history” today?

So much is available to all through online resources that one struggles to grasp “the whole” or what constitutes a complete body of work. A sub-issue is that while much is available electronically, the whole is still much greater and inaccessible. Art history is a discipline that builds on the past. Early images of important art objects are as critical to scholars as the latest bit-rich digital renditions of these objects. Each image has value that is often overlooked or dismissed when a newer format or version replaces it as the better or truer image. But how are these value judgments made and who is qualified to make them? Early scholarship, while perhaps no longer current or accepted, has value and importance in exposing other factors about the times and circumstances that produced it. Objects change due to time, wear, circumstances, or misfortunes and images are records of the effects of time. When resources are selected for us by the creators of databases and digital repositories, the whole is compromised. Digital art historians need to assume greater responsibility in the creation and management of digital resources so that the art historical record can be preserved. All of these resources, old as well as new, are facets of “the whole.”

3. Where do you see innovations happening?

Innovations typically happen outside the humanities. Art history, a discipline within the always underfunded humanities, has been chasing the innovators rather than having the luxury to play and dream with new tools and resources. Digital art historians should venture beyond traditional boundaries and supposed barriers to learn how to put digital resources to better use, remembering, too, that digital is just another tool.

4. What’s the panel or issue you’d most like to see proposed for THATCamp CAA in Chicago?

Rethinking methods courses for students of art history. What should students know and when should they know it?

1. What is your current involvement with “digital art history”?

My current involvement with digital art history is a little spread out: I co-founded and maintain a digital art history resource, arthistoryteachingresources.org; I blog and write about art history online in a number of places, including art21 and artwrit; and I’m currently helping to organize THATcamp at CAA 2014 as the graduate student representative (I’m currently a Ph. D candidate in Art History at The CUNY Graduate Center in New York).

2. What is one of the most pressing issues in the field of “digital art history” today?
As someone who will be graduating fairly soon and entering the job market I’m interested in the ways digital art history will change the field that I will engage with during my career as a teacher and a researcher. I think digital art history has great potential for facilitating access to knowledge, interdisciplinary collaboration, and peer-to-peer research.  However there is still resistance to, for example, online publication versus traditional print publication. I think one this is one of the most pressing issues in the field – recognizing online publications and digital forms of art history as “real work.” Those who hold the reins can be resistant to change, which makes the Digital Humanities and digital art history precarious to invest time and sweat in if they are not recognized as academic output. But, I think those definitions are changing, and fast.

3. Where do you see innovations happening?

One of the things I’m most proud of being involved with is creating online syllabi so students in my art history survey classes don’t have to buy expensive textbooks but can still have access to quality materials which help them to engage with and explore art history and its myriad forms. I think open educational resources are the way forward, but they must be properly supported during their research and development. I think it’s really important that quality open educational resources should count towards tenure portfolios in order to encourage all faculty to contribute to this innovative way of knowledge sharing. Who determines quality in this new field, though? How can it be peer-reviewed? These questions interest me.

4. What’s the panel or issue you’d most like to see proposed for THATCamp CAA in Chicago?

One of the most pressing issues in the humanities is the massive contingent labor pool and the difficulties associated with being a teacher and researcher within such precarious circumstances. I am interested in how the field of digital art history intersects with this issue. I’d like to see a panel around the politics and ethics of labor in art history today and the ways that digital art history can meet, manage and push these issues forward rather than exploit them.

Over the next few weeks we’re introducing the 2014 organizers for THATCamp at CAA 2014. We’ll also be asking speakers and participants from last year’s THATCamp to reflect on their experiences and make connections with what will happen in Chicago next February. They’re all getting involved with the conversation and preparation by answering four questions on the state of “digital art history” today. Comments always welcome.

Last week we introduced Prof. Anne Swartz. Today, we introduce Prof. Hussein Keshani who is also helping to organize THATCamp CAA 2014.

1. What is your current involvement with “digital art history”?

I have four projects that fall within the category of “digital art history” if construed broadly. The project Model Images is examining 18th century North Indian (Awadh) miniature paintings and the architecture and landscapes represented within using 3D modeling software as an analytical instrument. Art Historical discussions of close looking, analytical observation and gaze theory are being used to frame the inquiry. I am also developing a conventional visual database of Awadh visual culture. For the Digital Botanic Garden project, I am part of a team that is working on developing mobile apps that integrate environmental and cultural interpretation at a forthcoming cultural garden at Edmonton’s Devonian Botanic Garden, while critically reflecting on the authoritative construction of knowledge that is taking place. I am also in the process to developing two courses in digital art history, one focusing on modeling and the other on interpretation through mobile apps. Finally, I am a co-investigator on the World Art History Mashup (WHAM) project with PhD student Nathalie Hager, in which we are investigating how to materialize world art history theory into an interface for engaging art on the internet.

2. What is one of the most pressing issues in the field of “digital art history” today?

I am really interested in the unevenness in the digital turn in the humanities and art history and the implications for the kinds of art histories that can be written. What happens to the field as a whole when some specializations have access to digital infrastructure and programming capacity and others don’t? How can digital art history be broadly inclusive?

3. Where do you see innovations happening?

The advances in and mainstreaming of visual and spatial recognition capabilities is especially interesting as is the growing adoption of open-source philosophy by museums.

4. What’s the panel or issue you’d most like to see proposed for THATCamp CAA in Chicago?

I would find a panel on what is gained and what is lost in art history’s digital turn compelling.

Over the next few months, the site will host posts on issues germane to digital art history in advance of the discussions, panels, and actions at THATCamp in Chicago. This first post introduces Prof. Anne Swartz, the convener of this year’s camp. 

We’re asking posters to respond (broadly) to the following questions:

1. What is your current involvement with “digital art history”? 
2. What is one of the most pressing issues in the field of “digital art history” today? 
3. Where do you see innovations happening? 
4. What’s the panel or issue you’d most like to see proposed for THATCamp CAA in Chicago? 

I became a full-time eLearning professor in 2004.  I had a short training in course development and online teaching and I was sent on my way.   Online art history was much in conversation at CAA in 2005, but I still felt adrift because I didn’t have many other art historians to consult.  I quickly developed practical approaches, assignments, and incentives for students to engage them in the material, in both the courses I developed and the ones I taught.  As the eLearning program grew at my college, I dedicated myself to mentoring other faculty, helping them navigate this oft-unfamiliar terrain.  Now, I have become something of an apologist for eLearning and digital art history because I proselytize their attributes whenever I have the opportunity.   It isn’t simply the mode of delivery that makes it a valuable experience.

At first, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in academia looked at me with wounded eyes when I told them I was teaching via eLearning.  It was as though I had entered an academic purgatory of neither here nor there.  Some well-meaning but aggressive folk assured me I would be back in the on-campus classroom in no time with no damaging impact upon my career.  Others didn’t say anything and simply wrote me off as a professional lightweight.

Though it isn’t a method for everyone, the students for whom it does benefit are more engaged online than in the on-ground classroom.  Having students all over the world enlivens the conversation as students discuss the art they see in their area and the cultural differences about perceptions of the art we study.  Best of all, the students are learning well.  Students have opened themselves up more to the material in the online environment and, thus, do more with the curriculum.  The virtual art and references available online are astounding and impressive, giving students access to databases, networks, images, archives, and scholarship, enriching their experience. One of the benefits of teaching online is that I read and write faster and am able to be more professionally active as a result.

Prejudices against teaching and learning art history via eLearning are ubiquitous.  Perhaps our discipline is more conservative because we remain so anchored in the discussion of objects and their maintenance.  Or maybe it is a result of the relatively smaller size of our field.  However, in my experience, I can’t say these remonstrances have merit.  I have many wonderful interactions with the students.  My students report back about their successes, just as my on-ground students did when they become alums.  The proliferation of digital archives and image banks has changed the way I teach and research and I am grateful for these advances.  I use social media to circulate my research, learn about new publications, conferences, and opportunities, and question the art historiat about research queries.  I have much to learn about digital art history and am looking forward to what’s ahead.

Because of my interest in eLearning, I have also become interested in digital publishing and regard them as intertwined in sharing some similar negative perceptions.  I would be interested in discussion at THATCamp CAA 2014 of eLearning art history pedagogy and benefits and challenges of digital publishing.  Also, I want to hear from younger and emerging scholars about their experiences with both of these areas.

THATCamp CAA is open to scholars, artists, and graduate students with an active interest in digital art history. THATCamp at CAA in Chicago in 2014 builds on the great work done at the THATCamp session at CAA in New York in 2013.

THATCamp is a free digital art history unconference which will be held Monday, February 10 (11.45am – 5.15pm) and Tuesday, February 11 (9.30am – 5pm), the days immediately preceding the CAA annual conference. A follow up session will be held on Thursday February 13th (9.30am – noon). Participants should be able to attend all sessions. Full details of this year’s CAA THATCamp, including details on how to register, can be found in the “About” section.

Registration is now open! Please also start proposing session ideas here.