Digital Humanities in Promotion and Tenure

Introduction

As more scholars have engaged in the digital humanities—and as this scholarship has become an increasingly prominent part of promotion and tenure cases—it has become incumbent upon professional organizations and university departments to educate faculty on 1) what we mean by digital humanities and 2) how to evaluate faculty research in the digital humanities.

This post is a brief introduction to the digital humanities (a.k.a. DH) for university faculty whose responsibilities include reviewing promotion and tenure cases.

What is the Digital Humanities?

Digital Humanities includes a range of theories and methods that focus on the creation and critical application of digital technologies to further humanistic knowledge, develop scholarly communities, and engage with broad publics. It is inherently multidisciplinary and collaborative. Central to Digital Humanities scholarship is not simply the application of digital tools to facilitate humanities inquiry, but the theorization and criticism of those tools.

For more definitions of digital humanities, visit https://github.com/hepplerj/whatisdigitalhumanities

Modes of Digital Humanities Practice

There are many modes of digital humanities practice, but at their core, they exist at the intersection of humanities and computing theories and methodological frameworks. While most DH practice includes a component that applies digital methods to scholarship, some DH practitioners are focused solely on theorization and critical inquiry. As such, their practices may be analogous to scholarship in fields such as Media Studies, the History of Technology, or Critical Race Theory.

Below is a simplified taxonomy of what Digital Humanities scholarship looks like.

Taxonomy of Digital Humanities

Professional Guidelines for Review

There are a number of organizations that have produced promotion and tenure guidelines for DH projects. Below is a brief list to guide departments in revising their guidelines and faculty in reviewing P&T cases.