Socially Responsible Digital Humanities during Precarious Times

This lecture explores what socially responsible digital humanities can look like in the face of environmental crisis, technological inequity, and evolving relationships between academia and the public. Drawing inspiration from Bethany Nowviskie's 2014 Digital Humanities keynote, "Digital Humanities in the Anthropocene," it takes up her central question, "What are our best, shared hopes for DH?," as an opportunity to explore how digital humanities practitioners might critically examine their own infrastructures, engage meaningfully with communities, and imagine more ethical futures. Organized around three interrelated modes of practice: Critique + Interrogate, Engage + Empower, and Imagine + Speculate, the lecture will provide examples from and examine how digital humanities as a field has become increasingly attuned to the material, social, and ecological conditions that underlie digital humanities work, and more broadly society, today.